It`s Time To Get Lit, page 18

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It’s Time To Get Lit , page 18
Nov. 2006
LDI Inches Towards LEDI
Pop quiz — Who uttered the following words at LDI this year?
“This year we have a lot of new LED products.”
Was it:
A.
The founder of the Led Zeppelin fan club
C.
All of the exhibitors at LDI 2006
B.
Former Congressman Mark Foley
D.
Eric Loader of Elation Professional
To find the correct answer, see our complete coverage of LDI 2006 on page 22.
Harris Accepts Parnelli Award
LAS VEGAS, NV — In the waning hours of the first day
of LDI 2006, close to a thousand guests filled a ballroom
of the Venetian Hotel to honor their own. When it was
all over, Jere Harris, founder of PRG, walked away with
the live event industry’s highest honor the Lifetime
Achievement Award. Harris accepted the award, which
was presented by PRG vice President Darren DaVerna,
with great deference to his family and his employees,
many of whom were in attendance.
Bill Hanley took home the Sound Innovator
Award for his work dating at least as far back as
1964, when he designed the sound system for the
Beatles in Shea Stadium. In all, 22 awards were
handed out, including the newly added category
of Video Director of the Year. The full list of winners
is available now on the PLSN Web site and at ParnelliAwards.com, with complete coverage in the
December issue of PLSN.
New Birth
KNOXVILLE, TN — James Thomas Engineering, Ltd, in conjunction
with James Thomas Engineering,
Inc., would like to announce the
spin off of the sales and distribution of PixelRANGE LED products
in the U.S.A.
PixelRANGE, Inc. has been created to deal with the sales, distribution and support of Pixel products throughout the United States,
Canada and South America.
The new company will be headed up by Dave Thomas and Blaine
Engle. “The goal is to provide a
framework that will allow us to focus entirely on Pixel products and
to build on the level of service we
offer our customers.”
Long-Awaited
ACN Becomes
a Standard
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Friday
the Thirteenth the ANSI Board of
Standards Review approved the
reaffirmation of ANSI E1.3-2001, Entertainment Technology-Lighting
Control Systems-0 to 10V Analog
Control, making it the R2006 version of this control scheme. Six days
later, on October 19, the Board of
Standards Review approved ANSI
E1.17-2006, Entertainment Technology - Multipurpose Network Control Protocol Suite, better known
as ACN: Architecture for Control
Networks. Both will be published
in the next few continued on page 8
Inside...
16
Inside Theatre
The wonder and winter of
Slava’s Snowshow.
20
Production
Profile
Sexy, curvy lighting for this
chanteuse.
36
Road Test
High End Systems DL.2 Digital
Luminaire.
Ad info: www.plsn.com/instant-info
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TABLEOFCONTENTS
What’s New
FEATURES
18 Back to the Future
It didn’t take plutonium, but the glow
on this clock tower can be seen
for miles.
44 Video Digerati
Content management can cover
your assets.
45 Video World
Step one: remove lens cover. And more
tips to keep the yelling to a minimum.
20 Production Profile
LD Daunte Kenner pairs Mary J. Blige
with a sexy lighting rig.
50 Feeding the Machines
If your color palette has gone kaput,
put a little pizzazz in your console.
22 Lots of LEDs, Loads of Leads
In addition to LEDs, LDI featured media servers, consoles and networking
tools — to help you use your LEDs.
28
The Path and the Nirvana
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer translate the images
of the mind to images on stage.
33 Vital Stats
We take the pulse of A.C.T Lighting,
the U.S. distributor for MA Lighting.
36 Road Test
It’s better than a Big Chief tablet and a
box of crayons, and it’s DMX
controllable. It’s High End Systems
DL.2 digital luminaire.
47 Product Gallery
Architainment lighting means new
suits for old road dogs.
COLUMNS
04 Editor’s Note
Intellectual property meets a
mustachioed madman.
34
It’s a Delicate World
They’re “not really a lighting company” and “not really a video
company.” Just what does Delicate Productions do?
16 Inside Theatre
Lighters on the storm — Slava’s
Snowshow let’s the chaos free.
51 The Biz
Can lighting and video crew play well
together? Is a bear Catholic?
52 Technopolis
What does the well-equipped 17-yearold tech carry on their tool belt today?
53 Focus on Design
A funny thing happened on the way
to the top of the fader.
56 LD-at-Large
Good education versus good sushi.
DEPARTMENTS
05 News
08 The Event Calendar
11 On the Move
12 International News
14 Showtime
30 New Products
37 Projection Connection
42 Projection Connection New
Products
46 Welcome to My Nightmare
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EDITOR’SNOTE
The Publication of Record for the Lighting,
Staging and Projection Industries
Publisher
Terry Lowe
[email protected]
Editor
Richard Cadena
[email protected]
Editorial Director
Bill Evans
[email protected]
My conversations with Salvador Dali are
never dull.
Dali: Ideas are made to be copied.
Do you mean that in the same sense that
Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen farther
than others it is by standing on the shoulders
of giants?” We are, after all, where we are today because of the accumulation of knowledge. We couldn’t have automated lighting
without Edison’s light bulb or without Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry’s work with
magnetic fields. We couldn’t have memory
controllers without Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine or his Analytical Engine, the Ballistics Research Laboratory’s Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer
(ENIAC), Bell Labs’ invention of the transistor,
or Remington Rand’s UNIVAC computers. Nor
could we have Doug Fleenor’s DMX-controllable coffee maker without computers and
DMX512 protocol.
Ad info: www.plsn.com/rsc
So rather than copy ideas, shouldn’t we
build upon the ideas of the people who
came before us?
Dali: Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
They say imitation is the highest form of
flattery, and innovations, new ideas and new
products do benefit the common good of
Managing Editor
Jacob Coakley
RichardCadena
[email protected]
Associate Editor
David McGinnis
[email protected]
to profit from someone else’s hard work, creative thinking, time and effort? Aren’t they
entitled to the protection of their intellectual property? There’s little difference between
Contributing Writers
Vickie Claiborne, Phil Gilbert,
Cory FitzGerald,Rob Ludwig,
Kevin M. Mitchell, Richard
Rutherford, Brad Schiller,
Nook Schoenfeld, Paul J. Duyree
Photographers
Steve Jennings, Bree Kristel
Art Director
Garret Petrov
[email protected]
the industry. But why shouldn’t the person
who develops an original idea be rewarded
for their efforts? It takes time and lots of
money to develop and patent an idea, not to
mention the cost of building prototypes and
new products. Why should someone who
had nothing invested in an idea be allowed
stealing someone’s personal property and
stealing their intellectual property. Original
ideas are like personal property.
Dali: I have enough ideas to sell
them on.
Buying them is certainly better than
stealing them. If there’s one grand lesson
that the industry took away from the automated lighting patent infringement lawsuits
of the ‘90s, it’s that litigation is expensive.
In the end, it’s the lawyers who really make
out. Vari-Lite won several lawsuits, but they
ended up selling their manufacturing operations to Genlyte and kept their production
operation. I’m guessing they might not have
done that had their lawsuits been lucrative. Perhaps that’s why manufacturers have
been so careful about jumping on the LED
bandwagon. In Europe, where the owners of
intellectual property with regards to LEDs
have less of a stranglehold on the market, it’s
rife with LED products. But in North America,
it’s more restrained. Now the development
of digital lighting is facing the same issues
as LEDs. The intellectual property holders
are negotiating among themselves and with
other manufacturers to sell on their ideas,
but it’s a slow process.
Dali: I prefer that my ideas are stolen so that I don’t have to actually use
them myself.
Oh, Salvador, you’re such an enigma. You
say that you prefer that your ideas are stolen,
yet you used to sign blank canvasses late in
your life so that they could be sold as originals. It’s no big surprise that the French surrealist André Breton dubbed you “Avida Dollars”— an anagram of Salvador Dali — which
roughly translates to “eager for dollars.”
Dali: There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
You, on the other hand, are having a conversation with a man who died in 1989.
Don’t try to change the subject, Dali.
The market is eager for new products, and
digital lighting is the most promising of all
of the new technologies. If it’s taking longer
for it to be prominent in the industry, it’s
only because of all the behind-the-scenes
wrangling going on between the people
who hold all the IP and the manufacturers
who want to produce digital lighting products. But there is reason to believe that it
will soon be settled and then, look out! Now
if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment
with Leonardo da Vinci.
Production Manager
Linda Evans
[email protected]
Graphic Designers
Dana Pershyn
[email protected]
Michelle Sacca
[email protected]
Josh Harris
[email protected]
National
Advertising Director
Gregory Gallardo
[email protected]
Account Managers
Holly O`Hair & Warren Flood
[email protected] & [email protected]
General Manager
William Hamilton Vanyo
[email protected]
Executive Administrative
Assistant
Dawn-Marie Voss
[email protected]
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Advertising Office
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Ph: 512.280.0384
Fax: 512.292.0183
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North Hollywood, CA 91615
Projection, Lights & Staging News (ISSN:
1537-0046) Volume 07, Number 10 Published monthly by Timeless Communications Corp. 6000 South Eastern Ave.,
Suite 14J Las Vegas, NV 89119.
It is
distributed free to qualified individuals in the
lighting and staging industries in the United
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ESTA
ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES &
TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION
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www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:08:11 PM
NEWS
David Taylor
Joins Arup
NEW YORK – Arup, a global provider of
design, consulting and engineering services
to business and the built environment, announces the appointment of David Taylor,
an internationally acclaimed consultant for
theatres, concert halls and other performing
arts venues, to lead Arup’s performing arts
sector work in the Americas. Taylor, an associate
principal based in New York, will be the primary
point of contact in the Americas for performing
arts clients and the linchpin for Arup’s overall
work in the sector.
“It’s an excellent fit for both Arup and David,” said Neill Woodger, principal and leader of
the Arup Acoustics practice in the Americas.“He
has worked with Arup for more than 20 years on
key arts projects around the world. His expertise
in theatre planning and design brings an important skill set to our practice, augmenting our
existing acoustics, lighting, simulation, venue
consulting and engineering disciplines and allowing us to provide a complete and integrated
package of services to performing arts clients.”
Taylor joins Arup after 21 years with Theatre
Projects Consultants, a global theatre design
firm. He has led some of the most acclaimed
new performing arts projects of the last decade,
including the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, New
Amsterdam Theatre in New York, Hyperion Theatre at Disneyland, Goodman Theatres in Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, San Jose
and Seattle Repertory Theatres as well as new
homes for the Seattle Symphony, Philadelphia
Orchestra and New World Symphony.
Color Kinetics and Sylvania Reach Agreement
BOSTN AND DANVERS, MA — Color Kinetics Incorporated and Osram Sylvania recently
announced an agreement whereby Osram
Sylvania will license Color Kinetics’ patents for
a product to be marketed by Gotham Architectural Downlighting, an Acuity Brands company.
Under the license, Osram Sylvania will create an “intelligent,” multi-color light-emitting
diode (LED) system for Gotham. The global
license will apply to sales of this product in
all markets covered by Color Kinetics’ patent
portfolio.
“This is a significant agreement for Color
Kinetics,” said Bill Sims, president and CEO, Color Kinetics.“Earning the Osram Sylvania stamp
of validation sends a strong message to the
industry, and reaffirms the value of the innovations protected by our broad patent portfolio.
“The lighting industry is undergoing dramatic change as LED sources influence the
design of completely new products and applications,” Sims added. “The power of our
proprietary control methods makes it possible
to customize environments with light as never
before, and we’re excited to see these techniques being adopted by long-established
leaders in the lighting industry.”
“We are pleased to have the opportunity
to license the Color Kinetics patents for this
OEM opportunity,” said Sameer Sodhi, general
manager of the Osram Sylvania LED Systems
division. “LEDs offer exceptional flexibility in
the creation of new and unique lighting fix-
tures. Through this agreement, we are able to
provide a complete LED system solution meeting the high standards of our OEM customer.
This system is an important new product for
Osram Sylvania and reflects our company’s focus on developing customized LED solutions.”
“Every Gotham luminaire is designed to
enhance architecture and make our customers’
space more visually interesting,”said Steve Wiese,
Director, Gotham Architectural Downlighting.
“By tastefully integrating color into our decorative luminaires,we offer visually distinct products
that are relevant to modern interior design. LEDs
make the use of color more interesting -- we now
can dynamically control the colors achieved and
the rate in which they change, allowing designers even greater creative latitude.”
South Bank Center
Lights It Up
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LONDON — Lighting designer Willie Williams was asked by the South Bank Center’s creative director Jude Kelly to create a lighting design for the Center, both to give it its own identity
and to ensure that it wasn’t overshadowed by
the lighting design now in place at its neighbor,
the National Theatre.
Williams devised a fixed look for the buildings, and White Light supplied MBI floods and
ETC Source Four fixtures to implement the design. The scale of the site - a collection of buildings spread over 20 acres along the River Thames
- proved a challenge, as did the absence of up-todate drawings of the Center, leading Williams to
produce what he feels may be “the first lighting
plot in history to be drawn using Google Earth.”
In the final scheme, the floods were concealed in
the Center’s many corners and crevices, with the
Source Fours shuttered into slots to catch edges
and corners in tungsten color.
The lighting team included crew chief Alex
Murphy and Henry Barbour, Harry Haywood and
Dai Mitchel. This design was originally scheduled
to run until the end of August, but it has been extended into the autumn, with the designer and
White Light investigating weatherproofing options to keep the equipment running through
the winter.
www.PLSN.com
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PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
11/3/06 1:45:02 PM
NEWS
DB Lights Up DCLA
LOS ANGELES — One of the largest worship conferences for teenagers, the Youth Specialties DCLA event, drew record numbers of
high school and middle school students this
year. Named after the two cities where it is
held, the bicoastal event keeps growing (upwards of 11,000 attendees this year) because
it combines worship and religious training
with music concerts and theatre. This multifaceted program provides a big challenge
to production designers, said Dan Bashor of
Loveland, Colorado-based DB Production Services Inc., which handled the lighting, sound,
video, set and stage design for DCLA.
This year’s program included worship sessions with the David Crowder Band,
dramatizations of the Gospel of John and
concerts featuring popular Christian artists
like Tobymac, Jeremy Camp and Superchic(k)
— all held in the same large auditorium.
The event utilized an 80’ stage divided into
three main areas, said Bashor — one for the
worship program, the second for the dra-
matic show and the third for the musical
performers. There was also an 80-foot - wide
video screen up front, and a 60-foot video
screen halfway back in the house.
“The lighting was especially complicated and involved, because it had to encompass a lot of different types of productions,”
said Bashor. “Part of the stage was like a play
with actors, another was a musical concerttype event, and then there was the worship
service. To handle this diverse program, we
needed lighting that was very versatile. We
also had very limited height at the Anaheim
venue, so this was another concern.”
With these considerations, DB Production’s LD MacKenzie Smith chose a gear
package that included Power Spot 575IE automated fixtures from Elation Professional.
“The Power Spot 575IEs are very versatile
units that can produce a lot of different types
of effects, which was what we needed to handle the many different events taking place on
stage,” said Bashor. “They also give a lot of
Youth Specialties DCLA
punch for their small size, so they were great
for our spatial requirements.”
Bashor said that he was also
pleased with the service he received from
Elation. His company had been using an-
other brand of lights, which had failed just
prior to the July 1 Washington show. “I
contacted Elation, and they were able to
ship the quantity we needed right away.
They came through that same day,” he said.
Lamina Ceramics Announces New President and CEO
WESTAMPTON, NJ — The Board of Directors at Lamina Ceramics announced
the appointment of Frank M. Shinneman
as president and chief executive officer.
Shinneman brings 25 years of interna-
tional management experience to the
New Jersey-based developer of LED light
engines. Lamina’s products are the main
components in solid-state lighting fixtures
of more than 100 companies and are re-
placing less efficient incandescent and
fluorescent lamps worldwide.
Shinneman, 56, was most recently
president of PlasmaSol Corporation, the
sale of which he successfully negotiated
with Stryker Instruments late last year.
He has led a number of technology ventures, including Nanodyne, one of the first
nano materials companies, where he was
the founding president and CEO. In 1998
he sold the company to Umicore and assumed the role of U.S. business development, leading investments in a portfolio
of technology companies. Previously, he
served as division president of Materials
Research Corporation in Orangeburg, NY
(since sold to Sony).
“Frank Shinneman brings relevant and
successful business management experience.
He also has a demonstrated track record of
forging major business alliances across the
Pacific Rim and in Europe,” said Greg Blonder,
Lamina’s chairman of the board of directors.
“He’s a perfect fit to lead Lamina’s growth into
a new generation of innovative LED products
benefiting both industry and consumers.”
“This is an exciting time to be in the lighting industry,” said Shinneman. “It’s a great
honor to be selected to lead Lamina as it continues to revolutionize the industry.”
Lights Seal Unholy Alliance
DALLAS — Speed metal
band Slayer brought along
four other heavy metal
bands on its brand-new touring production, “Slayer: The
Unholy Alliance.” The line-up
featured Lamb of God, Mastodon, Children of Bodom,
Thine Eyes Bleed and some
Clay Paky Alpha Spots to
shed light and add drama to
the spectacle onstage.
Lighting
Designer/Director Jason Cain specified LD Jason Cain
20 Alpha Spot HPE 1200
luminaires for his lighting
rig. “I chose the Alpha Line because of their
light weight and bright output,” Cain explains.“It was also nice to have two rotating
gobo wheels, and the fixed wheel as well.
I was able to achieve multi-layering of the
gobos to produce different lighting effects.”
Cain also handled video duties.
The automated lighting was rigged in
moving light pre-rig truss built by Xtreme
Structures. Any concerns Cain had about
the lights holding up for two months riding
in the auto truss were quickly dispelled.“No
worries, the Alpha Spots held up nicely,”
Cain says.“For the duration of the tour, none
of the Alphas had any failures.
“The show consists of lots of smoke,
and very dark and moody lighting cues.
Mostly deep saturated colors, reds, blues,
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greens are used throughout the show and
gate chases are a constant. I did use the effects wheel on a song titled ‘Hell Awaits’ to
help achieve a fire effect. The Alphas lived
up to the fast pan and tilt movement, and
never-ending shutter chases.”
Dallas, Texas-based Gemini Stage Lighting served as the vendor for all of the lighting, video, trussing, and motors. Backing
Cain up in the lighting department are
lighting crew chief Dennis Waite and lighting technicians Danny Willet and Jason
Wright.
After spending two months playing
mainly arenas in the United States, the tour
is now headed to South America and then
Mexico, Singapore and Japan before arriving in Europe in the fall for the final leg of
this year’s tour.
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:10:43 PM
Ribbonlift Becomes
Actua Systems
OWATONNA, MN – Ribbonlift Acquisition Inc., designer and manufacturer of the
unique patented Ribbonlift positioning system, announced that it has changed its name
to Actua Systems Inc. Ribbonlift Acquisition, a
subsidiary of Imagility Inc., recently purchased
the assets of the Ribbonlift business in May of
2006.
The Ribbonlift product utilizes a patented
technology consisting of three steel ribbons
that “zip” together to form a column. The
unique design gives Ribbonlift products the
maximum extension possible from a compact
form factor. Ribbonlift systems are used to position cameras, lights, projectors, communication devices and more for live events, motion
picture production, construction, industrial,
military and other applications. The company
will continue to use the Ribbonlift brand for
the existing product line.
“Our acquisition by Imagility marked a
new exciting stage for Ribbonlift,” said David
Paine, founder and chief technology officer of
Ribbonlift. “In the next year we will introduce
additional products based on new technology platforms. The name ‘Actua’ reflects the
company’s mission: to provide innovative
positioning solutions that meet the unique
needs of its customers.”
Magnum Buys East Coast Lighting & Design
ATLANTA, GA - The Magnum Companies,
Ltd. has acquired East Coast Lighting & Design
(ECLD). David “Duck” Burns, former CEO of ECLD
will join the Magnum Production Services staff
as production manager for live entertainment.
The formal purchase of ECLD took place on July
15, and Magnum has spent the past few months
integrating ECLD’s inventory and customer base
with their own.
The acquisition is intended to expand the
products and services for the customer base of
the combined companies. The addition of the
ECLD concert-oriented inventory and Burns’
15+ years of experience in live entertainment
production will give Magnum’s clients a fuller
range of lighting services and technical support,
from special events, industrial theatre and trade
shows to concerts, tours and venue support.
“We are excited about Duck joining the
Magnum team. ECLD has been a good rental
customer, re-rent supplier and a friendly competitor to Magnum for the past five years, and
we are looking forward to a mutually beneficial
partnership going foreword.” said Erik Magnuson, president of Magnum.
Todd Finch, Magnum Production Services
manager says “The live entertainment side of
the business is completely built on a model of
efficiency and repetition. The event and corporate side is much more of a ‘one-off’ model built
to make it perfect for the single evening. We
now have the expertise and gear to combine
the two models for our clients. It’s the perfect
bridge between styles and strengths and will allow our clients to rely on us further as a strong
resource and asset for any type of production.”
Burns adds, “Having the seasoned inshop support and broad equipment inventory of automated and conventional
gear now immediately available, as well
as all the great back-office support, I can
now focus on the customer and their
shows. The combined resources and expertise of the two companies is also a
great tool for pursuing larger shows and
more diverse clients. Plus, none of these
guys have heard any of my tour stories,
and it’s great to have a new audience for
my bad jokes.”
ECLD’s well-established and muchloved slogan, “We rock; They suck” will be
retired, and Magnum’s “Brilliance is our
business” tag will be retained and continue
to be used by all of Magnum’s divisions.
Tapping Along
at the Chapel
Christ Chapel
MACON, GA — The Assembly of God
Christ Chapel is housed in a 130,000square foot sports facility that was once a
practice facility for a professional football
team. The Macon, Georgia-based church
holds regular Sunday and Wednesday worship services and its TV ministry, consisting
of Pastor John Wood’s Sunday sermon, airs
locally on Cox Cable and CTN Cable. The
entire Sunday morning and evening service is streamed live on the Internet; college, youth and children’s ministries will
soon stream live on the Web as well.
Macon-based Total Systems Audio,
Video, and Consulting have supplied vast
amounts of technical equipment to the
church; it’s no coincidence since their managing director is also the church’s technical
director. Recently the Church took delivery
of an LSC Lighting Systems maXim LP console and are getting ready to purchase a
maXim XXLP through LSC’s USA distributor, Applied Electronics.
“We love the maXim LP console because it is so much easier to use and control than any other console that we have
had before,” said Bryan. “The maXim LP
makes it easy to control moving fixtures
and program scenes before an event and
on the fly. Since getting the maXim LP
we have been able to do things that we
wouldn’t have tried before because it was
too much work and when you are dealing
with volunteers it needs to be as simple
as possible.”
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100.0611.5-11.News.indd 7
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
11/2/06 8:11:06 PM
NEWS
In Brief
Sew What? Inc. was the winner of the
first annual SMB 20 Awards hosted by PC
Magazine. The Awards honor the most
technologically innovative small and medium-sized businesses of the year. BSL
Productions launched Buygack.com, an
online theatrical and touring supply store
offering a range of supplies from gaff tape
and batteries to gobos and gel. Additionally, buygack.com will feature lighting
instruments and effects such as ETC Pars
and Ellipsoidals, LED fixtures, strobes and
hazers...ASI Production Services, Inc. has
signed an agreement to use IntelEvent
software for the entertainment, rental and
production industry. ASI Production Services has offices in Orlando, Atlanta, Las
Vegas, South Florida, Los Angeles and Dallas...A new training manual, “Step by Step
with VectorWorks Architect” by Steve Hader
teaches a practical approach to project
workflow in VectorWorks. For more in-
Long-Awaited ACN
Becomes a Standard
continued from front cover
weeks.The new ANSI E1.3, being a reaffirmation, has no substantive changes, so the new
version will only differ from the 2001 version
in its note that it is a reaffirmation and in the
listing of working group members.
