25th Anniversary of Vari*Lite VL1, page 40

Transcription

N
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t
Vol. 7.08
page 40
S
25 th Anniversary of Vari*Lite VL1,
Headline
Sept. 2006
Genesis, September 27, 1981 –
The Show that Launched an Industry
Pros Preview
Potent Products
at PLASA
EARL’S COURT, LONDON—The
buzz words for this year’s PLASA,
the annual entertainment lighting
tradeshow in London, will be automated lighting, LEDs, media server
software upgrades, and sinewave
dimming, plus a few surprises.
The automated lighting includes
two new offerings from Martin, the
MAC 700 Wash and the MAC TW1,
a 1200-watt tungsten wash fixture.
Robe will unveil their new ColorSpot
2500E AT moving head fixture with
a Philips MSR Gold 1200 SA/SE lamp
and a 1400-watt electronic ballast,
continued on page 9
New Lighting
Award for
Undergrads
Twenty-five years ago, Vari*Lite operator Tom Littrell pressed the Go button on the first Vari*Lite system to start the
first cue of the Genesis Abacab tour in a dusty bullfighting ring in Spain. The industry has never been the same.
The automated lighting industry is still going strong, and the number of manufacturers is still growing, and
the competition for market share has never been tougher. The original Vari*Lites spawned the company VariLite, the manufacturing portion of which was recently sold to Genlyte, while the production side went to PRG,
whose owner, Jere Harris, is soon to be the youngest recipient of the Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award.
In this issue, we have complete coverage of the silver jubilee event, including the first impressions of a number of lighting designers, first person observations from the four inventors, a capsule summary of the company
spawned by the VL1, and a retrospective on the achievements of PRG founder Jere Harris on page 28. We also
have the complete Parnelli Awards ballot on page 46. Lastly, a tip of the hat to our two new Parnelli sponsors,
Precise Corporate Staging and Sound Image.
Ad info: www.plsn.com/rsc
SYRACUSE, NY—A new lighting
design award for undergraduate
students has been added to the
array of USITT Awards for Young
Designers & Technicians in the Performing Arts. The award is made
possible with support from Minnesota-based Stage Technology, and
will be presented for the first time
in 2007.
In creating the award Niles Sayre,
president of Stage Technology,
said “Other USITT awards focus on
graduate students. There is so much
talent on the undergraduate and
graduate levels, Stage Technology
continued on page 11
Inside...
34
Olesen
Celebrates 100
When Otto K. Olesen came
to Hollywood, it was a small
town of 500.
42
Hometown
Heroes
The nominations for the
Parnelli Regional Lighting
Company Awards are here.
53
Road Test
The Gadget
You can never have too
many helpful Gadgets,
including this one from
Anidea Innovations.
TABLEOFCONTENTS
What’s New
FEATURES
COLUMNS
26 Production Profile
52 Video Digerati
The glitz and glam of the Turner
Upfront.
34 Olesen Celebrates 100 Years
When Otto Olesen came to Hollywood, it was a small community of
about 500 people.
36 And Move It Did
Vari-Lite launched an industry, and
thrives in it today
24
Inside Theatre
Tarzan Swings to Life in a relatively small Broadway theatre,
where the untouched jungles of southern Africa come to life.
40 The Light that Changed
the Industry
Twenty-five years ago, the VL1 captured the imagination of the industry.
42 Hometown Heroes
Every region has its production industry heroes, but only the best can be
our Hometown Heroes.
44 PLSN Interview
Tom Bagnasco has been a fixture with
the world’s largest auto manufacturer
for more than 18 years.
46 Parnelli Ballot
Vote for your personal faves in the
Parnelli Awards.
How, exactly, do you tame the wild
video clip?
54 Feeding the Machines
While some of us light a variety of
events, few of us provide lighting
for film.
55 The Biz
In this male-dominated industry,
women are gaining ground.
60 Focus on Design
Great lighting comes to life in the dark
spaces between the light.
64 LD-at-Large
In this hyper-competitive industry,
slacking on the job is guaranteed to
get you nowhere fast.
DEPARTMENTS
05 News
08 The Event Calendar
12 International News
16 On the Move
22 Showtime
47 Projection Connection
51 Video New Products
53 Road Test
The Parnelli Awards were created to honor the best in our industry. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Jere Harris,
is the man behind the powerhouse known as PRG
The Anidea Gadget is here to simplify
your life.
58 Product Gallery
On the 25th anniversary of the launch
of the VL1 our Product Gallery covers
automated profile luminaires.
28
Jere Harris: Parnelli Lifetime
Achievement Award Winner
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
PB
EDITOR’SNOTE
The Publication of Record for the Lighting,
Staging and Projection Industries
Publisher
Terry Lowe
[email protected]
{
T
wenty-five years ago, I didn’t own
a television. But I did own a bass
guitar and amplifier, which afforded me the opportunity to crash on
the couch of a friend who also happened
to be the drummer in our band. And since
he not only had a television but cable, too,
that’s where I first
saw MTV when it
was launched on
August 1, 1981.
Unbeknownst to
me at the time, there
was something going on a mere 200
miles up the road from where I was in Austin that would change my life even more
than MTV. Jim Bornhorst, John Covington,
Tom Walsh and Brook Taylor, all employees
of Showco in Dallas, were frantically building 55 automated lights for the upcoming
Bass Doesn’t
Editor
Richard Cadena
}
Genesis Abacab tour. When Vari*Lite operator Tom Littrell pushed the button to trigger
the first cue on the first show of the tour on
September 27, 1981, it changed the course
of the entire lighting industry.
There’s a new movie called Before the
Music Dies (www.beforethemusicdies.
[email protected]
Editorial Director
Bill Evans
[email protected]
Associate Editor
Jacob Coakley
RichardCadena
music industry; “People get art and commerce mixed up. Once you can separate
the two, and see that art is art and commerce is commerce,
and understand that
this business is commerce, then it makes
that much more
sense.”
It’s very difficult
to separate art from
commerce. Commerce can exist without
art, but art—real art—will always be in demand. And in a free market, demand drives
commerce. Commerce may come and
go—remember Enron? Worldcom? Braniff
Airlines? Lotus Development? DeLorean?
Packard Motor Car? Studebaker? Digital
Equipment Corporation?—but art, true art,
endures. There are artists who are merely
the tools of commerce for music industry
moguls—the Monkees, Milli Vanilli, Vanilla
Ice and many, many more—and then there
are the enduring icons for the ages—Bob
Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, U2,
Mozart, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse,
Alfred Hitchcock...
Twenty-five years later, MTV is still thriving. But where are the music videos? They’re
been relegated to VH1, CMT and part-time
work on MTV in favor of reality television.
Is reality television art or is it merely commerce? Time will tell. My guess is that reality
programming will fall out of favor sooner or
later, and it will be replaced by a “new” art
form called music video, because music is
art and, unlike my bass playing, art endures.
Twenty-five years later, automated lighting is also thriving. Like MTV, it has evolved.
It’s now smaller, lighter, cheaper and more
reliable than it once was, and the lamps
come with a lot more features as standard
than they once did. Virtually every show
you see today, whether it’s on Broadway, in
a local nightclub, a large arena, sports venue, stadium, theatre or cruise ship features
at least some automated lighting.
I think it’s a testament to the vision
of the creative people at Showco, and
those who preceded them who tried but
failed to make automated lighting a reality. The fact that the vast majority of
entertainment lighting has some form
of automated lighting is evidence of its
demand, a demand that stems from appreciation not only of great art, but of
the marriage of art and technology. Automated lighting is the enduring icon of
the entertainment lighting industry, and
will be for some time. Whether or not
digital lighting will supplant automated
lighting as the ultimate in lighting is yet
to be decided. But automated lighting
already has a place in the Hall of Fame,
very unlike my bass playing.
“ ommerce may come and go, but art endures.”
C
com) about the “faceless machinery of the
American music industry and the increasingly bland mediocrity it produces.” In it,
a man named Questlove—and that alone
makes it intriguing—who is the drummer
for a band called the Roots, says about the
[email protected]
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]
Production Manager
Linda Evans
[email protected]
Graphic Designers
Dana Pershyn
[email protected]
Josh Harris
[email protected]
National
Advertising Director
Gregory Gallardo
[email protected]
Advertising Representative
James Leasing
[email protected]
General Manager
William Hamilton Vanyo
[email protected]
Executive Administrative
Assistant
Dawn-Marie Voss
[email protected]
Business and
Advertising Office
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Ph: 512.280.0384
Fax: 512.292.0183
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Projection, Lights & Staging News (ISSN:
1537-0046) Volume 07, Number 08 Published monthly by Timeless Communications Corp. 6000 South
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ES TA
E NTERTAINMENT SERVICES &
TECHNOLOGY ASSOC IATION
NEWS
ESTA Announces Four New Standards-Drafting
NEW YORK—Four new projects were
started at the Technical Standards Program’s
working group meetings held by ESTA on July
13 through 15 in Ft. Worth Texas. Anyone interested in joining a working group to work
on these projects is invited to join. Information about joining can be found at http://
www.esta.org/tsp/working_groups/index.
html. Anyone objecting to one of these projects because they believe it is unnecessary or
that it conflicts with an existing standard is
invited to send his or her objections to [email protected].
BSR E1.33-200x, Extensions to E1.31
(DMX512 Streaming Protocol) for Transport
of ANSI E1.20 (RDM) is a project to develop
a set of extensions to E1.31 to support ANSI
E1.20 functionality. The basic E1.31 protocol
can be described as “DMX512 over Ethernet.”
It is intended to be suitable for implementation in hardware with very limited resources.
The E1.33 project can be described as “RDM
over Ethernet.” It is to add RDM functionality while maintaining E1.31’s compatibility
with the E1.17 (ACN) control architecture and
ANSI E1.11 (DMX512-A). BSR E1.34-200x, Entertainment Technology-Measuring and
Specifying the Slipperiness of Floors Used
in Live Performance Venues, is a project to
develop a means of quantifying the slipperiness of floor surfaces used by perform-
ers in live entertainment venues. There are
other standards aimed at making sure fire
fighters don’t slip off fire engine steps and
that pedestrians don’t lose their footing,
but none deal with the concerns of performers trying to dance or to do some other
unusual movement in front of an audience.
BSR E1.34 is a project of the Floors Working
Group, which is particularly interested in
gaining new voting members in the interest category of dealer/rental company.
E1.35-200x, Standard for Lens Quality
Measurements for Pattern Projecting Luminaires Intended for Entertainment Use, is
a project to develop a method for measuring lens quality with particular emphasis on
contrast and perceived image quality (sharpness). It also will offer a method for presenting
these results on a datasheet in a format that is
readily understood by a typical end-user and
that allows the end-user to directly compare
lenses in a meaningful way. This project is a
project of the Photometrics Working Group,
which would welcome new voting members
in the interest categories of dealer/rental
company, users, and general interest.
E1.36-200x, Model Procedure for Permitting the Use of Tungsten-Halogen Incandescent Lamps and Stage and Studio
Luminaires in Vendor Exhibit Booths in
Convention and Trade Show Exhibition
Halls, is a project to develop a model set
of procedures that can be used by convention center and trade show exhibition hall
staff to mitigate the risks perceived to be
associated with the use of tungsten-halogen lamps and stage and studio luminaires
in convention centers and trade show exhibition halls and to allow their use. There is
no evidence that tungsten-halogen lamps
or stage and studio luminaires present any
greater risk as they are used in exhibition
halls than any other light source or type of
luminaire, but the management staff of at
least one major convention center in the
United States believe that they do have elevated risks and have moved to prohibit or
limit their use by exhibitors. The restrictions
are inconsistently enforced, and this complicates the trade show business. This project is a project of the Photometrics Working
Group.
In related news, ESTA announced that
ANSI E1.20-2006 Remote Device Management (RDM) for DMX512, which was recently
published, is now available for immediate
purchase as a PDF or hardcopy from http://
webstore.ansi.org or www.estafoundation.
org. The list price is $40; member and quantity
discounts are available.
Branson
Summer
Showcase
Al Hornung of Omni Lighting shows off Omni’s new automated fixtures at Theatreworks Summer Showcase 2006.
BRANSON, MO - Theatreworks 11th
Annual Summer Showcase 2006 was recently held in Branson, Missouri, drawing
customers from a wide area including St.
Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa, Southern Arkansas, Florida and Washington state. The
two-day event consisted of product
demonstrations, door prizes, food and
fun. Midwest design veteran Darrell
Dahms won the grand prize drawing, a
half-ounce Gold Commemorative Coin
from the 1984 Olympics.
Attending vendors, including LeMaitre, High End Systems, Great American
Market (GAM), City Theatrical, Rosco,
Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC), Omni
Lighting, Clay Paky, Coemar, Compulite,
Altman Stage Lighting, Philips Lighting and Osram Sylvania Lighting, were
treated to a dinner and a catamaran
cruise aboard the Spirit of America on
Table Rock Lake. In conjunction with
the Showcase, the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) threw a mixer at
the Candlestick Innan upscale restaurant overlooking Lake Taneycomo. The
purpose of the mixer was to generate
interest in TEA membership with a goal
towards starting a Branson chapter.
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 5
PLSN SPTEMBER 2006
8/31/06 9:10:19 PM
NEWS
The Adventure Begins
After three weeks of rehearsals in Culver
Studios in L.A., Mariah Carey and crew hit the
road on “The Adventures of Mimi.” The adventure will take place on two stages; the main “A
stage” and a “B stage” in the middle of the arena
floor, both designed by Justin Collie of Art Fag,
LLC. The main stage proscenium is in the shape
of a giant “M” and a curved staircase stage right
provides a path between the upper stage and
the lower stage. The ramp stage left mimics the
curve of the staircase and is used by the dancers
to move between the stages. Off stage left a DJ
spins in his booth.
Video plays a major role in the show. Four
high-resolution LED screens fly on both the
X- and the Y-axis, and the stair steps, band raisers, and DJ booth are fitted with Element Labs
VersaTubes. The proscenium and round frame
for the circular LED screen are fitted with Barco
MiPix LEDs. Blink TV and XL Touring Video are
supplying the video, which includes a Control
Freak Systems media server and an Encore
DMX Controller.
The lighting, also designed by Collie, includes
56 Vari*Lite VL 3000 Spots, 50 Martin MAC 2000
Wash fixtures, 38 Atomic 3000 Strobes, six Syncrolite 7Ks, 23 FagPods, and 44 Color Kinetics
Color Blasts. The lighting is supplied by Ed & Ted’s
Excellent Lighting.
During rehearsals, lighting director Michael
“Sparky” Anderson and programmer Demfis Fyssicopulos used two MA Lighting grandMA consoles with four NSPs in a multi-user environment,
allowing them to work on the show simultane-
ously. On the tour,
the two consoles
are synched using
the tracking mode,
insuring a backup
in the unlikely event
of a console crash.
The B stage
sports two curved
trusses with moving lights and the
deck is surrounded
Mariah Carey, Culver Studios, L.A.
by four 7K Syncrolites. Fagpods underneath the Plexiglas floor light from beneath.
According to Fyssicopulos, “The production
is as big as Mariah is. Working on this production
was very gratifying and a fantastic experience. As
a programmer, it was outstanding to work with
people like Justin Collie and people like Stewart
White from Control Freak.”
6,000 Bravos and One Elvis to Go
LAS VEGAS—Mystère, Las Vegas’ longest
running Cirque du Soleil show which is now
in its 13th year at the Treasure Island Hotel &
Casino, celebrated its 6000th performance during the 7:30 pm show on Sunday, August 6.
Fireworks, confetti and balloons were released
during the Mystère finale marking the extraordinary event. Additionally, artistic director, Ria
Martens, brought the crew onstage, joining the
cast on stage for the final bow. After the show
a party for guests and the casts and crews of all
five Las Vegas Cirque shows took place outside
at the TI Pool.
So what do 6,000 Mystère bravos add up to?
•19 miles of bungee
•12,000 cans of coke used to “mop” the stage
•72,000 red balloons
•247 coats of paint—or 1/2 inch of paint on stage
•1,661,000 gallons of Liquid Nitrogen for fog
•8,105,407 tickets sold
In related news, CKX, Inc., its
subsidiary Elvis Presley Enterprises, and Cirque du Soleil have
reached an agreement with MGM
Mirage to create a permanent Elvis Presley show at the CityCenter
hotel/casino, under construction in Las Vegas. The show is
expected to open with the hotel
in November 2009. The deal, announced during Elvis Week, or the
week of Elvis’ death on August 16,
1977, marks the return of Elvis to
Las Vegas, the site of some of the
most remarkable performances
of his career.
Guy Laliberté, founder of
Cirque du Soleil, commented,
“This new creative challenge is
exactly what we strive at accomplishing in the development of
Mystè re
our new productions. We are
working closely with our partners
to ensure the public will have an
unforgettable encounter with the King of
Rock and Roll. Elvis had a unique relationship
with his adoring fans in Vegas and a large part
of our mission is to recreate the excitement
and the spirit of joy he generated here.”
Martin Restructures Marketing
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 6
SUNRISE, FL—Martin Professional, Inc. has
restructured its Marketing department, naming Michael Nevitt as the company’s new marketing manager and establishing several new
positions. Other appointments within the department include Matthias Hinrichs as product
manager, and Paul Costa and Steve Chase as
product specialists.
