I had learned the first rule. More light on the performer than on the audience. Lights in front, never behind. So when the tech coordinator at a corporate event in Vienna asked me about my lighting preferences, I gave what I thought was a clear and intelligent answer.
“Just a spotlight on me. Nice and bright.”
He nodded, made a note, and twenty minutes later I was standing in the most unflattering cone of light I have ever experienced. It was a single PAR can, hard-edged, no gel, mounted directly above and slightly in front of my position. The light was bright. Brutally bright. The kind of bright that makes you squint when you first step into it, that turns your eye sockets into dark pools, that casts a razor-sharp shadow of your nose across your cheek.
I looked, and I am choosing this word carefully, like a suspect in an interrogation room. The kind of lighting you see in crime dramas when the detective slides a folder across the table and says, “We know what you did.”
The audience could see me. That was not the problem. The problem was that they could see me in the worst possible way. Every imperfection amplified. Every shadow exaggerated. Every gesture looking slightly menacing because the light was creating dramatic contrasts that belonged in a thriller, not a corporate keynote with magic.
The performance went fine. The material held up. The audience responded. But I could not shake the feeling that I was fighting the lighting again, just in a different way than the Graz ballroom with its uniform chandeliers. There, I had too little differentiation. Here, I had differentiation of the wrong quality.
The Quality Problem
This is the thing nobody tells you when they say “get more light on yourself.” They are right, but they are incomplete. The quantity of light matters, but so does the quality. A harsh, hard-edged, unfiltered spotlight creates a lighting environment that is technically correct — you are brighter than the audience — but emotionally wrong. It creates an atmosphere of interrogation, exposure, clinical examination. None of these are the feelings you want your audience to have when they are supposed to be enjoying an evening of magic.
Dan Harlan addresses this directly in his Tarbell Lesson 83 lighting section. He talks about five controllable aspects of light: color, focus and placement, intensity, distribution, and movement. When I first encountered this list, I realized that my request in Vienna had addressed only one of those five — intensity. I had asked for bright. I had not specified anything about the other four aspects, and the tech had given me the default, which was a hard-edged fixture at full power with no color correction.
The result was technically a spotlight. It was also aesthetically a disaster.
Soft Edge vs. Hard Edge
Harlan’s recommendation is specific: use a soft edge on spotlights. Not a hard edge. The difference is profound and the terminology is straightforward.
A hard-edged spotlight has a crisp, defined circle of light. You can see exactly where the light begins and ends. Step inside the circle and you are lit. Step outside and you are in darkness. The transition is instantaneous. This creates a dramatic, theatrical, often harsh effect. It works in certain theatrical contexts — the dramatic reveal, the soliloquy, the confession scene. But as a general performance light, it is punishing.
A soft-edged spotlight has a gradual transition from full brightness at the center to dimness at the edges. The circle of light fades rather than ending abruptly. This creates a warmer, more natural, more flattering illumination. The performer can move slightly without stepping in and out of the light. The shadows on the face are softer. The overall feeling is of being highlighted rather than being exposed.
When Harlan says soft edge works for every character, he means it. Whether you are performing comedy, mentalism, close-up card work on a stage, or a full theatrical illusion, a soft-edged light flatters you. A hard-edged light can work for specific dramatic moments, but as your primary illumination, it is working against the warm, inviting connection you are trying to build with your audience.
The Bastard Amber Revelation
The single piece of lighting advice from Harlan’s lecture that changed my approach more than any other is his recommendation for bastard amber.
It is a gel — a colored filter placed over a light fixture — and the name is genuinely absurd. Bastard amber. It sounds like an insult from a Dickens novel. But the effect it produces is anything but absurd.
Harlan describes it as a gel that looks kind of pink, a pinkish yellow tone that works for any skin tone. His claim is direct and confident: if you put a bastard amber light on any human being, it immediately makes them feel more vibrant, warmer, and inviting.
I did not fully believe this until I saw the difference firsthand. At a conference in Salzburg, the venue had a lighting tech who was experienced with live performance. When I mentioned bastard amber, he nodded immediately — this was not obscure knowledge in the theatrical lighting world, apparently, just obscure in the world of people like me who perform at corporate events. He swapped the gel on the front wash, and the difference was immediate.
Under the neutral white light, I had looked fine. Professional. Adequately lit. Under the bastard amber, I looked alive. The warmth of the gel softened everything. My skin looked healthier. The shadows on my face were gentler. The overall impression was of someone who was approachable and interesting rather than someone standing under a clinical examination light.
The audience would never consciously notice this. Nobody in that Salzburg conference room thought, “Ah, I see they have used a bastard amber gel, which is creating a warmer and more inviting visual impression of the speaker.” What they experienced, without thinking about it, was that the person on stage looked good. Looked warm. Looked like someone they wanted to watch and listen to.