ANSI E1.17 is a new standard that is a
suite of more than a score of documents,
some of which are hyperlinked to each other. It will take more work to prepare for publication, but absolutely minimal formatting
changes are expected to be made to the
documents that were offered to the public in the last review, which should shorten
the preparation time. The biggest change
and most pervasive change to the E1.17
documents will be adding the approval
date on which it became an American National Standard to each of the documents
in the suite.
formation, visit www.nemetschek.net/
training/guides.php...Elizabeth Spencer,
a student and freelance production electrician from Golders Green in London is
the winner of AC Lighting’s Jands Vista
prize draw at PLASA 06. Spencer won a
512-channel Vista lighting control system (with a list price of £896) Angstrom
Lighting provided the lights for Universal
Studios Hollywood’s first-ever “Halloween Horror Nights.” Clayton Alexander of
Radiance Lightworks created the design
using lights provided by Angstrom Lighting...Atomic Design fabricated staging
elements for Mariah Carey’s international
tour, including a giant monogram “MC,”
an Austrian drape, a butterfly cloth, curtains of beads and a curving staircase...
Bandit Lites has added Airstar lighting
balloons to their rental inventory. The Airstar air- or helium-filled balloons vary in
size from 0.9m (3’) to 10m (33’) in diameter
and can illuminate areas from 1,000m² to 4
hectares (10,800 to 432,000 square feet)...
Chameleon Productions was awarded
the winning bid to supply lighting effects,
stage lighting and control systems for the
annual “Gator Growl” event held each year
at the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Utilizing over 100,000 watts
of lighting systems and miles of cable, the
show takes 5 days to set up...Gear-Source,
Inc. launched a new version, GS3, of their
site www.GearSource.com...LaserNet is
celebrating 30 years in the laser light show
business. In 1976, Tom Harman left the
broadcast television. As a founding member of the International Laser Display Association (ILDA) who is still active in the organization, Harman supports the safe use
of lasers and adheres to the principles set
forth by ILDA....upFront.eZine Publishing,
Ltd. released the second edition of its transition e-book for AutoCAD 2007 and TurboCAD Professional 12. TurboCAD for AutoCAD
Users is the updated e-book for AutoCAD
users interested in transitioning to the
lower cost and more capable TurboCAD...
NMR Staging & Events has added to their
inventory the FS Series and the RP Series
from Solaris Labs. NMR is now the exclusive
Solaris Labs rental provider in the US.
Remember Your First LDI?
LOS ANGELES — Elation Professional
welcomed a group of four lighting design students as their guests to the first
Elation Education Experience at the LDI
Show in Las Vegas. The event provided
students with an opportunity to see lighting products from Elation Professional, as
well as other companies. Students also
were exposed to new ideas and potential career opportunities in the world of
lighting design.
Students Marie Yokoyama, Jason
March, Scott Evans and Leah Austin were
selected by a group of educators and
journalists, based on their enthusiasm for,
and potential in, lighting design. These
students, along with lighting professor
David Jacques, were provided with an allexpense paid trip to the LDI show by Elation Professional.
The first day, they had lunch with
Scott Davies, general manager for the
American DJ Group of Companies, explored the LDI show, and had dinner with
Elation director of sales Eric Loader and
other company executives.
On the second day, the students
toured the Elation exhibit with John Lopez, sales manager for Elation Professional. Their day was completed at the American DJ customer appreciation party.
“The students represent the future,
not only for our company but the entire
industry,” said Loader. “We were excited
to spend time with this wonderful group
of young people, and believe we learn as
much from them as they learned from us.
We will most definitely be reaching out
to students and expanding this program
in the future.”
Hookin’ Up
With Toby Keith
KNOXVILLE,
TN — Bandit Lites teamed up
with
lighting
designer
Seth
Jackson to light
Toby Keith
Toby Keith’s most
recent “Hookin’
Up and Hangin’ Out” tour. Keith played sixty-plus
shows in cities throughout America from August
through November.
“Toby Keith is a rock show,” explains Jackson.
“Heavy backlight, lots of floor angles, audience
lighting and a lot of pyrotechnics.”
Jackson and lighting director Eddie Connell
are using the VL3000 spot as the base of the system. In addition, Jackson chose to have a base of
Martin MAC 2000 Wash units, Coemar Halos, and
a dozen Syncrolite SX-3Ks.
Jackson and crew are also the first tour to go
out with a product from Elation, the LED Blinder,
which is an 8-light unit with LEDs. Eric Loader of
the American DJ Group sent Jackson a sample
unit to try out, and Jackson put them on the set.
Lightning Strikes
Becomes Luminys
LOS ANGELES – Lightning Strikes, Inc., designer and manufacturer of high-intensity lighting systems for motion picture, television and
event production, automotive testing, highspeed photography and other professional and
industrial applications, announced that it has
changed its name to Luminys Systems Corp.
“Our company is in the midst of a rebirth,
with the introduction of new products both
for our traditional entertainment markets and
for applications such as high-speed industrial
testing,” said David Pringle, Lightning Strikes’
founder and chief technology officer. “What
began as a highly-specialized company focused on lightning effects for the entertainment industry has grown to encompass much
more, while holding true to our tradition for
unparalleled lighting quality and innovation.
The name ‘Luminys’ captures this broader mission and spirit of innovation,” said Pringle.
The company’s patented Lightning
Strikes® intermittent products generate up to
500,000 watts for a brief period and have been
used in thousands of feature films, television
series, commercials and live events worldwide.
SoftSun® lights produce up to 100,000 watts
that is dimmable to 3% of maximum output
with virtually no shift in color temperature. The
company will continue to utilize the Lightning
Strikes and SoftSun brands for those product
lines, and their development will continue to
be a major focus in the future.
Upcoming Events
• IAAPA Attractions Expo 2006: Nov 1518, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta,
GA (http://iaapaatlanta.expoplanner.com/)
• Stagemaker® Training Program:
Nov, R&M Materials Handling, Inc.,
Springfield, OH (www.rmhoist.com)
• Stage Lighting Super Saturday
seminars/workshops: Jan 13, 2007,
Pace University, Michael Schimmel
Center for the Arts, New York, NY
• The NAMM Show: Jan 18-21, 2007,
Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim,
CA (www.thenammshow.com)
• Mountain Productions 22nd Annual CM
Hoist School: March 26 – March 29, 2007,
Wilkes-Barre, PA (www.mountainproductions.com/hoistschool.html)
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.5-11.News.indd 8
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:11:43 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 9
11/2/06 7:59:05 PM
NEWS
Daktronics Acquires Hoffend & Sons
BROOKINGS, — S.D. Daktronics Inc. of
Brookings, S.D., recently announced the acquisition of substantially all the operating
assets of Hoffend & Sons Inc., of Victor, N.Y.
Hoffend & Sons is a designer and manufacturer of theatre and arena rigging systems
and scoreboard hoist systems.
The purchase of the operating assets,
which includes the patented Vortek® technology, is intended to strengthen Daktronics’ position in the sports industry with integrated video, scoring and display systems.
It also brings to Daktronics the ability to
expand its product offering to existing customers, with rigging system for theatres, auditoriums and athletic venues.
Hoffend & Sons recently introduced the
Vortek theatre rigging system, designed to
replace commonly used counterweight rigging systems and eliminate the need for
crews to climb ladders and catwalks and
handle heavy counterweights above the
stage. It allows for quicker scene changes,
takes significantly less space than traditional counterweight systems and reduces
construction costs for new theatres.
“Daktronics has worked with the Hoffend team and their products for nearly a
decade, primarily on sports projects that
required robust and safe scoreboard hoist
systems,” said Jim Morgan, president and
CEO of Daktronics Inc. “Our sports customers have for many years demanded Hoffend
hoist systems to complement our centerhung scoring and video systems. Hoffend
hoist systems include the latest technologies with sophisticated safety features.
“In addition to the benefits to us from
the purchase of an important supplier, we
expect significant growth in sales of the
Vortek theatre rigging technology to our
existing customers, which we expect will
include many elementary, middle and high
schools, as well as high profile theatre venues where we currently supply displays for
outdoor marquee signs and displays for
other locations.”
“We’ve known and worked with Daktronics for a number of years, and are
pleased to be able to join an industry
leader with a great reputation,” said Hoffend & Sons President Peter Hoffend.
“With Daktronics’ engineering
foundation, financial strength, marketing experience, and management
backing, we are well positioned to
market and deliver our new Vortek
technology to the theatre industry,”
said Scott Seeman, chief operating officer of Hoffend & Sons.
Letters to the Editor
photo credit: Gayla Fox
1/3 SQUARE AD
10
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.5-11.News.indd 10
Art Lives
September is
usually a “quiet”
month around
the Rockford Fine
Arts Auditorium
— once the start
of school events have come and gone. But this
September has been incredibly hectic; so much
so, that I just got a chance to read through the
September issue of PLSN on October 1st.
I thoroughly enjoyed your “Focus on Design” article,“The Dark Side of Chiaroscuro,” and
have included a photo for you to add to your
archive of lighting pictures. I’m hoping that you
may even add it to your short list of examples
of chiaroscuro. And, I’m proud to say that I correctly answered your “pop quiz” question at the
top of the column...without looking ahead for
the answer!
I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from some amazingly-talented, inspirational teachers/designers during
my “early years,” and the great fortune to have
had opportunities to experiment and to learn
for myself hands-on using other people’s lighting budgets (and their even more valuable support and encouragement!). And to you: thanks
for reminding me about shadows. When most
of my “designs” these days just put light on the
stage so that mom and dad can see little Billy or
little Sally’s face during a band or choir concert, I
remember fondly, and with some humble pride,
those moments in shows like The Crucible or
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
when just half a face or some big menacing
shadows conveyed more to the audience than
any amount of well-written dialogue or lyric.
Here’s to art!
Technical Director Rockford Fine Arts Auditorium Andrew D. Riley, (no da Vinci...but)
As usual, you have written a great article
Chiaroscuro
(“Focus on Design: The Dark Side of Chiaroscuro,” September 2006). Thanks for the big
picture reminder.
Jeff Malott, Executive AV Specialist
ConocoPhillips- Houston
Women in Lighting article
I loved the “Women, Who Light — and
Lit — the Way” article (The Biz, September 2006). I am a lighting chick and have
been in the business for 11 years. I agree
with what Ann Militello and Susan Rose say
about being a female in a male dominated
business. Most guys see my chest first before they see me as a valuable worker. After
they see that I can and am willing to work
(climbing a wire ladder, hanging lights, lifting coils of cable, etc..), they are happy to be
working with me. One of my guy co-workers was impressed when I crawled inside
a 12” x 18” trussing, 18 feet high, to focus
lights. Most of the time, I have more tools
on me than the guys. Through my hard
work, I have gotten lots of great jobs and
the respect of the guys I work with.
Erica Burger
Corrections
In the October issue of PLSN, the
picture accompanying the “Lightswitch
Roundtable” article improperly identified the principals in the photo. They
were Howard Werner, Chris Medvitz,
Brad Malkus, John Featherstone and
Norm Schwab.
Lightswitch
A picture that appeared in the October issue of PLSN that was supposed
to be David Hubbard of AVW was unfortunately not him. We regret the error.
The person in the picture was William
M. Deutsch
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:13:20 PM
ONTHEMOVE
Tim Olson has been named head of
the AV Concepts lighting department.
Olson’s new role will involve leading the
department and providing design services and technical drawings to aid in the
sales process.
Steve Overby has been appointed national sales
manager, National Sales
Group, as announced by
Darren Temple,
senior
vice president
sales, U.S. division of AVWTELAV Audio
Visual SoluSteve Overby
tions.
Fabio Fiorino has accepted the position
of president of Morris Material Handling,
Inc. and MMH Holdings, Inc., to head the
operations of companies trading under
the trademark of P&H. Effective October 2.
Marc Warren has joined NMR as a national account executive. Warren comes
to NMR with
almost
25
years of industry experience. NMR
believes that
Warren is already a valuable asset to
their expanding division.
Marc Warren
Matt Farmelant has been appointed director of sales for Shadow Mountain Productions. In this position, Farmelant will
supervise the development of SMP’s sales
and marketing strategies and staff. He will
also oversee all aspects of SMP’s regional
and national sales.
Rebecca Kanter has been named
account executive at Southwest
Show
Tech, Inc. Kanter brings more
than 8 years of
experience in
the adver tising
and marketing
industr y.
Alyson Horn has been named sales
manager for the Tampa Systems Integration Group. In addition to her new
role as sales manager, Ms. Horn will continue to
serve as
the manager
of
business
development for
the Tampa office.
Alyson Horn
Rebecca Kanter
Bryan Reiss has been named sales
manager of BML-Blackbird Theatrical
Services systems & equipment.
Dawn J. Earl has been named marketing coordinator for Da-Lite Screen Company,
Inc.
In her new
position, Ms.
Earl will be
responsible
for the coordination of
Da-Lite’s print
and electronic marketing
materials.
Dawn J. Earl
Intense Lighting has opened a new
distribution center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Through an agreement with Certified
Logistics, the new distribution center
will ship product available for same day
shipping and will call to the eastern
United States.
Bill Little has been named vice president of product development for J&J Electronics Inc.
Morpheus Lights announces the
opening of its new Las Vegas office and
production facility at 1660 Helm Drive,
Suite 200, Las Vegas, Nevada 89119. The
new shop will be the base of operations for
Mark Fetto, Morpheus Light’s chief operating officer, and industry professional Cory
Walker has joined Morpheus as a national
sales associate.
TO GET LISTED IN ON THE
MOVE, IN THE TRENCHES,
SHOWTIME OR WELCOME TO
Frank M. Shinneman has been named
president and chief executive officer for Lamina Ceramics. Mr. Shinneman, 56, was most
recently president of PlasmaSol Corporation,
the sale of which he successfully negotiated
with Stryker Instruments late last year.
MY NIGHTMARE, SEND
YOUR INFO AND PICS TO:
[email protected]
100.0611.5-11.News.indd 11
11/2/06 8:14:08 PM
INTERNATIONALNEWS
Turn Out the Lights…
PADERBORN, Germany —
An audience of 45,000 people
gathered in London’s Hyde
Park for this year’s Last Night of
the Proms. The lighting for this
show was designed by Tony
Hall who points out, “There
were eight very full universes
of DMX. The grandMA was an
obvious choice, since the channel count is so large.”
Hall insisted on all the
lamps being centrally rigged
on each truss spine, so each
unit was rigged onto a scaff
bar to get the correct orientation. The arena lighting is
always a huge undertaking,
since the camera shots need to
cover right to the back of the
audience. Included in the lighting rig were eleven Vari*Lite
VL3000 Spots.
Hattie Spice was responsible for the set, which was created to reflect a “Tiffany” lamp
made of structural spines of
trussing, with a painted cloth
between each spine. Martin
Seymour programmed the moving lights.
Essential Lighting offered comprehensive
project support.
Hawthorn
For Pyros
The band plays on in Paderborn.
A close-up look at some Hawthorn@Home gear.
The “Proms” is an eight-week summer
season of daily orchestral classical music
concerts held annually in Central London,
predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in
LEICESTERSHIRE, UK — Hawthorn
hosted the first Hawthorn@Home event
(a “Pyro Day” on October 13th featuring
a demonstration of Pyrotechnics by Le
Maitre) in Leicestershire. “The numbers
and quality of the registrations we received is encouraging,” said Alan Jackson
of Hawthorn.
Hawthorn regularly organizes a series
of events, which take place at its base at Old
Dalby in Leicestershire. The events run under the heading “Hawthorn@Home” which
give lighting, sound, AV and scenic materials users the opportunity to get hands-on
with equipment and technology.
Hawthorn’s hire and sales team host
the events, which kick off with lunch and
an informal get-together, followed by the
hands-on/demo of equipment.
The second event in this series, on
scenic paint, was scheduled for the 1st
of November.
“We will be doing further @Home days
on video, generic lighting and sound.”
South Kensington. Most people’s perception of the Proms is taken from the “Last
Night”, although this concert is quite different from the others. The concert is
traditionally in a lighter, “winding-down”
vein, with more popular classics being followed by a series of patriotic pieces in the
second half of the concert.
Pearls of
Wisdom
In India
12
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.12-13.INTNEWS.indd 12
MUMBAI, INDIA — Avolites, working
with its Indian distributor Jagmag Electric,
staged a workshop, seminar and open day
in Mumbai for its newly launched Pearl Expert console.
Avolites’ Steve Warren and Koy Neminathan organised the event with Jagmag’s Atul Sonpal. It was attended by
over 50 individuals including LDs, programmers, operators, rental companies
and show producers — representing a
broad range of market sectors, including concerts and rock ‘n’ roll, Bollywood,
television productions, spectaculars, festivals and fashion shows.
”I was honestly overwhelmed by the
response” says Steve Warren. “The original Pearl has been a huge success for us
in India generally, but reaction to the Expert has been stunning, and took us all
by surprise.”
The Pearl Expert has many features
that are perfect for the burgeoning Indian
show and event market – with its price,
power and flexibility top of the list.
Atul Sonpal commented, “This console
has come to our market at exactly the
right time.”
Warren and Neminathan also squeezed
in a very hectic schedule of attending various live events including a concert and a
fashion show — all using Avolites control
— in the short time they had available either side of the Open Day. The next Avolites
pearl Expert open day in India is planned
for before the end of the year.
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 1:48:00 PM
INTERNATIONALNEWS
Three Big Packages
NORTHAMPTON, UK — New Robe moving
light packages totaling half a million pounds
have been supplied and installed to three separate venues — Centre Stage, Reds and Skyline
— at Minehead, Skegness and Bognor Regis.
The ball started rolling when Bourne Leisure’s technical director, Mike Godolphin, visited
Robe UK’s Bill Jones, discussing the refurbishment of all three Butlins sites. Jones then visited
technical manager Dirk Peace, who drew up a
lighting spec with Woodrow “Woody” Peterkin,
head of lighting at the Minehead site.
Birmingham-based sound and lighting installation specialists Cloud One got
the contract.Minehead Centre Stage has a capacity of 2,800 and is in use 7 days a week, 49
weeks of the year, with productions ranging
from their own in-house cast shows to visiting
productions, comedy and cabaret acts, panto
and kids entertainment.They also host corporate events.
Woody and Peace ordered 8 ColorSpot
1200 AT’s and 4 ColorWash 1200 AT’s,
initially installed at Minehead’s Centre
Stage, with the other sites following.
These are hung in the roof and used
on the floor at Minehead, which has a
wide stage aperture and very low ceiling height. They are run from a GrandMA
lighting console.
For the Reds club venue at each site,
Robe UK supplied four circular trusses, each
Robe lights Butlins
rigged with two ColorSpot 250AT’s, two ColorWash 250AT’s and a 1200 Dominator effect in
the middle.
The Skyline main tented venues used four
ColorWash 1200E AT’s in Minehead and six each
at Bogor and Skegness.
Post Rock Gets
Most Light
LONDON — Lighting rental specialists
HSL supplied LD Nick Jevons and Electric Fly
Productions with their new A&O Falcon Beam
3Kw searchlights, Martin MAC moving lights,
LED fixtures and strobes for Mogwai’s show at
London’s Royal Albert Hall.
The influential Glasgow “post rock” band
have been on a world tour since the start of
the year, which has seen various different legs
and carried varying amounts of production.
Their visuals have been looked after throughout by Nick Jevons, their LD of eight years,
with some sections operated by Neil Trenell
when Jevons had other commitments.
For the European section preceding the
current short UK and European production
run, HSL supplied Trenell with 16 i-Pix Satellite
LED fixtures (the latest design from LED guru
Chris Ewington) and four Martin Professional
Atomic strobes with color changers, which
were used in conjunction with the house rigs
at different venues.
For the Albert Hall show, the lighting production was boosted for the occasion, with
HSL supplying six of the brand new Falcon
Beams, plus two Falcon Flowers, which are the
same units, converted into giant split-beam
effects with the addition of a “Flower” attachment. Jevons had first used these fixtures on
shows in Dubai earlier in the year.
Other fixtures supplied by HSL were
18 Martin MAC 2,000 luminaires (10 Profiles and eight Washes), 10 additional
Atomics with color - changers and another 20
i-Pix Satellites.
The A-type trussing and Jevon’s Maxxys
console were supplied by Bandit Lites UK.
Jevons ran everything off the Maxxys apart
from the Falcon Beams, which were controlled by Trenell using his Avolites D4 Desktop PC control system.
100.0611.12-13.INTNEWS.indd 13
Mogwai
11/2/06 8:39:27 PM
SHOWTIME
Vietnam War Memorial Dedication
Venue
4
6
4
7
2
1
1
1
1
1
35 18 4
8
16 3
Phil Trautner Stadium, Pierre, SD
Crew
Promoter/Producer: Merdian Entertainment
Lighting Company: Sure Sound and Lighting
Production Manager: Larry Suhr
Lighting Designer/Technician: Jeremy Wann
Lighting Director: Randy Garber
Staging Company: Sure Sound and Lighting
Staging Carpenter: Larry Suhr, Jeremy Wann
Staging Products: LSW
Gear
1
186
12 14 Avolites Pearl 2004
PAR 64s
ACL Bars
ETC Source Four 19 degrees
Thomas 8-lites
High End Systems Cyberlight Turbos
Lycian 1275 Spot Lights
Stations Clear-Com
Reel EFX DF-50 Hazers
Doug Fleenor Isolated Splitter
Leprecon LP-2000
ETC 96 X 2k Sensor dimmer rack
Leprecon 30 X 2k dimmer rack
12 circuit moving light distro
91” Thomas PRTs
10’ Tomcat 12”X18” truss
5’ Tomcat 12”X18” truss
Thomas P.R.T 4-way Conner Block
CM 1-ton Hoists
8-way Motor Controller
Honda Dealer Annual Meeting Finale
Venue
Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV
Crew
Promoter/Producer: Poko Event Productions
Lighting Company: Kinetic Lighting
Production Manager: David Jacobi
Lighting Designer: James Schipper
Lighting Director: Patrick Dodough
Automated Lighting Operator: Ron Deleskiewisz
Lighting Technicians: Eric Barth, Asher Nelson, Jon
Somenske, David Strouse
Gear
2
6
2
High End Systems DL.2 Digital Luminaires
Wildfire 400W Blacklights
Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC Consoles
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
72 76 1
17 118 2
28 6
60 6
6
FPS Hog iPC Playback Wing
FPS Hog Super Widget
ETC Sensor 48-dimmer rack
ETC Sensor 24-dimmer pack
Lex PBG Distro
Lex Soco distro
Lex Custom 208V Soco Distro
ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals
Martin MAC 2000 (wash)
Finelite® MSR Projector
Martin MAC 2000 II Profiles
PAR 46s
Reel EFX DF 50 Hazers
LED Tubes
DMX Opto-Splitters
1/2-ton Motors
6-way Corner Blocks
5’ X 12” Trusses
10 182 5
1
10’ X 20.5” Trusses
5’ X 20.5” Truss
Bo Deans, Kimmi Hayes Band
Venue
Lou’s LaGrotto, Peru, IL
Crew
Promoter/Producer: Fun, Fairs and Festivals
Lighting Company: Tower Sound
Lighting Designer/Director: Kimberly Meier
Lighting Technicians: Kilannin Krysiak, Patrick Mulligan,
Dan Widolff
Gear
1
2
8
3
Leprecon 2000+PAR 64s mounted
in a Thomas Truss/Roof
8-lamp audience blinders
NSI dimmer packs
Leprecon dimmer packs
14
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.14-15..SHOW.indd 14
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:41:01 PM
Def Leppard Tour 2006
Crew
Tour Manager: Malvin Mortimer
Accountant: Mark Litten
Production Manager: Arthur Kemish
Production Asst.: Shari Weber
Rigger: Willy Williams
Carpenter/Assistant Rigger: Gino Bonnucci
Lighting Designer: Kenji Ohasi
Lighting Director: Takeshi Tabuchi
Lighting Crew Chief: Jeff Hubbell
Lighting Technicians: Rich Vinyard, Seth Conlin and Neil Davis
Lighting Vendor/Set Construction: Premier Global Production
Company, Inc. – Nashville, TN
Gear
40 40 12 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles
High End Systems Studio Color 575s
Martin MAC Atomic 3K Strobes
8
6
12 12 7
16 31 36 24 7
32 16 2
1
3
2
3
1
5
Coemar Super Cycs
8-way Mole lites
PAR 64 ACLs
4-Lite Mole Fays
8-lite Format Color Ram 2 Scrollers 8-lite Moles
Large Format Color Ram 2 Scrollers 4-lite Moles
PAR 64 Color Ram 2 Scrollers
PAR 64s
93” X 30” X 31” moving light Truss
12” x 12” x 8’ Black utility truss
1-ton Hoists
Headsets and Belt packs
Clearcom Base Stations
Avolites Diamond 3 Console
Reel EFX DF50 Hazers
High End Systems F100 fog machines
48-way/208-Volt Moving Light Distro
96-way ETC Dimmer Rack
Custom Yellow 6-Sided Pods
Artscape Music Festival 2006, Baltimore, MD.
