Jim is the Head of the Technical Theatre Program, Technical Director, and Lighting Designer for The Theatre Academy at Los Angeles City College (A Professional Conservatory Program). Considered one of the founders of concert lighting he received the first Concert Lighting Designer of the Year Award from Performance magazine in1980. Early in his career he moved into Las Vegas venues along with many of his touring artists even winning the Las Vegas Designer of the Year in 1982 for "Dream Street¿, a production show. Active also in television, his work has been recognized with two Emmy nominations and one team award. He served for 10 years as Director of Photography on Entertainment Tonight and then switched to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune for 12 years. Jim is a member of both USA 829 (Theatrical Lighting Designer) and IA 600 (Director''s of Photography). He has written two books; The Business of Theatrical Design as well as 3 editions of Concert Lighting; Techniques, Art, and Business. In theatre Jim has designed lighting for over 300 productions including a recent production of "Doubt¿ at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre Company.
Jim has also received several theatre design awards including the Drama Logue Award and a Los Angeles Theatre Critics Award. Recently he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award in Lighting Design from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology. He has also been honored as a Fellow of the Institute. His academic background includes degrees from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in English Education with a Theatre minor and an M.F.A. degree from U.C.
L.A. in Theatre Design and a recent Ed D degree in Educational Administration for the University of Phoenix. He has taught as adjunct faculty and appeared at several universities as an Artist-in-Residence including U.S.C., Carnegie-Mellon University, CalARTS, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, San Diego State University, Pepperdine University, and the University of Colorado. For "fun¿ he is a member of TEAM Coast Guard assigned to Coast Guard Station Channel Islands Harbor about 50 miles north west of Los Angeles where he serves as a communications watchstander and Coxswain on rescue boats.
Paul Dexter began lighting in Los Angeles when he was sixteen (1970). He made 42 Hawaiian pineapple cans into lights and operated them with variacs and crude double pole switches. At 18, he was asked to tour with Elvis! A colorful history of worldwide concert toruing ensued as a lighting designer and stage set designer with the likes of Rick James, Motley Crue, DIO, Ozzy Osbourne, and Elton John. From 1973-1990 Paul''s interests diversified into film and video and he was the lighting designer and director for seven long-form concert DVDs and several MTV 80s rotation videos. He was the lighting designer for Fuji TVs live 1990 studio broadcasts from London to Japan with artists such as Paul McCartney and Rod Stewart; a live broadcast for European Cable channel Sky TV-"Elton John, Live from Verona¿, Italy and; he was the lighting designer/director for the 2001 movie "Rock Star¿. Notable exhibits include lighting design with artist Hiro Yamagata, for the amazing and lauded $3M art installation in New York City and Sci-Fi Channel''s Comic Con Exhibit, receiving 2005 Gold Award from Exhibitor Magazine''s discerning judges. An entrepreneur and industry magazine author, Paul co-founded the film/media project "Road Cases¿ in 2004, documenting road stories from some of our industry''s most amusing characters, and he was the Executive Producer for "Road Cases Shorts¿, an interstitial program developed for a major cable TV network in 2008. Paul is president of his own design firm, Masterworks Design, Inc.
His recent activities include touring the world with REO Speedwagon as production and lighting designer, production designer for Heaven & Hell and; architectural lighting designer for Activision Motion Capture Studios. Paul continues to produce new multimedia projects for Road Cases.