All four are existing Martin US employees
with years of company and industry experience.
Michael Nevitt has a master’s degree in lighting
design from UCLA and previously worked as a designer and programmer. In addition, he served on
development teams for several controllers, both
inside and outside of Martin. He moved from his
position as controller product manager. Matthias
Hinrichs has extensive experience as a designer
and programmer and moved from his position
of control specialist. Paul Costa and Steve Chase
previously held positions in technical support and
trade shows, respectively.
In addition to serving the marketing needs of
Martin US, the new team will also focus on product development/management, field testing and
customer communication, including lighting designer/programmer relations.
“As Marketing Manager my duties
go
beyond
traditional
marketing to
all aspects of
how products
are presented
to the cus- Michael Nevitt and Matthias Hinrichs
tomer,” Nevitt
comments. “This includes supervising the team
responsible for products and involves product
training, field tests, market feedback, etc., as well
as communication, trade shows, showrooms and
selected support. Our primary focus is our customers and we are committed to releasing rock
solid and well test products for their benefit.”
Martin US President Brian Friborg comments,
“Michael and his team add a solid, technically
based support to our entire team. Their depth
of product knowledge and industry experience
is an invaluable asset to our customers. Combine
that with excellent marketing and communication skills and I am confident that our marketing
department is in good hands.”
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:10:47 PM
NEWS
Sew What? Wins Small-Business Excellence Award
RANCHO DOMINGUEZ, CA – Sew What?
Inc., manufacturer of theatrical drapes and
fabrics, has been named the national winner of the third annual Small-Business Excellence Award sponsored by Dell and the
National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
The company, founded in 1992 by Australian-born Megan Duckett has grown
from a tiny kitchen-and-garage operation
to a multi-million dollar enterprise. “When
I see a problem, I just don’t back down. I
find a way to overcome it and I use everybody I know to help me,” she said.
To that end, the business has been
re-invented several times, most recently
to serve clients on a global level. “We really take our innovator role seriously,” said
Duckett. “If we want to establish ourselves
as a progressive leader in the world of
show business, we have to assume a lead-
ership position in our ability to serve the
customer to extremes as well. Having the
technological tools to make that possible
is absolutely essential.”
The Dell/NFIB competition honors
small businesses that “instill the spirit of
innovation and apply information technology to improve customer experience”
according to the NFIB. Sew What? Inc’s
entry featured examples of ways the company and its customers benefited from a
technological “extreme makeover.” This included setting up Internet tools that allow
overseas customers to communicate with
Sew What designers and follow their job
progress in near-real time.
Sew What? cites its changeover from
paper records of certification for fire-retardant fabrics to e-records as another example of their innovative use of technology
toward serving their customers. Having all
the documentation computerized allows
producers to present an instant and complete paper trail for local fire inspectors. In
addition, computerizing the entire work
process from order intake through shipping provides the ability to instantly access any part of the job and accommodate
changes from the customer on demand.
“We’re kind of iconoclasts,” said Duckett. “Every time we find ways to improve
ourselves and make the customer experience better, we go right at it. There are no
sacred cows at Sew What? Inc.”
To qualify for the Small-Business Excellence Award, contestants must be a small
business with 100 or fewer employees, be
NFIB members, and show how they have
used technology to drive a significant
change or develop a competitive advantage in delivering superior customer value
and experience. The winner was announced
Megan Duckett
in June at the 2006 NFIB National SmallBusiness Summit in Washington, D.C.
KISS
Coffeehouse
Off To
Smoking
Start
KISS Coffeehouse
WAYNESBORO, PA—The new KISS
Coffeehouse in Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina promises coffee with an
attitude. By way of illustration, a giant pair of KISS boots built into the
storefront emits clouds of fog. The
20-foot tall, stylized boots, reminiscent of Gene Simmons’s signature
footwear, flank the Coffeehouse’s
glass facade. The fog effect is
courtesy of a Look Solutions Viper
NT fog machine sold by Cincinnatibased Theatre Effects.
“KISS Coffeehouse needed to
have fog come out of the oversized
boots at timed intervals,” notes Doug
Weber, owner of Theatre Effects. “The
Viper NT was a natural choice thanks
to its digital timer. And its interface
is very easy and intuitive which is important in a location like this where
any employee could be in charge of
the system.”
A single Viper NT is ducted to
the two boots. “ The machine is
near the boots inside the building,” Weber notes. “Since the boots
operate continuously during shop
hours the Viper required more than
a one-gallon fluid container. So we
provided a fluid delivery system
that feeds from a 55-gallon drum
and keeps filling a five-gallon pail
next to the machine.”
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 7
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
8/31/06 9:12:59 PM
NEWS
Lighting Class Pulled Off with a Little Help from Friends
LINCOLN, NE—”You speak of our kindness in loaning fixtures for a lighting class. I
don’t see it as a kindness; it’s an obligation,”
said Mark Huber, vice president of Theatrical
Media Services.
In March, Dana Taylor was asked to teach
a class in automated lighting for the International Thespian Festival, held each June
in Lincoln, Nebraska. The class was to be directed toward high school theatre teachers
interested in the use of this technology in
their productions. He had a problem in that
he didn’t know anyone in Lincoln who could
supply the needed equipment, and he felt
that a class in automated lighting would lack
a certain amount of authenticity with only
pictures of fixtures and consoles.
“I have known for a long time that the entertainment technology industry is filled with
many helpful and caring people and the truth
of that statement was revealed again after
a few phone calls and some well-placed appeals for assistance,” Taylor said.
Ellen White, product education manager
for Electronic Theatre Controls offered two
Express consoles and four Source Four Revo-
lutions for the class. Many of the participants
would likely have Express consoles in their
schools and it seemed wise to include them
in the class.
Paul Sanow, project manager at Vincent
Lighting Systems, offered to approach Strand
about the loan of consoles. Strand, through
Peter Rogers, vice president marketing, designated two of their new Palette consoles
for the class to use. To sweeten the offer, Walt
Dowling, North Region Sales Manager for
Strand, came along to assist with the consoles
and to help teach the class. Dowling brought
a breadth of understanding and experience
to the class and a touch of the real world of
lighting technology.
The last piece of the puzzle was the lighting fixtures. Knowing no one in the Lincoln
area, Taylor was put in contact with Mark
Huber, vice president at Theatrical Media Services (TMS) in Omaha, Nebraska. The initial
request was for a few automated fixtures but
Huber thought they might need a bit more
than that if the class was to be really valuable
for the participants.
TMS’ lighting rig included all High End
Systems fixtures including two x.Spots, four
Color Commands, four Cyberlights, four Studio Color 575s and the requisite power distribution and cable to power the rig.
The willingness of TMS to help stems from
a “company policy” of lending a hand. Mark
Huber, commented that, “It is all about the
continuation and expression of your love of
the arts. If you are in the arts, there is a constant state of payback. Someone has given
you a hand along the way and you in turn,
should lend a hand to those in need.”
Taylor wished to extend additional thanks
to the staff at the University of Nebraska Studio Theatre, and notably, Brad Buffum, production stage manager and Erik Vose, an MFA
candidate and master electrician for the University Repertory Theatre. Vose volunteered
his assistance to help setup for the class, which
included humping 70-pound lighting fixtures
up to dead-hung battens. Also, Pat Bressman
of TMS delivered the equipment, helped to
load it into the theatre and left his cell number in case there were any questions.
“The result of each company’s generosity
was a class that offered real life experiences
to the 15 participants, who will then pass that
knowledge onto their own students who will
then pass it…you get the point,” Taylor said.
“Thanks friends.”
Verde Laser on Tour with Poison
MIAMI, FL—The 20th anniversary tour
of the legendary rock band, Poison is being
punctuated by a 20-watt Verde Beam Raider laser. The air-cooled green laser system
targeted bounce mirrors and blasted aerial
patterns into the air. The laser system is being provided by LaserNet.
According to Poison tour manager Mark
Hogue, “We were very pleased with the reliability of the LaserNet system; it never
missed a beat. Plus, never having to mess
with water hoses made it a dream come
true.”
LD Mark Miller added, “The laser projector is very well built and we have worked it
hard with no problems. I can see more rock
‘n’ roll in its future, and even corporate gigs.”
LaserNet’s President, Tom Harman
noted; “The Beam Raider system has been
very successful in clubs, but getting it on
the road was the acid test. We knew in our
bones that it would be reliable, but, seeing
is believing. We are very excited with the
success of the tour.”
The laser system includes 12 bounce
mirrors, two cone projectors, and LaserMax Pro Lasershow software. In addition
to the normal gear, a window air-conditioner was brought along to cool the laser during the hottest dates of the summer tour. The AC unit was used twice;
once for the laser in Arizona and once
for the operators.
LaserNet operators Tom “Hammer” Foster and Mike Dietz shared the responsibilities of life on the road with the laser.
Poison Concert
Upcoming Events
•PLASA: Sep 10-13, Earls Court, London
(www.plasashow.com)
•High End Systems Open House: Sep
13-14, Sound Check, Nashville, TN
(www.highend.com)
•High End Systems Open House: Sep
13-15, High End L.A., Van Nuys, CA
(www.highend.com)
•Rigging Seminars: Oct 9-12, Seattle, WA
(www.riggingseminars.com)
•Prolight + Sound Shanghai: Oct 18-21,
Shanghai New International Expo Centre,
Shanghai, China ([email protected])
•LDI 2006: Oct 20-22, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV
(www.ldishow.com)
•Stagemaker® Training Program: Nov,
R&M Materials Handling, Inc., Springfield,
OH (www.rmhoist.com)
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 8
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:13:18 PM
NEWS
LEDs Make for Breezy Show at Rockefeller Center
NEW YORK—High atop New York’s
Rockefeller Center is a unique, interactive
space that takes the capabilities of intelligent LED lighting to new heights. Conceptualized by Electroland of Los Angeles, the
Target Interactive Breezeway is an imaginatively lit passage that connects the Center’s
top-floor observation decks. Its intention is
to engage visitors as they pass through by
tracing their movement with intelligently
controlled light.
The space comprises a glowing ceiling and walls that are entirely lit by LED
systems. Approximately 1,300 Color Kinetics iColor Cove MX Powercore units were
employed as individually controllable, onefoot “pixels.” The units receive power and
data from compact Data Enabler devices,
which eliminate the need for low-voltage
power supplies. The unmistakable Target
brand is represented by bulls-eye logo
light fixtures integrated within the interactive pixel array.
Each pixel in the intelligent skin is composed of four iColor Cove MX units, tightly
grouped, says Seeley. These groupings are
located in all available wall and ceiling surfaces, behind translucent glass and backlit
by white LED strips. With support from Color Kinetics we developed our own custom
software for controlling the fixtures. Our
application sends UDP packets directly to
the bank of Data Enablers to generate patterns in the intelligent skin.
The designers engaged Tyzx Inc to
provide an elaborate tracking system that
takes advantage of Color Kinetics’ precisely controllable lighting systems for an
immersive and interactive environment.
Data from four stereo video cameras is
combined to locate and individually track
up to 30 separate visitors as they enter and
walk around the space. Upon entry each
visitor is automatically assigned a “person-
ality” by the 3-D tracking system and is in
turn followed by individualized light colors
and patterns. The designers in Los Angeles
are able to continuously monitor this New
York space remotely via a live webcam and
high-speed Internet connection, and are
able to upload and adjust new patterns remotely. New response patterns are tested
on a regular basis.
The result? According to Electroland the space “represents an attempt
to translate video-game interactivity,
computer intelligence and personalized
electronic experiences into an environmental experience.
To view the installation in action, visit
http://electroland.net/qt_target_rock_
vs02.html.
The breezeway in green
The breezeway in blue
New Products
to be Unveiled
at PLASA
continued from front cover
while SGM will show their new Synthesis automated luminaire.
Some of the many new LED products include TMB’s ColourPix Highand Low-Res modules, production
versions of AC Lighting’s ChromaQ™ Color Web LED system, SGM’s
Palco 5 with K2 LEDs (12 blue, 24
green, and 13 red), and SGM’s Genio
Mobile LED with an IP rating of 65.
New upgrades to media servers
include High End Systems Catalyst
Pro v4 and PixelMad and to display
content, Barco will show their new
MiStrip. Or for something stealthier,
Element Labs is expected to show
their new Stealth modular LED display panels.
Though they likely won’t be applicable to North America, ADB Lighting
Technologies’ new Euro-Sine 3K and
5K dimmers are a good indicator of
the state of the art. And the surprises
are...well, you might have to check
our PLASA Show Report in the next
issue of PLSN, but let’s just say that
we’re expecting something in the
digital luminaire department from
others besides High End Systems.
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 9
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
8/31/06 9:13:41 PM
NEWS
Teaching Theatre Kicks Off New Season
BUNNELL, FL – The 1000-seat Flagler Auditorium, located on the Northeast coast of Fla., is
a teaching theatre, working in conjunction with
Flagler Palm Coast High School, teaching theatre
tech and acting. Advanced students have the opportunity to work alongside professionals when
they come to the theatre, in addition to working
shows at other theatres in area. Some even go on
to work with IATSE. In a typical semester, there
are four classes, each with at least 30 students,
and some with even larger classes. The more advanced students are also taken to LDI every other
year when it’s in Orlando.
The students have the opportunity to work
in a state-of-the-art facility with current lighting
tools.The lighting system included an ETC Insight
console with Emphasis (WYSIWYG), 196 dimmers,
Source Fours, 6” and 8” Fresnels, six High End Sys-
tems Studio Spots 575 CMYs, and two Lycian M2
modular followspots.
According to Bruce Brady, who has been a
tech in the theatre for 13 years, several of the students have gone on to work in the industry.“One
young lady, Amanda Brown, is working in the
theatres in Branson. Another young man went
into the theatre with a local professional group,
Seaside Musical Theatre, and he’s now in management. Another is at North Carolina School
of the Arts, Steven Mayhugh, studying theatre.
Another student is at the University of Florida in
Pensacola—Nathan Smith.”
The teaching theatre has also had students
picked up and taken on the road with touring Broadway shows. “We had one student that
worked with the same Broadway show three
years in a row. The same crew kept coming back,
and they said to her, ‘Come with us now.’ ” She
worked in wardrobe. We turn out some pretty
good kids here. We have a few little budding
flowers here and there.”
Jack Nieberlein, who is the technical director,
has been with the theatre for six years.
Fab Four performing in Flagler Auditorium
In Brief
Angstrom Lighting provided the
lighting equipment for a special concert performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Montalban Theatre in Hollywood, California to benefit YouTHeatre
America! The Andrew Lloyd WebberTim Rice musical was directed by Gary
Goddard of Gary Goddard Entertainment, with lighting design by Rick Belzer, founder of Big Apple Lights and
Belzer Design International... Automation and control specialists Kinesys
have designed and built a custom control system for 40 giant streamer cannons which have been added to the
latest leg of the Rolling Stones Bigger
Bang world tour. Andy Cave is the project manager for Kinesys in close association with Andy Edwards from Brilliant Stages, designer of the hardware,
and in conjunction with the show’s set
designer Mark Fisher.
Article was a Blast
I wanted to take the time to drop
you a line to tell you how much I appreciated the article on our certification of
pyrotechnics bill in Tennessee (The Biz,
May 2006). I received so many positive
calls and great feedback from technicians to coliseums. Since your article,
the bill passed overwhelmingly and
was signed by the Governor. We have
interest from several other states at taking a look at this legislation as a model
for pyro certification. Also, I have been
retained by the Pyrotechnic Guild International as their lobbyist.
Melissa Bast
No Bloopers Here
I enjoyed your story about the Al
Kooper-Mike Bloomfield incident (Hopper, Kooper, and the Super Duper Blooper,
August, 2006). Good things can come
with persistence. As they say, “It’s sometimes easer to get forgiveness than permission.” Looks like it really worked for Al.
I hate to age myself but I have a reel to
reel tape of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield “Live” and also “Super Session” with
them and Steve Stills together. I use to
put my albums on tape to keep them
from getting scratched up. Of course the
albums are long gone now (too many exwives), but I still have my tapes. I enjoy
PLSN; keep up the good work.
Phil Allen
Corrections:
In the Editor’s Note last month we
misspelled Rear Admiral Grace Hopper’s
name. We regret the error.
Also, in the On The Move section,
we neglected to note Matt Pearlman’s
new position in his return to Intelligent
Lighting Creations. He has re-joined ILC
as account manager.
100.0609.5-10.News.indd 10
8/31/06 9:14:19 PM
INTERNATIONALNEWS
Many Martins for “One” Project
TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL—Since appearing
as Israel’s entrant to the 1990 Eurovision
Song Contest, Rita has established herself as one of Israel’s most popular singers ever. She is currently performing in a
series of spectacular shows called “One”
staged in Tel-Aviv’s Fair Grounds.
“One” is the largest multi-show production ever produced in Israel, an extravagant performance that showcases Rita’s
many talents. The format of the show was
taken from such shows as Cirque Du Soleil and Celine Dion’s “A New Day” in Las
Vegas. “One” features acrobats, high wire
acts, fire, water, 70 dancers and a huge 30meter by 7-meter black projection screen.
