Plan how many lighting positions should be included in the new light plot. Provide for instruments to be installed at the back of the auditorium, from catwalks or coves over the seating area, or from coves and pipes along the sidewalls. Plan for positions in the wings and over the stage itself as well. These lighting positions will help determine the number of instruments to buy and the number of dimmer boxes and power requirements needed for the new system.
Plan where the new lighting system should be controlled from. Older auditoriums often feature a projection booth at the back of the facility: this might be remodeled into a modern control booth with the installation of a much larger picture window. You can also build a new booth at the back of the seating area. Avoid placing lighting control booths on the stage itself: operators need to be able to see the entire stage.
Plan a minimum number of stage lighting instruments needed for the space. Start with a floor plan of the auditorium stage. Draw circles to scale representing 10-foot diameter pools of light. Draw light pools from the stage apron back to the cyclorama curtain and side to side across the width of the stage. Overlap these light pools slightly. If you end up with 15 10-foot diameter pools of light needed to cover the stage, for example, multiply 15 times 4. Sixty is then the minimum number of instruments you will need to cover each pool from four directions: one light from the front, one from the top and one from each side. If that number seems too high for your budget, make the pools of light larger, perhaps 12 feet in diameter, reducing the number of pools needed for full coverage.
Plan the minimum number of control dimmers you'll need. If your minimum lighting instrument budget is 60 lights, build flexibility into your entire system by providing at least four dimmer boxes for each instrument so you can move instruments around and add new instruments to the stock later. In this case, plan on a minimum of 240 dimmer boxes for use by the 60 lights. You'll have room to grow in the future.