You're like, time? What is that? Time off? We don't know what that is in the tour life. Are you usually doing tours back to back or do you ever take breaks between tours?

So this month I was supposed to have most of the month off, but I'm now doing Kaskades Christmas show.

What? That's so cool! Where's that gonna be?

Uh, it's in LA and I forget which theater.  One of the, one of the really iconic ones. They got a couple of them. 

So what is that like? From what I understand, the visuals and the production is very much a huge part of the DJ's set. Part of the experience of going to see a DJ is their visuals and their lighting production, right? 

I spent hours on the phone with the DJ getting his idea. And then sometimes as a creative director, you also have to get behind their ideas and you have to meet the middle of what they want.

So it's you coordinating with the DJ, creative director, and then are you also coordinating with a visualist?

Sometimes there's visuals already made, sometimes we have to follow their color scheme and stuff like that, make sure that we're not taking all the hits. Some videos can take some of the hits. So you don't want both doing everything the whole time. Same thing with the laser company, you know.

Oh, so the lasers are separate? 

Yeah, lasers are totally separate. We have to coordinate with them as well.

I can only imagine  how that could be such a double edged sword when it comes to, especially with creativity and art being the most subjective thing.

Well, you get four or five creative people to get in one room and they're all professionals. 

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone was just butting heads so much?

There's been one instance of that and everyone got fired. 

So back to just like the process of lighting & directing, do you typically work with other lighting people or is it pretty much just if you're directing?

It depends. So the Kaskade Christmas show, yes, there's two of us that are working together, but we also only have three days to program it. 

Where was it again?

It's in LA, but our rehearsals are in Utah. 

Does the venue dictate how you're gonna do the lighting production or do, when you,  when you create a lighting set? Is it usually something that you can do in any theater or stage?

It dictates how we draw our plots up and how we regulate all the lighting and stuff like that. So then some of that will dictate how the light show looks in the end. 

So it's definitely important to know what venue you're going to be at. Whatever venue in LA they give you all the information about that venue and you can start kind of like creating from there.

Yeah, this venue is actually so old that we have to build a structure inside of the venue.

How important is it to have seen the venue in person? Do you ever do that? 

It's very important. We did a walk through a couple weeks ago.

What has been your favorite city or venue to do your work?

 Red Rock out in Denver, Colorado. 

Oh my gosh. I have seen videos of what is it, that big festival? There’s that big EDM festival every year. 

 There's EDM shows there like every week . It's every weekend.

So why is that your favorite venue, aside from it being beautiful?

It's something that you don't get to do every day. The green rooms in the back are built out of the mountains, so you could sit on the mountain inside the green room.

How has the industry changed or evolved since you first started  for better or for worse?

I mean, I can't really speak too much on it because I was a lower end guy back in the day, so I don't know.

Has AI or anything helped made it easier?

AI doesn't do anything for me, but it does a lot for the video engineers. So there's not a lot with lighting.

When you guys are programming and actually doing the performance, um,  How, how do you guys manage timing?

That's actually a good question. So for Kaskades Christmas show, the whole thing is time coded. So there's a signal sent to the video guy, lighting guy, laser guy, and everything is, once this time happens, that triggers automatically. Now with Kai Wachi, I do everything by hand.  And it's dubstep. So it's thousands of hits.

Does that mean that you've gotten pretty good at knowing when the beat is going to drop and going crazy? Do you have to be familiar with the artist's music to be able to do it live?

I don't have to, at least I don't, but it obviously is way better if I am. Sometimes I do house gigs for Insomniac. I do one of the stages for EDC, the hardstyle stage, Wasteland.  I've designed that stage for the last six years.

That's the one I always run past. I'm always scared every time I walk by that one. 

 There's a lot going on. Two years ago, I was so tired when Little Texas was playing. I fell asleep, and I woke up to him naked on the stage and I'm like “Oh God!”  

Has being in such  a highly stimulating environment and industry caused you to get jaded? Can you fall asleep during an EDM show? 

Oh, absolutely. I could fall asleep right here, if I needed to. And I'll fall asleep backstage any  day.  