The stage spans over 33 meters wide by
20 meters deep, with a lighting rig that
includes 50 MAC 700 Profiles, 60 MAC
600 washlights, 24 MAC 550 profile spots,
eight MAC 2000 Performances and four
Atomic 3000 strobes along with 350 dimmers and 42 scrollers. Several DF-50 and
Martin Magnum series foggers provide
the atmospheric haze.
The lighting rig was supplied jointly
by Martin distributor Lightone of Israel
and Kilim Light & Sound, one of the top
lighting rental companies in the country. All the MAC 700 Profiles and 24 of
the MAC 600’s were supplied brand new
by Lightone with support provided by
both companies.
“I started the project by creating a 3D
MSD (Martin ShowDesigner) model off
the AutoCAD drawing sent to me by the
stage and set designer,” commented assistant LD and programmer Ofer Brum. “I
then added the lighting rig sent to me by
Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi), the project LD.
“Due to a very tight schedule on site,
the next stage was to connect MSD to the
lighting console and start programming
offline. After two weeks we moved the
whole system to the warehouse where the
stage was set. We started to supervise the
project on site while continuing to add elements using MSD. It also proved a good
solution while doing last minute, on site
modifications to the lighting rig since the
hanging structure was loaded down, not
leaving much room for the lighting rig.
“We completed about 70% of the programming using MSD. For a project of this
scale, we never would have achieved such
detailed programming (more then 700
cues) without the ability to program offline. The new MAC 700 Profile did a nice
job and all in all the system worked very
well. The show looks outstanding.”
Light Energizes Power Plant
LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Centrally located
in the city of Leipzig is the gas and steam
cogeneration plant, GuD Heizkraftwerk.
Owners Leipziger Stadtwerke GmbH
sought to integrate the building with
the more aesthetic structures of Leipzig’s
architectural center and thereby positively influence the city’s nighttime image.
Commercially, the company wanted to
visually brand the cogeneration plant with
the yellow and blue logo of Stadtwerke
Leipzig. In November 2003 the company
presented IPRO Leipzig with a draft and
implementation plan that
called for a unique nighttime lighting concept that
could achieve these goals.
Lighting artist Jürgen
Meier was subsequently
contracted and worked
with Armada Signs, the
leading lighting promotion company in central
Germany, on a striking illumination concept that
emphasizes the facade
structure and architecture
of the boiler house. The illumination consists of 12 Martin Architectural Exterior 600 and 4 Martin Exterior 200
color changers located around the building
which render the building’s finely drawn
grid structure visible in tones of blue and
yellow. The luminaires powerful illuminant and optimized optical characteristic
provide an even wash across the building
while the fully programmable color mixing
system makes a nearly limitless spectrum
of rich colors available. Technical aspects of
the illumination were handled by Heinrich
Müller of Licht-In-Form of Dresden.
continued from front cover
wishes to reward talent coming from an undergraduate program. An award limited to
undergraduate students may recognize a
student from one of the active smaller college theatre programs.”
Undergraduate students must be nominated for the award by a USITT member. Applications, which will be available soon on
the USITT website, must include letters of
recommendation, the candidate’s working
philosophy and examples of work, including those showing compositional skill and
a light plot, among other requirements.
The award includes a cash prize, complimentary registration for the USITT Annual Conference & Stage Expo to be held in
Phoenix, Arizona March 14 to 17, 2007, and
an opportunity to meet with Stage Technology representatives.
Lisa Westkaemper, USITT’s Acting VicePresident for Promotion & Development,
praised Mr. Sayre and Stage Technology
for seeing and moving to fill a gap in the
Awards for Young Designers & Technicians
in the Performing Arts. “By creating this
award, Stage Technology recognizes the innovative and creative work being done in
undergraduate programs across the nation.
Our panel of adjudicators looks forward to
reviewing the submissions for this award,”
she said.
For more information about the awards,
or USITT, visit www.usitt.org.
New Lighting Award
for Undergrads
INTERNATIONALNEWS
Jurassic Lighting
Ad info: www.fohonline.com/rsc
LONDON—White Light, the exclusive UK
distributor for the range of DMX networking
and control equipment from ELC, has supplied eight ELC miniSTOREs to the new Dino
Jaws traveling exhibition from the Natural
History Museum.
Designed by exhibition designers Ralph
Appelbaum Associates (RAA), the lighting for
Dino Jaws has been designed by leading architectural and exhibition lighting consultants
dha design.“Dino Jaws features eight automated dinosaurs and an interactive display area
called the LAB. The aesthetic requirement was
to light each dinosaur, but not to make a light
show so dazzling it distracted from them,” explains Flick Ansell of dha design.“The brief was
subtle changing landscapes and, importantly,
to make shadow play on the different colored
backdrop between each dinosaur.“
“There was also a practical brief that each
display area could, in future, be toured as a
stand alone exhibit. This meant that the lighting for each area had to be integral to that
area.” To help facilitate this, dha and RAA developed high-level and low-level three-circuit
track lighting positions that were then routed
back to one six-way dimmer rack per dinosaur.
“The control and dimmer systems were
developed with Roger Hennigan and Julie
Harper of White Light at a mock up with
the Natural History Museum, RAA and the
electrical contractor Reed Electrical all present, so that everyone understood what was
possible—the difference between ‘moving
lights’ and ‘the movement of light’ is best
explained to non-lighting specialists by a
mock-up,” Flick explains.
For programming the lighting, a series
of linked cues creating dynamic lighting
sequences, White Light supplied an ETC Express console. Once the lighting for each
dinosaur was completed, that entire lighting sequence was recorded into one ELC
miniSTORE per dinosaur. The miniSTORE is
a reduced version of ELC’s showSTORE show
backup system; it captures up to 512 channels of DMX data from another lighting console in real time, and can then play it back to
provide show backup or, in the case of Dino
Jaws, complete show playback.
Art Imitates Light
100.0609.11-15.INT.indd 12
LANCASHIRE, UK—HSL supplied all lighting, rigging and staging for the Whiteplane
2 project, a live interactive performance/
art installation tour using an atmospheric
mix of ambisonic sound and architectural
lighting, created by experimental artists
Alex Bradley and Charles Poulet. The audience enters the space and sit, stand or lie
between the two planes of light, which
change color and intensity as the piece unfolds. The multilayered physical experience
is completed by the “walls” of sound coming in from the sides, immersing everyone
in tonal sweeps of color and sonic waves.
Bradley and Poulet have used conventional lighting in many of
their previous works, but
this was their first time with
LED and they were originally
put into contact with HSL by
Chris Ewington, inventor of
the Pixel range of products.
HSL’s Ian Stevens managed
the project.
The floor is made up
from 8x4 Steeldeck frames
covered with a special Perspex mesh. The PixelLines
sit below this, on a floor area
covered with Lee silvered
gel. The top plane is made
from standard rear projec-
tion screen, stretched taught with bungies
on a frame constructed from A-type trussing, suspended by four one-ton Lodestar
motors. A Tomcat 1 truss bridging system
over the top of the A-type is used to support the PixelLines that shine down through
the screen material from the top plane. This
was a collaborative design by HSL’s head of
rigging Rupert Reynolds Charles Poulet and
Alex Bradley.
The PixelLines are run DMX through an
Expression lighting console. The HSL team
also supplied motors and flew the d&b line
array PA from Orbital with another four
one-ton Lodestars.
Visitors at the Whiteplane 2 installation
9/1/06 9:36:40 AM
INTERNATIONALNEWS
Guilfest Happens In Orbit
MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND—Entec Sound &
Light supplied audio and lighting production for three of the seven stages at GuilFest
2006, now in its 15th
year. Entec provided
sound and lighting production services to the
Radio 2 Main Stage and
the Rock Sound Stage.
The lighting department also installed a
system into the Theatre
Tent for the Howard
Cragg’s festival team
to service.
Main stage lighting
was co-ordinated by
Russell Matthews. Entec
supplied a WholeHog II and expansion wing
an Avolites Diamond 4 Elite console— all the
headliners brought their own LDs—Dom
Smith did Embrace, JoJo Tillmann works
with Ah-Ha and Brian Farris pressed the buttons for Billy Idol.
All this took place on a 15 meter Orbit
stage, fairly limited for space and headroom. They used three sections of jointed
trusses for the front and back runs, which
hinged down and followed the contours of
the roof, with a straight run of truss for the
middle position rigged by Al Beechey and
Urko Arruzza.
The moving lights of choice were
Vari*Lites—21 VL 2500 Spots and 16 2402
washes. There were six Martin Professional Atomic strobes, four JTE PixelLines on
the mid-truss—useful for daytime effects,
five 8-lites along the top of the front truss
for audience blinders and six 2-lites at the
back. Additional front truss key lighting was
provided from six Source Fours. Four floormounted vertical lamp bars provided sidestage cross washes, which were great for the
very neat illumination of people’s faces. Two
DF50 Hazers and Jem DMX Smoke Machines
completed the stage look.
A more reserved look adorned the theatre stage. Two 30-foot trusses sprinkled
with bars of Source Four PARs and Profiles
plus fresnels provided an even coverage for
the theatre, art and dance workshops taking
place throughout the weekend. The kit was
installed and dismantled for Howard Craggs
by Chris “Gaddie” Gadd and Leo Tierney.
www.PLSN.com
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
15
ONTHEMOVE
Altman Rentals is pleased to welcome
Sabrina Asquith as a rental
agent to its staff. Prior to joining Altman Rentals, Asquith
worked in sales and customer
service for City Theatrical, Inc. Sabrina Asquith
Audio Visual Innovations had plenty of
movement as David Stana has joined the company as sales engineer for the regional office
in Dallas. Mark Mathes joined the company
as account manager for the regional office in
Orlando. Gary L. Osteen came aboard as sales
bid estimator for the regional office in Atlanta.
Robert Perez joined the company as account
manager. In Tampa, Harrison Midkiff was promoted to the position of director of network
support for AVI’s corporate regional office. Lastly, Drew Wilson joined the company as project
engineer for the regional office in Atlanta.
John Ebert has accepted the position of
midwest dealer sales manager at Creative Stage
Lighting. Ebert brings an
extensive background in
stagecraft and lighting design to CSL.
John Ebert
Electrosonic Systems
Inc. has announced that
Eric Trombley has been promoted to product manager
of the company’s new Video Display Systems group. Eric Trombley
Tony Perez joined Gear Source, Inc. and
Rental-Source, LLC in a sales role following
successful runs with both Coemar US and
Robe America.
In-House
Production has hired Michael V.
Smith as director of sales
and marketing. A veteran
around the stage and production industry, Smith Michael V. Smith
will be promoting the new
in-house rigging products.
The International Association of Assembly
Managers appointed Larry
B. Perkins, CFE, CPP, CMP, assistant general manager,
RBC Center, Raleigh, North Larry B. Perkins
Carolina as the president.
Bob Fernley has been named director of
Digital Intermediate Operations at LaserPacific Media Corporation. He will be responsible for guiding the postproduction facility’s
operations in the DI arena.
LightParts Inc., the parts and repair
source for automated lighting, announced
that Carl Wake joined the company as imperial master/czar of all things Martin.
Deb Miller has joined OSA Production
Services as an account executive.
Stage Crew Audiovisual in Puerto Rico,
is proud to announce
that Carlos E. McConnie Loveland has been
named sales & market- Carlos McConnie
ing manager, and that
Mariano Fonseca Matos
has been named operations manager.
Mariano Fonseca
Tyler Truss Systems
has added two key sales
people—Mike Gibson and
Tracy Arnold—and relocated its sales and marketing
department to Pendleton, Scott Almand
Ind., 20 miles northeast
of Indianapolis. GM Scott
Almand has relocated to
Pendleton as well. Manufacturing will remain in
Tyler, Texas. Gibson, a vet- Tracy Arnold
eran LD, and Arnold, formerly an audio/recording
engineer and crew member for Kenny Chesney, are
responsible for business
development and project
Michael Gibson
management. Pendleton’s
new contact information is: 7979 W. Fall
Creek Dr, Pendleton, IN 46064-7075, phone
317.485.4604, fax 317.485.4228
PLSN september 2006
ON THE MOVE,
IN THE TRENCHES,
SHOWTIME
OR
WELCOME TO
MY NIGHTMARE,
SEND YOUR INFO
AND PICS TO:
[email protected]
16
TO GET LISTED IN
www.PLSN.com
LDINEWPRODUCTS
18
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.18-20.LDInewprod.indd 18
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:19:36 PM
LDINEWPRODUCTS
www.PLSN.com
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
19
8/31/06 9:20:05 PM
LDINEWPRODUCT
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
20
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:20:26 PM
SHOWTIME
Radiohead
Venue
Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA
Crew
Lighting Company: Upstaging, Inc.
Lighting Designer: Andi Watson
Lighting Technicians: Andy Beller, Ed
Jackson, Rob Gawler, Tom Green
Lighting Console: Flying Pig Systems
Wholehog III
Gear
12
2
CM 1-ton Motor
CM ½-ton Motor
1
2
25
4
4
4
10
8
4
16
8
12
10
12
10
12
8
Motion Labs Motor
Control System
20.5” x 20.5” x 4’‚ Black Box Truss
20.5” x 20.5” x 8’‚ Black Box Truss
12” x 12” x 8’‚ Black Box Truss
12” x 8’‚ Black Triangle Truss
20.5” Black Corner Block
Truss Bases
T-Bars, Various Lengths
8-Light Moles
Lowell Omni Fixtures
PAR 64s
ETC Source Four 26°
Stations Clear Com Intercom
Martin MAC 2000
Performance Luminaire
Martin MAC 2000
Wash Luminaire
8
12
6
6
10
8
15
2
2
4
1
1
1
3
Martin MAC 700 Luminaire
Martin MAC 300 Luminaire
Martin Atomic Strobes
Martin Atomic
Color Scrollers
Wybron 7 Coloram
Wybron 8-Light Coloram
Electronic Kabuki Solenoid
Confetti Storm
CAE A/C Distribution Rack
Cirro Lite Strata Mist
ETC Sensor 48 x 2.4k
Dimmer Rack
ETC Sensor 24 x 2.4k
Dimmer Rack
DMX Datalynx Show
Back-Up
DMX DataSplit Data Splitter
Alberta at the Smithsonian
Venue
The National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.
Crew
Big Drape: Syzygy Event Productions
Event Director: Jeff Monner
Production Manager: Mark Vilensky
Lighting Company: Atmosphere Inc.
