Published:  September 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780367423728

The Definitive Guide
to the Assisting Profession

This ground-breaking text returns in its second edition, unlocking the insider secrets and proven, time-tested methods to succeed as a professional assistant lighting designer.


This definitive guide outlines, step-by-step, the daily challenges that assistant lighting designers face during every phase of production, and the solutions for overcoming them. Furthermore, intermingled among the highly detailed paperwork techniques and essential procedures, top industry professionals reveal tips for success in this challenging career. This fully updated second edition features:

• All new advice, real-world stories, and current paperwork examples from over 120 working professionals.
• Updated industry practices with case studies from the professionals themselves, such as how to create a video network to record previews for the lighting department; how much printing is done in an increasingly paperless world; how to produce a set electrics package; and how the industry interfaces with cutting-edge technology like remote followspots and pre-visualization software.
• New lifestyle tips for traveling abroad, negotiating contracts, and dealing with stressful situations.

The Assistant Lighting Designer's Toolkit, the most trusted authority on assisting in the lighting world, equips budding assistant lighting designers and students studying lighting design with the insider knowledge they need to achieve the successful career that they have always wanted—whether choosing assisting as a career or as a stepping-stone toward design. Within these pages are the industry secrets rarely taught in school!

    "The Assistant Lighting Designer's Toolkit is a book the lighting world needs and should be required reading for all new – and not so new – lighting designers."

– Ken Billington

Purchase HERE

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