Crew
Lighting Company: BSL Productions, Inc.
Production Manager: Mike Scarfe
Lighting Director: Jamie Peck
Lighting Designers: Nick John, Ryan Anderson
Dimmer Tech: Brandon Eckstorm
Crew: Eric Spause, Tim Ostovitz, Delmont “Rabbit” Ward
Gear
1
1
1
1
72 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 2 with
expansion wing
Avolites Sapphire Console
Catalyst Media Server
Folsom Image Pro
Element Labs Versa Tubes (1m)
2
1
10 14 2
4
35’ 98 10 2
4
2
14 2
Leprecon VX 48 racks
12 x 20 208v distro
CM 1-ton chain hoist
Thomas PRT 91”
Thomas PRT 60”
Thomas PRT Cbs
of Thomas 12” GP truss
PAR 64 1Ks
ETC Source Four ellipsoidals
Thomas 8-Lites
racks of 250w ACLs
1.2k HMI Explorer followspots
Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot
Vari*Lite VL3000 Wash
Diversitronics Strobes,
Purpose Driven Worship Conference 2006
Venue
Saddleback Valley Community Church, Lake Forest, CA
Crew
Promoter/Producer: Purpose Driven
Lighting Company: California Stage and Lighting
Video Director: Elaine Koehler
Video Company: Saddleback Church
Production Manager: Steve Powers (Production Manger/
Technical Director:)Lighting Designer/Director: Jon Griffin
Lighting Technicians: Travis Morra, AJ Williams, Brian Reed,
Roger Kilgore and Kevin Sorg
Gear
Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 3 w/2 Playback Wings
Color Kinetics Color Blast 12s
Vari*lite VL2000 Wash
Vari*lite VL2000 Spots
Vari*lite VL3000 Wash
Vari*lite VL2500 Spots
Vari*lite VL1000TS
High End Systems Studio Spots
Thomas 9-lites
Le Maitre Radiance Touring Hazers
Strong Truss Trouper 1200s
ETC Sensor 24 Dimmers.
Rigging Equipment:
10 20.5” 10’ Box Trusses
2
20.5” 5’ Box Trusses
5
12” 10’ Box Trusses
12 1/2-ton CM Lodestars
1
36
8
18 12 8
10 6
6
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PLSN
JULY
2006
NOVEMBER
2006
PLSN
15
15
11/2/06 8:41:28 PM
INSIDETHEATRE
The cues come as fast as flakes in a blizzard for Slava’s Snowshow
By BryanReesman
S
lava’s Snowshow is a theatrical free-forall unlike anything else you’ve experienced. Russian clowns play tricks on
each other, parody famous cinematic moments, wander through a winter wonderland
and even invade the audience and heckle
the crowd during intermission. For two years
now the comedic and semi-improvisational
show has delighted audiences at the Union
Square Theatre near Greenwich Village, and
lighting director Derek Brashears has been
there since day one, from unloading the
truck to learning the lighting design to manning the boards. He’s learned to weather a
storm of surprises that can happen on a dayto-day basis, so much so that the connection
is somewhat telepathic.
“The cast rotates almost every day, but it’s
not a nightmare,” explains Brashears, a former
freelance carpenter and electrician who also
worked as a TD at a small Brooklyn theatre
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100.0611.18-19.InsideThea.indd 16
prior to entering the world of Snowshow. “I’ve
gotten to the point where my hands and my
eyes are linked up so that they know someone’s traveling from there to there, and my
hands know how much that is. They just kind
of sync up without me realizing it anymore.”
The premise of Snowshow is simple. The
various clowns, lead by a yellow clown, perform scripted routines with improv elements
— two people lost at sea; a clown reenacting
a conversation between quarreling lovers
(but done with babbling as opposed to clear
speech); and a group of clowns pranking one
another. With certain segments expanded
or shortened depending upon the yellow
clown’s mood that night, and with no stage
manager on the production, Brashears has to
be constantly aware of what is going on.
“The way the show runs is fairly organic,”
he says. “The lighting is live mix, so it’s not hitting the ‘Go’ button like most shows are. I’m
live-mixing channels and submasters, and as
a result of that they brought in their lighting
designer Oleg Iline, who was there for about
three weeks to a month when the show first
opened. I trained with him. His light plot was
drawn on the first day of hang on a piece of
notebook paper, and that was the only really useful for channel information. Mostly he
stood under the pipes, pointed up and said
he wanted a light there.”
Brashears runs an ETC Express 24/48 console with “absolutely no cues programmed
into the board.” He lights the show predominately with Source Four ellipsoidals, of which
there are close to 150. “Those are the front
light, the side light, specials and lights in the
house,” he remarks.“There are two things going on with back light. There are the actual
back and top lights, which are all 2K Fresnels,
and then there are the PAR 64s focused on
the blue legs.” For color wash, he uses primary colors: Lee 119 for blue, Lee 106 for red,
and Lee 179 for yellow. Blue is used during
the snow scenes, while red is used during a
fog sequence.
The various effects used in the show include haze, fog, dry ice, bubbles, Mylar rain,
confetti snow, wind and smoke charges. The
confetti is a fire retardant tissue paper that
covers much of the stage by the middle of
the show and gradually makes its way into
the audience up to the show’s climactic blizzard. (You’ll feel sympathy for whoever has to
clean it all up later.) The confetti snow is used
primarily in two scenes: one where the clowns
walk through the snow, with one pushing a
giant snowball, and the final storm. “In terms
of it being all over the stage all the time, it’s
there for the look. It’s there to create the environment. You just embrace the fact that it
is there, that the floor is going to change its
color halfway through the show.”
Another striking element on stage is
the “walls,” which are homemade creations
of fabric and cotton bedding. They are suspended from the ceiling and feature one
light-colored side and one dark. They are lit
from above so that one can catch the detail
on them. “They’re just down lit. Automatically
by doing that you get the shape of them, the
fact that they’re billowy.” He adds that effects
like bubbles or the appearance of a clown in
a translucent ball does not generate any unwanted reflections. They just add to the atmosphere of the show.
According to Brashears, Slava’s Snowshow
has only a few lighting positions. “There’s the
white front light, white side light, white high
sides, blue sides, yellow sides, and then there’s
blue top light, blue back light, red back light
and white top light. The PAR cans that are
focused on the legs are all blue.” Then there
is a giant, glowing yellow ball that protrudes
from backstage for a short period during the
show, but the operation of this ominous orb,
which is under control of the lighting console,
is a trade secret that cannot be surrendered.
In terms of the basic cue sheet, Brashears
says that, printed in 10-point font, it runs nine
pages long — and that is without the “little,
nuance-y cues” he does as well (not to mention the individual changes per clown). This
cue sheet is given to people training as a substitute. It’s no wonder the training period lasts
a month.
“For instance, you’ll have a cue where you
have to fade up two submasters at different
rates as the clown walks across the stage,”
says Brashears. “When he reaches a certain
point you stop, but you want to be about 50%
at that point. Then he walks again, and by
the time he finishes you want to be at 100%.
Some days he’ll go fast, some days he’ll stop
three times for no reason, and some days he’ll
go really, really slow. So it’s always changing.”
The improv moment that caught
Brashears most off-guard occurred when
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11/2/06 8:23:26 PM
“Chaos is so much fun.” – LD Derek Brashears
this new version of the show that we’re doing
tonight and tonight only.”
Brashears relishes the chance to delve
into the pandemonium of Slava’s Snowshow
each and every night. “Chaos is so much fun,”
he says. “There’s something brilliantly nice
about the fact that we’re sitting there and
not hitting one button every night. We have
no stage manager, no one calling any of the
cues and no Clear-Com, so the basic rule of
the show is that you have to know it.” Plus, the
lack of completely defined cues is no problem. “There’s no worrying that I’m going hit
‘go’ and it’s going to be bad, or the next time I
hit ‘go’ I forgot to clear something.”
And he has a technical compatriot right
alongside him in Rubinstein. “We’re in the
same booth. We’ve been sitting next to
each other for two years. It gets to a point
where even with the controlled chaos, Keith
and I don’t need to speak in order to run the
show together. Even when it’s an improv
moment, we kind of know what the other
one’s going to do.”
The Snowshow lighting director stresses
that the improvisational aspects of the show
have more to do with timing than with radical
scene rewrites, but they are enough to keep
the production challenging on a nightly basis. It also means that audiences can return
and not see the exact same show.“I have seen
Slava do the show in an hour and 10 minutes,
including intermission,” reveals Brashears.“He
was bowing at 9:15, but then I’ve seen another performer, Robert, bow at 10:15, and he did
one scene less. It’s all in the timing.”
Slava himself was still doing the show (before
embarking on a national tour of the production). He came out and did the show’s death
scene with two fake arrows protruding from
his body, but he decided to shorten things
up a bit. “It normally goes through the whole
first verse of the accompanying music where
he’s on stage dancing around, and the second
verse he goes into the audience. Slava was already on the ground dying — he had already
done his thing onstage and been through
the audience — by the end of the first
verse.” Both Brashears and sound supervisor
Keith Rubinstein quickly transitioned to the
next segment.
“Honestly, the biggest challenge is when
the scenes change, and you don’t know about
it until it’s happening,” remarks Brashears.“The
clowns are allowed to improv a little, and some
of them are encouraged to. So the scenes will
change, and you kind of reach a point some
nights where you think, ‘What is going on?
Okay, I’m going to cover it this way!’ The simplest example of that is when someone in the
audience is laughing inappropriately or their
cell phone goes off, and the clown runs into
the house and starts going after the person.
The immediate thing you do is bring up your
house lights. It’s the best way to cover that.
I’ve had scenes where there was supposed to
be one clown on stage in a spotlight, like during the scene where he cleans off the stage
with a broom. I’ve had other clowns show up
in the middle of that. The advantage of it being a live mix show is that you can instantly
bring things up and make things look good in
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PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
17
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INSTALLATIONS
By PhilGilbert
A Historic Clock Tower Is
Lit Using Modern Methods
Dr. Emmet Brown: Don’t worry! As long as
you hit that wire with the connecting hook at
precisely eighty-eight miles per hour the instant
the lightning strikes the tower, everything will
be fine!
In the climax of the movie Back to the
Future, Doc Brown and Marty McFly attach a
steel cable to the town’s clock tower in order
to harness the electricity of a pre-destined
lightning strike. They then proceed to mispronounce the word “gigawatt,” and send Martyback to the future.
In a neighborhood near to Chicago’s
Wrigley Field, another clock tower is lit up
— without the need for a time machine or a
guy named Biff.
10 Years Into the Past
In 1996, the condominium conversion of
three historic industrial buildings was completed. The site had played host to a variety of
companies in the past, including a stint as the
headquarters of Bell & Howell.
At the time of their original construction,
it was common to install water towers on the
roofs of buildings to provide adequate water
pressure to the tenants. In some cases, clocks
were installed as facades for the otherwise
unattractive water towers.
Brian Norkett, one of the new residents
of the complex (recently re-dubbed “Larch-
mont Lofts”), noticed that the clock faces of
the newly renovated building were not working. The developer promised the future repair
of the clock mechanisms, then later reneged,
eventually forcing Norkett and the condo
association to pursue the issue in the Cook
County court system.
After eight years of litigation, the developer eventually settled in 2006. Shortly
thereafter, Norkett and the condominium association began the process of refurbishing
the historic clock face.
8 Months Into the Past
A tuck pointer was hired to clean the terra
cotta face and re-paint the clock’s numerals. A
company was brought in from Cincinnati to
gut the mechanical clock apparatus, replacing it with a modern-day digital mechanism
that would be more accurate and automatically adjust for daylight savings.
Norkett said, “We also decided that we
should light up the clock tower, and thereby
allow it to serve as a night beacon for the
Ravenwood and Lakeview neighborhoods.
This was quite a technical challenge because
the clock was never lit previously, and it was
not designed to be back-lit through a translucent membrane as most lit clock towers are.”
The condo association initially contacted
Scott Shelberg at Evergeen Oak/Crest Lighting, who subsequently referred the client to
“The clock was never lit previously,
and it was not designed to be back-lit
through a translucent membrane as
most lit clock towers are.” –Brian Norkett
Lightswitch Chicago. Avraham “Avi” Mor, a
lighting designer with Lightswitch, took the
reins from there.
“We started talking about some different
methods for lighting the clock face,” says Mor.
“We looked at how big it is, and how impossible it is to reach the clock face, and that it
could not be back-illuminated because it’s
solid stone.”
Future maintenance was a key aspect of
the design. Norkett noted that the height of
the structure posed its own issues. “The fact
that the face is nine stories — over 135 feet
— in the air means it would be difficult to
change bulbs and otherwise maintain any
light fixtures which we might install on the
face. We kind of threw some design ideas
around in the office,” added Mor. “We came
up with this idea of lighting it from a ring
around the clock face.
“The really nice thing about it is that
there’s no extraneous light that goes into the
sky, and you don’t get the shadows from the
clock hands. Any flood lighting would have
created a shadow on the face of the clock. So,
it actually turned out to be an ingenious idea.
And, as we investigated it further, we said ‘why
not light it with fiber?’ “
12 Weeks Into the Past
“And that,” says Mor, “is when we turned
to Fiber Optic Studio.”
Fiber Optic Studio is a specialty lighting firm based out of Winnetka, Ill. Working
with LED and fiber optic technologies, they
specialize in the creation of custom lighting solutions for their clients. Jenny Shulkin,
the project manager for Fiber Optic Studio
on this project, discussed the reasons for
the fiber optic solution that was eventually
implemented.
“Avi wanted some sort of solution — not
even like an LED that would last five or ten
years — but something that would essentially be a permanent solution. From his
design standpoint, I think it was ‘how am I
going to illuminate this clock tower so the
owners never have to get up to the exterior
again?’
“So, we went with fiber because we
could plant all of the electrical work and all
of the lighting inside the clock tower, and
then pump that light outside through the fiber. We went through all of the visual design
steps with the client. I know there was a big
question in our design phase whether or not
we were going to do color or if it was going
to be a white light.”
With the condo board and the design
team deciding on a strictly white light solution, it was time to move on to the engineering phase of the project.
60 Days Into the Past
“We decided to use a solid-core fiber that’s about an inch in diameter,” says
Shulkin. “We put that inside of a metal channel that was maybe an inch or two larger
than the clock itself, which had a nine-foot
diameter.”
Mor commented that “On the coldest
day of the summer — wearing shorts and a
t-shirt because I thought it was a nice summer day — we went up on the rooftop and
mocked up a piece of this fiber. It was really
impressive!”
“We ended up having a U-channel bent
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“When you start to add up the math, you save that
much in electricity. The lights aren’t turning on
at five o’clock in the summer.” –Avraham “Avi” Mor
ing team and said, “You can now read the time
at night from many blocks surrounding our
building, and if you are on a tall enough structure, you can see the lights of the clock tower
from many miles away.”
Phil Gilbert is a freelance lighting designer / programmer. He can be reached at
pgilbert@ plsn.com.
into a ring,” says Shulkin, “with a fiber on the
back side of it, facing the wall.”
Building code required that the stainless steel pieces be attached in such a way
that they could withstand 100 mile-per-hour
winds.
“The fiber sits in a custom stainless steel
extrusion, which allows it to stand off from
the building, as well as blocking extraneous
light from lighting other surfaces of the clock
face,” adds Mor.
Each of the four clock faces is ringed with
a single piece of solid core fiber. On each face
the fiber is routed to the exterior at the twelve
o’clock position, lies inside of the channel
around the clock, and re-enters the structure
again at high noon.
Visual Lighting Technology supplied the
150-watt metal halide illuminators that feed
both ends of each fiber. Four pieces of fiber
and eight illuminators were installed in the
clock tower.
“Metal halides are great because they’re
super bright and they last,” says Shulkin.
“That’s generally what works best on the sidelit fiber. Anything halogen really wouldn’t
have thrown any light off.
“On one side of the fiber it has a white
coating. If you’re working with a thirty-foot
strand, it has more etchings in it near the end
than at the beginning so that the light stays
consistent. At the beginning you might have
an etch every three or four inches, and at the
end they may be every centimeter.
“The install was a little tricky because we
had to get up on booms and raise these metal
rings,” adds Shulkin, giving praise to her staff
for going above and beyond their normal duties.
“We had our guys on booms. They’re the
same guys we use to do our Color Kinetics
LED programming. They’re not people that
are normally up that high, and they worked
really great up at that level.”
To activate the fixtures on a nightly basis,
Mor wanted something reliable and simple.
For this he turned to an Intermatic digital astronomic time clock.
“They don’t have to worry about daylight
savings time. They don’t have to worry about
when the sun is rising or setting. It always
turns on half an hour before sunset and turns
off half an hour after sunrise.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that
the digital astronomic time clock from Intermatic is maybe a few hundred dollars. And
for that money, you never have to touch that
time clock again. And when you start to add
up the math, you save that much in electricity.
The lights aren’t turning on at five o’clock in
the summer,” Mor finishes.
“In about two years, when the lights start
to go out,” says Shulkin, “we’ll just go in and
change all the lamps in one shot. That’ll probably take us about fifteen or twenty minutes,
because we just have to get into the clock
tower. They’ll never have to get to the outside
of the building.”
The residents of the Larchmont Lofts are out
tonight, throwing a party to celebrate the lighting of their clock tower.The new shining beacon
for their neighborhood will light their way from
sundown to sun-up every day of the year.
“You can see the installation from the train,
going into the city. It’s a highly visible sight,” says
Shulkin.
Adds Mor,“It blew me away what this piece
of fiber could do with a hundred-fifty watt metal halide illuminator.”
Norkett concluded his praise for the light-
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100.0611.18-19.CLOCK.indd 19
1 Hour Into the Future
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
19
11/3/06 2:18:30 PM
PRODUCTIONPROFILE
and That’s Just Her Lighting Rig
CREW & GEAR
Crew
Tour Manager: Michael “Huggy” Carter
Road Manager: Toshi Iizuka
Production Designer: Alan Thompson
Production Manager: Rob Brenner
Production Coordinator:Pamela Harris
Stage Manager: Curtis “Duewerk” Baker
LD: Daunte Kenner
Lighting Crew Chief: Joe Finn
Structure Tech: Harry Gray
Gaffer: Michael Anton
Lighting Techs: Mike “Slim” Howe,
Craig Kreider
Video Director: Mick Anger
Video Engineer: Eric Lee
Video Eng/Camera Op: Mitch Nyberg
LED Tech/Camera Op: William Duncan
Pyro Director: Wade Padget
Pyro Engineer: Mike Hartle
Lead Rigger: Gerald McDougald
Rigger: Colin Nevins
Carpenters: Chris “Smalls”, Vance Hardy,
Mikal Safiyulla, Rodney Camper
Content Developer: Mark Argenti,
Ian McDaniel
Gear
18
26
12
24
6
12
12
24
12
7
5
22
22
174’
80’
100’
1
1
2
1
1
3
80’
2
2
4
1
1
1
1
1
Martin MAC 2000s
High End Systems Studio
Beams
PixelRange PixelLine 1044s
PixelRange Pixel Bricks
Mole Fays
Martin Atomic 3K Strobes
with scrollers
High End Systems x.Spots
ETC Source Four PARs
ETC Source Four Lekos
MR-16 battens
PAR 64 ACLs
CM 1-ton motors
CM ½-ton motors (half-ton motors)
12”x12” box truss polished
12”x12” truss curve, polished
Pre-rigged truss, black
ETC Sensor 24K dimmer rack
ETC Sensor 48K dimmer rack
Leprecon 208V Distros
Avolites Diamond 4 Console
Avolites D-4 Console backup
12’x9.5’ Toshiba LED Panels
Hi-Res SoftLED
Liquid Venoms
LeMaitre LSGs
Sony BVP Broadcast Cameras
Grass Valley 250 Switcher
Media Evolutions Green System
All Access Proprietary Mobilator
All Access Proprietary Elevator
All Access Proprietary Carousel
LD Daunte Kenner captures the
essence of Mary J. Blige in design
Daunte Kenner, LD for Mary J. Blige
By RichardCadena
S
he’s the soulful queen of hip-hop, an
embattled figure who has recently
emerged victoriously from bouts
against alcohol and drug abuse to become
a successful and happily-married entertainer.
Her concert sounds like a battle cry for troubled women everywhere, leading the charge
against the emotional distress of everyday
life in the trenches. She is Mary J. Blige. And
the responsibility for lighting her shows falls
squarely on the shoulders of Daunte Kenner. And if MJB has gone through a series of
changes, Kenner can certainly relate. Talk to
him about the show and the constant theme
that emerges is one of change. Take, for example, the design process.
“Nineteen,” says Kenner with a smile.
That’s the number of iterations his lighting design went through before going into
pre-production. But he says it in such a way
that you can’t be sure whether the design
was finished or they just ran short of time. But
Kenner seems unflappable as he talks about
working through the design with AT, formally
known as Alan Thompson, the production designer, Huggie, the tour manager, and Kendu
Isaacs, Mary’s husband.
Impress Me
Kenner, who works for Performance Lighting in Chicago, was brought into the MJB
camp by longtime friend and Performance
Lighting client Alan Thompson, with whom
Kenner has worked several tours. Preparations for this tour began on a European leg
where MJB spoke directly to Kenner about
her vision for the U.S. leg of the tour.
“She basically told me, ‘I want this lighting
rig to look like some other concert I would go
to,’ ” says Kenner, whose voice sounds as if it
should be on the radio.“She wanted to be impressed when she saw it, and she snuck in on
me a couple times and video taped rehearsals. Then she watched them and she critiqued
me,” he laughs.
Kenner’s own concept was to give the
lighting rig a look that is reminiscent of MJB
— curvy, sexy-looking.“Mary’s stage presence
is stunning, so her visual support should be
as well,” he says. At the same time, he wanted
the front truss to follow the curve of the linearray speakers. Though the line-array never
materialized, the truss design still works very
well. It looked good when he drew it up in
VectorWorks, and it looks great live.
Even after splitting the rig down the middle to accommodate a reverse Kabuki, the rig
looks big, open and curvy. The set features
a large riser for the drums and backup singers, sweeping bookend staircases and just
enough soft goods to add a feminine touch.
What it doesn’t have is a front truss.
“The design doesn’t work well with a
straight stick in front of it. It’s designed so
it looks very open, very large,” he says. “My
thoughts were, if you are sitting at the top
seat in the arena, I always hate when you look
down and there’s a truss in the way. You can’t
see the stage. So I nixed that. I want everyone
to fully experience Mary J. Blige. I use the two
side trusses…There’s a lot of side light in here,
but it fills up very beautifully, you can’t really
tell there is very little front lighting.”
Pre-Production?
What’s That?
Given the size and complexity of the rig,
and the complexity of the cueing during the
show, you might
think Kenner had
lots of pre-production time for
programming.
“Oh Lord! Boy,
do I wish I did,” he
says. “There was
no time for that. I
went over to the
UK with her, and
there was just no
time
between
running
shows
over there and
advancing
the
changes, because
the changes were
Back Row (L-R): Harry Gray, structure tech; Joe Finn, crew chief; Craig Kreider, system tech. Front (L-R):
constantly com-
ing. Literally, up until they were pushing gear
on the truck, I was calling back to shop going,
‘Hey, we need to add this, we need to subtract
this, we need to change this.’ So the first time
I actually saw the rig and was able to move
a light on it was the second day of our twoweek rehearsal in L.A., which was constantly
interrupted by radio shows.”
When he finally did get a crack at the
console, Kenner, in addition to designing
the rig, programmed it, with the help of Brad
White from Avolites America, on an Avo Diamond 4 console.
“I’m normally a Flying Pig Systems Hog
guy, or an MA Lighting grandMA,” he says of
the switch. “I got really good reviews from
Tony Trovato, who’s also working on this
project. He also works for Performance Lighting. He’s a die-hard Avo fan. And I liked the
console for the application. Avo was something I would normally use on a quick oneoff when I need to be able to program fast.
I never considered using it on tour, but they
came out with the Diamond 4, and it kind
of incorporates some of the philosophies of
the Hog world and some of the philosophies
of the grandMA world, but it gives the ease
of Avo. So…”
A big part of the set is the Main Light
Industries SoftLED backdrop and a smaller
—but still very large — Barco LED wall supplied by Screenworks. The SoftLED is used to
frame the video wall with low-res imagery.