Lighting Designer: Jay Snyder
Lighting Board Op: Steve Balazs
Spotlight Operators: Rob Powers, Laura Witkowski
Sound Design Consultant: Steve Fisher (Smithsonian)
Sound Company: National Sound
President: Tom Linthicum
FOH Engineer: Harry Cimermanis
Monitor Engineer: Chris Kozlowski
Deck Men: Andy Derr, Josh Derr,“T.J.”, Chris Lawson
Video Company: CPR MultiMedia Solutions
Video Crew: Brian Lemon, Robin Anderson, Cleve Baker
Camera Crew: Rolf Johansson, Bob Evans, Austin Steo
Gear
1
16
8
6
4
44
2
12
22
52
2
2
6
Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II
Martin MAC 2000 Wash
Martin MAC 2000 Profile
Martin MAC 2000 Performance
High End Systems Studio Color 575
ETC Source Four PAR
ETC Source Four 5°
EDI 48 x 2.4k dimmers
Lycian 400 Spotlights
Barco R8 Projectors
Ubuntu Education Fund/Angelique Kidjo
Venue
Puck Building, New York, NY
Crew
Producer: E.I. Read
Lighting Company: 4Wall Lighting
Production Manager: Paul Newall
Lighting Designer/Director, Automated
Lighting Op: E.I. Read
Lighting Technicians: Jeff Turner,
Production Electrician and the
4Wall irregulars
Set Design: Ubuntu
Set Construction: SIR
Rigger: Jeff Turner
Staging Company: Studio Instrument Rental
Video Director: Bill Magod, Video Rep
Video Company: Michael Andrews Audio Visual
Gear
1
1
1
5
2
1
Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC
Jands Hog 1000
ETC Acclaim 12/2
Martin MAC 2000 Performances
Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
ETC 48-way Sensor dimmers
22
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
www.PLSN.com
1
35
25
20
26
2
3
4
4
2
4
4
1
ETC 12-way Sensor dimmers
ETC Source Four 50 degree
ETC Source Four PARs
10' 21 1/2" Truss
10' 12" Box
8' 12" Box
4' 12" Box
Christie LX 66 Video Projector
Christie LX45 Video Projector
DA
NC8000 Laptop
Venue
Bank United Center, Coral Gables, FL
Crew
Producer: Cisco Suarez
Lighting Company: PRG (Orlando)
Production Manager: Tony Parodi
Lighting Designer: Carlos Colina
Lighting Director: Ramon Furelos, Noah Mitz
Automated Lighting Operator: Ken Hudson
Lighting Technicians: Matt Bloom, Brett Pulwaski, Mike Smallmen, Alex Flores, Luis Portela
Set Design: Jorge Dominquez
Set Construction: Jupiter Scenic
Rigger: Dennis White, Tony Pol
Staging Company: Roc-Off
Staging Carpenter: Jesus (Chuy) Fragoso
Staging Products: Roc-Off
Video Director: Jason Rudolph
Video Company: Roca Video
Gear
82
35
Vari*Lite VL5s (Light Stipple Lens)
Vari*Lite VL5s (Narrow Flood Lens)
8
39
17
10
30
22
10
24
57
42
24
24
8
14
31
15
9
4
4
48
7
5
Vari*Lite VL5s (Med. Flood Lens)
Vari*Lite VL5 ARCs (all with clear lens)
Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots
Vari*Lite VL2416s (Very Narrow Lens)
Vari*Lite VL6Cs
Vari*Lite VL7us
Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes
Coemar iWash Halos
Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12s
Coemar Parlite LED (Truss Toners)
ETC Source Four PARs with MFL
ETC Source Four PARs with NNSF
Birdies PAR 16 NFLs
9-Lite PAR 56s
Duccio One cell cycs w/
500w lamps
ETC 10° Source Four Lekos
ETC 19° Source Four Lekos
2K Mole Zips
Mathews C-Stands
Spill Rings for Source Four PARs
Strong Super Trouper II
Lycian Starklite Short
Premios Juventud
2
1
1
2
14
44
68
64
7
15
5
7
44
3
6
1
EMBARQ Company Launch
Venue
Orleans Arena, Las Vegas, NV
Crew
Lighting Company: Event Tech,
Hanover, MD
Technical Director: Mike Aug
Conventional LD: Bob Anders
Moving Light LD: Matt Stephens
ME: Dave Garman, Paul Dreher,
Robert Ingram
Promoter/Producer: JOM
Lighting Company: The Opera Shop
Production Manager: Reed Hall (JOM)
Lighting Designer/Director: Tom Stanziano
Lighting Technicians: Joel Wojcik, Dominic Fanelli,
Kevin Maas, Sue Osborn
Rigger: Joel Wojcik
Video Director: Jon Swearington
Video Company: JOM / DPS
Video 2/Camera: Erin Darling
Lead Camera: Keith Simpson
Graphics: Julian Pizzaro
Projectionist: Kyle Weir
Gear
1
1
12
20
MA Lighting grandMA
MA Lighting grandMA Light
High End Systems Studio Beams
Martin MAC 2000 Profile E2
Gear
1
1
1
1
2
4
24 10
12
8
Hog iPC
Hog 500
ETC Express 250
Leprecon 1624/48 plus
ETC 48way Sensor Touring Rack
Leprecon 24way VX Touring
Dimmer Rack Moving Lights
Martin Mac700
High End Studio Beam
High End Studio Spot 575
High End Studio Spot 250
18
6 5
158 18 50 12 32 9
144 2
2
High End Studio Color
High End Technobeam
High End Trackspot
Source 4 PAR
Source 4 19° fixture
L&E Broad Cyc light
PAR38
Strong Super Trouper followspot
DF50 hazer
An Evening with Joel Osteen
14
5
7
14
1
2
2
12
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
High End Systems Studio Color S
Griven Kolorado 1.8
Thomas 9-light w/Wybron Scroller
ETC Sensor 48K Dimmer Rack
Opera Shop moving light distro
Fleenor DMX splitter,
CM 1-ton Chain Hoist
Motion Labs Hoist Controller
Gainsville CV120 SDI Switcher
JOM Custom Flypack, Playback via Nuendo 3.0 on
Custom AMD rackmount computer
Sony BVP700 camera (triax),
Sony BVP750 camera (triax), Fujinon lensing, Viten
camera support,
Draper Cinefold 15' x 20' truss screens, rear projection.
Barco SLM R12+ Projector
Crew
Throw Model 1271
MA Lighting grandMA
Consoles (with 100mb
Ethernet card)
VLPS Virtuoso Console
Flying Pig Systems
Wholehog III
ETC Insight 3 Console
Hoist 208V 1/4-Ton Motors
Hoist 208V 1/2-Ton Motors
Hoist 208V 1-Ton Motors
Truss Box 20"x20"x10'
12' x 3' D& Display Columns
42" Plasma Displays
Element Labs Versa Tubes
Stewart Screens
DPI 28SX DLP Projectors
DynaScan
www.PLSN.com
PLSN
JULYPLSN
2006
SEPTEMBER
2006
23
23
INSIDETHEATRE
Flying adds to
lighting complexity
By CoryFitzGerald
T
ransforming Broadway theatres into
exotic locations is not a new concept; however it is rarely done to
the extent found at the Richard Rodgers
Theatre, which has been converted into
the tropical jungle home to Disney’s latest Broadway effort, Tarzan. Within this
relatively small Broadway theatre, the untouched jungles of southern Africa come
to life every night to tell the story of a
boy left without his parents, taken in by
a tribe of apes and raised as one of their
own. To illustrate this classic tale, the production has utilized an extensive array of
rigging and flying equipment to literally
make the actors fly off the stage and in
and out of the set with total grace. With
the set designed by
Bob Crowley, the production turned to Natasha Katz to
light the show and capture the visual essence of this jungle adventure.
The set for the show is a unique departure for a typical Broadway musical. It
consists of a back wall and two sidewalls
which never move, but are covered with a
number of holes draped with multicolored
green vines. This not only gives the illusion
of depth behind the vines, but also allows
the actors to have seemingly countless entry points onto the stage. Since so much
of the flying intersects with the set, all of
the walls and alcoves are covered with as
much as three feet of inflatable material to
provide for softer impacts should the actors hit the scenery.
This extensive scenic layout created
somewhat of a difficulty in terms of placing lighting equipment into usable positions. Katz explains, “We had a sidelight
position in one, and we had one upstage
just downstage of the back wall. What
happens otherwise, because of the flying, the lights couldn’t be at a low trim
because all the flying lines would hit the
electrics which would be dangerous. So
all of the electrics have the ability to have
different trims. Whenever there is anything flying, most of the electrics are out
at their high trim of 45 feet, which makes
it hard to hit the actors with anything except backlight. On top of the side walls
we have a permanent lighting position
which is about 26-28 feet, which can add
light from the sides and the back and that
was really helpful.”
The show evolved from simple ideas to
what it is today over a long and extensive
process. Katz says. “The set designer, Bob
Crowley, had been working on the show
for maybe three years before they did it on
Broadway. It started as an arena show, then
it became theatre in the round, then they
were going to do it off-Broadway. It went
through so many incarnations. Then they
did a flying workshop down in Buenos Aires with Pichón Baldinu, and they learned
a lot down there. That’s when they decided
to put it in the Richard Rodgers. The Richard Rodgers is not very deep at all, and
was picked because of the sightlines. From
most of the seats you can see the flying,
which wouldn’t be true in most Broadway
houses. Bob wanted it to feel like an enclosed rainforest and I think that’s where
the box idea came from. To make it a place
where no human had ever been, where
light has a hard time getting into.”
In order to get the most out of the surrounding jungle walls, Katz used a huge
array of LED fixtures to highlight the space
around and within the walls. “Behind all
the green vines in the set are inflatable
mats which are there to protect the actors
from dangerous scenic elements while flying. But they were light translucent, which
is what allowed the set to have a certain
glow, which then allowed us to have a
backdrop that then means I can carve actors out. The genesis of all these issues is
that it was to be set in a box, but these are
the ways we collaborated to make the box
a viable theatrical set. We have hundreds
of Color Kinetics Color Blast strip lights,
which are about two inches away from
the inflatable padding surrounding the
set, because they’re LEDs and they don’t
give off that much heat. They are all on
about nine-inch centers, so the back wall
is practically covered with Color Blasts,
making it essentially like a light box.”
Another noticeable issue within the
acting space on-stage is that the entire
“The hard part was that the actors have to stay in a
position, and you can’t have them stop in mid-swing.”
– lighting designer Natasha Katz
24
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.24-25.BROAD.indd 24
Gear List
1
2
6
6
3
392
50
13
13
205
11
19
21 49 8
29 14 10
12
12
150
16 4
26
14
7
3
2
2
20 20
60 ETC Obsession II DPS 4608
Virtuoso DX Control Consoles
96 X 2.4kW ETC Sensor Dimmer Racks
City Theatrical WDS 15-amp Dimmers
City Theatrical WDA Personal Dimmers
ETC Source Fours
ETC Source Four PARs
Altman PAR 64 Steel Can NSP
Strand 6” Bambino Fresnel
w/Barn Doors
“Birdies” MR16 Steel Cans
New Style L&E 6’ Mini-Strip #6560, three-circuit (Lamp EYF 75w/12v).
New Style L&E 8’ Mini-Strip #6580, four-circuit (Lamp EYF 75w/12v).
Vari*Lite VL3500Q Spot Luminaires
Vari*Lite VL3500 Spot Luminaires
Vari*Lite VL2500 Spot Luminaires
Vari*Lite VL2000 Wash Luminaires
Vari*Lite VL5 Wash Luminaires w Tungsten Lamp
ETC Source Four Revolution
Wybron BP-2 Beam Luminaire mounted in City Theatrical AutoYoke
City Theatrical AutoYoke retrofitted for Wybron BP-2 Beam Luminaire
4-Inch Wybron Coloram II Scroller
High End Dataflash AF1000 Xenon Strobes in PAR 64 Steel Can
Housing w/DMX
Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes
GAM SX 4 w/ Four-Gobo Tray
City Theatrical EFX Plus2 Variable Speed 0-12 RPM
Ocean Optics Sea Changer Color Engine
Altman UV-705 Blacklight Floodlight DMX-controlled
Lycian 1290 XLT Xenon 2000w Fol
lowspots
Lycian Starklite 1272 MSR 1200w Followspots
Color Kinetics Color Blaze 72
Color Kinetics Color Blaze 48
Color Kinetics Color Blast 12 with clear tempered glass lens.
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:47:25 PM
course is Tarzan’s family, who then builds
a shelter in a tree-top fort only to be attacked by a deadly leopard before a tribe
of apes takes in the abandoned baby
boy. This sequence, designed to give the
audience the history and background
on Tarzan’s origins, had no dialogue but
tells an extremely powerful visual story
within a very short period of time. Katz
explains, “The opening was really part of
Bob’s plan for years; it was always in his
head about that shipwreck. We had it
locked in from the day we started teching
to the day we opened. Bob wasn’t really
interested in a digital or video projection
technique. He was more interested in the
humanity of it all, and looking at it from
a humane point of view, which is why it is
all scrim and tactile and light as opposed
to LEDs and video.”
As for dealing with the flying aspect
of the show, Katz describes it as a very
giving relationship. “Lighting was definitely on the other side of the railroad
tracks when it came time to cue the show.
The flying came first, so we were never in
their way, as soon as someone was flying,
the electrics would fly out to their high
trim. After working the scene we would
bring in an electric or two if we felt we
could do it safely. We knew this would
be a lengthy and complicated process
before even going into the theatre, so
I really think attitude is everything. We
knew what to expect and we all worked
together to get it done. The flying team
had to figure out the flying first, which
is almost like dry teching, and then we
would light it. The hard part was that the
actors have to stay in a position, and you
can’t have them stop in mid-swing. The
trick was to have a starting point and
an end point for the actor and write the
cues around that.”
Tarzan’s high flying antics as well as
its beautiful imagery will no doubt amaze
countless numbers of fans coming to see
the gravity-defying stagecraft used to
bring this jungle tale to life.
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.24-25.BROAD.indd 25
t
set, including the floor and surrounding space is all green—not unusual for a
jungle, but when trying to light a Broadway show in what looks more like a “green
screen” movie set than your average musical, it gets a bit more complicated. Katz
explains her new outlook, “I realized that
green is the new white, which is to say
that when you pick your neutral color in
a show—off of which you base all of your
colors—I had to really base it all on green
from a color point of view, lighting-wise.
So what you’d expect to see in terms of
color mixing never happens on the green.
Color theory is color theory, but it was a
lot of re-learning and re-teaching myself
all sorts of things. For instance, a warm
backlight may look warm on the person
but when it hits the floor it looks lavender
or whatever color it ends up looking, but
nothing certainly that you would expect
it to. So the whole color palette is completely shifted from what I am used to. Everything mixed differently than I expected, which all became a learning process
eventually. There are all types of greens
and blues and shades of more red in the
blue, more green in the blue and that kind
of thing.”
One of the most powerful tools used
in this show was the Vari*Lite VL 3000 series fixtures, both 3000s and 3500s, with
custom gobos. During several of the
show’s major numbers, the VLs are used
not only as lights but as extremely effective static image projectors. Katz goes on
to say, “Bob Crowley and his associate did
all the artwork for the gobo images of
life in England and they hit it pretty well
the first time, avoiding having to remake
any of the many detailed custom lithos.
Using the 3000s, if the image needs to
be smaller or larger, we know we can just
use the zoom and keep the image clarity. They are really impressive fixtures.
We did tests at the shop between video
versus Pani projectors versus the 3000s;
we looked at all of it. We decided on the
3000s as they feel more human than a
digital projector.”
In a crucial moment in the opening sequence, a scrim on stage is painted with a
ship on the high seas. With the rocking of
the pipe holding the scrim, it gives the illusion that the ship is actually moving as
it would on the ocean—brilliantly done
with classic theatrical techniques. As the
house lights go down, the ship is damaged and sinks, and the scrim flies away,
revealing the family suspended in air, as
though they are floating in the sea. When
they escape to the surface, the perspective shifts so that the audience is looking
down on the beach from above. This of
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
25
8/31/06 9:47:50 PM
Glitz & Glam – and That’s Just the Production at Turner’s Upfront
Lenny Kravitz
Putting the best light on
Turner’s Fall Season
By BryanReesman
Photos By AlicynLeigh
T
Michael Rhoads
Tricia Fackler
Soren West
26
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.26-27.prodprofile.indd 26
wo-thousand attendees. Dozens of
high-powered executives. A cavalcade
of actors and one rock star, Lenny
Kravitz, topping off the night. Putting on the
annual Turner Upfront event, where TBS and
TNT sell their upcoming season and programs to advertisers of Turner Broadcasting, is no small feat. This year set designers
Atomic Design not only transformed the
Theatre at Madison Square Garden into a
flashy corporate showcase, they also reinvented the lobby as a glitzy faux nightclub
for the after-party.
While Atomic is known for their touring
designs—they recently worked with Martina
McBride and Julio Iglesias, among others—
they have also taken on corporate events as
well as television specials (Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall
of Fame), award shows (Japanese VMAs), and
special events (Thalia Fashion Show). They
have even spun off a rental business with
products that they have built for shows. For
years now they have worked with Turner on
their annual advertiser showcase, and the
2006 spectacle featured a stage loaded with
LED grids and a giant video screen.
The teams behind Turner Upfront know
each other well as they collaborate annually
on the event. The main parties include Atomic Design (producer and stage designer) and
David Stark Design and Production (party
production and decor), along with a team of
vendors including Scharff Weisberg (video),
Firehouse Productions (audio) and Production Solutions, Inc. (lighting vendor).
Executive producer Soren West observes
that the pressure for this event comes not
during planning, but during the execution of
the event itself, from the parade of talent and
their handlers to the complex series of cues
and stage changes. But he also remarks that
egos are not a problem and that everyone
involved is there to have a good time. Associate producer Tricia Fackler adds that logistics
are key to this event, from the PR require-
ments
to getting
people onto the
stage.
“Corporate budgets
are a little different,” observes West. “They’re beefier in
some areas and tighter in other areas. Generally they’re willing to spend
money to get their message across. They
have a much more concise objective than,
say, a rock concert, where the objective is to
make money every night. The objective here
is to communicate a brand, and if they can
effectively communicate brand by spending a little extra, they will do that. From that
point of view, these guys are great to work
with. They’re not afraid to do it right. They
have a great eye for detail, and they love the
collaborative process.”
Branding was a key factor in the 2006
Turner event. This year David Stark designed
a logo that merged the circle logo of TBS
and the half-moon of TNT. The new logo appeared in the walls of the lounge space as
well as on the LED grids and the two large
light boxes flanking the stage.
Atomic Design founder and primary
designer Tom McPhillips started work on
the show, and handed it off to associate
designer Michael Rhoads to finish. Rhoads
observes that working on a corporate event
can be tougher than television. “The finish
has to be much more perfect, especially if it’s
a high-end client,” he states. “They can see
it up close and personal. They can touch it,
they can look at the finish, they can see if you
sewed it well. On TV, you’re removed 20 feet
from the camera, and then you’re watching it
on a small screen. A lot of details will get lost.
Although we can’t really say that too much
anymore, because with high-definition TV
coming in, every little flaw will show up.”
The most striking aspect of the lounge
was a backlit Plexiglas® wall sporting a
continuous pattern of Stark’s hybrid Turner
logo. It was a polycarbonate wall made up
of two layers: a solid frosted pane in front of
another layer printed in white with the logo
pattern, giving it a soft focus look, especially
when backlit with Color Kinetics Color Blasts
and Color Blazes from the floor. Additionally,
Stark requested 130,000 beads for the columns in the room. Aside from the wall, columns, moving lights and catering, the two
side hallways leading to the venue had long
tables for group dining.
Naturally the main event, the corporate presentation and the rock concert afterward, took place in the Theatre proper.
