EXPOSED
The front half of this job — mood boards, period research, concept renderings, sketch variations, drafting elevations in CAD/SketchUp — is exactly what image and drafting models now produce in minutes, and directors and curators are already using them for early looks. What survives is downstream and physical: walking a stage or gallery, specifying real materials and load paths, hitting a budget, and standing in the shop when a flat doesn't fit. Scored for the modal worker across theater/film sets and museum exhibits; the exhibit side has slightly more surviving fabrication and accessibility work.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. The concept-through-drafting half of your week — thumbnail variations, period reference boards, colored elevations, painter's elevations, model photos for the production meeting — is now generated output, while the half that holds is site survey on a raked stage, material substitution when the lauan is backordered, tech-week notes, and mount design against ADA reach ranges, which lands this at 10 rather than the 14+ a purely on-site trade would get.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. You are in the shop and on the deck: measuring a proscenium that isn't square, checking sightlines from row F, riding a lift to look at a drop, walking an exhibit in mid-install with case glass on pallets and dust in the air — uncontrolled spaces on someone else's schedule, though you're specifying and supervising rather than swinging the hammer for eight hours, which is why 13 and not 17.
No licence, no signature requirement. No licence exists for set or exhibit design; the technical director, the licensed structural engineer stamping the rigging or a mezzanine, and the venue's fire marshal review of flame-spread ratings are the signatures that carry legal weight, so your drawing gets approved by someone else's credential and 2 is honest.
Some relationship component. Directors, curators, and production designers rehire designers they've survived a tech week with, and the shorthand built over three shows is real — but you're hired per production through a portfolio and an interview, often competing against a dozen decks, and the audience never learns your name, which caps this at 9.
Meaningful discretion. You commit the show to a scenic budget and a build calendar with no way to unspend it — choosing a turntable over wagons, deciding an artifact can hang unvitrined, calling whether a deck will hold a full-cast dance number — decisions the TD and producer can override but that are yours to propose and defend, which is genuine discretion short of the 14+ where a wrong call is a life-safety event you personally own.
Choreographers EXPOSED
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