The original idea was for Kenner to control all
the video content using a media server, but
due to time the idea was dropped. Instead,
the video is run by a crew led by video veteran Mick Anger. In order to develop a coherent
design among the various disciplines, Kenner
worked closely with the video crew.
“All the color palettes have gone through
me,” Kenner states. “I worked with Mark Argenti and Ian McDaniel (the content developers), and we tried to make sure that we were
all on the same page regarding color and
texture. Kendu is the driving force when it
comes to that creative part. He picked most
of the imagery and most of the content that
was developed by Media Evolutions, and all
we did was tweak it to make sure the colors
coincide, making sure the timing was right.
Video runs off time code, I don’t. So we had to
make sure that I’m synched up, even though
I’m not running time code.”
Working in Bronze
The colors for the show resulted from
a collaboration between Kenner and Blige.
Mike “Slim” Howe, moving light tech; Daunte Kenner, LD; Michael “Frenchie” Anton, system tech, gaffer
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The starting point was Kenner’s own concepts for each song, based on “what I
thought was right for the moment.” Then
a review session with Blige confirmed that
their concept for colors was very similar,
with one small addition.
“There was one color she wanted that
took me an hour to figure out how to get. It’s
bronze,” Kenner said with amazement. “Who
ever thought you could get bronze out of
a mover? But as you’ll see in the show, it is
bronze.”
In addition to the moving lights, Kenner
relies on the followspots for “mood lighting.”
“The only corrective frame I have,” he
says, “is a CTO; a full cut just to really lay it on
her. Everything else is just flesh tones; pink
like a Rosco 33, standard video stuff and a
Rosco 24. The upstage Lekos are half cut CTB,
the downstage ones are quarter cut CTB and
all the MR-16s are a quarter cut CTB, a CTO,
with Lee 400 added to dramatically soften
the light [One in each of the three cells – ed.+The floor PARs, just to light the bands’ face,
are a quarter cut CTB. Different tones of CTB
to make certain things pop out and certain
things sit back.”
With all the video imagery and displays, you might think Blige would be
overly concerned about I-Mag. But Kenner
says it’s not so.
“She hasn’t been very picky about it;
Kendu has. There have been some issues
here and there, but we found out it was a
video equipment problem instead of gel. So
it just took a second for me and video guys
to work things out. We actually didn’t have
a full camera run-through until our second
dress rehearsal in St Louis. So that was when
we had our first full trip.”
was extremely happy to have them as part
of the show. There’s also a PixelLine on each
curved piece. The bricks work excellently as
truss warmers, and they were a creative solution to our problem of toning 12-by-12
trussing with multiple colors. The PixelLines
are just eye candy.”
And there’s plenty more eye candy in
the show between the hi-res and low-res
video, moving lights, moving truss, moving
LED Wall and pyro
by Strickly FX. All
of the 28 songs on
the set list are programmed cue-tocue, with plenty of
on-the-fly playback
to keep Kenner busy. But as busy as he is and
as many changes as he’s been thrown, Kenner is a happy man behind the console and
Mick Anger, video director for Mary J. Blige.
behind the scenes of one of his favorite acts.
“I’m a closet Mary J. Blige fan,” he says.
We won’t tell anybody.
Eye Want Candy
According to Kenner, the video and lighting crews play well together, but it can be
challenging at times. “They ask a lot of me,”
he says. “Right now their biggest issue is the
LED light level — the (Main Light Industries)
SoftLED versus the hard LED. The SoftLED
curtain just blows everything away. It’s just
way too bright. We are still kind of playing
with it, dialing it way down. It is so huge —
80 feet wide. There’s so much of it.”
SoftLED is not the only thing on the set in
huge quantity. “There are lots of toys on this
rig,” Kenner says with a grin.“Lots. Martin MAC
2Ks and High End Systems Studio Beams are
the bulk of it. Studio Beams — battle tanks.
Excellent! If you ever want to buy a wash
fixture, that is the fixture to buy. 2Ks for the
punch, Studio Beams because of their road
worthiness. And I like them; they are pretty
quick. On the floor we have High End Systems x.Spots, strictly for their gobo palette.
It’s really hard to have those compete with
MAC 2Ks for punch, but when they are used
properly they are irreplaceable. Each stick of
truss has a James Thomas Engineering PixelBrick in it, an LED fixture. They’re brand new;
Scott Baker of Performance Lighting sourced
them. Blaine at James Thomas Engineering
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PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
21
11/2/06 8:27:11 PM
By RichardCadena
LOTS OF LEDs, LOADS OF LEADS
So, who uttered “This year we have a lot
of new LED products”?
Your choices, again, are:
A. The
founder
of
the
Led
Zeppelin fan club
B. Former Congressman Mark Foley
C. All of the exhibitors at LDI 2006
D. Eric Loader of Elation Professional
If you answered “C,” then you’re a lot
smarter than you look. But the correct answer is actually Eric Loader of Elation Professional. But it could have been almost anyone
exhibiting at the show and it would have
been a fitting remark.
Besides companies like Color Kinetics,
Element Labs, PixelRange (who announced
that they have been spun off of their parent
company, James Thomas Engineering), and
Seledor, who without LEDs would be SOL,
several other manufacturers have joined in
the LED fray. Automated lighting kingpins
Martin Professional and Robe Show Lighting both trotted out new LED video walls
called the LC 2140 and the StageCube 324,
respectively. Add to that the new DV HR
video wall from Chauvet — you can buy
48 modules and build a video wall approximately 10’x13’ for under $100K retail — and
you start to get the sense of where the industry is going: Right down the LED rabbit
hole. What’s up doc? LED stocks, that’s what.
But it’s not just video displays that are
taking advantage of LED technology. SGM is
expanding their line of LED color wash fixtures with the Genio Mobile, a moving yoke
LED fixture, and several new applications of
LEDs could be found on the show floor. ACT
Lighting showed the EvenLED cyc lighting
color wash system, which produces a beautifully uniform color wash by projecting on the
Eric “We have lots of new LED products” Loader of Elation and Acclaim (L),
with Scott Davies (M) and Chuck Davies (R) of American DJ. Elation and
Acclaim released several new products
including the X Panel and X Curtain LED
displays, Design Spot 575E, Design Wash
250, Design LED 12 Brick LED Panel with
12 1-watt LEDs, Design LED 60 Strip LED
Panel with 48 1-watt LEDs, Design Par
575H halogen Opti Par moving head
fixture, Design Par 575D discharge lamp
Opti Par moving head fixture, Design
LED 36UV LED wash, Design LED 36WA
LED wash with white and amber LEDs,
Design LED 36MH LED moving head
fixture; Elation LED Blinder 48, AR-32 Architectural Wall Mount DMX Recorder/
Playback Controller, Alkalite PZ54 Wall/
Ceiling Mount LED Panel with built-in
controller,and Show Designer 3D, a software-based media server.
22
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 22
rear of a cyc. Rosco introduced the LitePad
slim profile soft light source that produces a
very uniform white light. They are available in
sizes from 3”x3” to 12”x12” and they are only
1” thick.
But LEDs weren’t the only thing in abundance at LDI this year. There were all manner
of products to help you use your LEDs, including networking tools and media servers.
There was even a media servers that could
be networked. The newest version of the
Hippotizer, V3, from Green Hippo includes
the ability to configure and control multiple
Hippos from one or more machines with the
HippoNet networking feature. The product
generated quite the buzz at the show. Other buzzing products at the show included
Apollo’s Right Arm, a moving yoke that will
accept just about anything you want to pan
and tilt, and Pharos AVC, the powerful audiovisual controller that can fit in the palm of
your hand, though it works much better at-
Martin Architectural Project Coordinator Bruno Silva (L) and co-worker with
the new Exterior 1200 Wash fixture. The
new LC 2140 video wall can be seen in
the background. Other new products introduced by Martin include the Stagebar
54 LED pixel bar, the MAC TW1 1200-watt
tungsten wash fixture, the MAC 700 Wash
fixture, the Big Lite Littlebig 3.0 3kW xenon single-arm moving yoke fixture, the
RBG Laser 1.6, and a number of Mania
effects, Jem fog products and architectural products. Also introduced was the
Maxedia Compact media server, and the
Maxxyz Compact was previewed by invitation only.
tached to a wall. This year, Pharos was on the
ETC stand, who is now their North American
distributor.
And speaking of ETC, it was their own
Patricia Bornhofen who said they collected
more leads on the first day of LDI than they
had in all four days of PLASA the prior month,
and that was the most successful PLASA
they’ve ever had. That’s a good indication...
At LDI, everyone is typically looking for
the “next big thing.” The conversation usually
follows some form of: “How was your flight?”
and “Have you seen anything interesting on
the show floor?” If you were around in 1999
when Light & Sound Design/Fourth Phase/
PRG debuted the Icon M, then you know
exactly what everyone is looking for in the
“next big thing.” You know what “interesting”
looks like. But this year’s LDI was interesting
in a very different kind of way. There were no
Icon Ms, but a lot of fallout from the legacy of
the M, and a lot of incremental advances in
L-R: Noel Duncan of Inner Circle
Distribution (U.S. distributor for Coemar), John Huddleston of Upstaging,
Gary Mass of ICD, lighting designer
Alex Reardon on the Coemar stand. Coemar’s new Infinity Wash uses a unique
tilting CMY dichroic color mixing system
to extend the range of available colors.
The Philips Fast Fit 1200-watt lamp powers the unit, and its zoom ranges from 6
degrees to 80 degrees. Also new on the
Coemar stand was the Pinlight LED, the
smaller brother of the Parlight LED, and
the Striplight LED.
the technology of our chosen field — Lex’s
flat multi-core cable, Syncrolite’s dichroic
film scroller, ACT Lighting’s EvenLED cyc
color wash, Coemar’s tilting CMY color
mixing system, to name a few. That’s
good news for the industry, both from
the manufacturer’s point of view because
they have good things to offer, and from
the production company’s point of view
because they can improve their services
without replacing their entire inventory,
and from the end user’s point of view because they will benefit from the software
upgrades and the nifty gadgets.
From all indications the industry is as
healthy as it has ever been, perhaps even
more so. Not only is the sun shining, but
it’s pouring down new products to boot.
If you aren’t making hay — as well as
sowing seeds for next year’s crop — then
you might want to have your tractor
checked out.
The newly spun off PixelRange presented at the stand of former parent
company James Thomas Engineering.
L-R: product designer Dr. James Powell, Dave Thomas, account rep Blaine
Engle. Their new products included
the Micro W color wash and the Micro
E LED effects unit — smaller versions of
the 1044 and 110, respectively — and
the Pixel Art linear LED strip, available
in 6x72 pixels or the shorter 6x12 pixel
version.
Albert Chauvet of Chauvet Lighting in front of the Color Tube EQ LED visualizer. Also on display were a number
of new LED products including the LED
Blacklight, and the DV HR video wall.
Each square meter module of the DV HR
retails for $799 with the case. It is driven
by DVW Studio software and a driver
package.
Mike Zorena and Scott Humphrey of Applied Electronics with their
new I-Tube truss, which carries 30% more
capacity for approximately 15% more
cost. If you look closely you might see the
secret of the stronger product — it has
a channel extruded inside of the main
truss chords. Also on the Applied Electronics/Staging Dimensions stand were
the Hi-Res Pixel Panel LED Floor and the
range of LSC lighting consoles.
Scott Blair of High End Systems with
their new Axon media server, the same
server that is found in the DL.2 digital
luminaire, in a stand-alone package.
Also new on the High End stand were
software upgrades for the DL.2 and the
WholeHog 3.
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 2:30:12 PM
Custom LED sculpture made with
Barco MiPix modular LED pixels on the
XL Video stand.
The Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash made its
debut at the show. It can use a 1200-watt
or 1500-watt lamp and the zoom ranges
from 10 to 30 degrees.
Video in 3D. G-LEC demonstrates
their Tube System of 3D LED pixel tubes.
Chauvet breaks into the video wall
market in a big way but with a little
price. A 10’x13’ DV HR video wall can be
had for under $100K retail.
Tim Bachman of A.C.T Lighting
is excited about the new MA Lighting
grandMA 2 Port Node. The Node works
with 100Mbit ArtNet or Fast Ethernet,
and allows you to put together a grandMA PC version at a reduced cost.
Joshua Alemany of Rosco showing a new photographic image, fullcolor glass gobo projection. The new
gobos are only 2mm thick, allowing
better focus across all layers. They fit in a
standard gobo slot, and they work in the
Vari*Lite Series 30
Rich Dale of Apollo Design Technology demonstrating the Right Arm
moving yoke. The yoke can adapt to a
variety of luminaires and keeps the center of gravity in the center of the device
when it moves.
Nigel Sadler of Green Hippo hippotizes his audience during a demonstration of the new Hippotizer Version
3.0. New features include HippoNet
networking capability, which allows you
to network several media servers, and a
time line.
L-R: Francesco Romagnoli, Eric
Mueller, Pasquale Quadri, Giovanni
Zucchinali, John Maher, Emilio Cornelli, and Scot Townsend of Clay Paky.
New to the Martin stand is National
Sales Director for Show, TV and Theatre
P.J. Turpin. The throngs of people at the
Martin stand were typical of this year’s
show.
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100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 23
Rob Steele of Avolites America discussing the new Pearl Expert console
with Duo Core processor, USB support,
20 playback faders and a split roller.
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
23
11/3/06 2:31:26 PM
Element Labs on display. The
three newest products from the company — Stealth, Cirrus and Versa Tube HD
— made for a colorful display on their
stand. Cirrus is a semi-transparent LED
curtain made from clear polycarbonate
webbing.
Doug Fleenor with the Doug Fleenor Devices Rerun, a wall-mount or handheld DMX recorder with 40 minutes of
record time per channel. Also on the
DFD stand was the new Start Code Stripper which allows different DMX devices
to work together.
Tom Littrell of ETC talks about
the new features of the Revolution automated luminaire, which now features
the Wybron CXI color scroller with 432
distinct colors. ETC also debuted the Eos
console, the Congo jr and the Pharos
AVC audio-video controller.
David Buerer of Leviton demonstrating one of the three new consoles
in the 8700 series. The GL, GX, and GS
consoles range in price from $6,000 to
$15,000
Tony Hansen with the SGM Pilot
3000 console, a very small and portable
— but powerful — console that retails
for under $3000. It features two DMX
universes, an extensive fixture library
and an effects generator. Techni-Lux is
the U.S. distributor for SGM.
Tomcat USA Design Manager Keith
Bohn with the new Dance Tower, an
easy way to rig side light. Tomcat also
showed the new Sky ladder beam truss
with a “Star Connection” system to build
a variety of structural configurations.
Bob Luther of Lex Products/Electrol with their new welded aluminum
rack and rack-mounted power distro.
Also new on the stand were the flat
multi-core cable that meets NEC article
520 for hard usage, the Lex/Electrol
DMX Isolated Splitter, and the 12x2.5K
dimmers.
Helmut Protte of Coolux showing
version 3.x of the Pandora’s Box media
server. New features include a dual-VGA
input card, optional MediaPlayer features such as high-def, soft edge blending and the MatrixPlayer video pixel to
DMX, which is available as a standalone
software solution in LT, STD and PRO
versions.
24
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 24
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:32:04 PM
Fred Mikeska of AC Lighting demonstrating the Jands Vista console. AC
Lighting gave away a Vista S3 system during the show by drawing. AC Lighting also
introduced several new products including Color Web 125, a higher-res version of
the semi-transparent LED webbing, the
Chroma-Q Plus color scroller, Vista S3 and
Vista App, a software-based version of the
innovative lighting controller.
Jerry Colmenero of Pulsar introduces a number of new LED products
including: MR16 ChromaTube in 300,
600 and 900 mm lengths; a rack-mount
Chromazone X3 2U power supply; ChromaStrip 12V single color LED strips; and
ChromaHeart MR16 12V single color LED
modules available in red, green, blue,
amber, warm white, medium white and
cool white. In addition, Pulsar is offering
ChromaRange products with variable
white LED configurations using a combination of cold white LEDs and green,
amber and red LEDs to warm the light.
ChromaFlood, ChromaBatten and Strip
are currently available in variable white.
Mark Arthur of R&M Materials Handling with the new StageMaker Configuration V Inverter Hoist, which provides
variable speed ranging from 0 to 64 fpm.
They also smooth the starts and stops of
the hoist movements.
Simon Beck of Swisson shows the
new XMT 120 DMX Measurement Tool.
Besides a cable tester, the device can store
32 scenes, from which sequences can be
built using timing and crossfades. It also
contains fixture libraries.
Marion Hall of PRG demonstrates
the new features of the M-Box Extreme
media server, including crossfading
within one layer, new transitions and effects, pixel-mapping and edge blending.
Brandon James of Wybron and the
new Fiber Illuminator. Info Trace also received a lot of attention for its RDM capabilities and reporting features
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100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 25
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
25
11/2/06 8:32:33 PM
Vinny Finnigan of Elektralite introduces their new Paintcan line of moving yoke fixtures.
Jack Calmes (R) of Syncrolite discusses the finer points of the SXB-5/2
with Robert Mokry of Light Parts. Syncrolite B52s are now available with Omnicolor 2 dichroic film color scrollers.
The Robe stand was highlighted by
a video wall made from StageCube 324
modules. Robe also launched the 700
series of automated luminaires.
Vice president for operations Jennifer Tankleff (L) and senior project manager Richard Parks of I-Weiss.
Max Destanislao of Italian-based
lighting manufacturer Proel. Destanislao
manages the US office in El Paso.
Adrian Segeren (center) of Le Maitre.
Doug Adams of Pyrotek and Laser
Design Productions.
David Chandler of Kangaroo Cases showed off his line of road cases
Vari-Lite celebrated their 25th anniversary by displaying every model of
Vari*Lite since the VL0.
Michael Metcalf of Nutech Industries showing their range of portable
power distribution products.
Allison Larkin (L) and Jeff Broitman of Milos America. The truss manufacturer introduced two new towers; the
MT3 Tower has a capacity of 4 tons and a
lift of 15 meters; the MRT2 Rigging Tower
lifts 31 feet with a 2500 pound capacity.
26
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 26
The VectorWorks product demonstration area.
Total Structures on display.
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:33:14 PM
Nocturne, one of the oldest concert touring video companies, exhibited
at LDI for the first time. Do they know
something about the future of the lighting industry? Shown in the foreground
is Element Labs’ Cirrus semi-transparent
LED curtain.
L-R: Steve Tulk, Ernie Armas, Lin
Cui of PR Lighting with their new XL
1200 Spot. Also new in the XL Range are
the 1200 Wash, 700 Spot, 700 Wash and
the 575 Spot.
Steve Lerman of Lycian Stage
Lighting with a prototype of a new medium-throw followspot to be launched
in the first quarter of 2007.
Ted May of Techni-Lux with the SGM
Palco 3 White. The LED luminaire is designed to reproduce white light ranging
from 3000K to 10,000K with seven amber LEDs and 42 white Luxeon LEDs.
Ralph Young of Lee Filters who
introduced seven new filter colors at
the show.
Bob Goddard of Goddard Design.
They’ve implemented the new DMX
512a codes into their DMXter software.
Amber Reed of Daktronics with their
Pro Tour modular LED display panels.
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100.0611.24-29.LDI.indd 27
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
27
11/3/06 2:32:46 PM
PLSNINTERVIEW
AT
rt On Demand
he Path and the Nirvana
Peggy Eisenhauer and Jules
Fisher in front of a rock show
rig they designed.
Fisher and Eisenhauer’s
lights will be seen in the
upcoming film
Dreamgirls.
Peggy and Jules in front
of a rock show rig
Fisher and Eisenhauer
worked on the 2003 Broadway revival of Gypsy.
By RichardCadena & RobLudwig
She sets the cues, and she’s very musical. So
I think her musicality has distinguished our
lighting in recent years. And that’s what’s
you see in the movie Chicago, or what you
will see the movie Dream Girls, which is
coming out. [Scheduled for release in December 2006–ed.]
Peggy Eisenhauer: I was a big fan of
Fisher’s growing up in New York and seeing all of Jules’ work. One of the reasons I
went to Carnegie Mellon was because he
went there. So, I was a huge fan of his and
he came to the school to lecture when I
was a sophomore. A professor of mine at
the time, Bill Nelson, was Jules’ professor
because he had been there for, like, forty
years. I was destined and driven to come to
New York and dying to know Jules and work
with him.
Jules Fisher and Peggy
Eisenhauer pose after one
of their Tony wins
A
mong the working lighting designers of the world, few names carry
the cachet as the name Jules Fisher.
His 18 Tony Award nominations have netted him eight shiny statues dating back to
1973. His work extends beyond Broadway
and into the realm of film (School of Rock,
Chicago, A Star is Born), ballet, opera, television and concert lighting (Rolling Stones,
KISS, David Bowie, Whitney Houston). But
to speak to the self-effacing man you might
never guess that he has met with any success, as he is quick to praise his design partner, Peggy Eisenhauer. Ironically, it is Fisher
whom Eisenhauer credits with inspiring her
early in her career. Together, they form the
design firm Third Eye Studios. Our interview
started in their offices in New York and culminated over the phone, as it is quite challenging to pin them down.
PLSN: How did the two
of you start working
together?
Jules Fisher: Peggy and I joined forces
when she came to me as an assistant. I have
no qualms in saying that she was so good
that after a few years I said, “Look, let’s be
partners.”
We can both do better lighting, we feed
each other, we challenge and test each other, and, to this day, we are always discussing
the merits of a certain lighting method. It’s
an odd partnership—how do two people
sit down at a lighting desk? It’s not easy.
Do you find that working
together helps you?
Eisenhauer: You’ve understated it.
It’s our reason for being
partners, in a way. We can
provide each other with
inspiration when we are
lacking it. It’s hard to find
inspiration perpetually. In
a way, we have back-up
inspiration and that is a
great gift. It can be lonely
if you don’t have someone to tell it to. I’d
have a hard time working as a lighting designer if I didn’t have a brilliant mind next
to me to ask, “How do you feel about this
choice or idea?” I guess that’s my specific
problem, but I wouldn’t want it any other
way.
technology that is to save us time, because
you have so many more parameters to
control now.
What are some of the
changes you’ve seen it
the theatrical lighting
industry over the many
years you’ve been at it?
Fisher: I’d like to do a study and compare light levels from the ‘50s to levels today. Today, it’s much brighter. But, can we
see better? No—because we see by a more
important component, contrast. If we can’t
see more, what’s the value in it?
Unfortunately, we’ve gotten used to it.
It’s an expectation, and we keep asking the
manufacturers for more. I go to see some
Broadway musicals and it’s almost hard to
look at them, it’s so bright. Peggy and I say
it’s like a parking lot. You lose nuance. Once
you get to a certain brightness, then raising
the level five percent on a dimmer, you can’t
“I think all of your education goes
somewhere, and none of it is lost.
It causes you to think differently,
and you grow.” – Jules Fisher
Do you get the
job done any quicker
because there are
two of you?
Fisher: I’d like to think so. But we never
get it done sooner because we want to be
there too long. There is a famous line about
musicals in the theatre: “You’re never done
lighting a musical, it just opens.” And we’re
culprits. So is it faster? I’d like to think it
is, because we do better work than if it’s
one of us, but our indulgence is that we
want to do better lighting with each new
opportunity. And lighting takes time. It
takes time because of technology, the very
see the change. On a scale of one-to-ten, it’s
easier to see a change from one to two than
it is to see a change from nine to ten. Now
we’re so high in that upper range that we
lose the subtlety. So now to be subtle, you
have to take large groups of lights out, or be
much bolder. I think that’s sad.
Have you changed your
approach to, let’s say,
choosing colors for a
production? Is it
intuitive now?
Fisher: I had a standard education
about color. Part of Carnegie Tech’s (now
Carnegie Mellon) value as a school was that
we had to take art classes in the art department. I studied Josef Albers and the colorists. Do I use it? I think all of your education goes somewhere, and none of it is lost.
It causes you to think differently, and you
grow. But now it’s just: I like this color red. I
continued to page 32
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11/3/06 2:18:52 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 29
11/3/06 2:53:02 PM
NEWPRODUCTS
>Rosco
Delta Hazer
Rosco’s new Delta Hazer uses a water-based fluid to create atmospheric haze. The machine is
equipped with a 1,000-watt heat exchanger and is designed to create haze for a variety of venues.