Atomic created a stage with a large center
screen flanked by grids of LEDs and two side
screens. The idea was to create a dynamic
environment for speakers, but also allow for
the show’s main host, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, to bring stars of all the shows
to stage right and interview them in front of
the audience.
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:38:31 PM
Anderson Cooper interviews the cast of TNT’s series “Nightmares and Dreams”
West stresses that the big center screen onstage,
created by Atomic in widescreen format from raw RP materials made by Da-Lite, was the focus of the corporate presentation, particularly as this was a television-oriented event. “One of the
challenges was having these people onstage and trying not to have any
light bounce onto the screen,” he says. “We tried to have a nice, deep stage and
keep them downstage. From a staging point
of view, the biggest challenge was delivering that big center screen, delivering flawless lighting on stars without disturbing that
big center screen, and creating a transition
from that big center screen to a rock concert
in front of the audience.”
In terms of lighting for Turner Upfront, the lounge was made up primarily
of Vari*Lite VL5s and ‘6s, as well as conventional fixtures. “We had a lot of VL1000s, the
incandescent Vari*Lites with shutters, to do
the main stage and performance area in the
theatre,” says lighting designer Abigail Holmes, “as well as Martin MAC moving lights
that are primarily used for the band and
some of our scenery. We had a lot of Color
Kinetics’ Color Blazes and Color Blasts in
both parts of the show. They were lighting
the frosted Plexi’ wall up here in the party
area, and they lit some of the scenic pieces
in the theatre. Then one thing that’s interesting in the theatre is that broken-up LED
that we were driving had a beautiful, metallic, scrim-like cloth in front that was lit at the
same time as that LED behind it. Mixing that
was part of what made that unusual.”
Holmes, who primarily handles rock
concerts such as Martina McBride and The
Cure, found Turner Upfront to have its own
special challenges every year. “Designing
the theatre is always interesting because
there are some technical restrictions that
make it a challenge,” she remarks. “We have
two very different shows that share the
stage. One is the Turner presentation, and
the second is putting a band on the stage.
It’s not always easy to fit both those things
into one space. The fact that the band must
be revealed limits the physical amount of
space for the corporate presentation, which
makes it quite a challenge to fit the scenery
and the lighting into the space that’s left.
We do our best to be very creative, to multiuse fixtures and locations so that they the
work for both parts of the event.”
“One of the things that makes this collaboration interesting as that we’ve got
people from television and rock ‘n’ roll
working together with people from a very
structured, big, corporate culture,” declares
West. “Our role as producers is to be the liaison, or translator, between those cultures,
and see that the corporate objectives are
met. Those are very articulate, concise objectives, and our style in production has a
little bit of a cowboy edge to it. We’re used
to shooting from the hip or dealing with
the unexpected. We function as a team
from a slightly different culture, so I think
marrying those two is part of the fun of this
corporate event.”
Even in corporate America, the Wild
West is alive and well.
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.26-27.prodprofile.indd 27
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
27
8/31/06 9:39:00 PM
“Jere Harris has had his feet
firmly planted in the dual galaxies of Broadway and touring production since he first burst upon
the scene in the 1970s,” says
By KevinM.Mitchell
Patrick Stansfield, a past Parnelli
Honoree. “He’s had the savvy, vision and knowledge to build PRG
prising that all four of Joseph and Geralresources large enough to be able to redine’s children ended up in the business.
spond to vast seasonal shifts of demand in
It makes one wonder if it wasn’t the rethe show biz industry while still remaining
verse in a household like that—that there
responsive to the daily needs of individual
was pressure to go into the theatre, not
productions.”
run from it as perhaps the stereotypical
Harris started working in a theatre sceparent might advocate.
nic shop when he was in high school, and
“They never encouraged us to be in
worked his way up from there. His first tourthe theatre business,” Harris tells. “All of
ing show was the ground-breaking Chius were free to do whatever we wanted.
cago, (“Still the most fun I’ve had,” he says), Though I think they were a little surprised
and he went out on his own while he was
when we did decide to go into theatre,
still in his 20s (“We’d get a little money, buy
especially since we all ended up on the
another table saw.”), eventually becoming
technical side.”
a founder of Production Resource Group,
Harris says he never considered anyone of the world’s foremost entertainment
thing but the technical side, and instead
technology companies that spans almost
of flipping burgers like the typical 16every aspect of this business and covers
year-old would do in the summer, he was
the globe.
able to work for Pete Feller in a Broadway
“I’m a bit taken a back,” Harris says
scene shop. “He was one of the innovaabout receiving the industry’s highest
tors of Broadway theatre, and had a great
honor, the Parnelli Lifetime Achievement
presence. There were a lot of characAward. “My success is not based on me, but
on the team of people I’ve been able to surround myself with.”
His career has been trademarked by
his talent, people skills and solid business
sense—and those who know best point out
that rarely have all three been equally represented in one person. Add to those qualiters in the business, even more than we
ties the instincts that lead him to expand
have now, and being around those guys
into new horizons. Most people would
I learned not only a lot about the craft,
have been content to have his Broadway
but about life.” Harris would adopt from
credentials and been happy with that, but
Feller the elder’s renowned never say die,
Harris had a wandering eye, moving into
always figuring out a way to make it work
other areas before it was “cool” to do so.
philosophy. “We stayed days and nights to
“I would say that all the new markets
make something work. His great love and
we’ve gotten into in the last 25 years, great passion for the theatre is a big part
the different projects we’ve done, has
of my success.”
paid off exponentially in the markets we
He continued to work for Fellers durwere already in,” Harris says of his hising college, but by the late 1970s he would
tory of diversifying. “This industry is not
leave both when Theatre Now, the largest
definable in a book or a two-year grad
Broadway theatre management company
program. It’s an industry that requires
during the 1970s and 1980s, offered him
experience. The more experience, the
a production manager job. He spent the
more qualified you become.”
next seven years there.
“The sheer volume of shows we did
was pretty remarkable,” he says. “It was
All in the Family
at least 15 to 20 a year. But the highlight
Born Jeremiah Joseph Harris on Sepwas all the people I worked with. It was
tember 8, 1954, he came into the world
an amazing group.” CBS President Les
with theatre-imprinted DNA. His great
Moonves was there, as was Paramount
grandfather was a theatre manager in Enghead Gail Berman.
land, and his grandfather was a company
manager for the great George Abbott. His
dad is four-time Tony Award-winning producer Joseph P. Harris, whose 200+ Broadway shows include Chicago and Dancing at
Lughnasa, among many others. His mom is
actress Geraldine Delaney Harris who was
featured in the likes of Guys and Dolls and
Silk Stockings.
With a pedigree like that, it is not sur-
28
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.28-32.HARRIS.indd 28
www.PLSN.com
9/1/06 3:01:12 PM
“Jere started with us when
he was in his 20s,” recalls William
Court Cohen, founder of Theatre
Now, and now running Theatre
Now West in San Francisco. “And
even then he exhibited that rare
combination of greatness. He
had a visionary technical understanding of the industry, unusually high business acumen, and
he was a gentleman by anyone’s
standard. Rarely are all three
traits in one human being, especially at such a
young age.”
“An
Opportunity”
In 1982, at the age
of 28, he started Harris Production Services
(HPS) ,a production management company serving the live entertainment industry, with Fred
Gallo, Roy Sears, John
Wolf and Kevin Baxley.
Since its inception, Harris
Production Services has
been involved in more
than 500 major productions, including Beauty
and the Beast, Starlight
Express, Madame Butterfly, An Inspector Calls,
Sweet Charity and EFX.
Four years later, with
Gallo, Scenic Technologies was launched. One
of their technological
success stories was the
introduction of Stage
Command™, a proprietary motion control system. This system has
been used in such popular productions as The
Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon on Broadway, EFX and Masquerade in the Sky
in Las Vegas, “Terminator 2 in 3D” and “Twister”
at Universal Studios, and numerous corporate
events, tradeshows and automotive shows.
“We were dominant in the theatre business,
but needed to branch out into the corporate and
industrial world. In those days, the theatre business was slow in the summer time and our goal
was to have work 52 weeks a year.”
In those early days it was easy enough to
get a meeting with corporate clients, but they
had to be convinced to pull the trigger. First of all,
Harris had to convince them that while he had
30
a growing list of impressive Broadway credits,
a corporate show certainly wasn’t “below” him.
And it wasn’t. For Harris, it’s taking the same approach—a professional show going off without
a hitch—using different skills and disciplines but
without changing the foundation of the craft. For
example,often the rigging of an auto show would
be more complicated than a Broadway show, he
points out. And it’s important that the Oldsmobile CEO be presented just as well as Mary Martin
in Peter Pan. Each one is equally important.
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
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www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:27:33 PM
Jere with Willie Stargell
Though there are
differences….
“In the corporate world you only get one
chance at the show,” he smiles. “On Broadway,
you can fix a small problem because there are
multiple shows. So the tension can sometimes
be higher.”
Soon the seeds of diversification were blossoming, and Harris was keeping his hands occupied with not only corporate and Broadway, but
houses of worship, schools, colleges, concerts
and live television events. “Each one in its own
right requires us to
bring professional
expertise to the
project.”
Highlights include doing the
1986 Toyota show
in Long Beach California. Not only did
that show go well,
but Mother Nature
allowed the company to show off a
bit: the day after the
show there was an earthquake, and not a single
thing in the Long Beach Arena fell. Toyota has
been a client ever since. Another highlight was
Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, where
they erected a 120-foot wide by 60-foot high
bald eagle proscenium across from the White
House at the Elispe.
Next was the founding of Scenic Technologies in 1987. They would be asked to build the
machinery and control system for what would
be one of Broadway’s most popular and enduring shows: Phantom.
“We thought it would be exciting and fun
to do and possibly be lucrative,” he recalls.“That
was a turning point for our company. That really
put us on the map.”
Phantom’s executive producer Martin McCullum, general manager Allan
Wasser and technical director John Paul
gave the upstarts a chance to bid on the
ground-breaking work, and they were
able to prove they were up to the challenge while offering to do it at a competitive price. Producer Cameron Mackintosh awarded the project to them “not
because we had a big shop, but because
he felt we’d do what we needed to do
to get the job done,” Harris says. “Fortunately we assembled the right team of
people and completed that project successfully.”
He adds that the big
challenge was that they departed from convention and
built from the ground-up a
control system using industrial control. Using an early
Allen Bradley PLC launched
in 1985, it certainly was laborious getting it to work,
as the computer power was
limited.
“We Grew Up”
In
1994,
groundbreaking
another
show
1/2 JR. VERTICAL AD
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31
8/31/06 9:28:23 PM
came to them: Michael Crawford’s EFX. Harris took on the role of executive producer
for this show.
“That job was unique because each scene
was the equivalent of one entire Broadway
musical, and it really stretched the capability
of the company. It was quite a special time. We
grew up.” They had to—the proscenium was
110 feet wide and there were 200 High End
Systems Cyberlights and 300 Vari*Lites being
used.
Reflecting on the go-go 1990s, Harris says
what was previously a craft industry with
some technical aspects like hydraulics, etc.,
suddenly became highly technology-driven.
He points out that the Jules Fisher’s original
Chicago had 220 fixtures and eight winches,
making it an extraordinarily complicated
show for its day. But if that show was produced today, there would be 1500 lights and
50 winches.
The next discipline for Harris to tackle was
theme parks.
“We pursued that theme park market because it was another place to apply our craft,”
he says. “All these transitions were learning
experiences for the positive. They might not
have always been financial successes, but
many of the forays out of theatre were not initially financially successful. But it’s almost like
traveling abroad in terms of experience and
growth. There’s a certain magic in each area
of the market that we participate in. And the
theme park industry was totally different.”
The theme park market door swung open
because of two big non-traditional shows he
worked on: Beauty and the Beast, where he
was production supervisor, and EFX. These
two experiences gave him a new perspective
on the world because
the companies that
put on these shows,
Disney and MGM,
had something most
Broadway shows are
lacking: resources.
He marvels how
he was working with a
company that pulled
together $1.5 billion for
a hotel. “I’m just a guy from Broadway where
you have to scrape, borrow, beg and steal to
get a show produced!” he laughs. “MGM and
Disney taught me there were other ways to
do what we do.”
This continued growth in all areas allowed
him to found Production Resource Group
(PRG) in 1996, and the other companies were
placed under that. There was a bit of a buying spree in the following years, and leading
lighting and audio companies were brought
into the fold, including Production Arts, Vanco, Bash, Cinema Services, Promix, Electrotec,
Lighting Technologies, A-1 Audio, Production
Lighting Systems, Light & Sound Design, Four
Star and Westsun.
Soon PRG had 16 offices in the U.S., Canada, UK and Japan.
He says that he noticed a phenomenon in
the 1990s where the industry’s entrepreneurs
of yesteryear were at the point of getting out
of the business, and they were either handing
it down to their kids with decidedly mixed results or just closing the doors. PRG filled that
gap and quickly became the 800-pound gorilla. And Harris is not apologetic about it.
“There was a lot of criticism and angst
about this big monster called PRG, but at the
end of the day I think we were a necessary
‘evil’ because we allowed certain people to realize all the equity in their business over their
lifetime,” he says. “So it was unique in the ‘90s,
and I saw an opportunity to grow our business. They say if you don’t continue to grow,
you die.” He saw a growing need for more
integration of everything, more turnkey operations, and a move away from the a la carte
approach.
“I think for a
long time people
will still buy things
individually, but in
some areas there
will be more integration in what
we do and how
we do it.”
“Still a Lot to Do”
While flattered at the Parnelli, the youngest recipient of our industry’s most prestigious award is a little uncomfortable with it.
“I’m still a young man, and there’s still a lot to
do,” he laughs.
With 1500 people working with him
worldwide, he notes how far he’s come. A
single issuing of paychecks is more than what
the company used to make in a year.
Understandably, the personal challenge
is keeping it fun. On the morning of the interview for this article he had just been to
a meeting of a new Broadway show, and he
says that part, the production side of theatre
or a corporate event or a concert “is something I actually don’t get enough of.” Otherwise, he’s trying to drive the Queen Marysized ship, making the right decisions about
the future and keeping pace with the everchanging market. The modest Harris does allow himself one bragging point:
“One of the things I do is work for the
people at this company. This is bold, but the
best people in the industry are with us. We
still have all the original inventors of Vari-Lite
and Stage Command, and just have a wealth
of knowledge here that is second to none.”
That indulgence aside, he’s not that interested in reflecting on the history of the business, and you won’t hear a moan about how
things were “better” in the “good old days.”
“A lot of people would say no, things
aren’t as good as they were in this business,” he shrugs. “But I say the world is about
change. We change everyday—emotionally,
spiritually. I think what happens to the entire
industry enhances the experience in certain
ways that are all for the positive. Like the
original Chicago. I don’t know if more recent
productions are better or worse—just different. Live entertainment continually reinvents
itself. And I think audiences overall are more
entertained today.”
Few who know and worked
with him are surprised at
his success.
32
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100.0609.28-32.HARRIS.indd 32
Jere with his father Joe Sr.
“I always thought he had very special
quality,” Cohen says, on the phone . He was
always wonderful with people, and has a very
even keel as far as ego is concerned. And he
seems to understand highly complex business situations and technical situations, and
has been able to mold those together—thus
you have PRG today, which was built mostly
on his back. He had some difficult moments
too, of course. But he’s resilient, an extremely
hard worker with a high degree of integrity
and a God-given talent.”
Harris will receive the Parnelli Lifetime
Achievement Award on October 20, 2006,
at the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las
Vegas during LDI. Past honorees include
Patrick Stansfield, Bob See, Chip Monck,
Mike Brown and Brian Croft. For more information and to make reservations, go to
www.parnelliawards.com.
www.PLSN.com
9/1/06 4:04:05 PM
l
a
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a
e
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T
y
l
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p
Ole
Su
s
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t
En
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Se
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C
Rise and Fall…
By KevinM.Mitchell
How bad can
things get?
I
magine that a stellar century-old company’s image would be so tarnished that the
new owners seriously considered scrapping the name.
“We went through a severe debate internally about it,” sighs Mark Rosenthal. “Do we
even keep the name? There had been a considerable amount of negativism associated
with it… but then again, it was such a wellknown brand we felt with the right people,
the right relationships, we could make up for
the two years” when the company struggled.
“We did have a bad reputation,” Kelly
Koskella adds. “Our product wasn’t maintained, personnel weren’t well-trained, and
there wasn’t good leadership.”
But now everything old is new again.
Today, with new owners George and Mark
Rosenthal (of Raleigh Enterprises, the nation’s largest private studio company) and
Olesen’s new executive vice president Koskella running things, the organization has
turned around—and the new team wants
everyone to know it.
34
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
“Problems included deferred
maintenance, a high turnover rate, and
most alarming, a spotty reputation.”
Otto K. Olesen took the
“go west young man” axiom to
heart and went to Hollywood
in 1905 when the town had
a mere 500 people. There he
founded the company that
serviced the growing motion picture industry. The town, the industry and Olesen
grew dramatically, and soon it was one of
the biggest and best-known rental houses
and manufacturers of lighting and related
equipment in the Los Angeles area. Eventually it relocated to Burbank and at its
height it maintained an inventory of over
130,000 items.
