Inside the Junior Trailhead AV Career Day: TYLERLIGHT Introduces Students to Live Event Lighting
October 24, 2026
On October 9, 2026, TYLERLIGHT joined Evolve Media Group and other Central Florida production professionals for the Evolve Junior Trailhead AV Career Day, giving approximately 40 high school students a hands-on look at professional lighting, audio, video, projection, show control, and the technology behind a modern live event production.
Giving Orlando Students A Look Behind the Show
The Junior Trailhead AV Career Day was designed to give students something more valuable than a traditional classroom presentation: the opportunity to walk into a working production environment and see how a live show is actually assembled and operated.
TYLERLIGHT partnered with Evolve Media Group and other Central Florida organizations and production professionals to help create that environment inside Chapman Leonard Studios in Orlando.
Building a Real Orlando Event Environment for Students
About 40 high school students attended the career-day program to learn how a professional live event is built, controlled, and executed.
Rather than showing students individual pieces of equipment in isolation, the production team transformed an empty Orlando studio into a functioning event environment incorporating professional event lighting , projection, video walls, cameras, audio systems, playback equipment, switching systems, and production control.
The goal was to let students see both sides of a show: the finished experience an audience normally sees and the technical systems that make that experience possible.
Designing the Studio Around the Learning Experience
The event took place inside Stage 2 at Chapman Leonard Studios in Orlando, a roughly 5,000-square-foot studio with a large cyclorama wall that provided an ideal canvas for lighting and projection.
For a normal event, many technical positions would be intentionally placed out of the audience’s direct view. For Career Day, the layout was deliberately different.
Playback systems, video switching, production controls, projection, lighting positions, and other behind-the-scenes technology were made visible so students could understand how the departments connect.
Lighting truss towers were positioned in the audience area while projection screens flanked the center video wall. This allowed students to view the room almost like a cutaway version of a professional live production.
Live Event Lighting Starts Long Before the Audience Arrives
The production began the same way many professional events begin: trucks were unloaded, road cases were moved into the studio, equipment positions were established, and each technical department began assembling its part of the system.
For TYLERLIGHT, that meant creating a lighting design capable of supporting both the presenters and the larger visual environment.
Two 10-foot truss towers were used to support LED ellipsoidal fixtures. Eight fixtures—four on each tower—provided warm white front light for the presentation area and helped keep speakers clearly visible.
This same principle is important in professional stage lighting in Orlando : faces, presenters, performers, and important visual areas must remain properly illuminated while still allowing screens, scenic lighting, and effects to contribute to the environment.
24 Wireless Uplights Turned a White Wall Into Part of the Show
One of the most dramatic transformations involved the studio’s large white cyclorama wall.
TYLERLIGHT used 24 battery-powered uplights with wireless control to illuminate the cyclorama and introduce color across the production environment.
Instead of functioning simply as a blank background, the wall became an active part of the visual design.
This is the same reason uplighting in Orlando is frequently used for corporate events, weddings, stages, hotels, ballrooms, and architectural environments. Carefully placed color can change the visual character of a room without changing the physical architecture.
Wireless Battery-Powered Uplighting
Battery-powered fixtures reduce visible cabling and can provide flexible placement around event spaces while wireless control allows color and intensity changes to be managed from the lighting system.
Triangle GOBO Patterns Connected the Lighting to the Event Visuals
Moving lights added another visual layer to the Career Day production. Vari-Lite VL770 fixtures were positioned on truss towers flanking the center video wall.
Because triangle shapes appeared throughout the event’s visual presentation, triangle GOBO patterns were selected and combined with a prism effect to project matching shapes across the cyclorama.
This demonstrated an important concept in professional event design: lighting can support a visual identity rather than simply provide illumination.
At corporate events, conferences, weddings, galas, and branded experiences, custom GOBO projection can be used for logos, monograms, patterns, artwork, and other visual elements that connect the lighting design to the event itself.
Vari-Lite VL770 Moving Light
The VL770 fixtures were used for projected patterns and could also provide controlled spotlighting, movement, color, and other dynamic effects during the presentation.