One knob adjusts the fan and pump for optimum output and the
machine runs continuously even at high outputs. An on-board,
DMX input allows operation from any DMX lighting control board
and a continuous self-cleaning feature helps insure long machine
life. Both digital and analog remote modules are available. The
fluid reservoir holds four liters, and the machine consumes approximately one half liter of fluid per hour.
Rosco Laboratories • 800.767.2669 • www.rosco.com
>Robert
Juliat Lancelot
The new Lancelot, from Robert Juliat, is both a long throw effects projector and a followspot, designed for stadiums and other large venues. The unit uses a 360,000 lumen 4KW HTI
lamp, and features a flat field, smooth dimming control, fully closing iris, color changer and
DMX control. In addition, its modular design employs plug and
play cartridges to offer many additional options. Cartridges are
available now for progressive color effects, frost, color correction
and color mixing. Future features will include up to two five position rotating gobo modules, motorized zoom, variable strobe
and a moving mirror head.
Robert Juliat USA • 203.294.0481 • www.robertjuliat.com
>Meteor
Spinner D3 Gobo Rotator
Meteor Light and Sound’s new Spinner D3 Gobo Rotator works with ETC Source Fours, Altman Shakespeares and Selecon Pacificas. The dual-motor, dual-gobo rotator can operate via
DMX using two channels, or in manual mode with different speeds and direction set up via dip
switch settings. The motors can be independently controlled and
glass or metal gobos can be used. The speed and the direction of
rotation of each of the gobos can be changed remotely from slow
to fast and clockwise or counterclockwise. The unit comes with a ULlisted 24V power supply and adapter rings for changing between
glass and metal gobos.
Meteor Light and Sound Company • 256.461.8000 • www.meteor-global.com
>PixelRange
Pixel Arc
The latest additions to the PixelRange family of LED fixtures are the PixelArc C and
PixelArc R indoor/outdoor fixtures. The two self-contained units offer
the choice of a circular head (PixelArc C) containing 44 of the new K2
Luxeon red, green, blue and amber LEDs or a rectangular head (PixelArc R) with 24 red, green, blue and amber Luxeon K2 LEDs. The units
are also available in RGBW (W=white). The IP65-rated housings are
constructed of heavy-duty extruded aluminum and are UL listed. The
head can be located up to 200’ (60m) from the PSU/user interface. 16bit resolution provides a smooth dimming curve.
PixelRange • 765.588.7660 • www.pixelrange.com
>Elation
Opti Profile
The new Opti Profile from Elation Professional is an ellipsoidal fixture with CETL compliance. It can use any one of two 575 lamps: a 300-hour GLC
lamp or a longer-life GLA (1500-hours average life). Lens options include a 19° lens or 26° lens. Four additional lens tube
options include 5°, 10°, 36° and 50°. Other available accessories include a B-sized gobo holder and an 18-leaf iris module.
The retail price is $369.95. White fixtures are available for an
extra charge.
Elation Professional – 866.245.6726 – www.elationprofessional.com
>Entertainment
Technology Marquee
Software Upgrade
Entertainment Technology’s new release of software version 3.1 for the complete line of
Marquee® Lighting Control Consoles is now available for download through www.etdimming.
com. Designed by Horizon Control, Marquee software version 3.1 introduces new moving light
and intensity Effects, Independent Attribute Timing, Redundant Tracking Backup, a new Color
Picker tool and Astronomical Time Event Control. The new moving light and intensity Effects
allow operators to select from a pre-existing list of lighting effects, or by using a list of mathematical equations along with
host parameters, may create specific effects. Independent Attribute Timing gives the ability to add cue dynamics to every
attribute of every fixture in every cue.
Entertainment Technology • 800.223.9477 • www.horizoncontrol.com.
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100.0611.14-15.NP.indd 30
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 2:11:43 PM
>J&J
Electronics ColorGlo LED PAR Lamps
ColorGlo™ LED PAR lamps are designed and manufactured by USA-based J&J Electronics
Inc. and install into a medium Edison screw base. The lamps feature
on-board programming for static colors or color changing effects by
switching a circuit on and off to advance through program choices.
The PAR 30 and PAR 64 lamps are 12 or 35 watts each, and are available in either a 72 or 202 LED configuration. The thermal management system produces maximum light output without generating
significant heat. The lamps are available in 12VAC or 120VAC and last
up to 100,000 hours.
J&J Electronics, Inc. - 800.735.4553 - www.colorgloledlighting.com
>Martin
MAC 700 Wash
The MAC 700 Wash from Martin Professional is a 700-watt Fresnel moving yoke luminaire
with CMY color mixing system, variable CTC, an 8-position color wheel, variable zoom, continuous and indexable beam shaper, and a dimmer shutter system. The lamp
source is a short-arc HTI 700 D4/75 lamp and the zoom ranges from 12.5
degrees to 66 degrees. The electronic ballast offers flicker-free operation,
lower weight, extended lamp life and a power saving mode. The hot lamp
restrike eliminates the need to wait for the lamp to cool before re-striking. An auto-voltage sensing switch mode power supply provides for
world wide operation.
Martin Professional • 954.858.1800; 805.581.8001 (California); 702.597.3030
(Las Vegas) • www.martin.com
>Robe
ColorSpot 2500E AT
The ColorSpot 2500E AT from Robe is an automated moving yoke luminaire that uses the
Philips MSR Gold 1200 SA/SE lamp and a 1400-watt electronic ballast. It
features: a zoom range of 10 degrees to 30 degrees; CMY color mixing;
variable CTO; a color wheel with six replaceable “Slot & Lock” colors plus
open; two gobo wheels, each with six rotating, indexable, replaceable “Slot
& Lock” dichroic glass gobos plus open and iris; an effects wheel with four
rotating, indexable, replaceable “Slot & Lock” prisms and effects plus open;
and variable frost. The fixture is designed specifically for large stages, big
concert halls, outdoor festivals, events and other applications.
>ETC
Robe America • 954.615.9100 • www.robeamerica.com
Eos Console
ETC’s new Eos™ console is a fully networked system managing conventional fixtures,
moving lights, LEDs, fog machines, media servers and more. The system simultaneously
outputs both ETCNet2™ and the new Net3™ protocol, ETC’s network powered by the new
ESTA ACN standard. Eos offers what ETC calls “partitioned
control” to support the layers of production work that can
be done simultaneously. It is available in two models: Eos 8K
(supports 8000 outputs) and Eos 4K (supports 4000 outputs).
Accessories include the Eos Remote Processor Unit (RPU);
the Eos Remote Video Interface (RVI); and Eos Radio Remote
Focus Unit (RRFU).
Electronic Theatre Controls • 800.688.4116 • www.etcconnect.com
>SGM
Synthesis Wash 700
The Synthesis 700 Wash fixture from SGM can be fitted with two types of lamps for two different color temperatures: 7200°K or 5600°K. The CMY color mixing system and linear CTO filter
enable any shade of color to be obtained. A 4-slot plus white color wheel
provides supplementary colors. The built-in 2-blade beam shaper is adjustable, with continuous indexing from 0 to 180°, enabling users to sculpt the
light beam to meet specific needs. Other features include adjustable 6 to
40° zoom, automatic hot restrike, linear dimming, automatic electronic
pan/tilt locking/unlocking and silent operation. A wireless DMX interface
and over-voltage protection up to 400 volts are standard.
Techni-Lux • 407.857.8770 • www.techni-lux.com
>Rock-N-Roll
To Go FX Lighting Systems
New Port Richey, FL-based Rock-N-Roll To Go Lighting Systems new FX Lighting System
is a portable effects lighting package designed for mobile DJs, bands, magicians, schools,
hotels, youth groups, etc. The system is designed to be lightweight
and portable and sets up quickly. It’s adjustable in height for different ceiling heights. The trussing offers protection for lighting
fixtures and is available with a wireless lighting system or allows
you to install your own fixtures. The system is finished with black
powder-coat or natural aluminum. The list price is $1,795 for two
standard towers and $2,995 for two towers including wireless lighting fixtures and a controller.
Rock-N-Roll To Go Lighting Systems • 727.376.7625 • www.DJLightingSystems.com
www.PLSN.com
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31
11/3/06 2:12:11 PM
PLSNINTERVIEW
Bernadette Peters
in 2003’s Gypsy
Bernadette Peters
in 2003’s Gypsy
“What one needs is to create an environment for oneself in which you,
as an artist, can sit there and weather the disparaging comment, the
time pressure, the nervousness, the running commentary of what
youaredoing before actually completing anything and the
variety of difficulties. It can be scary.” – Peggy Eisenhauer
continued from page 28
don’t think I could tell you why I am choosing a color. Yes, I might be able to technically say that this is a complementary color
that will cause vibration in the retina. But I
don’t think I pick a color that way. I think it’s
more subjective, personal, emotional and
maybe psychological.
Eisenhauer: One of the things that
people ask us frequently is, “How do you
use color, pick color. How does it work?”
I guess there is a period in one’s career where one studies one’s own choices.
You might try something and then think
it wasn’t saturated enough, so you change
color and so forth. And sometimes we do
have to go through a special process for
finding the right color, but after a certain
period of being a lighting designer, we start
to feel out what kind of colors we want to
use by what we see in the mind’s eye, what
images come to us, and how those images
are tinted. We can infuse so much emotion
into what we are doing with color that the
goal, the dream, the nirvana part of it, is allowing that feeling to arise—whether it be
visual, in the mind’s eye, or emotional. All of
the work that we have done as lighting designers through our entire careers informs
the choice in that moment. It’s a cumulative experiential choice. Not experiential in
terms of having successful lighting designs
and successful shows, but rather causing or
allowing experience of emotions in an audience. We don’t always analyze the choice,
and that’s one of the things about it being
instinctive. You go with a gut feeling, and we
trust that because we are channeled into an
emotional energy. It’s an emotional and abstract function. It is a function of the spirit,
and comes through to us in spirit form. We
also do the work in addressing the needs of
the costumes, what kind of cast and range
of skin tones. We don’t ignore that work, but
when we are talking about tinting a world,
or composing color into shadow, that’s more
on the emotional side and I think one of the
mysterious design processes that we have.
So there are certain parameters you need to address
in this world — the theatre
— and once the parameters
are defined, it becomes
instinctive.
Eisenhauer: Exactly. That’s exactly right.
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PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.30-32.PLSN INTER.indd 32
It’s the thing that I visualize for myself as
the path and the nirvana.
There is so much pressure being a
lighting designer and being in that seat
because it’s an on-demand art form.
You can’t stay up all night in your
studio and do it; you have to do it
while everybody is waiting for you,
while everybody is on the clock, and
the clock is ticking down. It’s on-demand.
What one needs is to create an environment for oneself in which you, as
an artist, can sit there and weather the
disparaging comment, the time pressure,
the nervousness, the running commentary
of what you are doing before actually completing anything and the variety of difficulties. It can be scary. And it can be uncomfortable.
In the environment one must create for
oneself, and I’ll use a running term, leap over
the wall. When you hit the wall which stops
you from going forward, you have to leap over
it. When you lose your pace, you can get back
on track by putting one foot in front of the other, or by putting one light up, and the next light
up, and the next light up. You have to trust that,
as a lighting designer, your entire past career
will inform that next choice you make and you
will be right back on track, moving forward.
I’ve created this path, these stepping
stones, so when questioning yourself—“Oh my
God! What do I have to do next?”—you know
that you have to record the cue. And then,
“Ugh! What do I do next?” You know you have
to talk to the followspots. Chaos can ensue in
seconds! It’s hard to function. I just imagine the
path, and put one foot in front of the other, and
know that this is the next thing I’m supposed
to do, and this is the next thing, and so on.
But when things are going well, artistically,
and you’re not in a crisis feel, you can actually
leave the path below you and float above it. It’s
spirit driven; you can just light. You don’t know
where your choices are coming from, but you
can just enjoy being the channel for them.
So imagine being up there flying, in
clear skies, and everything looks great
and—bam!—something happens. I remember all I have to do is drop back down to
the path, and put one foot in front of the
other until I am ready to lift off again. It’s a
contrast: first, the built-in nature of the
chaos that may be difficult to manage; and
Tammy Blanchard as Louise
in the 2003 Gypsy revival
then, the pure nirvana of being the lighting designer, floating along and lighting.
We each go up and down, every show. My goal
is to know, inside, that I have those two places
and both will be creative.
When one’s not
working, you rely on the
other…
Eisenhauer: Right. The path is there when
it’s not working. It’s terra firma. That’s where
one touches down.
That plays into the name
of your lighting design
firm, Third Eye Studios.
Eisenhauer: In Eastern philosophy it is
considered the eye of the mind. It is where we
see images in our head.
And you’d be there all
the time if you could.
Eisenhauer: A lot of time I’m just on the
phone [Laughs]. You can guess how many
weeks and months we spend on the phone
and on the computer managing these
jobs so we can get three months lighting
something big, or three months shooting
on a picture.
You dedicate that time
to the business-side as a
means to an end.
Eisenhauer: Yes. So we can turn the
work lights off and bring up some dark
blue PARs.
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 2:20:38 PM
VITALSTATS
Bob Gordon, president and CEO
act
Lighting
Tim Bachman,
director of sales and marketing
Joe Cabrera demos an
A.C.T product.
Who:
A.C.T Lighting
What:
Wholesale distributor whose business includes being the exclusive North America
distributor for MA Lighting, Zero 88 and the U.S. distributor of MDG smoke, fog and
haze machines.
Where:
Agoura Hills, Ca., with two people working out of home offices in New York.
When:
A.C. Lighting, Inc. was founded in 1993 by Bob Gordon and David Leggett, managing
director of A.C. Lighting Ltd. In 1999, Bob purchased Leggett’s shares and subsequently
became the CEO/President. In 2002 the company was renamed as A.C.T Lighting.
How Many Products:
Seven lines, including ELC, Selecon, Reel Efx and Zero 88.
How Many Employees:
20
Current Tours:
MA is being used by Madonna, Elton John, Mariah Carey, Faith Hill/Tim McGraw and
scores of others. Also, MA equipment was used in the Broadway hit Jersey Boys, which
won a Tony for lighting, and is currently running Cirque du Soleil’s/Beatles’ Love in Las
Vegas.
Recent Company Highlight Includes:
In Spring of 2006, Brian Dowd, formerly of TMB, and Broadway lighting programmer Paul
Sonnleitner, launched A.C.T’s New York operation.
Degrees of Separation:
Gordon was previously sales manager of GAM Products and VP of Sales with Wybron;
operation manager Ward Carlisle and technical support manager Mario Collazo were
both previously with Light & Sound Design; and director of sales and marketing, Tim
Bachman, was at one time with Leviton and Barbizon.
The A.C.T Lighting crew, outside world HQ.
www.PLSN.com
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
33
It’s a DELIC
Production company rolls
By DavidFarinella
Smoother Smyth, co-founder, Delicate Productions.
stantly hammering each other on price over
service. That’s nothing new, Smyth admits.
“This incarnation of Delicate started in 1980,
so I’ve seen 26 years of the market, and we’ve
seen these situations,” he explains.“It’s a company’s prerogative what strategy they care
to take. If there was longevity with ‘we’ll beat
everybody’s price,’ I’m sure those companies
would have proceeded with that, but it’s not
good for the long term.
“For everybody, it’s their business to stay
in business, and those circumstances morph
your company on a regular basis,” Smyth continues.“It ain’t the same anymore. We all know
that, and we only have to look at the record
industry and how that whole thing has gone
JimiG Photography
S
moother Smyth, one of the co-founders
of Delicate Productions, is watching the
set coming together at the Mandalay
Bay Arena in Las Vegas. Tonight the band is
INXS, but it could just as well be Clay Aiken,
Gwen Stefani, The Black Crowes or any of
the other hundred plus clients that Smyth
and the Delicate crew have helped out over
the 26 years that the company has been
in business.
Delicate Productions opened its doors in
1980 after partners Smyth, Stephen Dabbs,
Spy Matthews and Gus Thomson purchased
the audio and lighting equipment that had
been used on Supertramp’s “Breakfast in
America” tour. The company has expanded
from its audio and lighting base to
include video and full production
support. Delicate’s 30-plus employees work out of its Camarillo, CA
headquarters.
The INXS theatre tour is one of
the rare occasions where the company is providing audio, lighting and
video services. In fact, Smyth points
out,“We are not really a lighting company. We are not really a video company. When it comes to the audio, I
JimiG Photography
INXS at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley
“We are all adapting and
rolling with the current
situation.” – Smoother Smyth
don’t see us there. We are a production company, and we go where we
are wanted. Some of our clients will
come knocking on the door for one
of those three services.”
Smyth reports that that is just
fine with him. “If we are out on a tour
with, say Gwen Stefani, and we’re doing video only, we are happy not to
be involved with lighting and audio,”
he says. “We have to be everyone’s
friend out there. We have to be very careful
that we don’t step on toes.”
Delicate was tapped for this tour after
production manager Paul Spriggs called up
and asked for a lighting package quote. “I did
that,” Smyth says.“He came back and said,‘You
should probably give me a quote on some
audio.’ I did that. He told me he was adamant
that he was going with a video wall and I said,
‘Fine, come talk to us.’ He came and talked to
us and went away with a video projection system. That’s how we work.”
Being able to provide all three services
helps on a number of fronts, Smyth admits.
“It’s a question of the client having a budget
and trying to take the shortcut,” he says. “If
the numbers aren’t working I can rob Peter to
pay Paul. It’s surprising when you offer three
services how much latitude you have to work
within your numbers.”
In addition, that kind of flexibility is crucial, especially as bigger companies are con-
34
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
www.PLSN.com
JimiG Photography
down the dumper. Now there are large conglomerates like PRG, and that’s changed the
way that we have to conduct business. The
SFX/Clear Channel has now morphed into
Live Nation and where will that take us? So,
we are all adapting and rolling with the current situation.”
While Delicate got its start working in
the touring market, Smyth reports that the
company splits its time half and half between
corporate and touring assignments. It’s
there, he says, where being a one-stop shop
is extremely beneficial. At the same time, he
doesn’t push that approach in the touring
market.“We can’t alienate companies. I need a
good relationship with Showco. I need a good
relationship with Clair. That’s a fact,” he says.
“Now, I’m happy to have lights and video out
on their concert tours. I think over the years
you respect others, and I think they respect
you. I don’t want another vendor going to a
production manager and saying to stay the
A
an
C ATE
and adapts
World
heck away from Smoother, he’s a scumbag.
I’m a happy guy. I respect the other people
in the industry and I get on pretty much with
everybody.”
That includes production managers and
LDs, since that is whom Smyth interacts with
(and pleases) at the outset. In fact, when
Smyth got the call from INXS production
manager Spriggs, the band had just come off
the wildly successful television show “Rockstar: INXS,” and there were some definite
ideas about how the set would look. “The
word was that they absolutely, positively had
to have a video wall,” Smyth recalls. “I started
looking up the weight, the cost, the labor, the
truck space, and when Paul came out to see
me I said, ‘Look, we’ll have Steve Gilbard, my
partner, give you a little overview of what you
can do with projection.’ Within 10 minutes he
was back talking to me and I said, ‘I have this
straight truss here, you can put the wall on
there.’ He said, ‘Oh, #!*@ the video wall, we’re
going with projection.’
“He had something he could sell the band,”
he continues. “They knew they needed video
because of the TV show where they had a lot
of video support. They knew it was a critical element, and they had to take a step away from the
of a relationship with our clients and focus
a little bit more on how things leave the
shop. All is well there, but I want to focus
on just being better at what we’re doing already. Our goal is to enhance what we are
doing already, become our own billboard
to the industry and hope that people will
come to us based on what they’ve seen
or heard.”
Delicate Productions HQ.
JimiG Photography
‘80s, and this worked out extremely well. These
are LCD projectors, these aren’t even the DLPs.
These are Sanyo 10Ks. It’s outrageous what you
can do with LCDs.”
Beyond the changes in technology,
Smyth points out that the industry needs to
let go of some of its old ideas. “The marriage
of audio and video is a joke. Audio is audio,
and video should be a part of lighting. It’s all
a hold over, of course, from the old hotel A/V
departments where it was, ‘Oh, you want this
video screen here?’ Then you’d have these
two speakers on a stick there and that’s audio and video,” he says. “Seeing my company
work and marry video and lighting together
has just been awesome. It’s a visual experience, and very often controlled from the one
console. That’s electric. And with the servers
that are out on the market now, the things
that you can do are just unbelievable. By
the time you start your first date on the tour
you already have a hundred ideas of how to
enhance and build on it. That’s a Pandora’s
Box.”
It’s one that Smyth and Delicate Productions are ready to crack open and then
keep open. In the next couple of years, he
reports, the company is looking to continue to build on its infrastructure, gear and
staff. Even with its continued success, Delicate is not resting on its laurels. “We have
to do what we’re doing a little bit better,”
he says. “We have to get a little bit better
ls
www.PLSN.com
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
35
roadtest
High End Systems DL.2
All I Really Need to Know (About Digital Lighting) I Learned in Kindergarten
By PhilGilbert
T
hings were simpler when we were in
kindergarten. We learned about important things like sharing. We got to spend
a bit of time coloring and painting. We even
got to make big murals out of those long rolls
of butcher paper. When I was programming
for an upcoming tour in Nashville recently, I
came to realize that there were some distinct
similarities to what I was now doing.
Meeting the Class:
Background
The DL.2 is the newest lighting fixture
to take the flagship spot in a long list of
products from Austin-based High End Systems. Though to call this a lighting fixture is
probably slightly misleading. The fixture is,
essentially, the synthesis of a moving head
light fixture, a high-output graphics projector and a state-of-the-art DMX-controllable
media server.
At the head of the current unit, the fixture houses a Christie Digital LX55 projector,
a Sony video camera with infrared capabili-
ties, an infrared illuminator, a mechanical
iris-type dimmer and all the usual niceties of
a top-tier fixture.
In the base of the DL.2 lives the media
server/graphics engine. Relying on a Windows XPe (“e” for embedded) operating system, the DirectX powered engine is treated as
a 3D environment with up to three 3D objects
in use at a time.
On the exterior of the fixture, a variety
of connections can be found. These include
DMX in and out, power, network, USB, RGBHV
video inputs to the projector (on BNC and
DB-15 connectors), an S-Video output from
the onboard camera and an S-Video input
to the graphics engine. The base also hosts a
full-color LCD display that offers a graphical
menu system for fixture setup and addressing, as well as live previews of onboard content.
Learning to Share:
Content Management
With the media server living in the base
of the fixture, users won’t always have easy access, making
content management a larger
challenge than it would be on
a stack of Hippotizers at FOH.
To this end, HES has developed
a content management application to handle uploads of all
user supplied content to the
server(s).
Coincidentally named the
“Content Management Application,” the CMA (for short) is
available for Windows and Mac
OS X platforms. Via a network
connection with all of your
DL.2s, the software allows you
to upload user-provided content, as well as preview thumbnails of all stock and user content on-board the fixture. Once
the fixtures are networked most
fixture options can be adjusted
remotely, including DMX addressing, network properties
and channel count.
Once the CMA application is connected
to the fixtures, content management is very
simple, giving you a good amount of information and allowing for manual or automatic
DMX assignments of all media.
What it is: Digital Luminaire with integrated media server and networking capability
What it’s for: Graphics projection,
animated aerial beams, set painting
and video projection
Pros: Large quantity of stock content,
good content management with networking capability, powerful collage
generator mode
Cons: Waiting for more brightness to
compete with high ambient lighting
conditions, limited objects/layers
Retail Price: $36,430
A Big Box of Crayons:
Stock Content
With the phenomenal success of their
Catalyst media servers, HES apparently
learned that users want stock content out
of the box. And with the DL.2 ,that’s what
you get. Fixtures arrive from the factory preloaded with over 1,000 pieces of royalty-free
content. Much of the media has been created
by in-house artists at HES, while small sets of
content have been supplied by industry arthouses in an effort to advertise their capabilities. Also included are large catalogs of static
images that replicate the gobo catalogs from
HES, DHA, and Apollo. (All factory-loaded content is locked down, assuring that all DL.2s
in circulation will have matching stock content.)
With a diverse set of stock media, many
shows will be able to rely heavily on this preloaded set of files.