A staple of movie premieres in the 1930s
and beyond, it was also the first company
to light the Hollywood Bowl, says Koskella,
who has gotten to look through the nearly
100 year-old photos of the company’s history. “They did a huge lighting ceremony at
the Coliseum, and the L.A. court building,
and lit all of Hollywood Boulevard for a military event,” Koskella tells. “They were one of
the first to create lighting, generator trucks
and skylights.”
Another Olesen legacy is that there
were many who left and went out to form
other great companies. ELS, Premiere, Illumination Dynamics and others all have
founders who have roots with Olesen.
In 1997, Olesen became a subsidiary of
Hollywood Rentals and by the end of that
decade mismanagement, failure to keep
up with a changing market and a series of
ill-advised decisions, like moving from Burbank to Northridge, had taken its toll on the
company. Hollywood Rentals/Olesen filed
for bankruptcy in 2000.
In January 2001, Raleigh Enterprises
became an investor in the group that purchased Hollywood Rentals/Olesen out of
bankruptcy. However, management difficulties continued to plague the company,
resulting in continued loss of market share
and staff. Then minority holders George and
Mark Rosenthal took a big risk: they bought
out the other owners, and brought it out of
bankruptcy in April 2004.
“At that point, Olesen didn’t have much
of an identity from Hollywood Rentals,” Raleigh President Mark Rosenthal says. There
were many concerns and the father and son
team were well aware of the risk they were
taking. “The company had just moved to
Northridge, which was not a great location.”
Other problems include deferred maintenance, a high turnover rate (“the exact
opposite of what we have with our other
www.PLSN.com
companies”) and perhaps most alarming, a
spotty reputation.
They turned to Koskella, who had an onagain off-again relationship with the company, leaving twice and returning twice. Koskella started out in Hollywood as an actor
in 1976 doing commercials and guest spots
in a few TV series and feature films. In the
early 1980s, a shoulder injury sidelined him,
so on the advice of a buddy at Acey Decy
Theatrical he took a job there and never
looked back. He started at the very bottom,
taking orders and working the floor, and in
1986 he went to J&L Service. He was there
when Hollywood Rentals bought it out in
1993. Shortly thereafter he left, tried other
jobs and traveled.
“But I kept talking about the business,
and finally my wife pointed out that I was
always happy there, so I came back.”
Meanwhile, the Rosenthals had tried to
lure Koskella back when they were still minority holders in the company. It took three
sit-downs with Koskella, and he turned them
down a couple of times. “It wasn’t about the
money, and they had the right vision. But
their partners….” Almost as a dare, Koskella
“The
message
he was
sending
was clear;
they were tr
ying to esta
blish
a livelihood,
and they we
re
all in it toge
ther.”
… and Rise Again
One of the first things they did was purchase new vehicles and proudly put the
Olesen name on them. “Logos had been
taken off so the trucks could be rented to
independents, which wasn’t a good move,”
Koskella says. “Now Olesen has its own fleet,
and it’s been seen at the events we do.”
He was also keenly aware of the image
problem on the inside, too. With morale
down and turnover high, he didn’t overlook
the small things. He dragged his wife and
kids in on weekends and set out to give the
office a fresh paint job and fix the neglected office equipment. He would also pitch
in and load trucks. The message he was
sending was clear: They were all trying to
establish a livelihood, and they were all in it
together. Soon, those just showing up for a
paycheck went looking for work elsewhere,
which was fine with him. “I want people to
come in to work here because they have a
future.” Quite a few quality ex-employees
have returned as well.
“When I first returned, we had about 60
employees. Today we have about 100 people nationwide.”
In addition to service, equipment is
what matters most to clients. Raleigh invested heavily, spending a reported sevenfigures on new equipment the first year,
and a little more than that the second year.
That’s all well and good, but the competition hardly stood idle for the years when
Olesen faltered. Competitors are plenty, and
some are very good.
“I will stand toe-to-toe with all the
competitors,” Koskella says emphatically.
“I provide better service. Also, I do not bid
in the manner most do. Some others continue to drive rates into the dirt. I don’t go
there because I don’t have too. My service
and products stand on their own.” He adds
that’s he enjoys good, strong relations with
his competitors, and partners with them
whenever he can.
“We’re focused on supporting people
who are largely freelancers,” Rosenthal
says. “LDs, directors, gaffers, grips—their
performances on the job are based in part
on the equipment they take with them.
They want the lights to work. So ultimately,
at the end of the day, what is most important is make them look good. It’s like that
old commercial—when you’re not number
one, you try harder.”
www.PLSN.com
said he would come back if they bought out
the other partners, and thought that would
be the last he’d hear from them.
“And ten days later, they did it!” he
laughs. “I didn’t want to break my word, so
I came back again.”
“What Kelly brought to us was a very
strong work ethic and a tremendous following in the industry,” Rosenthal says.
“And we needed credibility.” Despite being
subsumed under Hollywood Rentals, he
maintains that Olesen’s name and potential are valuable. “Then again, we see more
cross-over in the moving light division in
what has been our market—TV, commercials, films… so it does make sense for
them to be together, if Olesen retains a
strong identity.”
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
35
And M
ove It
D
id
Vari-Lite Launched an Industry
and Thrives in it Today
By KevinM.Mitchell
A
s the legend goes, the “eureka” moment happened at a barbecue when
Showco founders and employees
first hit on the idea of adding two extra
motors to a fixture with dichroic filters
that could move and change colors. By December of 1980, a rather large (by today’s
standard), rather noisy, Frankenstein-like
prototype of a fully automated lighting
system was completed, and the history of
event lighting would never be the same.
The team flew their baby to London
and showed the genesis of this lighting
revolution to, appropriately enough, the
band Genesis. A mere two cues were programmed into it, and when the demonstration was completed, band mate Mike
Rutherford reportedly said: “I expected the
color change, but by Jove, I didn’t know
it was going to move.” The next Genesis
tour would feature the first Vari*Lite Series
100™ consisting of 55 VL1 luminaries and
a computerized control console. The opening night of the world tour was on September 25, 1981, in Barcelona, Spain.
The rest as they say,
is history.
Watching it unfold from the other side
of the fence was Bob Schacherl. While today he’s vice president of world wide sales
at Vari-Lite, in 1981 he was one of the
owners and the president of what would
later become High End Systems. “When
Genesis burst onto the scene as the first
concert tour with intelligent lighting, we
were blown away—both from a professional stand point and as a ticket holder.”
He says he understood the impact
immediately, as the industry was firmly
rooted in the fixed installation world and
now there was a great opportunity to
explore the new technology. Of course,
those early products were problematic,
36
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100.0609.VARILIT25.indd 36
and Schacherl points out that being on
the cutting edge of anything means a
certain amount of risk taking. “It’s well
known that the early products weren’t
really reliable, and that’s why we rented
them instead of sold them.” To compensate, Vari-Lite would send out technicians
with every show, thus ensuring that any
problem that might come up was taken
care of right then and there. “So every client was satisfied.”
In 1986, computer advancements allowed Vari-Lite engineers to develop the
Series 200 system, which included the
VL2™ spot and the VL3™ wash which allowed two-way data communication with
their new Artisan control console.
In 1991 came the VL4™ wash, and it
was that year the company was presented
with the first of three Prime Time Emmy®
Awards for Outstanding Achievement in
Engineering. The following year came the
VLO
VL1
Series 300 and the VL5™ wash, which featured radial dichroic color changers, compact size and the much-desired, mostly
elusive, silent operation. From 1997
to1999 the company expanded with additional offices, and unleashed such products as VL7™, VL6B™, and VL7B™.
Then in late 1999,
“hell froze over.”
“The market was changing, and Vari-Lite
responded by reversing their long-held policy
of just renting or leasing products. They began promoting their new for-sale product
line with a marketing campaign entitled ‘hell
freezes over.’ ” Schacherl says. Around that
time, Schacherl left High End and soon after
ended up at Vari-Lite.
Meanwhile, in 2000 at LDI, the Virtuoso
DX console was introduced along with the
VL2000™ spot and wash. VL2000 wash would
receive the Eddy Award for Lighting Product
VL4
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:36:48 PM
VL2500
VL1000ERS
VL500
of the Year. Many other awards and
honors would follow.
Still, in this “what have you done
for me lately?” industry, it’s not
surprising that there was no laurel-resting going on at Vari-Lite.
“We’re a market-driven company,” says Schacherl. “We listen
to market needs and desires and
then try to incorporate emerging
technology to meet or exceed expectations.” Yet he points out the
problem involved in the lengthy
lead-time needed for new products, typically 24 months from
Bob Schacherl
VL3000
acquisition meant. Many thought it was
a death knell for Vari-Lite. What people
didn’t understand is that Genlyte takes a
unique approach to business and doesn’t
act like a huge conglomerate, but instead
creates autonomous divisions.” He insisted there is no “meddling” from above,
especially since his division has been
consistently recognized for sales and
earnings growth.… though if that ever
changed, “we’d be visited by the CEO,” he
laughs, adding “but only in the sense to
see how he can help.”
Genlyte continues its business philosophy of not only growing the divi-
“I expected the color change,
but by Jove, I didn’t know it
was going to move.”
–Mike Rutherford, of Genesis
George Masek
Rich Booth
VL5
VL6
sions, but also growing the company as
a whole through acquisitions, and just
recently bought the United States and
Asian operations of Strand Lighting.
Reflecting on the importance of the
moving light, Schacherl is asked if it’ll
ever completely replace conventional
lighting, or be replaced by something
else, such as LEDs.
“Some were predicting with LEDs that
everything else would be obsolete, but
I believe there will always be a need for
everything: conventional lighting, digital
lighting, LEDs, automated lighting and
new technology yet to be released,” he
says. “No product will be the end-all be-all.
There’ll always be budgets, applications
and relationships to consider in making
purchasing decisions.”
VL7
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.VARILIT25.indd 37
idea to product launch. “During
that time frame, there can be
changes in the market, so we try
to do some crystal-ball gazing, but
it’s always a challenge.” The challenges of market desires are generally matched by the challenges
of market forces, too. “Typically
clients always want it brighter and
cheaper,” he says.
Meanwhile, in 2002, the Genlyte
Group, Inc., one of North America’s
largest lighting companies based
in Louisville, KY, purchased the
company. Schacherl admits he was
a little nervous. “When you’re at
the bought end of an acquisition,
there’s always apprehension,” he
says. “But it’s been an amazingly
positive experience.” Genlyte
came to the table with that enviable combination of deep pockets
and a hands-off approach to all its
acquisitions.
“But we had to overcome the
market perception of what the
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
37
8/31/06 9:37:36 PM
TECHNOPOLIS
ING
V
MO HT
LIG NU
ME
A B
stepper motor
I
have a confession to make: I snuck into
the TV studio at school the other day and
stole their lighting controller. It was summer, so they weren’t actually using it, and I
wanted to fiddle with a new moving light
I received that morning. I needed a nice,
small DMX512 controller and they had one.
I carried the thing down to our theatre, set
everything up in our orchestra pit and began to put my new light through its paces.
In particular, I wanted to fiddle with the
menu controls. All of the latest intelligent
lighting fixtures have an incredible (let’s
be honest, overwhelming) number of menu
options and settings. You can change the
menu settings without a controller (right
there at the light) but having a controller next to the thing makes it easier to see
the results. It was also kind of fun to play
with the sliders and watch my new toy spin
around and around right in front of my eyes
. . . but, hey, I’m easily impressed.
Appetizers
right. Plinking through the menu I found
the “Test” function, and the “Lamp On/Off”,
both very useful, as you might imagine.
Other standard menu options were “Reset,”
“Time,” and “Display.” Reset is sort of like a
warm re-boot on a computer, re-aligning all
the filters and gobos, which sometimes get
out of adjustment. Time tells you how old
the lamp is so you can replace it before it
blows, Display allows you to turn the menu
display off so it won’t annoy your audience.
Some of the other menu items are a little
more esoteric. Suppose we have a dozen
similar units, half of which are hanging upside down above the talent. Change the
“Rpan” and “Rtlt” in the menu and all of the
units will track together left-to-right and upand-down. Rpan also comes in handy when
units face each other, you can set one side to
mirror the other, greatly simplifying the cues.
There’s also a “Disp/Flip” setting so that the
now upside-down menus can be set to read
correctly. Why bother? Any trick to save a little trouble further down the line is worth it.
All we have to do is step through the
menu until the menu option we want appears on the display, then activate or deactivate the setting. Of course the display
characters and features are different for different manufacturers, but if you can figure
7.5 per ste
p
Salads (The menu is trying to
tell you something…)
When I turned on the controller the
menu on my light very kindly stopped blinking at me, an indication that the DMX was
working. I also got a somewhat cryptic indication that the lamp was on and functioning
correctly. Knowing these subtle indications
(in this case, a lit decimal point) can save a
lot of hunting around when things aren’t
38
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.38.TECHNOP.indd 38
out text messages (U KN 2 THT, RT?) you can
figure out the menu abbreviations.
You want that to go?
Imagine discovering an incorrect DMX
assignment on a somewhat inaccessible
unit. Never happens in real life, but hey, let’s
pretend. Some newer intelligent lights allow you to reassign the DMX address from
the board. [Now that the Remote Device
Management or RDM protocol allowing bidirectional communication has been published we will start to see a lot more fixtures
with this capability. – ed.] It’s a little tricky
until you’ve done it a few times; I freely
admit I have to step through it with the
manual open right next to me. Setting several channel controllers just so sends a DMX
assignment change to the distant unit. Not
something I like to do often, but it saves a
lot of ladder work. It’s theoretically possible
to call this function up by accident, which
is why you can turn the option off at the
menu if you wish.
Supersize it?
The unit I was experimenting with also
had an option (menu accessible) to change
the pan limits from 630°, which is more
than some other units, to 540°, which is a
little more standard. Imagine the difficulty
of interpolating the differing settings when
mixing these lights with older stock and
you will appreciate the menu tweak. Most
manufacturers have a special feature or
two like this that needs menu access; look
for them in the online manuals. This is probably not the right time to tease the manufacturers about the poorly written manuals
(Hey… I know a good writer), but, yes, the
manuals could be a little more helpful. As
I’ve said before, stare at the manual (and
the menu) long enough and it will eventually make sense.
I still have to return the lighting controller to the TV studio, but not before I play with
the rest of the menu options on my light. I’ll
tell you about it next month. As my students
say, “Mad props!” to Eric and Ray over at Elation Lighting for providing the test unit, a
Design Spot 250.
John Kaluta teaches Research & Experimentation and Robotics at Montgomery Blair
High School in Silver Spring, MD. 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. And, yes, he returned the
TV studio lighting controller to the TV studio.
He can be reached at [email protected]
I suppose the most important menu
setting would be the DMX address itself.
How many of us have struggled with an erratic unit, only to find that the address was
set incorrectly? This happens a lot when we
have to take a unit out of service and hook
up a new one. Somewhere during the swap
the correct DMX address gets forgotten.
Push a few buttons, problem solved. (At our
school installation we have a piece of white
gaff stuck on every DMX connector with
the “proper” DMX address written right on
it. Yes, I realize that this is cheating.)
For today’s experiment I went way out
on a limb and assigned my new light the
DMX address of, um… one. Actually “001,”
which is also the default address for most
units (and the address that corresponds
with the “slave” setting when lights are
strung together without a controller nearby). Of course, this actually assigned my first
sixteen addresses, since my new light has
sixteen controllable features. And, to get
back on-topic, almost all of these features
can be changed in the menu.
By JohnKaluta
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:50:01 PM
By RichardCadena
Strains of ABACAB still reverberating in the industry
“I knew that this was going to change
everything.”
summer hiatus doing some festival gigs with
Genesis in Europe for Turbosound, I believe.
Upon our return to the road with the Straits
said tech regaled us with stories of these
strange lights that could not only change
color but could also move, and on top of that
they could change patterns automatically, in-
Lighting designer Lee Rose saw the future of the entertainment lighting industry and he knew it when he saw a Genesis
show at the L.A. Forum in the early 1980s.
It was soon after the band kicked off their
Abacab tour on September 27, 1981with
55 moving lights, the first of their kind,
called Vari*Lites.
The development of automated lighting has roots going back a century or
more, but none of the predecessors to the
Vari*Lite came close to having the impact
that the VL1 did. Within days, news of the
tour spread through the industry, and before long several production companies
followed suit with their own version of automated lighting. The die had been cast.
Twenty-five years later, automated
lights, and that Genesis tour in particular,
still hold special memories for generations
of lighting designers. We polled a few to
inquire about their earliest memories of
automated lighting.
“One day in the early spring of 1983, I
went to my first big rock concert Journey. I
had no idea who Hawkeye, Tom Littrell, Benny,
(or) John Lobel were, and I had never heard
the word Vari*Lite. With that first sweep of
the VL1 through the air with the infamous
breakup pattern, I was sold. Not pyro, not
Steve Perry, not even those funny-looking
cigarettes people kept passing could take my
eyes off of these incredible machines. Several
Genesis videos later, I had dug deep into the
world of Vari*Lite. Ten years later, I was working for the company, and walking into that
office on Regal Row was like walking into
Mecca.” - Seth Jackson, Visionering, Inc
“I remember a time when I truly saw the
potential of the lights. It was Bruce Springsteen
at the L.A. Forum under the lighting design of
Jeff Ravitz. Vari-Lite had invited a lot of the L.A.
