A channel hookup is the whole lighting rig set out as a list, one row for every lantern, put in order of the channel that controls it. Read down it and you are seeing the rig the way the lighting desk sees it: find channel 12 and the hookup tells you which lantern, or which group of lanterns, comes up when that fader goes up, along with what type it is, where it hangs, where it is pointed and what color it is in.
The name comes mainly from American lighting paperwork, where "hookup" (also written "hook-up") is standard; in the UK the same document is sometimes called a channel schedule or simply a channel list. Whatever it is called, it is one member of a family of lighting paperwork that all describe the same rig, each sorted a different way for a different job.
What a channel actually is
The word channel gets used loosely, so it is worth pinning down against the two things it is easily confused with: the dimmer and the address.
A channel is a control number the designer assigns. When you select a number on the lighting desk and take it up, that is a channel. On a modern memory console the numbering is the designer's own logic rather than something fixed by the wiring, and a soft patch connects each channel to the dimmer or the DMX address that actually delivers power to the lantern. One channel can hold several lanterns, so a single fader can raise a whole wash at once.
On older hard-patched systems a channel and a dimmer were often one and the same thing, which is why the two words still get muddled. On anything with a memory console they are separate ideas, and keeping them apart is the reason a channel hookup and a patch sheet are two different documents rather than one.
What each column means
Columns vary between designers and between the software that produces them, but a hookup usually carries most of the following. The first few locate the lantern; the rest describe what it is and what it does.
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Channel | The control number, and the order the sheet is sorted in |
| Dimmer / address | The supply the channel is patched to: a dimmer number on a tungsten rig, or a universe and DMX address on an LED or moving-light rig |
| Position | The bar, boom, ladder or floor position the lantern hangs on |
| Unit number | Its number along that position, so "LX2 (5)" is the fifth unit on the second electric; with the position, this is how you find the lantern on the bar and on the plot |
| Instrument / type | The kind of lantern: a profile, a Fresnel, a PAR, a moving light, with its beam angle where it has one |
| Wattage | The load, which matters for power and for older dimmer rigs |
| Purpose / focus | What the lantern is for and where it is aimed, in words rather than coordinates: "warm cover DSC", "special on the chair", commonly written relative to the plaster line and the centre line |
| Color | The gel or color, by manufacturer number |
| Gobo | Any template in the gate |
| Accessories | Barn doors, an iris, a top hat, a gobo rotator, and the like |
| Notes | Anything else the crew needs to know |
Not every rig fills every column. A tungsten Fresnel has a wattage and a dimmer; an LED wash has a DMX address and a mode instead, and no gel at all. A good hookup carries whatever it takes to find each lantern and know what it should be doing.
Why the order matters
The rows of a channel hookup are the same rows that make up two other documents. Sort them by position instead and you have a hanging schedule; sort them by dimmer or address and you have a patch sheet. Same rig, same information, three orders, because three different people need to read it at three different moments.
| Document | Sorted by | Reached for by | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channel hookup | channel number | the designer and the board operator | plotting, teching and running the show |
| Hanging schedule | position and unit number | the electricians | the fit-up, while hanging and focusing along each bar |
| Patch sheet | dimmer, circuit or address | whoever patches the rig | connecting dimmers or addresses to channels |
Channel order is the one you work in once the show is being lit. In a plotting session or a tech the designer talks in channels ("channel 46, and take it to 70"), so a list in channel order is the one you can move through at speed, often in a half-dark auditorium. It matters, too, that the channels themselves are laid out sensibly: a whole front wash gathered into one run of numbers, side light in another, specials up in the hundreds. A rig numbered that way is quick to read on the desk and on the page, while one with channels scattered at random still works electrically but is a trial to run. Reading a hookup, you learn nearly as much from the shape of the numbering as from any single row.
How it sits with the plot and the magic sheet
A channel hookup is a list, not a picture. The picture is the lighting plot, the scale drawing that shows where every lantern actually hangs. The two share the position and unit number and the channel, so you cross between them constantly: pick a lantern out on the plot, read its channel, and turn to that row of the hookup for the detail the drawing has no room for.
A magic sheet is different again. It is not a full list but a quick schematic of what each channel does by area and function, kept beside the desk for calling and building cues at speed. The hookup is the complete reference; the magic sheet is the shorthand you actually glance at mid-cue.
Keeping it in step
The awkward thing about all of this paperwork is that it describes one rig several times over. Move a lantern to a different bar, or change a gel, and the plot, the hookup, the hanging schedule and the patch sheet all have to agree, or a focus note sends someone to the wrong bar at the worst possible moment. Maintained by hand, as four separate lists, they drift apart easily.
Holding the rig once and printing each view from it removes that whole class of error. In Setplot the rig hangs over the same groundplan as the set, and the channel hookup is one export taken from it, in channel order, with the focus written in stage language so the sheet doubles as focus notes. The hanging schedule and the patch sheet are the same rows re-sorted, and the plot is the same rig drawn to scale, so none of them can fall out of step with the others. The hookup comes out as a CSV with fixed English column headings, which means it opens the same way in any spreadsheet, whatever language the rest of the app is set to.
Read well, a channel hookup is less a table to decode than a map of the designer's thinking: how the rig is divided up, what each part of it is for, and what will happen the moment a given number goes up.