36
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
www.PLSN.com
Making a Mural:
The Collage Generator
One of the most innovative features of
the DL.2 is the built-in “Collage Generator”
mode, which allows users to create edgeblended panoramas and grids using up to
sixteen fixtures. The collage mode was surprisingly easy to set up initially, with about
10 to 20 minutes dedicated to updating it on
each tour stop. The manual includes an easyto-follow process for converging the units
and setting them to display the proper portion of the “collage.”
Out on the Playground:
Summary
With that said, improvements can still be
made to the platform. The most notable issue was the stretching of content in collage
mode. HES is currently sizing content to its
native resolution in all modes for an upcoming software release. Also notable is the limit
of three objects/layers at once. While it’s suitable for most applications, this certainly falls
below the standards set by similar graphics
engines.
Still, the projections from the DL.2s, in
the right environment, can be stunning. We
projected onto a 20-foot by 40-foot muslin
backdrop with two edge-blended fixtures
and got great results. In many cases the fixtures are set up off stage-right and stage-left
in order to provide clean lines of sight to the
band from the house. We’re pushing the keystone correction to its limit, and with about a
20-foot throw the images are crisp, clear and
bright.
After six weeks on the road with these fixtures, I will definitely be looking to find more
uses for them in future shows. The ability to
add dynamic digital content to an event is
now easier than ever.
Phil Gilbert is a freelance lighting designer/
programmer.He can be reached at pgilbert@ plsn.
com. Credit where credit’s due…Robert Fulghum
wrote the phenomenal best-seller “All I Really
Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Buy
a copy. You’ll thank me.
INSTALLS • INDUSTRIALS • FILM/TV • THEATRE • CONCERTS
P R O J E C T I O N CO N N E C T I O N
XL, Bandit Bring Pink To Life
HERTFORDSHIRE, UK — Pink’s “I’m Not
Dead” tour has started with a lengthy European section featuring a energetic and
physically demanding performance by
the singer. It culminates in a series of aerobatic stunts performed on silks hoisted
high above the stage. The production and
lighting design has been created by Mark
Fisher and Baz Halpin. With considerable
input from Pink, they’ve woven lighting,
video and scenic elements into a provocative visual collage.
XL Video is supplying video and crew,
while Bandit Lites UK is supplying light-
ing, production and crew. Video playback
is run from a High End Systems Catalyst
digital media server triggered by a Flying
Pig Systems WholeHog 2 console under
the operation of Craig Allnutt. Three Sony
D50 cameras at FOH and two hand-held
cameras in the pit capture images for IMag run through one of XL’s standard
PPU systems.
Halpin designed a set with three 4by-3 meter pods of semi-transparent Komaden Image Mesh, which was supplied
by Le Grandi Immagini. Each pod is suspended on motors and travels between
the two positions
throughout
the
show. The Image
Mesh panels show
both playback and
I-Mag, while Barco
MiPix video pixels are used solely
for playback. The
main I-Mag mix is
beamed onto two
16’x12’ Fast Fold
side screens, fed by
rear-projected Barco R12s. Larne Poland is cutting the
video mix using a GV1200 mixer/switcher
and a Magic DVE for effects.
The lighting includes 110 moving
lights — a combination of Martin Professional MAC 2K Spot and Wash fixtures
— on the overhead trusses. On the upper
and lower “dog leg” side trusses on the
vertical upstage trusses that are revealed
for the final section of the set at strategic
points on the bold sweeping staircase set
and all over the floor. These are complemented by a selection of conventional
lights including 4-way ACL bars mounted
on Robe media spinners, red police beacons, Martin Atomic strobes, MR16 battens for audience lighting and as up light
along the thrust stage, four-lite Moles and
Reel EFX DF-50 hazers.
The lighting rig is controlled via a second WholeHog II operated by Trent O’ Connor. In addition to running the Hog II and
Catalyst, Allnutt is also calling the six spots
— a Lycian M2 on the back truss and five
Lycian 2Ks at FOH.
Bandit is also supplying several crew
members; crew chief John Wynne is joined
by James “Jam” Such, Roy Hunt and Jonathan Dawson-Butterworth, in addition to
O’Connor and Allnutt.
PRG Launches Video Division
industry. Wiley also will serve as general
manager of PRG’s Orlando office. Bob Murdock, an Emmy-award-winning producer
and journalist, is general manager of PRG
Video operation in Orlando.
“We have been building our video
capability for some time in response to
customer demand,” says Jere Harris, PRG’s
chairman and founder. “Our new structure
allows us to focus our efforts around lead-
ership and technology that set the standard for the industry.”
Tim Kuschel, formerly a master show
technician with LMG, has been named
general manager of PRG Video Las Vegas
operation, and Art Lavis, PRG’s longtime
specialist in large-format projection solutions, heads PRG Video New York operation from its office in Mount Vernon, NY.
continued on page 40
SEATTLE — Mode Studios, the Seattlebased production design company, has added ESP Vision to its arsenal of design tools.
“We’ve watched the development of this
product category carefully in the last couple
of years” comments Mode Studios Principle
Designer, Bob Bonniol. “We’ve always used
pre-visuals in design, usually via our 3D applications like Softimage, or in compositing
apps like After Effects. These were always
a good visual aid, but obviously we weren’t
then deriving the benefit of cueing data to
use in the show. Up to now we just hadn’t
continued on page 40
Inside...
38
Video Sways Dirty Dancing
When it comes to scenic projection,
this musical has all the right curves.
Southern Rock and LED Blocks
38 Three
Doors Down co-headlines with
Lynyrd Skynyrd and lots of LEDs.
Video Under New Management
40 How
do you synchronize the playback
of 82 video players?
MOUNT VERNON, NY — Production
Resource Group, LLC has launched PRG
Video, introducing the new division at a
two-day demonstration event, October 12
and 13 at New York’s Manhattan Center.
Tim Wiley is heading the new division as
vice president of PRG Video. Wiley came
to PRG from Florida-based LMG, where he
earned a national reputation as a technological innovator for the corporate staging
Mode Studios Brings
Pre-Viz to Seattle
www.PLSN.com
100.0611.37-42.PROJCONN.indd 37
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
37
11/2/06 8:38:23 PM
Video Has All the Right
Curves in Dirty Dancing
Are You Ready for Some...
Spyders?
NEW YORK — NBC’s Sunday Night Football studio show has adopted a complement
of networked Vista Systems Spyders to create displays on a 12-cube video wall on the
show’s new set. The Spyder handles 16 varied inputs plus keys and are controlled via
Vista Systems software.
“NBC Sports visited our booth at NAB
and invited us to demo Spyder,” recalls Victor
States. It is used together in conjunction with
the other lighting and projection effects as the
central media element on the stage.
When all four screens come together they
have a viewing area of approximately 3.1 meters high by 7.6 meters wide (10’ x 25’) with a 10
millimeter (.39”) pixel pitch. The LED display is
the only curved model of its kind in the world
and was developed specially for this musical.
“We are very excited about our relationship
with Stage Entertainment and enhancing the
viewing experience for the people who come
to see the musical,” said Rolf Bauer, Daktronics regional sales representative for Germany.
“These new displays will truly bring the Dirty
Dancing musical to an all new entertainment
level for their patrons.”
South Rocks with LED Blocks
HIGH WYCOMBE, UK — Lighting designer
Matt Mills recently specified over 50 ChromaQ™ Color Block LED fixtures as part of his set
lighting for the Three Doors Down U.S. summer co-headline tour with Lynrd Skynyrd. The
45-date tour for two of the country’s biggest
southern rock bands was in support of Three
Doors Down’s smash hit album Seventeen Days
— one of the top five selling US rock albums of
2005 — and Lynrd Skynyrd’s recent induction
into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
Lynrd Skynyrd was already on the road
when Three Doors Down joined the tour, so
Mills and Lynrd Skynyrd LD Steve Owens codesigned a new rig, doubling the size of it and
incorporating the drum riser and backline elements from previous Three Doors Down tours.
As it was a scaled down version of the band’s rig
and they were reluctant to purchase another
backdrop, Mills thought it would be a good
opportunity to explore new creative possibilities using an LED drape for the backdrop and
lighting the drum riser with a fixture that was
capable of displaying low-res images. The Color
Blocks were permanently mounted in the drum
riser using just zip ties and lived in the set for
the duration of the tour, making changeover
very fast.
Mills programmed the Color Blocks in full
channel mode to give him control over individual LEDs in each fixture, and used the “Bitmap
Effects” mode on his console to map the LEDs
to the pixels of low-res images. To create the
looks he needed, Mills used a combination of
38
Vettorello, Vista Systems’ director of applications engineering. “Broadcasters are under
increasing pressure to produce high-techlooking sets. They are also challenged with
incorporating many different digital and analog formats from standard definition to HD
to high resolution computer graphics. With
Spyder’s universal inputs, there is never a
concern about hardware or input formats.”
BROOKINGS, S.D. — Stage Entertainment
of Hamburg, Germany is supplying four Daktronics ProStar® video displays designed to
intensify the background of the stage for Dirty
Dancing, the musical. Audiences are currently
enjoying the musical at the Theatre Neue Flora
in Hamburg, Germany.
The video display is curved to fit a circular
piece of the stage that moves up and down
and can also turn around. The two mid sections slide to the back and side to open like a
door. The move occurs approximately 68 times
during the daily show.
“We are very pleased with the reliability of
the system,” said Martin Siebler, technical project manager of Stage Entertainment. “We are
further delighted with the ability of Daktronics to produce a custom design for this show
with the curved elements and an external
power rack placed below the stage to avoid
any noise.”
The video is used to show film clips for
special scenes such as a river and for background content. Over 23 different photos are
exchanged in the course of the show. All landscape images are originals, taken in the United
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.37-42.PROJCONN.indd 38
the console’s rotate, tile, scroll and zoom images
functions to manipulate multi-colored litho pattern gobo library bitmaps, as well as using the
Color Block’s built-in effects engine.
He commented: “The Color Blocks really
made the LED drape look even bigger than it
actually was. I used them for everything: sudden blast, low intensity mood setting, complementing the content I was playing on the LED
drape. I was able to make some good-looking
fire and water effects using the bitmaps and
also created some nice looks with the Color
Block’s built-in effects engine.”
Three Doors Down tour suppliers Christie
Lites provided the Color Blocks and control console, while Lynrd Skynyrd tour suppliers Bandit
Lites provided the rest of the lighting rig.
The rig consisted of a High End Systems
Catalyst media server providing all content for
the main LED drape backdrop, 16 Martin MAC
2000 Wash lights, 24 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles,
24 High End Systems Studio Beams, seven Martin Atomic 2000 strobes, 120K PAR can rig, 10 8lite blinders and 14 2-lite blinders.
Summarizing his experience using the
Color Blocks Matt commented: “I’m a big fan of
the Color Blocks. I’m very impressed with how
bright they are and how many different configurations you can create with them. They’re
like Legos you can build all sorts of interesting
designs with them. They stole the show every
night, and I really enjoyed using them. Thanks
also to everyone at A.C. Lighting for all the help
they gave me.”
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:38:54 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 39
11/2/06 8:00:04 PM
NEWS
Video Helps Philips Stand Out at Trade Fair
BERLIN — Video recently played a key
behind-the-scenes role at the IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) in Berlin, with an
extensive complement of equipment in the
Philips booth at the world’s largest consumer
electronics trade fair.
Philips offered IFA attendees an innovative video experience in a specially-designed
Ambilight dome where 82 Philips Cineos Ambilight flatscreen TVs combined with exciting
acrobatics, lights and multi-channel audio in a
seven-minute show repeated 24 times a day.
On a stage with moving lifts, the New York
dance group Pilobolus gave an artistic impression of Ambilight with a modern dance
choreography.
Medialon Manager controlled 83 synchronized Adtec Edje video players (82 for
the show, and one dedicated to “next show”
announcements outside the dome) and provided timecode for lighting, via a Flying Pig
Systems Wholehog 2 console.
During the day the Philips show ran in a
continuous loop; in case of an emergency the
show could be stopped with the press of a
button. Another button restarted the loop. A
box with these two buttons and status LEDs
served as the user interface; it connected to
an Adlink Nudam 4 I/O interface which, in
turn, was connected to COM1 of the Medialon
PC. Both the LEDs and PC screen supplied status information and visual timecode.
An Adrienne Timecode card provided
timecode for the Wholehog 2. The first, or
master, Edje video player of the cluster of 82
was controlled via Ethernet. The Edje devoted
to displaying “next show” information was
controlled by Medialon Manager.
Hugo Janzen Audiovisuele Projecten BV,
based in the Netherlands, configured the Philips booth for technical producer The Production Factory in association with Bruggen Verwiel Eventmarketing, also in the Netherlands.
Hugo Janzen Audiovisuele provided Medialon
Manager programming, delivered the interface
between the creative and technical aspects of
projects, and executed technical architecture
for high-end audiovisual systems.
Paul Notebaart of Hugo Janzen added,
“Medialon delivered a reliable and flexible
way to program and run the show. Even with
an interface as simple as two buttons, an extended set of equipment and tasks could be
controlled and synchronized easily.”
Impact Sponsors Cancer Benefit
LOS ANGELES — The 9th Annual L.A. Cancer Challenge Run benefiting the Hirshberg
Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research,
recently held in Los Angeles, was aided by
a sponsorship from Impact Video. The company donated equipment and services to
broadcast the race live and help inform the
public of the extreme seriousness of pancreatic cancer and the need for research.
More than 2,000 men, women and children attended and participated in the event,
some even in festive Halloween costumes.
This year’s event was hosted by Veronica
Mars star, Michael Muhney with special
guest, Rodney Van Johnson from Passions.
The event features a Kids Can Cure 1K
Race, Halloween Kid Zone, Pumpkin Decorating, Halloween Parade and a Pumpkin
Pancake Breakfast.
PRG Launches Video Divison
2/3 JR. VERTICAL AD
All three PRG Video locations have
been stocked with state-of-the art video
equipment, including native high definition (HD) cameras and projectors, as well
as switchers that perform seamless transitions between standard and HD formats.
“We’re launching PRG Video at the time
the industry is embracing HD, so we’ve
been able to build with the very latest and
best — including high end equipment
that is either unavailable or hard to find in
many markets.”
Some of the inventory includes Snell
& Wilcox™ Kahuna switching systems,
Di-VentiX™ high-resolution switchers,
Grass Valley™ LDK cameras, Panasonic PT7700Us, Digital Projection, Inc., 12000DSX,
35 HD and 22K 40HD video projectors, and
the new Element Labs Versa™ Tube HD.
In addition to larger events, PRG Video
is also targeting small-to-medium corporate meetings and events. For example,
the company’s Breakout in a Box show
package includes all the equipment needed to set up two rooms, all conveniently
packaged so that one person can set up
two rooms.
“With PRG Video, we are a full-service,
one-stop shop for our customers,” notes
Harris.“We have the people and the equipment to do the job — whatever the size.”
Mode Studios Brings
Pre-Viz to Seattle
seen the necessary level of visual representation in pre-programming solutions that compelled us to buy one. ESP has changed that.”
Mode purchased a license of ESP Vision,
which they then installed on a quad processor
64-bit Boxx workstation with dual SLI Video
Cards. “The platform we chose to install it on
is about as robust as you can imagine,” says
Mode Associate Designer Thomas Hague. The
result is a photo-realistic pre-visualization of all
lighting and multimedia elements in real time.
Mode Studios put the system to immediate use for the design of their upcoming PBS
Concert Special, “Metal Messiah.” “On Metal
Messiah we have a large rig of Vari*Lites and
multiple projection and emissive media surfaces. We were able to hook up Mode’s own
HD Hippotizer Media Server to the ESP, im-
40
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.37-42.PROJCONN.indd 40
port the VectorWorks draftings of the rig, and
plug in ArtNet with two grandMA desks,” says
Bonniol.“We then brought in the director, the
producers and the programmers for a week
of tech/visualization. Our actual tech time in
the venue is very short, and we had to be able
to communicate the whole show production
to the PBS filming team in advance for shot
planning. The ESP system functioned flawlessly, and everybody was blown away. The
producers were quite excited by the potential
cost savings, while the creative team revelled
in the ability to really dial in the design.”
Mode expects to use the ESP system on all of
their upcoming shows. “We have a huge booth
design for Nokia N-Series coming up, as well as
an Opera, Frobisher, happening in January. Both
of those shows will be going into the ESP Vision
phase quite soon,” comments Bonniol.
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 1:53:06 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 41
11/2/06 8:01:19 PM
VIDEO NEW PRODUCTS
»
»
For-A VPS-700 1 M/E Digital Switcher
High End Systems Axon Media Server
The VPS-700 1 M/E digital switcher, or “Ginga,” derives its name from the Japanese
word for “Galaxy.” Features include frame synchronization for every input, up to 16 SD inputs and outputs, six keyers, six
chroma keyers, and six channels
of 3D DVE. It also offers optional
2D DVE in every input, delivering up to 32 DVE channels for
multi-source productions. It
supports the 525/60 and 625/50
standard definition formats and
is designed for mobile production and in-studio broadcasting
applications.
High End Systems’ new Axon™ rack-mount media server features the same graphics
engine as the DL.2 digital light and provides the same functions of the DL.2, including Collage Generator™ and Curved Surface Support. It comes with a stock digital library of more
than 1,000 media clips and 200 folders for
custom media. Because all stock content is
locked down, each Axon will be consistent
from rental house to rental house. The XP
Embedded Operating System protects Axon
from drive corruption and O/S degradation
over time. Multiple Axons may be linked with
communication and content management
by High End Systems’ Content Management
Application.
For-A • 714.894.3311 • www.for-a.com
High End Systems • 800.890.8989 • www.highend.com
»
»
16x9 0.75X Wide Converter
for Panasonic HVX200
Chauvet DVwall HR Display System
The 0.75X Wide Converter from 16x9 Inc. works with the Panasonic HVX200 to provide
25% more extreme angle of view with no sacrifice in zoom capability. The Converter employs
four glass elements to reduce geometric
distortion and improve off-axis performance.
Weighing 20 ounces and measuring 40mm
long, it is equipped with 82mm screw-in
rear threads. Teamed with the original HVX200 lens, the 0.75X shifts the focal
length from 4.2-55mm to 3.15-41.25mm. A
82-72mm step-down ring, included at no
charge, allows it to also work with the Sony
HVR-Z1U, Canon XL-H1, XH-G1, and XH-A1
camcorders. Suggested U.S. price is $995.00.
The Chauvet DVwall HR is an IP 65 modular LED display system with a 31mm pixel
pitch. The half-meter by half-meter DV modules are fitted with 2,304 LEDs grouped in
clusters of nine, mounting hardware
for multiple configurations, and signal
and power cables with an IP-65 rating.
Pixel density is 256 per module or
1,024 pixels per square meter. The system operates on a standard computer
with any ATI graphics card and the
Chauvet DVwall Studio PCI card and
driver. Each driver features 16 outputs and operates up to 96 modules
and can be daisy-chained for bigger
displays.
16x9 Inc. • 661.295.3313 • www.16x9inc.com
Chauvet Lighting • 800.762.1084 • www.chauvetlighting.com
»
Panasonic 1080P HD Pro Plasma Displays
Panasonic Broadcast has a new line of 1080 progressive scan full HD pro plasma displays.
The 65” TH-65PF9UK is available now and will be followed by the 103” TH-103PF9UK (the
world’s largest plasma) and the 50” TH-50PF9UK. With 2.07
million pixels (1,920 x 1,080) of resolution, these 1080p
HD pro plasmas offer about twice the resolution as standard high-definition models, and produce the entire color
range specified in the HDTV standard (ITU-R, BT709). They
feature a contrast ratio of 5,000:1 and 16-bit processing
to reproduce motion pictures with 4,096 steps of gradation. The 1080p HD plasmas can display HD/SD signals
including 1080/60p/50p, 1080/60i/50i/24p/24sF/25p/30p,
1080/50i, 720/60p/50p 480/60i/p, and 575/50i/p.
Panasonic Broadcast · www.panasonic.com/proplasma.
Stop Answering
Stupid
Questions!
Let the LD FAQ T-Shirt do the answering for you.
You may have already heard about these shirts that feature the answers to
the Top 10 stupid questions audience members ask. Now you can order one
of these beauties and a portion of the net proceeds will benefit the music
and arts programs of the Rogue River, Ore School District.
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PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.37-42.PROJCONN.indd 42
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:40:47 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 43
11/2/06 8:02:11 PM
VIDEO DIGERATI
C Y A
with
Managing Your Content
T
he gig you’ve just landed will be using 30
media servers, and you need to upload
custom content into all of them. Some
of the questions that are probably popping
into your mind right now are: How long will
that take? Will I have the opportunity to load
the content before the load-in date? If not, will
I have enough time to get everything organized
on site at the gig? If any of these sound like
questions you’ve asked yourself on a show using digital lighting fixtures and/or media servers, then you will appreciate this article.
One aspect of digital lighting that is now
gaining a lot of attention is the process of uploading, organizing and managing your digital video content when you’re working with
media servers. If you’ve ever needed to load
custom content into more than just a couple
of media servers for a show, then you already
know that it can pretty much stop you in your
tracks, preventing you from being able to do
anything else until all of
your servers are online. To
add to that obstacle, configuring your servers typically
requires physically being
in front of them while you
change DMX addresses of
fixtures or layers, add DMX
numbers to
your files or
simply rename your Hippotizer
files for betMedia
ter organiSelector
zation. But
with
the
popularity
of the digital media server, the need for a content management system has rapidly come to
the forefront. This type of software, sometimes
referred to as a Content Management Application (or CMA), whether it’s embedded into the
C M A
media server application or running on a separate computer, allows you to upload and organize your content into a user-created content
folder in the application.
A content management application has
some real advantages for the digital lighting programmer. For instance, the capability to rapidly and remotely update and
manage content anytime means less time
spent away from the creative programming
process. Features such as increasing the
ease of upgrading the media server application software, uploading and cross-loading
content between servers by simply using
drag-and-drop functionality, and the ability
to remotely assign DMX values to a server’s
content files once they have been loaded
without having to physically be at the server
make the content management application
very flexible too. Using a CMA can result in
dramatic increases in efficiency by minimiz-
DL2 CMA
ing the need to interrupt the media server
application while it is
running in order to access the content folder
on the media server’s hard drive.
All of these features are also attractive to
the lighting designer as well. What LD can’t
relate to the need for speed and ease of use
in a media server application? There are obvious benefits to things like easily being able to
see all of the content in a folder, much like the
ability to see a list or even a thumbnail image
of each gobo on a pattern wheel in an automated lighting fixture. When you’re using a
content management application, a thumbnail is created for each piece of content, and
it is displayed along with the DMX number
and name of the file. This makes the content
easily recognizable and accessible. And that
greatly reduces the need to keep paper copies of thumbnails of each file on hand, as well
By VickieClaiborne
How do they work?
Content management applications allow
digital-to-digital file transfers, automating
the process of reformatting and uploading
content to a broadcast server, and providing
seamless network-based delivery. Using this
type of application requires an established networking connection
via Ethernet between the computer running the CMA and the media servers and/or digital lighting
fixtures. Once the network connection is secured and the CMA is
Catalyst
launched, it can seek out all media
V3.3
servers on the network and autoLibrary
matically display all available preloaded content.
You can see the advantages
of this, especially in an installation
project where the servers are in
some distant location around the
site (like a locked closet!),
and you need to load in a
new piece of content for a
new section of the show.
The need for a flexible,
user-friendly content management application is just
Maxedia
one more step in the evoMedia
lution of the integration of
Selector
video into lighting. Using a
CMA with your media server greatly simplifies
as streamlining the searching and sorting
the process of adding content into servers reprocesses while programming.
motely. And since many media servers have
the capacity to hold approximately 65,000 usable pieces of still images and/or video clips,
loading new media into your servers can be
a time-consuming process, especially if all
you are armed with is a single external content HD. With a content management application, new content can easily be uploaded,
organized, copied between and deleted from
your servers remotely and on several servers
simultaneously. Less time will be spent on the
logistics, and more time can be focused on
the fun part of creating!
Here are some examples of current video
content management applications:
Content Management Application from
High End Systems: the new standalone application currently for use with High End
Systems DL.2 and Axon servers is available
at http://www.highend.com/support/digital_
lighting/dl2.asp.
Embedded content management applications are also included in Catalyst (High End
Systems), Maxedia (Martin), Hippotizer (Green
Hippo), Mbox Extreme (PRG) and BrashLive
(BrashLive Inc).