40
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.varilite.indd 40
“Recently I was clearing out the old tour
information stored in my office. As I sifted
“I BELIEVE THAT MY ENTIRE
BACKGROUND IN THE VISUALWORLD
COMES FROM WATCHING THOSE LIVE
GENESIS VIDEOS...”– Benoit Richard
cluding a ‘cone’ shape that was the trademark
of laser effects of the day. Me and the rest of
the lighting crew ridiculed him and wrote the
stories off as those of delusion. Some months
later, I found myself at Madison Square Garden witnessing first-hand these incredible
lights in action at a Genesis show and my
life was changed it really was that huge of an
impact. Needless to say, the guitar tech took
great delight in serving me up a very large
helping of humble pie.” - Chas Herington, Zenith Lighting
“Unfortunately, I was not able to see that
first (Abacab) tour in person. Luckily, I did get
my hands on all the ‘bootleg’ videos and I was
instantly hooked! To this day, I believe that my
entire background in the visual world comes
from watching those live Genesis videos, especially the old tours in the ‘70s (without automated lighting) and later on with the Mama
and Invisible Touch tours in the ‘80s.” - Benoit
Richard, Millennium Lighting Design LLC
“I remember when Genesis played at the
Forum in L.A. in the very early 1980s. Someone I knew was involved in the tour and got
me some tickets. I was sitting about halfway
back from the stage to the mix position. The
house lights went down and these lights on
stage came up. I remember thinking what
“Then...the lights started moving. I was
completely blown away.” – Lee Rose
lighting designers and put on a big, splashy
pre-show party. At show time we all headed
out to the lighting console area to watch the
show. On came Bruce, and song after song no
light moved. I assumed the system was down
but at the end when Bruce walked off every
light came alive! I challenge you to find anyone who stayed in their seat. Yes, Bruce is great,
but Jeff’s way of using the lights to re-position,
change color and pattern between Bruce’s
Bruce’s songs matched perfectly style; not distracting from him but accenting the music as
needed, and allowing Jeff one final trick to get
the audience on their feet for more...more...
more!” - James Moody, author of “Concert Light:
Technique, Art, and Business” (Focal Press) “When I was the LD for Dire Straits, one of
the backline crew, Mark Knoplfer’s guitar tech
at the time, was moonlighting during one
We sat for hours trying to figure out what the
heck was going on with these lights and how
they worked. I’m still confused.” - John Featherstone, Lightswitch
a nice quality of light and color the fixtures
had. They didn’t move the lights or change
the color live for the first number in the
show. I think the second number had the
lights changing color and I thought, ‘Now this
is really cool.’ The vibrancy of the colors was
amazing. Then of course the lights started
moving. I was completely blown away. In awe
is the best description of how I felt. I had never seen anything like it. I remember scraping
my jaw up off the floor at the end of the show
and wandering in a daze out of the Forum. I
knew that this was going to change everything.” - Lee Rose, Design Partners, Inc.
“Twenty-five years ago I was a 17 year-old
kid with a small garage lighting company. A
friend of mine got a really grainy copy of a
demo tape Vari-Lite produced. It was the most
amazing thing I had ever seen.
though the brochures, old passes and itineraries a lone video tape stood out against
the background of junk that had amassed
through the years. It was the original VL/Genesis demo video on VHS (at the time I had to
borrow a VHS machine to watch it). My memories of this local bar band lighting guy seeing this amazing light show moving light show
awestruck, inspired, and for the first time witnessing the future of my chosen industry.
Suddenly my swatch books, PARs, ACL bars
and pin matrix desk took on the shape of an
old nag whose last few miles had been pretty
hard on her. To think a bunch of sound guys
did this for us.” - Butch Allen, lighting designer
“I think the first time I saw automated
lights in person was at LDI 1988 in Dallas. I
had heard about them, read about them
through the industry trades and seen promotional material. But this was one of my
first opportunities to see them up close. There was a seminar where some moving
lights were demonstrated. We were all very
impressed. Jim Moody served as moderator,
talking about the equipment and then inviting some new, uninitiated lighting designers
to step up to the console and work with a programmer to create some new visual ideas with
these moving lights. I remember some of the
guinea pig lighting designers being dumbfounded or awestruck by the possibilities;
how do you design with these new, move-allover-place, multi-parameter things? How do
you even convey an idea to a programmer? How did you do all those things? A few years
later, I was designing legit shows with bunches of these terrific moving lights. Very cool,
very fun.” - Dawn Chiang, Theatre Projects, Inc.
“I was working for Theatre Projects in
1982 and took Richard Pilbow to see what I
think must have been the first UK show (with
Vari*Lites) in Birmingham. We had been invited by Rusty (Brutsche) and had discussions
about the possibility of Theatre Projects becoming European distributors. (The decision
was overtaken by events because Samuelson’s acquired Theatre Projects soon thereafter and subsequently became distributors.)
Richard and I were both, of course, like
everybody else, blown away by the overwhelming impact of the dynamic effect of
movement. It was certainly a major, major ‘effects’ light but there were serious doubts
as to its suitability for legit theatre. Although
the VL1 seemed to be accurate enough, Richard had concerns about the fact that it was
essentially a hard edged light and that the
colors were a bit unsubtle for classic theatre
very rock ‘n’ roll.
“We recognized the long-term creative
impact and importance of having an accurately repositionable and recolorable range
of luminaires. Although they were expensive,
the long term economies were obvious. We
realized that it was only a question of time
before this would be accomplished by VariLite just how long, nobody knew. “My wife reminds me that on my return from Birmingham all I said was, ‘They’re
bloody noisy, that’s for sure.’ ” - Brian Croft
“(In addition to the Birmingham trip),
my other early VL experience was in Los
Angeles where I went to see Wally Russell’s
‘great experiment’: the first opera (Tristan &
Isolde) for the L.A. Opera) to be fully lit with
Vari*Lites — a Wally/David Hockney design.
Here again, noise was a huge problem, but
the visuals were so great that after many
nervous nail-biting moments it was decided
to live with the problem! Maybe the orchestra played louder!” - Richard Pilbrow, Theatre
Projects
“The first time I saw moving lights was
at a Steve Miller Band concert at The Greek
Theatre in L.A. Although the lightshow, compared with today’s standards, was somewhat
awkward, I was fascinated with the color and
movement and that the lighting operator
managed to make the lights move in time
with the music. After the concert I met the
lighting operator and discovered the lights
were manufactured by Morpheus Inc. and
were run off a crude prototype desk.
“After that I went on to use Vari*Lite model 1s in Australia on several major events. In
those days we had a couple of spare lights
given the number of breakdowns. Moving
lights revolutionized live productions in the
early eighties and have been fascinating audiences ever since.” - Colin Baldwin, lighting
designer
“In the mid 80’s, I was a young lighting tech working at a local lighting company. We had just landed a tour and the
crew chief they hired was currently on
the road with Whitesnake. The tour was
coming to a close and was playing an
arena a few hours away. I got the job of
dropping off paperwork, plus the bonus
of having a pass for the show and getting to watch it from FOH. The show was
great. One of the parts that stuck in my
mind was John Sykes’ guitar solo. As his
solo started he was surrounded by a ring
of open white V*L 2Cs (and) a single red
color started to chase through the VLs
in a circular path. As the guitar solo got
faster the red started to chase faster, climaxing in a solid red ring of 2Cs at the
end. This I thought was the coolest thing
I’d ever seen.” - Alex Skowron, lighting director, the Black Eyed Peas
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:42:56 PM
Four Inventors
Look Back, Ahead
were so much brighter
than the wash lights in
the cue, that, after they
sat there like that, unmoving, for part of the song,
they became solid architectural columns in your
mind like part of the set. So, when they all swept
out from the stage together on cue, the effect
Vari*Lite Inventors, L-R John Covington,Jim Bornhorst, Brooks Taylor, Tom Walsh
Most people live an entire lifetime and
never participate in the type of change
brought about by the first Vari*Lite system. For those who lived it, it’s a once-in-alifetime experience about which they can
proudly tell their grandchildren. But during those days leading up to the launch of
the product, did they have any idea of the
impact their creation would have?
“Not totally or specifically,” said Tom
Littrell. “I’m not that big of a thinker.” Littrell was on the road staff of Showco, the
parent company of the original Vari*Lite,
and witnessed first-hand the development of the VL0. He was sent on the road
with Genesis and the first Vari*Lite system as the crew chief and programmer.
He also helped with the construction of
those first 55 VL1 prototypes – wiring the
power distribution system, drilling, soldering and “even a little bit of low-level wirewrapping.” We think Littrell is a bit modest
about his thinking skills, but nonetheless
he admits that “there was a nebulous notion that this was big stuff.”
When we asked Littrell about the future of automated lighting, he replied,
“Automated lighting will be a part of the
stage/event/themed lighting world for the
foreseeable future. Every development in
lighting will most likely have an automated variant. No matter what the yet-to-beseen breakthrough is, someone will slap a
yoke on it.”
We asked the four inventors – Jim
Bornhorst, Tom Maxwell, John Covington
and Brooks Taylor – and Vari-Lite employee Tom Littrell whether or not they had
any idea of the gravity of the situation at
the time. We also asked them to speculate
about the future of automated lighting.
Brooks Taylor: “I can’t think of many developments that have changed the face of an
industry as radically as the first Vari-Lite system and I feel lucky to have been part of it.
“I knew the first Vari-Lite system would allow one light to do the job of four or five or
more, but I had no inkling of the impact they
would have when they moved while they
were on. Lasers had been used for several
years previous and could be scanned to add
motion to the lights in the rig. Follow spots
could also be swept around to give some
motion. But, those were only a handful of
moving sources against a backdrop of static
sources. Seeing video or film of pre-Vari-Lite
shows and VL0 shows just reminds me of how
static the former were and how kinetic the
latter were.
“At the first Vari-Lite show, when every
light in the rig moved at once, the entire crowd
went ‘Whoa!’ And there was a cue that got to
me in every show on that Genesis tour. All the
VL fixtures around the sides and back of the
truss were pointed straight down at their full
size, with hard-edged beams in white. They
The first Vari*Lite controller
was absolutely visceral. It seemed like the
walls of the set were sweeping away and you
felt for a moment like you were falling.
“I think control systems will just continue
getting ‘smarter’ and more in tune with the
lighting designers and operators. Consoles
are tools for artists to use, so we have to look
Taylor left VLPS (as it was by then) in 2001, and
shortly thereafter entered law school. He graduated in 2005, passed the Texas Bar exam and is now
a patent attorney with Munck Butrus, PC, in Dallas.
continiued on page 61
Genesis Abacab Rehearsal
to how the artists work to learn how
design better consoles. How can they
fit in to the instructions an operator is
receiving from a designer? How can
they fit in to the different cognitive
processes that different designer/operators use in building a show? How
can they provide as consistent as possible a control interface to the operator
to control the ever-increasing variety of
elements of the show: lights, video projectors, effects, LED walls, and so on?”
8/31/06 9:43:16 PM
PLSN
Voters
Choose
Best
Companies
in
Their
Region
Five “Hometown Heroes” honored
West
By Kevin M.Mitchell
For every 500-pound gorilla of a production company, there are dozens and dozens of
smaller, regional guerillas. They make up the
bulk of the production industry, and manufacturers couldn’t survive without them. They
are small- to mid-sized in stature, but they are
very big in the eyes of the people who rely on
them day in and day out. They support the
up-and-coming acts before they do national
stadium tours. They take care of the fairs, the
festivals and the hundreds of corporate events
that happen in every metropolitan area, year
in, year out. They are the backbone of the business. And to us they are, well, heroes.
And the readers of PLSN have chosen to
honor six of them.
Despite the differences in their respective
regions, the different paths that have brought
them to where they are today, they have much
in common. Talent. Persistence. The skill to hire
and keep a great staff of people. Finally, but
not lastly, the ability to learn how to crunch the
numbers, make wise business-decisions and
keep it all moving onward and upward.
The readers of PLSN have honored these
“Hometown Heroes” by voting for them in our
secure poll, overseen by the Parnelli Award
Board of Directors (see www.parnelliawards.
com for more information). And while only one
will receive the Parnelli for Best Regional Light
company in October, every one of these guys
is a winner.
Smoother Smythe
Delicate Productions
Camarillo, CA
Founded in 1980 by touring-experienced Smoother Smyth, Stephen Dabbs,
Spy Matthews and Gus Thomson, Delicate
was off to a hard-running start having already served at the privilege of such acts as
Kiss, The Rolling Stones, Supertramp, Elton
John, Fleetwood Mac and more. In fact, the
initial inventory that launched the company was bought used from Supertramp.
The company grew as primarily a sound company. In 1996, Matthews left, returning
to his native Australia, and Steve Gilbard stepped in. Gilbard was instrumental in further
expanding the company into the lighting and video marketplace. Delicate evolved from
just concerts to corporate, sporting, entertainment industry events and beyond.
“I would say diversification is a big reason for our success,” Symthe says. “That and
having a talented staff that works with us, not for us—that’s something we learned going
back to working with Supertramp in the late 1970s.”
Today the company has 20 full-time employees, but counting freelancers, averages
50-plus each pay period. They’ve worked with a broad range of talent today including
Counting Crowes, The Black Crowes, INXS, Yanni, Sting, Natalie Cole, premiere parties like
Pirates of the Caribbean, corporate clients like BMW, Audi and Lexus and awards shows like
ESPN.
“First of all, we always have to do what we’re doing a little bit better,” Smythe told FOH
magazine in a recent interview.“We have to get a little bit better 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. 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.”
Smoother Smythe
Southwest
Rob McKinley
LD Systems
Houston, San Antonio, TX
Celebrating their 31st year, LD Systems provides production and installation expertise and
equipment for national touring acts, annual festivals and corporate meetings. They have also
evolved into having a systems integration department for houses of worship, sports facilities
and even offshore oil platforms.
All a long way from 1973, which is when
Andy DiRaddo and John Larson began renting sound equipment out of a garage. In 1975,
Larson joined the armed services and Rob McKinley stepped in, an event that, for them,
marks the true beginning of the company.
“My interests were electronics and music and I was a trumpet player,” McKinley says.
“While we started as a sound company, we grew into lights. Then our clients pulled us into
different markets—that’s how we’ve grown over the years.”
Today they have around 80 people employed between the two offices, and have worked
with groups such as 3 Doors Down, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Nickleback, and corporate clients
such as Lexus, Mercedes and Shell Oil.
The delicate balance of new gear versus keeping money in the bank is an ongoing challenge.“We’re being conservative with purchases and wanting to grow within our means. We
don’t want to grow too fast, because we want to be able to maintain a level of quality… So
you try to keep up with it all, but not go too far.” He laughs and adds: “After 31 years, we’ve
tried just about every possible strategy! And now we tend to grow more conservatively than
we have in earlier years.”
Not surprisingly, McKinley says the people that work for LD Systems are the reason for
their success. “You look for people who care about their work, are self-motivated… it’s a
team effort. Over 50% of our employees have been here for over 20 years. And we have clients who are able to have the same staff work their event or show year after year.”
Rob McKinley
Southeast
42
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
David Milly • Theatrical Lighting Systems • Huntsville, AL
“The longer I’m in business, the more I learn that it’s not about me, it’s about my employees,” says David Milly, President of Theatrical Lighting Systems (TLS).“They have different reasons to come to work than me. I own the business.”
Milly began his career working for a company called Luna Tech, Inc.Then in 1981 the pyrotechnic-based company split and he and his wife, Janet, took over the lighting and staging part of it. Last
year, TLS celebrated its silver anniversary. Capping it off was Milly receiving a Parnelli for regional
lighting company, 25 years to the day after he wrote TLS’ first invoice.
Today TLS has 42 people employed at the Huntsville location, seven at a Nashville
office and three at the Jacksonville office.
Currently they have long-time client Brad Paisley on tour, and recently finished the installation
duties at the Meridian, Miss. Opera House that he says was a $20 million dollar renovation. An especially interesting project was the Retirement Systems of Alabama Battle House Tower in Mobile, Ala.
www.PLSN.com
Canada
Marc Raymond
Q1 Production Technologies
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Q1 Production Technologies was launched
in 2001 after the company’s founders, Marc
Raymond and Phil Bernard, sold their interest in
Westsun International. They had built Westsun
from a local lighting rental facility to an operation with seven locations in cities throughout
Canada and the U.S. and more than $70 million
in annual revenue. In 2002, Q1 merged with
Phil Bernard, Don Holder, Marc Raymond, Brian Kochny
Showtime Lighting—a west coast boutique
shop with mre than 10 years of service to a wide-ranging client base. Showtime founder
Brian Konechny joined the Q1 partnership and later that year the company repurchased a
portion of Westsun, including the head office operation.
Q1 has been involved in thousands of projects ranging from The Lion King and Mamma
Mia, to Sarah McLachlan and Britney Spears, to Microsoft and the XV Winter Olympic Games.
The personnel assembled by the group brings decades of experience and enthusiasm to a
wide range of clients.