Was there ever a moment in your creative process where you felt stuck? If so, how did you overcome it, if you did?

I always get stuck in certain things, and most of the time it's because I don't have all the aspects that I need. So I just don't know what to do or they're trying to follow what I'm doing. I'm not a huge creative director. I just follow what I'm told to do.

Do you have a favorite lighting trick whenever you're doing a show? 

There's delay sweeps, that’s where the lights turn on one at a time and then  Fade out all together. So it happens really fast. So it almost seems like the whole rig fades on, but even though it's one or it's a million lights fading on, it's. But it looks like the whole vertical fades on at the same time.

How does lighting with fireworks work? Are fireworks like timed? 

Once again, it's all the same thing. Sometimes they're hit.  Manually, sometimes it's time coded, just with a simple signal. 

So what do you listen to when you're not working?  

I don't listen to music unless I'm doing a show for it. But I'm always listening to music, so that's the problem. Like the Christmas show that's going on, the whole time I was listening to Christmas music on the way here. 

Any plans in the future maybe to work on the sphere or what do you think of the Sphere?

I have zero plans and zero will to want to go there.  It seems like a lot of bureaucratic stuff that I'd have to deal with there. Especially with it being focused on the video wall, they probably wouldn't let lighting do a lot of stuff.

Do you have any dream projects that you would love to work on?

Not currently, but there have been moments where I've wanted to do some kind of arts thing with lights. But nothing specific, like I haven't decided on anything that I'd want to do. Without music, well not necessarily without music, but not with DJs or something like that, just like some kind of try to do something cool with visuals. Hopefully one day, when I’m not busy enough. 

So aside from all of the super cool DJ productions and EDM stuff, do you ever do any other types of productions?

 Yeah. I do some sports, figure skating, the Golden Knights & Silver Knights in Vegas.

That’s cool, so what does that look like? 

So there's the opening stuff. There's all the intermission stuff every time we score we have to do lights and all that.

So next time you're at a Golden Knights or Silver Knights game, maybe you'll look up to the booths and be like, is that Jason Buckley up there? 

I’m all the way in the rafters. 110 feet in the air. That's where the lighting console is.

Do you have any advice for anyone that is up and coming in the industry, or anyone who's watching this? 

Just keep at it and keep studying it. It's ever changing and never stops growing with this industry, so everything's gonna change. 

How would one go about studying it though?  You have to find someone that's willing to help you for the most part. So did you ever have somebody that was willing to help you? How did you find them?

I would say he found me.

That's nice, was this in high school?

No, it was shortly after it was a few years after. 

I'm curious about that gap right after high school, you know, you did tech theater. How did you get your first few gigs?

I was doing stagehand calls and stuff like that throughout town. And then somebody offered me some small gig, and I did it, and then  they kept offering me more and more of them. 

So is that something that you would advise then, is to just get started with any sort of production?

 Yeah.  But in the field that you want to do, like if you're starting something else, you're going to keep doing that in this industry. So don't keep going towards something that you don't want to do, just because it pays the bills. Don't do it if that's not what you want, cause you're just going to get stuck in that one part of the industry.

So if you want to be a lighting director, but then you're getting offered ringing gigs, then…

Yeah, I wouldn't do it. I would just keep trying to get the lighting ones.

What would it be like at the entry level? A lighting position that someone would need to look for.

Well, you want to work for stagehand companies like Rhino or something like that, that they have lighting techs and that you just follow around and do what you're told basically, but you start to learn from all that.

Does it help to have curiosity, and hang around those guys and ask questions and show that initiative?

Sometimes it's the wrong place because a lot of those are like corporate gigs or something like that. So they won't allow that but yes, absolutely. Yeah, you can feel out the technicalities.

Do you need to have previous experience? What experience are they looking for?

Somebody with a level head. That's all they’re looking for.

We really appreciate you and we hope to see you on ArtCee If you want to connect with Jason, make sure to visit his portfolio on ArtCee.co, and maybe If you are someone that he's looking to collaborate with in the future, that opportunity might be there.