Information on Fresco, a robust application
that controls many video devices, is available at
http://www.spearmorgan.com/fresco.html.
Vickie Claiborne (www.vickieclaiborne.
com) is an independent programmer and
training consultant, and can be reached at
[email protected].
44
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.44.vidigerati.indd 44
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:35:46 PM
VIDEO WORLD
Getting the Picture
and Getting it Right
“
chip. A three-chip camera has better resolution because there are physically more pixels
looking at the image. The individual pixels are
also located right next to each other. Every
pixel in the final image will have a red, green,
and blue component.
In a single chip camera it takes four pixels
on the chip to make one pixel in the final image.
Additionally, they use a filter, called the Bayer
filter, to make the red, green and blue components. But the only thing the Bayer filter has to
do with headaches is the less than spectacular results you get. This is great for the consumer camcorder making home movies, but
if we expect to be paid well for good results,
we should be able to produce them (good
results, that is!).
More about the chips: A “charge coupled
device,” or CCD, is a chip which produces a
voltage when light strikes its surface, similar
to what happens in a solar cell. This voltage is
stored in a capacitor until it is passed off to a
buffer. A “hole accumulation diode,” or HAD,
is a manufacturing technology developed by
Sony to reduce the noise in the video signal
at its source (the chip).
This also improves the image quality by improving
video black.
When light comes
into the camera, the CCDs
are spitting out signal.
Now we have to gather
that signal and turn it into something we can
actually use. This can be done in either analog or digital on the camera, or with a camera
control unit, or CCU for short. Here is where
we begin tweaking the image. The goal is to
provide the best possible signal to its final
destination.
Professional-level cameras will typically
have a switch somewhere to adjust the knee,
and it will most likely be called “autoknee.”
This control will also be found on the CCU.
Think of this as a sort of an automatic gain
control in the video signal. What it does visually is to remove the halo effect from around
The only thing the Bayer
filter has to do with
headaches is the less than
spectacular results you get.
back focus ring and not the mounting ring. I
know a young man who once dropped a lens
off a camera in the middle of a shoot because
he “adjusted” the wrong ring — very embarrassing! (And no it wasn’t me!)
The focal plane can either be a single CCD
chip or it can be a prism that will split the image into its red, green and blue components.
Without getting heavily into physics, suffice it
to say that the prism in a camera works the
same way it does in a projector: light is split
into three component colors and sent to its
respective chip. This is part of the reason that
a three-chip camera looks better than a single
“
T
he stage is set, the lights go up, the
speaker walks out on stage, and the
video screen is black. The producer
begins yelling at the technical director, and
the TD starts yelling at everyone. It’s a demonstration of what flows, and in which direction. It’s also a reminder that, as a camera
operator or engineer, you are at the bottom
of the hill on which it all flows. Assuming
we remembered to remove the lens cover,
there are many other pitfalls we would like
to avoid. But what other kinds of problems
could we have? By understanding a very basic signal flow through the camera, we can
protect ourselves from doing something
foolish and, more importantly, help us recover
quickly when we have already done something foolish.
All cameras have lenses. They all do the
same thing. They gather light and focus it
on the focal plane. The first adjustment we
should make to the camera is to set the back
focus, assuring that when we zoom in and out,
the subject stays in focus. Make certain that
when you make this adjustment you use the
bright spots in an image. For example, if we
have a close-up of someone standing near
a lamp, the lamp will typically have a halo
around it where it has washed out the image. By turning on autoknee, the effect will go
away and the lamp will look natural.
On the CCU is an adjustment called “pedestal.” No, this is not a remote control for the
camera stand, and has even less to do with
what the camera operator thinks they should
be on. This is kind of like 0dB for audio guys.
It is the blanking level in the video signal and
should be 7.5 IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers — the unit of measurement for video
signals) below video black. This adjustment
can be used to reduce noise and improve
black levels in our pictures. Do not, however,
confuse this with your black level adjustment.
If we set the pedestal for the least noise,
then set auto black, the end result will look
much better.
Additionally, the CCU also has adjustments
for color saturation, white levels, black levels, sync
and phase. Color saturation will behave as a gain
control for the individual colors. White level is an
adjustment to tell the camera how bright to allow the signal to get. If the incoming signal goes
above that, the image will flare and be ruined.
Cameras typically require 80% of the screen to
be filled with white before the auto white feature
will work. Auto black will close the iris in the lens
to block out all incoming light and adjust itself to
set black to the appropriate level.
Now the signal is ready to leave home. If
we connect it to a properly adjusted monitor
and vectorscope, we can watch and verify that
we have done our jobs. We have to pay constant attention to make subtle adjustments as
needed. This will also help lower the director’s
blood pressure and overall stress level on
the job. We can be confident that when the
producers and directors start yelling, it is not
our fault.
Paul J. Duryee is not getting the picture, he is the
systems design lead at Maxx Technology. He can be
contacted at [email protected].
1/2 JR. HORIZONTAL AD
www.PLSN.com
100.0611.45.VWORLD.indd 45
By Paul J. Duryee
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
45
11/2/06 8:34:30 PM
WELCOMETOMYNIGHTMARE
Patches? Those Go On Pants!!
B
ack in 1996, when the art of conventional lighting still reigned supreme on
the “legitimate” stage, I was working as
LD for a new play. (Yes, some of us do that.)
I received a packet of design materials from the M.E. at the theatre where we
would load-in. We all know the condition
in which many of these packets arrive, if
they arrive at all, but this one was truly an
exception. The instrument schedule detailed types, colors, lamps, circuits, channels, patch and everything else that I could
think of. The plot, well drawn and to scale,
gave a precise view of every instrument
relative to its focal point. I even got the almighty sectional, which had the potential
to save a lot of focus time. (This was before
1999, understand. Moving lights were still
confined to the “big” shows and rentals.)
I wrote all my cues, and transferred
them to a disk, as the packet indicated
that the theatre ran an ETC console. With
all that I knew of their plot and patch, prerecording was not only smart, but almost
guaranteed…Yeah. Almost guaranteed.
We arrived at the theatre, at which we
were engaged for only one day, without
incident. Every piece of equipment came
out untouched. Not one spare anything
proved necessary. One of the facility administrators informed me that we had
one hour for dimmer and sound checks
before curtain up. No big deal! I had my
disk, right?
Their M.E. led my board op and me up
a flight of stairs to their booth. The booth
was cramped, but it functioned, and everything we needed was there. The M.E. sat
my board op down at the console and I
handed her the disk, offering her a well-intentioned “good show” as I turned to head
out for a quick smoke.
You know that “Uhhhhh” that techs mut-
ter when technology doesn’t do what it’s
supposed to? Yeah. That one. That “Uhhhhh”
stopped me dead in my tracks at the door. I
turned to notice that the console had indeed
46
uploaded the disk, and cue one (our warmer) had run. But what I saw when my eyes
cleared the wall and peered out through the
fingerprints on the booth glass was not in
any shape or form my warmer.
The cue had brought up a section of houselights, a few worklights, some random ellipsoidals
and Fresnels, maybe a PAR or two and some other
incandescents that may or may not even qualify
as light sources. We ran the next cue…blackout.
OK, that one worked. Next cue…more random
crap. Different random crap, but equally random.
I turned to their M.E., if indeed he ever
qualified as such, and asked, “What the
#%&^ happened?”
He stared at me for a moment, but then
replied, “Oh yeah. We had a show in here
last week, and the patch didn’t work for
‘em, so we changed it.”
Now it’s 35 minutes to curtain, and instead of lighting up a cigarette I have the
sudden urge to light this guy, his boss
and the director of that mysterious “other
show” ablaze!
I sat down behind the board, and I
started programming subs like a madman.
We held the house an extra 15 minutes
while I programmed and fended off a coronary, completing the last look just seconds
before I heard that first door open from
the lobby.
In the end, the show went off with no
discernable hitches, unless there was another designer in the house who ferreted
out the repetition. My stage manager, who
good-heartedly bore the brunt of my expletives, was seemingly pleased, and actor
complaints about weak hotspots stayed at
a minimum, and stopped altogether when
they saw the manic glint in my eyes.
Trust no one. Ever. Check everything in
person. Their specs are lies!
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.46.night.indd 46
Dave McGinnis
[email protected]
[We went and did it. We hired another
backstage guy to help us out here at PLSN.
Please welcome our new associate editor,
David McGinnis. He’s an LD, electrician
and stage-hand, and he teaches part-time
at UNLV, where he received a Masters in
Theatre.–ed.]
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:33:46 PM
PRODUCTGALLERY
t used to be that when an old road dog cut
his hair and put on a suit, you could safely
assume it was because he had a pending
court appearance. But that all changed around
1990, when Vari-Lite retooled a color wash
fixture that looked suspiciously like a VL5 for
exterior use. The unit was dubbed the Irideon
AR500, and a cottage industry within a cottage
industry was born. But cottage industries were
not what the lighting industry had in mind.
From the point of view of the entertainment lighting industry, the so-called “architainment” industry looked like the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow. By entertainment
lighting standards, architectural lighting could
become a huge market, and combining the
color changing capabilities of entertainment
lighting with housings made for exterior use to
make exterior color wash fixtures looked to be
the combination to the architectural lighting
vault. Suddenly, entertainment lighting manufacturers were offering up their own versions
of exterior color wash fixtures, and old road
dogs were cutting their hair, putting on suits
and ties and learning all about IP ratings.
IP ratings, depending on who you believe,
either stand for Ingress Protection or International Protection ratings. The IEC (Commission
Electrotechnique Internationale), who issues
international standards, makes reference to
“International Protection” in the international
standard IEC 60529, which describes the degrees of protection provided by enclosures
of electrical equipment (IP Code). But some
people and Internet sites refer to it as “Ingress
Protection” ratings. Either way, the two-digit
code represents the degree of protection afforded an enclosure against the ingress of foreign objects and water, and against the access
to hazardous parts.
The first digit ranges from 0 to 6 and represents the degree of protection against the
ingress of solid foreign objects. A “0” means no
protection at all, while a “6” indicates that the
enclosure is completely dust tight. The standard also describes how an enclosure is tested
for compliance.
The second digit ranges from 0 to 8 and
represents the degree of protection against
the ingress of water. A “0” means no protection
at all while an “8” indicates that the enclosure
can withstand continuous immersion in water
without any harmful effects.
There are additional optional letters
that can be appended to the IP code that
describe the degree of protection of personnel and other special conditions. The
complete code can be found at http://webstore.iec.ch/webstore/webstore.nsf/artnum/
026766?opendocument.
Ironically, many architectural lighting
manufacturers, who have been building conventional exterior luminaires for many years
before the architainment industry was born,
use the National Electrical Manufacturer’s Association (NEMA) ratings for enclosures. NEMA
250-1997, Enclosures for Electrical Equipment
(1000 Volts Maximum) rates enclosures from
type 1 to type 13. The ratings deal not only with
the ingress of solid foreign objects and water,
but also with corrosion resistance and construction details. NEMA enclosures can meet
the requirements for an IP rating, but there is
no direct equivalent between the two.
Whether they carry IP ratings or NEMA ratings, exterior color wash fixtures have opened
new markets for entertainment lighting manufacturers everywhere. That’s no small feat,
considering the specialized nature of color
wash fixtures, but then neither is getting all
those old road dogs to cut their hair and put
on suits.
This month’s Product Gallery takes us from
the bus to the board room with a selection of
architainment products.
Chauvet Spectrum 575
Studio Due City Color 2500
Clay Paky Color 150-E
D.T.S. Acr 1200
American DJ Acclaim Color Ray
Martin Exterior 1200
www.PLSN.com
100.0611.47-49.PRODGALLERY.indd 47
PR Century Color 2500
SGM Palco 3
I
By RichardCadena
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
47
11/2/06 8:32:03 PM
PRODUCTGALLERY
Colors
Manufacturer
Website
Model
Lamp Life
Lamp Source
Rating
(type-wattage)
(hours)
Acclaim Lighting
www.acclaimlighting.com
Color Ray
3 x 1-Watt "high
50,000 hours
intensity" LEDs
N/A
N/A
N/A
RGB color
mixing
No
No
1000 hours
IP-54
CMY
N/A
N/A
N/A
CMY color
mixing
Motorized
No
Colorado 3
54 x 1-Watt
LEDs
100,000 hours
IP-65
No
N/A
N/A
N/A
RGB color
mixing
No
No
Clay Paky
www.claypakyamerica.com
HSD 575 W
3,000
(7,200 K) or HSR hours/1,000
575 W (6,000 K)
hours
Fixe
Yes (
fil
IP-65
Yes
No
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
No
CP Color 150-E
CDM-SA/T
150W/942
(4,200 K)
6000 hours
Delta
40 x 3-Watt
LEDs
100,000 hours
IP-65
RGB
N/A
N/A
N/A
RGB color
mixing
No
No
Arc 1200
MSR 1200/2
750 hours
IP-55
Yes
N/A
N/A
N/A
CMY color
mixing
No
No
Yes, v
Arc 575
MSR 575/2
1000 hours
IP-55
Yes
N/A
N/A
N/A
CMY color
mixing
No
No
Yes, v
Exterior 1200
1200-watt metal
halide or MSD
1200
3000 hours
7-19, 12-29,
+42
No
Exterior 600
575-watt metal
halide or MSD
575
3000 hours
9-12, 11-27,
+8, 46, 65,
100
Yes
Exterior 200
150-watt metal
halide or CDMSA/T 150
9000 hours
10, 15, 21,
38, 42, 54
No
Pixel Arc C
44 High Intensity
K2 Luxeon
Emitters
N/A
N/A
No
No
CMY color
mixing
8-22
degrees
(manual)
No
N/A
Full CMY
Spectrum
No
No
N/A
Full CMY
Spectrum
D.T.S. Illuminazione srl
www.dts-lighting.it
Martin Professional
www.martin.com
Pixel Range
www.pixelrange.com
Yes (5
fil
Yes
IP-65
75,000 hours
IP-65
22 High Intensity
K2 Luxeon
Emitters
Century 2500L
Phillips MSR
2500 DE
2000 hours
IP-44
Design 250
Phillips CDM-T
250W
9000 hours
IP-65
Mega Color 2000
XQ2000W
Xenon Lamp
800 hours
IP-44
Ecolor 250 XT
MSD 250
2000 hours
Palco 3 LED
49 LEDs - 25 x
3W, 24 x 1W
Ribalta LED
90 LEDs - 30 x
3W, 60 x 1W
City Color 400
2x CDM-T150W
(3000K or
4200K)
Robe Show Lighting
www.robe.cz
SGM (distributed in US by
Techni-Lux)
www.sgm.it
www.techni-lux.com
Yes
Full CMY
Spectrum
N/A
N/A
Red,Green,Blue,
Amber as
standard,or
Individual 3200K
5600k,8000K
White or
3200k/5600K
Color Temp
Mixing White
4.2 Billion
Color
Permutations
RGBA
Additive
Yes
No
N/A
N/A
CMY
N/A
N/A
100,000 hours
IP-65
CMY
6000 hours
IP-66
N/A
No
City Color 2500
MHN-SA2500W
2000 hours
City Beam 1800
MSR2000W/SA
750 hours
CMY
IP-54
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
4 + open
Yes
No
Pixel Arc R
PR Lighting
www.pr-lighting.com
RGB
Variable
Frost
MSR 575
CP Color 575
48
IP-65
Zoom
Color
Color Number of Replaceable
Color
Mixing Wheels
Colors
Colors
Combinations
Spectrum 575
Chauvet
www.chauvetlighting.com
Studio Due
(distributed in US by
Techni-Lux)
www.studiodue.it
www.techni-lux.com
IP Rating
No
5 to 8
degrees
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:32:37 PM
O
Holo
Lens'
30,4
e
Fixed Frost
Type of Data
Ports (i.e.,
Strobe (fps)
3-pin, 5-pin,
etc.)
Other Effects
Voltage
Current (A)
24V
DC
L"xW"xH"
No
N/A
N/A
10 preset
programs w/ fade
time & speed
selection
No
N/A
N/A
11 color macros,
32 built-in standalone programs
100, 115, 230 or
240V, 50/60Hz
N/A
20.5" x 18.5" x
21"
No
N/A
Yes
N/A
Switchable
110V/230V
50/60Hz
N/A
22.5" x 7.5" x
8.3"
Yes (4 adapt.
filters)
5-pin
No
Yes (5 adapt.
filters )
N/A
90-260V, 50/60 Hz
2A
Yes, via DMX
5 or 3 (user
0.85 - 10 fps
selectable)
N/A
120V 50/60 Hz
12A
Yes, via DMX
5 or 3 (user
0.85 - 10 fps
selectable)
N/A
120V 50/60 Hz
6.5A
No
On/Off
No
3-pin XLR
No
DMX-512 or stand-alone operation. Optional controller
(Ray Power) can drive up to 20 units (sold separately).
96.3 lbs
$1,399.99
8 DMX channels, vectored movement; variable
motorized dimmer; frosted lens diffuser.
18 lbs
$999.99
Individual addressing, automatic
DMX-512 addressing, 12 DMX channels
5 gobo wheel,
200, 208, 220,
animation wheel, 230, 240, 250, 277
dimmer
50/60Hz
6.9" x 4.6" x 9.1" 44 lbs
11.2" x 7.7" x
11.7"
N/A
$2,961.00
5.6-7.5
33” x 17” x 24”
150
208, 230, 245, 277
50/60 Hz
3.4-4.0
25” x 15” x 17”
106
No
Dimmer
195, 210, 225, 245,
277 50/60 Hz
.8-1.2
12” x 12” x 16”
33
3-pin XLR
N/A
No
5-pin XLR
1 to 20 Hz
No
5-pin XLR
N/A
Beam coverage
60° x 45° at
35mts. Linear
dimmer, thermal
cut-off
200/230/240
500mm x
770mm x
720mm
70 kg
Beam angle 42° at
30mts. Light level
sensor. Timer
mode. Remote
reset.
100/120/220
/230/240
362 x 380mm x
482mm
23 kg
Linear focus. Liner
dimmer. Linear
color mixing. DMX
13 channels
220 / 240
570mm x
520mm x
900mm
52 kg
13" x 11.6" x
17.7"
48.5 lbs
15 color macros
208/230/240 VAC,
2.5A at 208V
50/60Hz
P.O.A.
P.O.A .
1.5A
15" x 9" x 16.34" 30 lbs
$3,499.00
2A
12.2" x 38.2" x 9" 35.3 lbs
$4,989.00
6 color macros,
rainbow, dimmer,
remote lamp &
reset.
208-230V 50/60Hz
2.4A
18.9" x 19.29" x
29.13"
14A
11A
69 lbs
Motorized or manual movement on 3 axes (pan/tilt 1/tilt 2)
P.O.A.
5 lens options
90 - 270 VAC, 50 available, CTC,
60 Hz auto-ranging
macros
Remote zoom,
remote lamp &
focus
Convection Cooled via heat sink,Onboard 4 digit alphanumerical user Interface display,DMX 512 In/Out,Built In
Master Intensity Channel,Master/Slave Mode, Selectable
3 to 11 channel modes, Wet,Damp,and Dry location
rated,Head can be remoted from PSU housing up to
250',Anodized black or powder coated white or silver
(other colors to order)
Stand alone operation with clock/calendar,
IR control, interchangeable lenses
$2,900.00
147.7 lbs $6,139.00
30.7" x 22.05" x
29.13"
112.4 lbs $6,100.00
www.PLSN.com
$4,470.00
10" x 7.7" x 11.7" 117 lbs
Beam shaper,
dimmer
No
$3,325.00
$3,657.00
Yes, 8Hz
1~5 fps
$4,345.00
155 lbs
2 sets of 31
1A at 110V 10.6" x 17" x 5.0” 15 lbs
Internal Effects
Holographic
each with the
Auto-Ranging 100
5 Pin or Hard
Lens's 10,20,
Yes (28 fps)
ability to vary
to 240 VAC 50/60
Wired
30,40, 60x1
speed,Intensity,
Hz
10.6" x 13.6" x
0.5A at 110V
15 bs
and crossfade for
5.0"
each effect
No
Comments
$229.00
5.3" x 3.9" x 6.3" 2.6 lbs
2.8A at
230V/50 20.47" x 10.24" x
73 lbs
Hz (PFC of
24.33"
0-100% dimming;
230V 50 Hz; 240V
70µF)
ovalizing adapt.
50 Hz; 208V 60Hz;
filter
1.1A at 230V
9.29" x 8.66" x
50 Hz (PFC
38 lbs
2106"
of 20µF)
Harting / ILME
0.03 - 20 fps
sockets (IP65)
No
Weight Retail Price
(lbs)
(US)
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
49
11/3/06 2:24:39 PM
FEEDINGTHEMACHINES
Creating and Using Color Palettes
O
ne of the most essential functions of an
automated light is the ability to alter the
color of the light output from the fixture.
The lighting designer must carefully choose the
colors used within performances, as different
colors can produce different physiological reactions by the audience. Furthermore, the use of
colored lighting can dramatically alter the appearance of set pieces and performers. The automated lighting programmer must be aware
of the capabilities and limitations when working with color and automated lights.
The Tools We are Given
Automated lighting fixtures basically have
two methods of producing colored light output. The first is color mixing, where a series of
colored glass pieces are used to allow various
levels of color to be adjusted. The second is a
fixed color wheel, where a wheel allows various
colors to be placed in front of the beam of light.
Many fixtures actually contain both methods to
allow optimum flexibility.
Color Mixing Rant #1
It is my personal opinion (and I will stay off
my soapbox) that every professional automated
light produced today should use color mixing. I
feel there is no need for any fixtures that simply
use a color wheel and do not allow color mixing.
Modern technology and the dropping prices of
automated lighting make this possible, yet manufacturers still build fixtures without color mixing.
Color Mixing Defined
Color mixing in automated lighting is generally achieved through the use of CMY, or cyan,
magenta, yellow parameters. As the program-
mer adjusts the value for each of these three
colors, the output of the fixture will increase in
saturation of the selected color. By combining
these colors, millions of hues can be achieved.
This method of color mixing is known as “subtractive,” however, because as each color is
brought into the path of the light more wavelengths of light are filtered out. Bringing all three
parameters to their maximum value will result
in very little light output. In addition, some fixtures contain variable amber wheels as well as
adjustable CTO and CTB. CTO stands for “Correct
To Orange.” It’s A color-mixing term that means
to lower the color temperature by taking it
closer to the color red. Paradoxically, this has the
psychological effect of making the light seem
“warmer,” whereas CTB — “Correct To Blue”
— raises the color temperature by correcting to
a color with a higher wavelength, blue, but psychologically “cools” the scene. These complex
color mixing systems permit almost any color
to be produced.
Programming Procedures
It is important for an automated lighting
programmer to be prepared for the programming sessions. This includes making many color
mixing palettes or presets in advance. As the
show is programmed these colors will be utilized often, and it is important that they are wellorganized. When building color palettes, you
should create a broad range of colors and various levels of saturation for each. It is also helpful
if you can lay out your palettes in an order that
is logical to you. For example, color palettes one
through 10 range from light amber through to
red. Then 11 through 20 span from light cyan to
Congo blue, and 21 through 30 are light teal to
deep green. Using a system such as this allows
for a quick selection when the LD asks for a “fire
orange” color.
Some programmers prefer to build color
palettes that represent common gel colors.
Then they assign the same palette numbers as
used to refer to the gel numbers. For instance,
deep blue might be stored in palette number
80 (for Roscolux 80) or fire red in number 19
(for Roscolux 19). Another organization method
is to visually lay out the palettes horizontally in
the “order” of the rainbow (ROYGBIV), with various levels of saturation in a vertical configuration. This allows for a quick on-screen selection
without concern for palette numbers. A wellorganized set of color palettes is essential for
quick programming, and if used consistently on
all productions the layout can quickly become
second nature.
Color Effects
The mechanical methods that allow color
mixing in automated lighting fixtures also
provide the ability to produce very complex
color effects. Some fixtures can turn their color
wheels in two directions, meaning you can color mix into a color slowly, or snap instantly to it.
Furthermore you can often create “half colors”
by dialing in a value that uses half full saturation
and half open white beam. Check your fixture’s
DMX protocol for details, as this often requires
a special mode or setting. Color mixing wheels
can also be manipulated with console effects
generators to create flickers, sweeps, oscillations, etc. Often a simple color effect can have a
bigger impact on stage than a movement of the
fixtures or a blackout.