The MA3 Console Showed Students How a Lighting System Is Operated
Fixtures are only part of a professional lighting system. Someone must program and control how those fixtures behave throughout the event.
Tyler operated the lighting using an MA3 console and demonstrated how different looks could be programmed for the students.
During the interactive portion of Career Day, groups of students were invited to work around the console and see how simple adjustments could change colors and projected patterns throughout the room.
For a student seeing professional show control for the first time, the connection becomes immediate: press a control, change a value, and watch the entire visual environment respond.
Tyler Shared How an Interest in School Lighting Became a Career
Career Day was not only about explaining equipment. The professionals involved also shared how they entered the live-event industry.
Tyler explained that his own interest in lighting began in middle school while operating the lighting console for school plays.
That early interest eventually developed into professional industry experience, including working at PRG as a shop technician, before building his own business into TYLERLIGHT.
That story matters because many careers in live entertainment begin exactly that way: a student becomes interested in one technical area, gets an opportunity to experiment, and gradually discovers that the interest can become a profession.
Today TYLERLIGHT provides corporate event lighting , stage lighting, uplighting, projection, specialty lighting, and professional lighting design throughout Orlando and Central Florida.
A Live Event Requires More Than One Technical Department
The Junior Trailhead AV Career Day was a collaborative production.
Evolve Media Group organized major technical portions of the event and provided video-wall and projection systems along with production personnel.
Elevate Orlando helped organize students from multiple high schools, AVStrategy contributed audio systems, and Valencia College shared educational and career pathways related to live events, film, and video.
TYLERLIGHT and AFPC contributed equipment supporting the lighting system.
Together, those contributions demonstrated a reality of professional live production: lighting designers, audio technicians, video engineers, camera operators, playback technicians, projection specialists, and production personnel must coordinate their work to create one finished event.
Students Rotated Through the Technical Areas of the Show
After the main presentation, students were divided into smaller groups and rotated through different production departments.
Those rotations gave them the chance to see front-of-house lighting and audio, backstage systems, playback, switching, video, and other technical positions from close range.
Instead of simply watching professionals operate equipment, students could ask questions and interact with some of the technology.
That type of direct exposure can be important because many students may have attended concerts, sporting events, conferences, theatrical productions, or streamed events without ever realizing how many technical careers exist behind the finished experience.
A student may already enjoy technology, music, photography, computers, theater, design, or electronics without knowing that those interests can lead directly into careers in live-event production.
Professional Event Lighting Is a System, Not Just a Collection of Fixtures
One of the most useful lessons from the Career Day setup was seeing how different systems serve different purposes.
The ellipsoidal fixtures provided clear presentation lighting. Wireless uplights transformed the cyclorama. Moving fixtures added projected patterns and spotlighting. The MA3 console coordinated the lighting behavior while video, projection, cameras, and audio created additional layers of the production.
That same layered approach is used when TYLERLIGHT designs lighting for real client events.
A ballroom, conference, gala, wedding, stage, or live production may combine uplighting, GOBO projection, stage lighting, architectural lighting, decorative lighting, and specialty fixtures depending on the venue and the experience being created.
You can see more examples in the TYLERLIGHT event lighting portfolio .
Why TYLERLIGHT Supports Career Exposure in the Live Events Industry
Most people experience live events from the audience.
They see the finished stage, hear the sound, watch the screens, and experience the lighting without necessarily seeing the technicians, programmers, operators, engineers, and production teams working behind those systems.
Career Day gave students the opportunity to step behind that finished experience and see the industry from the production side.
For TYLERLIGHT, contributing time, equipment, and professional experience to an event like this is an investment in the next generation of live-event professionals in Central Florida.
If a student walks away interested in lighting, audio, video, production technology, or another technical role they had never considered before, the experience has already accomplished something important.
Create a Professional Production Built Around Your Event.
From corporate conferences and stages to galas, weddings, live productions, and specialty events, TYLERLIGHT designs professional lighting environments throughout Orlando and Central Florida.