Why Skin Tone Matters
This is a point that seems obvious once someone explains it but that I had never considered. The color temperature of the light directly affects how human skin appears. Cool, blue-white light — the kind that many modern LED fixtures produce by default — makes skin look pale, slightly washed out, subtly unhealthy. Warm light makes skin look vibrant, alive, and attractive.
Harlan notes this trade-off explicitly when discussing the LED revolution. LEDs are fantastic tools: they are cool to the touch, adjustable for color and intensity without physically changing gels, and controllable from a single fixture. But their default color temperature tends toward the cooler end of the spectrum, which can result in slightly paler skin tones compared to the warm glow of traditional incandescent fixtures.
This does not mean LEDs are bad. It means they need adjustment. If you are working with LED fixtures, warming the color temperature is usually as simple as adjusting a setting. If you are working with traditional fixtures, a bastard amber gel accomplishes the same thing.
The point is that neutral or cool lighting may be technically accurate but emotionally cold. Warm lighting is technically inaccurate — it shifts the color of everything in the room — but emotionally inviting. For performance purposes, emotionally inviting wins every time.
The Spot Size Question
Harlan has specific advice about how large your spotlight should be, and it is more generous than I expected. The spot should cover you from your feet to the full spread of your arms, with room to step around the edges. This is not a tight circle that pins you in place. It is a broad enough pool of light that you can move naturally, gesture freely, and step to either side without falling into darkness.
This was liberating to learn. I had assumed that a spotlight meant standing in one precise location, locked in place like a store mannequin. The idea of a larger pool of light meant that I could move as I naturally do during a keynote — stepping slightly forward for emphasis, shifting to one side to address a particular section of the audience, moving to my prop table and back — all within the lit area.
It also meant that the soft edge of the light did important work at the boundaries. Because the light fades gradually, my movements near the edge of the pool looked natural rather than like I was stepping in and out of a defined zone. The audience perceived me as having freedom of movement because the lighting supported that freedom rather than constraining it.
What I Ask For Now
My pre-event lighting request has evolved from “just a spotlight” to something considerably more specific. I ask for a front wash — light coming from in front and slightly above, never from behind — with a soft edge and warm color temperature. If the venue has gels, I ask for bastard amber. If they are using LEDs, I ask them to warm the color temperature toward the amber end.
I ask for the spot to be large enough that I can move within a roughly three-meter-wide area without stepping out of the light. I ask for the house lights in the audience seating to be dimmed — not killed entirely, but reduced to perhaps fifty to sixty percent. This creates the brightness differential without plunging the audience into darkness, which has its own problems that I will address in a later post.
And I ask for the intensity to be comfortable for my eyes. This is a personal thing. If the light is so bright that I cannot see the first few rows of the audience, it is too bright. I need to see faces. I need to read the room. A light that blinds me to the audience is a light that cuts me off from the people I am performing for, and that defeats the entire purpose.
Most venue techs, once they understand these requests, can accommodate them in minutes. The adjustments are not exotic. They are basic theatrical lighting principles that any experienced lighting person knows. The problem is not that the adjustments are difficult. The problem is that performers who work corporate events rarely ask for them, so the default is whatever the venue thinks looks good for a banquet — which is typically cool, uniform, and unflattering.
The Lesson Behind the Lesson
What I took from the Vienna interrogation-spotlight experience and from Harlan’s detailed lighting guidance was something bigger than the specific technical recommendations. It was the realization that every element of the performance environment is communicating something to the audience, whether you manage it or not.
Harsh, cold, hard-edged light communicates authority, exposure, clinical scrutiny. That is why interrogation rooms use it. That is why operating theaters use it. Those are contexts where harsh light serves the purpose.
Warm, soft-edged light communicates invitation, warmth, safety. That is why restaurants use candlelight. That is why living rooms have warm-toned lamps. Those are contexts where people relax and open up.
As a performer, I want my audience to relax and open up. I want them to feel invited, not examined. I want the lighting to communicate before I say a word that this is going to be an enjoyable experience, not a stressful one. And the fastest way to communicate that is not through my patter or my smile or my body language — although all of those matter. The fastest way is through the quality of the light that falls on my face.
More light on you than on the audience — yes. But what kind of light? That question matters just as much as the quantity. A single harsh spotlight with no gel and a hard edge gives you the brightness differential you need while simultaneously making you look like you are about to confess to something.
Soft edge. Warm color. Bastard amber if you can get it. These are not luxuries. They are the difference between an audience that settles in to enjoy the show and an audience that spends the entire evening wondering why the performer looks like he is being interrogated.