50
Working with the LD
Recently I stopped in at pre-production of
a West End musical and found myself reading
the light plot. I noticed a small table that listed
the order and gel color names for the show’s
color scrollers. There was an extra column that
also listed the corresponding palette numbers
for the automated lights. The programmer of
this production had provided the LD with the
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.50.FEED.indd 50
By BradSchiller
palette numbers she used, and he was able to
add it to his paperwork. Then the LD could simply call out the palette number of the color he
desired, and the programmer could respond
much faster when building cues. I have often
provided LDs with a list of the color palettes and
their relevant numbers. Some LDs like to read
this list like a menu and then call out the color
number as needed. When programming with a
command line, this allows the fastest entry possible as no time is wasted looking for the color
on the screen.
When initially building color palettes for
your production, you should build your normal
set as described above. However, it is also a good
idea to talk with the LD to see what other colors
he/she is planning to use (and what the favorites
are). Many LDs will have some “signature” colors
that they like to use, and it is essential that you
create these for them (and name them accordingly). Also when deciding on color palettes you
should consider the rest of the lighting rig. I will
usually match my color mixing fixtures to the
colors used in gel scrollers, fixed color wheel fixtures, and other lighting equipment. This way if
the LD wants to match or complement the various components of the lighting rig, I am ready
to respond with appropriate colors.
Color Mixing Rant #2
I mentioned color mixing fixtures while I was
on my soapbox. I also feel very strongly about
not always utilizing the same color palettes over
and over for every production. I feel that it is important to color mix according to the specific
artist, environment, costumes, sets, etc. When
working on a show with pre-production I create
new colors that match the look and feel of the
current show. Sure, I often end up making many
of the same colors, but some values are different
and I know that the colors were produced in and
for this situation. Automated lighting programmers should take the time to challenge themselves to create new colors with each production.Of course,when working with a limited time
frame you should import your common color
palettes and reduce setup time.
Colors Abound
I am very thankful that our industry has
perfected the ability to adjust the color output
of lighting fixtures. In fact, we owe our entire
industry to that one idea. With color mixing
abilities in our lights, we can create various
looks and feelings onstage. It is important that
we understand the methods of color mixing
and use well-planned organization methods
to aid in quick and efficient programming. New
technology, such as digital lighting and LED fixtures, has caused us to look into new practices
and procedures related to color mixing, but the
standard automated light CMY methodology
provides superb access to a multitude of colors
and effects.
Contact Brad at [email protected]
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 2:41:36 PM
THEBIZ
Picture and Light Have Become (Mostly) One
digital technology, specifically the ability of ESP
Vision’s to capture and manipulate video when
designing a lighting show, and Apple’s Final Cut
Pro, which has changed the equation between
video and lighting specialists more than is often
acknowledged. Richards points out that the vast
majority of tours can’t budget for original video
content and resort to stock footage. The ability
to essentially post-produce raw and stock content in a program like that adds tremendous
power to the lighting design.
It also adds to the LD’s bottom line, first by
giving the designer more to offer, secondly by
freeing up more time to actually do the work.
Richards says he holed up for two straight weeks
laying out the upcoming Rob Thomas tour, but
that was a blink compared to what it would
have taken without the technology. “I could
have bought a console, I could have bought
a media server,” he says. “But I had to buy one
thing and that was the visualizer. It changes the
way you do business.”
When an existing technology is confronted
with a new and potentially supplanting one, a
collision is understandable. When two technologies that can either compete or collaborate
By DanDaley
encounter one another, the result and the outcome are less predictable.
Dan Daley can be reached at [email protected]
C
onvergence” can become tiresome to
hear, but never truly gets overused in this
day and age. It’s an appropriate term for
what’s taken place between video and lighting as elements of live performances. The trend
dates back to 1998 when Lighting & Sound
Design (LSD) first had a private showing of the
Icon M (Medusa) at the LDI show. It combined
the Texas Instruments nanotechnology-based
DMD (digital mirror device) and the automated
yoke of an automated luminaire into a single
fixture, with “soft” gobos. Even though the fixture was never mass-produced (it was used
on a few tours, including Korn and one or two
others), it aligned the industry into the realm of
video, media servers and digital lighting.
Two years later, High End Systems developed a DMX-controlled media server — Catalyst — by putting an orbital mirror head on
a projector and the race was on. Today, there
are about half a dozen or more media server
manufacturers competing for the convergence market. Since the late 1980s when Journey went on the road with video (they subsequently started Nocturne Video, still one of the
biggest players in the touring video industry),
video specialists have been autonomous and
in complete charge of the video. However,
lighting designers, programmers and directors
can compete with the ability to switch video
from the lighting console thanks to enhanced
control onboard capability. Is this the demilitarized zone of event illumination?
One production designer, who has ventured
into the convergence DMZ, related a recent experience that is a case in point. His design for a
touring event in the round included a backdrop
with several projection surfaces flowing together that would use video as much for illumination
as for graphics. The system would have been
complex but not envelope-stretching, using
several projectors with edge-blending to create one panoramic image. The designer created
several renderings, but before he could show
them he got call from the production manager
scrapping the idea. He thinks he knows why.
“The reason is because the mere mention of
technology outside of the video crew’s comfort
zone shook them so badly that they wanted to
get rid of me,” he says.“Instead of calling and saying they didn’t think it would work or asking how
it could work, they wanted to throw out the baby
with the bath water. One of the comments that
came out was that someone in the production
camp thought that I approached the video from
the perspective of a lighting guy. This is an example of how some video people feel threatened by
‘lighting people’ dealing with video elements.”
Roy Bennett, a production designer who
has incorporated video into productions for the
Dixie Chicks, Paul McCartney and others, says
making video and lighting mesh well hinges
on properly distributing responsibilities at the
design stage. “There can be as many as three
or four video artists on a single production,” he
says.“I try to make the entire production fully integrated between lighting and video.That’s why
I started designing stage sets in the first place:
to avoid a clash between LDs and video artists.
Philosophically speaking, I think video has become part of lighting, and video artists seem to
agree that the whole production benefits from
a single cohesive vision and control.”
Ben Richards, LD for Yes, Rob Thomas and
Dream Theater, agrees, taking it one step further.“Video is light,” he says on a break from the
Aerosmith tour. Richards says the convergence
of video and lighting has been accelerated by
“
www.PLSN.com
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
51
TECHNOPOLIS
By JohnKaluta
I
went to my high school reunion last
month and, as is usual at these things,
the reminiscing began. A couple of the
crew kids and me, now in our late 40s,
were trying to recall details of shows from
30 years ago. I could barely recall what the
theatre looked like, much less any specific
information from any shows. After finding
a few photographs, some in the yearbook,
some sent in by the drama director, memories began to come back. There was some
lights.
What did
the well-equipped
17 year-old tech have on his tool belt in
those days?
A crescent wrench was a must-have, as
were wire cutters and a common screwdriver to rewire the lights. Gloves were
required, something I was painfully reminded of when I pressed an old, old 360
Let’s see; how did we do it back in
the day? Crescent wrench, wire cutters,
a screwdriver and gloves…
that was about it.
into service just last night at my school’s
homecoming dance. I tossed the dusty old
thing into the back of my van not really
expecting to use it, but it came in handy
when the gobo holder in our newer unit
went missing. Anyhow, I forgot how hot
those old units got, and this morning I
have two teeny little blisters, one on my
thumb and one on my index finger, reminding me.
Let’s see; how did we do it back in
the day? Crescent wrench, wire cutters, a
screwdriver and gloves… that was about
it. You might have carried a hammer, mainly for persuading shutters to take a shape
that would allow them to fit back into the
slot out of which they fell. Cables were
tied in place, so a roll of tie line filled out
the kit.
That tool belt served me well through
high school, and even through my first
professional gig, at the old Capital Centre in Largo, Md. Sometime during that
gig I managed to wangle my way into the
beams, then reached up and touched the
ceiling of the arena, well over a hundred
feet in the air. Out of all the thousands and
thousands of people attending events at
the Cap Centre, I am one of the few who
got to touch the ceiling. What a cool job
we have. While I was up there, an electrician began yelling up not at me, but at his
apprentice nearby. He wanted to know if a
specific junction box was arcing. The fellow
opened the box, which was pretty much
on fire, and yelled down, “No!” I said, “Dude,
it’s arcing,” since it was clear to me the apprentice didn’t know what arcing meant.
So he yelled down “Uhhhh, yeah… a little
bit!” Welcome to the pro ranks, Kaluta.
How about now? To steal a phrase
52
disagreement, however, over just
how we did what we did.
I mostly built sets, and painted a bit.
My buddy Mark had the unique ability to
jimmy the paint room door lock with his
comb, a skill that I could never master, so
he had more to do with the painting. He
and a couple of other guys did most of the
lighting. I seem to recall Mark climbing a
rickety wooden ladder carrying a Leko
and a crescent wrench… that’s how we set
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
100.0611.52.technopolis.indd 52
from the Capital One commercial, “What’s
in your toolbox?” Now, the well-equipped
tech, even in a high school, has to have a
few more tools at her disposal. I’ve bought
most of the gimmicky tools that have
come along, but they usually end up in
the bottom of a box somewhere. The useful things that make up a kit? Well, somewhere along the line gaff tape supplanted
tie line (though tie line still comes in handy), and 15 years ago or so a Leatherman
became essential. I don’t know a tech that
doesn’t carry one, except me — mine’s
made by Winchester.
Hmm… when DMX came in a soldering iron became the necessary accessory
for success, I guess. (Note to readers… let’s
see if my editor let’s that one stay in.) [I’ll
trade a soldering iron for a laptop any day!
– ed.] I usually borrowed my soldering iron
from the sound guy, except when I was the
sound guy. Let’s not forget walkie-talkies and cell phones — they aren’t exactly
tools but, boy, do they come in handy.
A DMX line tester is probably the newest must-have, and I’ve been told that
lighting technicians had better learn how
to make Cat5 cables or find a new line of
work; so a connector crimper ought to
be on your Christmas list. One nice thing,
though, you can probably leave the hammer at home.
Now, to bring my story full circle, just
last Tuesday I was at D.C.’s Verizon Center to see a concert. The kid next to me,
probably brought to the show by his father, looked up and saw the followspot
operators in the beams. He turned to his
dad, pointed up and said, “What a cool job
those guys have.” It might have been my
imagination, but when I looked up I could
have sworn I saw the spot operator stand
up, reach out, and touch the ceiling of
the arena.
John Kaluta teaches Research & Experimentation and Robotics at Montgomery
Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., and
sponsors the Stage Crew there. He is also
the author of The Perfect Stage Crew, The
Compleat Technical Guide for High School,
College, and Community Theatre, available
at the PLSN Bookshelf. If you have a toolbox
item you want the world to know about,
e-mail him at [email protected]
www.PLSN.com
11/3/06 2:43:11 PM
FOCUSONDESIGN
ILLUMINATION INFLATION
But It Goes to 11!
By RichardCadena
A
horsepowfunny
er
we
can get,
“Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands
thing hapthe
better.
We
just
can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry,
pened on the way to the
continue to push the faders
prophecy and religion, all in one”.
top of the grand master fader.
to the top of the range, and we’re
– John Ruskin
I found out that it not only goes up,
forgetting to balance our sources. If our
but it also comes down. It was a complete
It’s very easy to get caught up in illu- profile spots and color washes are washaccident, but it turned out to be a discovery mination inflation. Automated lights are ing out our followspots, or vice versa, we
that was right up there with the time I found dropping in price relative to their light out- wouldn’t know it, because we’re too intent
out my VCR wasn’t supposed to flash “12:00.” put, and today it’s much more affordable on squeezing out every last iota of candle
When a tour manager voiced concerns for a production to have the latest crop of power from our sources. Never mind that
about the pacing of a show, I listened intent- brighter, more efficient automated lights you can’t see the projection.
ly as he described what he wanted to see. and Lekos. And today’s 700-watt fixtures put
From now on I’m going to work harder
He wanted the show to build. He wanted a out about as much light, in general, as many to remember my objective, which is to cresteady building of lighting looks, punctuated 1200-watt fixtures do. Do we really need all ate effective lighting that looks great. I won’t
by a climax. He wanted to hold back the best this firepower?
be afraid to turn down a fader or three. Even
for last. In short, he wanted the impossible.
We see by a combination of illumination if my fader goes to 11, I’m going to try it on
Ordinarily, his would have been a perfect- and contrast — or in simple terms, light and
ly reasonable request. But in this case I was dark. And as lighting designers we sometimes
using some new toys to light a hard-rocking forget about the other half of the equation,
band. I found it as close to impossible as you the dark, or the contrast. The human eye is an
could possibly get to not get excited about incredibly complex instrument. It has an abilthe music and throw every programming ity to adjust itself and compensate for varytrick you have into the mix. And that was ing levels of illumination. When the lighting
just the opening act. So you see, there was level goes down, the iris opens up to allow
nothing left in reserve for the headliner. This more light to reach the part of your eye that
was a problem.
senses it. So the contrast between light and
After pondering it for a while, I decided dark might be more important to a composito take drastic action. When the show start- tion than the quantity of light in it.
ed and the opening band took the stage, I
Tony Award-winning lighting designer
closed my eyes, said a little prayer, swallowed Jules Fisher recently told me that the lighthard, and did it. I actually lowered the playing levels on Broadway have risen steadily
back fader to half.
since he started working there several years
Not having enough time to reprogram ago. He suggested that it would be an inthe songs in the show, I reasoned that by teresting exercise to take some old lighting
lowering the lighting levels, I could lower plots and calculate the illuminance on stage
the energy of the show. Less light equals less and compare it to a modern day production.
energy and excitement, right? Wrong. In this I think he estimated that it has increased
case, it actually had the opposite effect.
two- or three-fold. Why is that? Do we reExcuse me? You mean to tell me you low- ally need that much light, or are we seduced
ered the lighting levels and it raised the energy by the power and punch of a big, powerful
level on the stage? Have you been hanging out beam of light?
five. I want to let my eyes do the work while
I balance the scene, and maybe those projections that I thought were too weak will pop
like they should.
This is especially important in the age
of convergence with digital lighting and the
new crop of pan and tilt yokes for projectors.
Maybe we don’t need 20K ANSI lumen projectors on every show. Maybe a 5K will do.
After this experience, when I hear
someone say a projector isn’t bright
enough, what I hear is, “I don’t know how
to balance my sources.” I’ll bet their VCR is
flashing “12:00,” too.
Prove the author wrong. Send your e-mail to
[email protected].
This is my hypothesis, and
I would love to be proven
wrong about this, so don’t be
shy. As the lighting manufacturers continue to produce
brighter and less expensive
(relative to the light output)
lights, optical engineers are
increasingly making design
decisions on our shows.
We are to the point where we have
enough light on stage; now we’re just rearranging the balance between the sources.
When you spec a particular light on a show,
you can be sure that the programmer will
use it at its full output without dimming it.
So the determining factor, as far as illumination levels are concerned, is how bright
the factory can make it. What should be the
designer’s decision — how much light do I
want on this subject, object or background?
— is being determined by the optical engineer who designs the luminaire.
It’s not the manufacturer’s fault. They are
simply feeding our need for speed. The more
I closed my eyes, swallowed
hard, and lowered the
playback fader to half.
with Mel Gibson? Lucy, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.
Let me explain. Although I lowered the
lighting levels, the projection was on another playback fader. It was left at full. Right
before my eyes, what I saw was the relative
levels between the stage lighting and the
projection on the backdrop swapping places. What started as very strong lighting with
some projection in the background, became
very strong projection with some lighting in
the foreground. It completely transformed
the visuals.
To my eyes, if it wasn’t pure magic, then
it was at least a really good illusion.
www.PLSN.com
PLSN NOVEMBER 2006
53
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ADVERTISER’SINDEX
COMPANY
PG# PH
URL
COMPANY
PG# PH#
URL
A.C.T Lighting, Inc.
5
818.707.0884
www.actlighting.com
Milos
25
800.411.0065
www.milosamerica.com
AC Lighting
21, 35, 51
416.255.9494
www.aclighting.com/northamerica
Mole Richardson
42
323.851.0111
www.mole.com
Advanced Entertainment Services
47
702.364.1847
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Mountain Productions
30
570.826.5566
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All Access Staging & Prod.
36
310.784.2464
www.allaccessinc.com
Navigator
30
615.547.1895
www.hiretrack.com
American DJ
1
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Angstrom Lighting
44
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Ocean Optics
11
727.545.0741
www.oceanoptics.com
www.angstromlighting.com
Omnisistem
52
253.395.9500
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Apollo Design Technology, Inc.
7
800.288.4626
www.internetapollo.com
Paradigm Production Services
45
954.933.9210
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Applied Electronics
37
800.883.0008
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PR Lighting LTD
29
253.395.9494
www.omnisistem.com
ARRI, Inc.
13
845.353.1400
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Prolyte
23
31.595
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Atlanta Rigging
53
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Pro-Tapes and Specialties
46
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Branam
3
661.295.3300
BSL Productions Inc
8
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R&M Materials Handling
24
800.955.9967
www.rmhoist.cm
www.buygack.com
Robe America
2
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Bulbtronics
19
800.227.2852
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Roc-Off
10
877.978.2437
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Chauvet Lighting
9
800.762.1084
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Rosco Laboratories
18
800.767.8652
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Checkers Industrial Prod.
33
800.438.9336
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Sanyo Fisher Company
39
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City Theatrical Inc.
26
800.230.9497
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Set Wear/Studio Depot
38
818.340.0540
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CM Rigging Products
40
800.888.0985
www.cmrigging.com
Sew What
46
866.444.2062
www.sewwhatinc.com
Coast Wire & Plastic Tech., Inc.
45
800.514.9473
www.coastwire.com
Staging Dimensions
15
866.591.3471
www.stagingdimensionsinc.com
Swisson
12
805.443.7834
www.swisson.com
www.creativestagelighting.com
Syncrolite
30
214.350.7696
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Cooling & Power Rentals
27
888.871.5503
Creative Stage Lighting
10, 23
518.251.3302
Doug Fleenor Design
30
888.436.9512
www.dfd.com
Techni-Lux
C2
407.857.8770
www.techni-lux.com
Elation
C4
866.245.6726
www.elationlighting.com
TLS
38
866.254.7803
www.tlsinc.com
Element Labs
27
512.491.9111
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TMB
31
818.899.8818
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ESP Vision
31
702.492.6923
www.esp-vision.com
Tyler Truss Systems
50
903.877.0300
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Full Sail
33
800.226.7625
www.fullsail.com
Vista Systems
41
602.943.5700
www.vistasystems.net
Gemini Stage Lighting
6
214.341.4822
www.gsldallas.com
Xtreme Structures & Fabrication
12
903.473.1100
www.xtremestructures.com
High End Systems
34
512.836.2242
www.highend.com
In-House Production
19
702.631.4748
www.in-houseproduction.com
Intelevent Systems
34
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MARKET PLACE
James Thomas Engineering
32
865.692.3060
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City Theatrical Inc.
54
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Johnson Systems
10
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DK Capital
54
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Legend Theatrical
31
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ELS
54
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Leprecon/Cae Inc.
14
810.231.9373
www.leprecon.com
Hybrid Case
54
800.346.4638
www.discount-distributors.com
Light Source
4
803.547.4765
www.coolclamps.com
Light Source Inc.
54
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Lightronics
C3
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Lightronics
54
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Marinco Electrical Group
25
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54
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Martin
C1
954.858.1800
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54
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MDG Fog Generators Limited
17
800.663.3020
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Upstaging
54
815.899.9888
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11/3/06 2:12:29 PM
LDATLARGE
The
Main Course
Sushi in Chicago Continues...
[If last month’s LD-at-Large column resolved anything, it’s that sushi is definitely
the cuisine of choice among most lighting
designers. Four of them, Nook Schoenfeld,
Bob Peterson, John Featherstone and Olivier Ilisca, got together for an informal
lunch discussion at Nook’s urging.
On the menu? Sushi, of course.
Once the sushi connection was
established, the four LDs talked about how they started in
the business and how they
ended up where they are, all
the while working on their
appetizer. By the time the
main course arrived, they
were on to bigger and better things, like what it takes
to get ahead in this business.
This is the second of a three-part
series. – ed.]
close to home with my daughter.
John Featherstone: I started hanging
out with an English Opera company during
the summers in England.
These guys were doing
huge light shows
before
there
were moving
lights. In
Bob: You were a sound guy first,
weren’t you?
Nook: That’s correct. But Bob See [the
owner of See Factor – ed.] had more lighting gigs than he did audio gigs. So I started pulling cable, and patching monster
800-PAR can rigs for the likes of lighting
designer Howard Ungerleider and Rush. I
asked questions and watched each LD do
Olivier Ilisca: All of you guys
apparently started out in rock ‘N’
roll. I was devoted to theatre.
Bob Peterson: I got into theatre afterwards. I actually became
a Local 2 IATSE [International Alliance of Theatre and Stage Employees
— the stage hands’ union–ed.] member
and ran the stage at the Chicago Theatre
by accident. I came to love the legitimate
theatre gigs, and the concept of staying
COMING NEXT
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• Parnelli Awards
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Visualist Robert
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• Product Gallery
Lo-res, hi-res and
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100.0611.50.LD.indd 56
“I think a formal education can be
a huge benefit, but it can’t
replace the huge hours
spent on site.”
– John Featherstone
one night
I
would
watch
them
re-hang and focus
500 lights for a different show the next
night. These were the true rock opera guys.
I loved it. I watched and learned for many,
many hours.
Olivier: I would watch designers come
into my theatre and make up a plot on site.
They’d say “Let’s hang all your Fresnels over
here, place some PARs over here, and use
the Lekos for key lights. Anyone got any
gel?” It was so inspiring to see all of these
people do things differently, and I soaked
it all up.
Nook: I got into lighting by accident,
while I was working at See Factor in New
York City.
his thing. The next thing I know, they’ve
invented moving lights. I went from working 20-hour days for 500 bucks per week to
wiggling 20 moving lights for double the
money. Eventually production managers
started asking me to light their bands and
I’ve never looked back.
Olivier: How did you come to Chicago?
Nook: In 2000 I was designing at a
lighting company in Atlanta. There was this
one loud salesman who everyone despised,
especially me. John Huddleston from Upstaging called just to say hi one day. I told
him I was moving on and looking for a new
place to reside. He invited my wife and me
to visit Chicago as his guests, so we did. He
offered to build a state-of-the-art visualization suite at Upstaging if I would teach his
employees how to program consoles and
By NookSchoenfeld
use the facility. We’ve maintained a great
relationship since. My wife got out of the
South, and I got away from the salesman.
So it sounds like we’re all self-taught at
this table.
John: I think a formal education can
be a huge benefit, but it can’t replace the
huge hours spent on site. Every spring I
get a deluge of resumes from kids in college. Just because you have a degree, it
does not make you a designer. I’m
self-taught like you guys, but I
have one partner with a masters in lighting design from
Carnegie Mellon, and another with a bachelor’s in fine
arts. These guys know what
they are doing, but they’ve
spent years perfecting
their craft.
Olivier: Likewise. I
get young people calling
me, just out of Northwest or DePaul University. They say, “I’m
an LD; give me some
work.” So I tell them,
“You know what?
First thing you’re
going to do is wash
some feeder. Then
after a while I’ll let
you hang some
lights. And if you do
that correctly I’ll let
you wire some lights
for a couple years. Then
if you are still gung-ho
about this business,
we’ll talk about running a console.”
Nook: These new
[email protected]
guys, as well as a lot of
programmers, have not
spent enough time watching others. You need to develop
an eye for what we do.
John: You know, when I was getting
into lighting I would do anything — cut
gel, go get coffee, dump the truck. The fact
that you even let me in the theatre was
enough of a buzz to hook me. I think everyone in our demographic that’s successful
feels that way.
Bob: Exactly. You cannot come into
this business and expect people to hand
you a job. You have to make your own
breaks. See a door that’s slightly open,
kick it in. But don’t stop there — look for
the next door.
Check in with Nook and the guys next
month when they wrap up their discussion
about how to thrive in the lighting business.
In the meantime, you can contact the author by e-mailing [email protected].
www.PLSN.com
11/2/06 8:29:10 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 3
11/2/06 8:02:41 PM
100.0611.ADS.indd 4
11/2/06 8:03:14 PM

It`s Time To Get Lit, page 18

Transcription

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