Applying the founding principles of Westsun to an industry that has undergone enormous change in the past 25 years, Q1 seeks to fulfill its commitment to continued growth
and success through a network of relationships with established industry suppliers, innovative new manufacturers and a loyal client base that includes many of the most acclaimed
designers, producers and performers in the global business of live entertainment.
Marc Raymond
“Lighting design was in
my heart —I dreamt it, I bled it.”
– Bob “Flash” Finical
Northeast
Don Earl
Earl Girls
Egg Harbor City, NJ
When Don Earl was a kid growing up in Connecticut, his parents were active in community
theatre. So there he was up on the stage at the
tender age of seven. But luckily for the lighting
clients in New England, he didn’t get bit by any
acting bug.
“I remember looking up the stairwell at the
theatre and there was this board with all these
lights and dials,” Earl recalls.“And I was thinking I had to find out more about that.”
He did. He earned a college degree in technical theatre, then moved to Atlantic City
and worked on the lighting for the casinos opening there. In 1991 he founded “Earl Girls” in
honor of his wife and two young daughters. “When I first started it my kids were just oneand two-years-old, and I was thinking that everything I do is for the benefit of my wife and
girls so… Earl Girls! But then I did get a few weird remarks about the name, I thought, ‘What
have I done’?” he laughs. But it was not a name that was easy to forget, so it stuck.
Today he works with a crew of 15 full-time people, plus part-timers. They are starting to
reach beyond their borders and recently did shows in Branson, Missouri, Nashville and Vegas.
“We are proud of our recently installation at the House of Blues in Atlantic City,” he says.
“We were subcontracted through Edwards Technologies.” Otherwise they do “a ton” of corporate work and concerts.
“I think the trick of this is business is realizing that anybody can have the same equipment and pricing—not too much is unique. So it comes down to service. We actually call
ourselves ‘theatrical convenience contractors.’ The ‘convenient’ part means that anytime
they call and ask us for anything—if they want chairs and tables in the mixing area, something small like that, we try to do it.”
Don Earl
Midwest
Bob “Flash” Finical
Theatreworks
Branson, MO
“I got started in the bar band business
in Iowa in 1975,” tells Bob “Flash” Finical. He
was still in college when he started going out
with his brother’s band running lights… “and
never left. Lighting design was in my heart—I
dreamt it, I bled it.” The band broke up, and
he worked for other light companies and a diverse group of artist including Paul Anka, Mel
Tillis and the Clash.
In 1990, Tillis asked him to open a theatre for him in a place called Branson, Missouri.
He never left, and went on to open another one for Tillis, then theatres for Glen Campell
and Ray Stevens.
Finical noticed that no one in town was selling theatrical lighting products, so working with friends at Bandit Lites, he started Theatreworks part-time in 1997. With the help
of an anonymous partner who put up the money, it quickly became the go-to company
for a town that today boasts 53 theatres.
Today he has a staff of five, and his office and warehouse fills up a 5,000 square-foot
building. While Branson and the Midwest are where the majority of his clients are, his
reach has extended to Vegas, Orlando and even Tunsia, North Africa.
Most recently Theatreworks did a million dollar-plus install into Mansion America. The
state-of-the-art theatre is over 6,500 square feet and features a 2700 square-foot stage.
Theatreworks is also doing a lot of work for churches and schools and recently did some
work for Kansas City’s theme park, World’s of Fun.
“We have just a great client base,”says Finical.“They are a very loyal, great bunch.”Not surprisingly, he credits his success to the“high-quality group of employees I have working with me.They
really want to learn and stay up with all the trends and technological advancements.”
The 745-foot building is Alabama’s tallest, and they
lit the exterior of it with package from Martin.
Milly speaks at length about the importance of
recruiting talent, and today he says they are slow
to hire and quick to fire, and aren’t afraid to recruit
someone aggressively.“I look for the excellence in
people—that’s what I’m focused on now.” That,
and keeping it all under control. “I don’t want to
be a Wal-Mart. I don’t want to be the biggest, I only
want to be the best.”
He’s modest about his success:“I think its just persistence,”he says.“I’ve had literally hundreds of
competitors come and go, but I’m still here. The two things I’ve seen in successful people is persistence—they have goals and achieve them; the second is they aren’t afraid to fail.”
David Milly
www.PLSN.com
Bob “Flash” Finical
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
43
PLSNINTERVIEW
Heights, MI. We finished
a project last year with the
Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, where we did a walk-through
exhibit. And, we’ve just finished two museum
exhibit projects at the Henry Ford Museum in
Dearborn, MI.
What does Lighting
Design Services, do?
We provide design, consultation,
specify equipment and provide bid
packages for all of our clients, as
well as implementation.
Did that happen
as a result of
being affiliated
with GM?
I saw a niche there. It was
hard for them to decipher lighting
quotes and they needed a local
Tom Lighting
Bagnasco
in the
D
By RobLudwig
I
f you’re from the Midwest, it’s not hard to
figure out that the automotive giants in
Detroit and their subsidiaries have met
with economic hard times. In the land of
buyouts, downsizing and exodus, Tom Bagnasco has been a fixture with the world’s
largest auto manufacturer, General Motors,
for more than 18 years—a feat for any designer. As an adept small business owner, he
has learned plenty along the way and diversified his customer base. In our PLSN Interview, Bagnasco discusses lighting in the D.
How did you get started in
the industry?
We started out like a lot of guys in the
business, with local bands, probably around
1975. LDS (Lighting Design Services) is a
Serviced Disabled Veteran owned business. I was in Vietnam from 1969 through
’71—honorable discharged in ’72—with the
Marine Corps, and it’s kind of ironic because
when I was in the bush, I was listening to
Grand Funk Railroad and Wolfman Jack on
Armed Forces Radio. I ultimately ended
up touring with Grand Funk for a number
of years, starting in 1979, which is when I
started touring with national acts. The next
big guys out of Detroit were the Romantics,
and I did their breakout album tour in 1981,
as their lighting designer/director. Then did
the John Cougar Mellencamp tour for the
American Fool album in 1982.
That was pretty big at
the time.
I hit a lot of these guys on their premiere
albums and it was a lot of fun. There were a
number of other ones, but those are the guys
I was with most of the years I was touring
with rock ‘n’ roll.
Then you moved into
corporate work, right?
We moved into General Motors work
about 18 years ago—we’ve actually been a
supplier to them for 18 years now.
44
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
designer to help them, and I was available
at the time. Like I said, it’s been a long term
relationship now.
Working for anybody
for 18 years is quite a
while. What is your role
with them now?
My primary role is to design, consult and
implement auto show exhibits. We’ve been
doing that since 1989 through 2006. From
the year 2000 through 2006, I’ve been the
lead designer on the GM Experience. We do
a lot of other special events for General Motors, such as the upcoming SEMA Show 2006
in November, in Vegas.
Just how busy does GM
keep you?
GM is about 40% of our overall business. The rest of it is architectural lighting in
churches, museums and specialty projects. As
a disabled veteran-owned business we have
access to government contracts, and we’re
working on some stuff for Homeland Security
and the Department of Natural Resources.
GM and the U.S. auto industry are hurting. How
do you see that affecting
businesses that are built
on that economy?
From what I can tell right now, even
though everyone is in dire straits, the way
they sell product, even in hard times, is to
market product, and their biggest envelope is
the auto show. Like I said, they’re about 40%
of our business, and obviously a very good
client, but not our only client. This time of year,
we are quite busy with museum projects.
What’s that like?
We design, engineer and specify museum lighting, and we’ve done about five museums, now. The first one was the National
Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. We
did the GM World Museum in Detroit, MI.
We did the GM Heritage Museum in Sterling
www.PLSN.com
They all sound like
interesting projects.
What can you tell us
about the Henry Ford?
It’s called the “With Liberty and Justice
for All” exhibit. It’s a permanent exhibit
within the confines of the building and we’re
basically lighting exhibits, graphics and,
most importantly, we’re lighting historical
artifacts throughout the exhibit space, such
as remnants of Washington’s Camp, a letter
from Patrick Henry and the Rosa Park’s bus. In
effect, we’re lighting things that have shaped
American History.
That carries a lot of
responsibility.
We use very, very low footcandle readings on anything of consequence—three
to four footcandles on any given artifact or
historic piece is what we end up looking
for—so it’s quite tricky to get that to work
in that environment and have it lit properly.
There’s a lot of contrast—it’s very museum
style lighting.
You use the dark spaces and low illumination
levels to light most
things in order to control light damage?
It’s to control damage. Even though you
use UV filters, it can still damage paper, in particular, and any cloth material, even leather.
We have to be very careful. The pathway lighting may be 40 or 50 footcandles, but those artifacts are very precisely lit not to exceed four
footcandles. It’s tricky and a lot of fun figuring
all of that out.
We’ve got another exhibit that just
opened this summer at the Henry Ford. It’s a
historic building called the Soybean Lab and
it’s more of an architectural project. We did
period lighting for the building itself, because
of its historic nature around the turn of the
century, and I was able to conceal LED lighting
to support that look and be able to light the
artifacts from a concealed location. It looked
as close to period as you could get, down to
the lamps which were historic Thomas Edison
1890 filament lamps. We snuck in some LEDs,
hidden behind the timber of the building, and
we were able to get a 20-footcandle reading
out in front with it recessed behind columns
and structures.
It would seem that
LED fixtures make a
lot of sense. They may
not offer the efficacy
of conventional light
sources, but they have
no UV, right?
You can get the footcandle reading
you’re looking for and feel confident you’re
not going to damage precious American
artifacts in the process.
We’ll wrap this up with
one of the traditional
closing questions: Do
you miss being on the
road, touring?
[Laughs]. I do. That’s where I learned
my trade.
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Below are the
nominees for the Parnelli Awards. Cast your votes to honor those
individuals and companies who have done outstanding work in the past year. Voting for the Parnelli Awards
is limited to subscribers of Projection Lights & Staging News and Front of House.
To cast your vote, go to
www.parn elliawards.co m
To ensure only one vote per person, you must input the subscription code from your address label. (See Web site for details.)
Lighting Designer of the Year
Steve Cohen—Billy Joel
Bryan Hartley—Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Seth Jackson—Barry Manilow
Alex Reardon—Dixie Chicks
Jeff Rials—Mudvayne
Mike Swinford—Rascal Flatts
Set/Scenic Designer of the Year
Roy Bennett—Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
Mark Fisher—Rolling Stones
Rob Howell—Lord of the Rings
Tom McPhillips—Martina McBride
Jean Rabasse—Love
Bruce Rodgers, Trey Turner—Rascal Flatts
Lighting Company of the Year
Bandit Lites—Queen
Ed & Ted’s—Bon Jovi
Premier Global—Red Hot Chili Peppers
PRG—Coldplay
Theatrical Media Services—Dave Matthews Band
Upstaging—Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
Set Construction Company of the Year
Accurate
All Access
B & R Scenery
Tait Towers
Tomcat
Video Rental Company of the Year
I-Mag
MOO TV
Nocturne
Pete’s Big TVs
Screenworks NEP
XL Video
Video Director of the Year
Mick Anger—Mary J. Blige
Paul Becker—Paul McCartney
Tony Bongiovi—Bon Jovi
Jake Cooper—Kenny Chesney
Breckinridge Haggerty—Tool
Christine Strand—Rolling Stones
Sound Company of the Year
8th Day Sound
Audio Analysts
Clair-Showco.
Rat Sound Systems
Sound Image
Thunder Audio
Production Manager of the Year
John “Bugzee” Hougdahl—Bon Jovi
Chris Lamb—Madonna
Bill Rahmy—Red Hot Chili Peppers
Sean Sargeant—Toby Keith
Dale “Opie” Skjerseth—Rolling Stones
Ed Wanabo—Kenny Chesney
Regional Sound Company of the Year
Midwest—Clearwing Productions
Northwest—Concert Production Services
Southwest—HAS Productions
Northeast—Sound Associates
Southeast—Tennessee Concert Sound
Canada—Tour Tech East
Tour Manager of the Year
Bernie Boyle—Paul McCartney
Jerome Crooks—Nine Inch Nails
Fitzjoy Hellin—Shakira
Marty Hom—Delirium
Steve Kidd—Mudvayne
David Milem—Toby Keith
FOH Mixer of the Year
Robert Collins—Eric Clapton
Dirk Durham—Toby Keith
Clive Franks—Elton John
Dave Natale—Rolling Stones
Kevin Pruce—Madonna
Ken “Pooch” Van Druten—System of a Down
Coach Company of the Year
Diamond Coach
Hemphill Brothers Coach Company
Music City Coach
Ziggy’s Custom Coaches
Trucking Company of the Year
Ego Trips
Janco Entertainment Transport
Roadshow Services
StageCall
Upstaging
Regional Lighting Company of the Year
West Coast—Delicate Productions
Northeast—Earl Girls, Inc.
Southwest—LD Systems
Canada—Q1 Production Technologies
Midwest—Theatreworks
Southeast—Theatrical Lighting Systems, Inc.
Rigging Company of the Year
Atlanta Rigging Systems
Branam West Coast
Five Points
Kish Rigging
Ocean State Rigging
SGPS
Monitor Mixer of the Year
Beau Alexander—Tool
Rance Caldwell—Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Earl Neal—Toby Keith
Bruce Pendelton—Mudvayne
John Stevens—Hall and Oates
Vish Wadi—Shakira
Staging Company of the Year
Brown United
Kleege
Mobile Stage Rentals
Mountain Stages
Stageco
Pyro Company of the Year
Advanced Entertainment Services
J.E.M. F/X Inc.
Pyro Spectaculars by Souza
Pyrotek Special Effects
Strictly FX
Zenith Pyrotechnology
Sound Designer of the Year
Tom Clark —The Drowsy Chaperone
Jonathan Deans—Love
Abe Jacob —Evita
Steve Kennedy—Jersey Boys
Mick Potter—Phantom-The Las Vegas Spectacular
Freight Company of the Year
Backstage Cargo
Global Motion
Horizon
Rock-It Cargo
Sound Moves
www.parn elli awards.co m
Be front and center as the industry salutes its finest companies and practitioners at the 6th Annual Parnelli Awards
OCTOBER 20TH, 2006 7pm
THE VENETIAN HOTEL AND CASINO
Jere Harris
Bill Hanley
Audio Innovator
Award
Parnelli Lifetime
Achievement
Award
Participating Sponsors of the Parnellis include:
GOLD SPONSORS
INSTALLS • INDUSTRIALS • FILM/TV • THEATRE • CONCERTS
PROJECTION CONNECTION
Production Design Delivers for FedEx
NEW YORK—UVLD (Unlimited Visibility
Lighting Design) teamed with production
company PineRock to deliver a dynamic
onstage look for the annual FedEx national
sales meeting at the Venetian Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. UVLD drove the attentiongetting media content and designed the
extensive lighting for the three-day event,
which featured executive speakers, panel
presentations, celebrity talent and performances by extreme athletes.
Both UVLD and PineRock have been in
the forefront of the application of media
server technology in corporate design. “The
synergy between PineRock’s producers
and creative directors and the UVLD team
enabled us to maximize the capabilities of
20 multimedia LED panels, which formed
the background to the meeting’s set,” says
UVLD lighting designer Gregory Cohen. “Driven by us through the High End Systems’ Catalyst media server, the LED panels
carried the low-resolution video content
for every speaker, all the talent and the athletes. ”The PineRock team was lead by Mac
McNally and creative director Jeff Davis. Set
designer Tom Cariello designed the panels’
configuration. A large, horizontal LED panel,
with 768 x 144 resolution, was flanked by
clusters of nine smaller 192 x 192 outboard
panels raised above the large
panel and notching its upper
corners. A giant FedEx logo
capped the horizontal panel. IMAG screens bookended the
low-res screens.
“Working with the creative
team, I could use my experience
creating dramatic visual transitions and apply that palette to
the more traditional graphic
elements,” Cohen explains. “I
think what made the show suc-
cessful is that everyone was open to the
power the technology allows. From animated backgrounds, to still wallpaper, to full
motion clips, we were able to put the media
servers through their paces in a way that
was appropriate and ultimately effective for
the project.”
The wide array of backgrounds required
multiple days of onsite Catalyst programming by Cameron Yeary in advance of the
meeting. “The decision to let us drive the
background ultimately afforded us a lot of
flexibility,”Yeary notes. “We were always live
to the screen. This provided both adaptability and responsibility, and everything
was programmed to run flawlessly and consistently through rehearsal and during the
shows.”
UVLD’s Paul Sharwell, serving as
the moving light programmer, crafted
a dramatic lighting environment for
the meeting employing 100 automated
lights40 Vari*Lite VL 2500 Spots, 40 Martin MAC 2000 Washes and 20 MAC 2000
Performancesplus 130 conventional fixtures for traditional area lighting. “This was not a small show by any
Inside...
48 8 Hippos, 1 Big Screen
Idyll Hands Imagery were anything
but when they configured 360° of
hi-def video.
48 3,000 Points of Light
The first VersaPixel installation in the UK
proves to be not much of a gamble.
50 The Softy Gets Lofty
Photo By Steve Jennings
The Microsoft Management Summit relied on hi-def video to provide the scenic
elements at their annual meeting.
ity. The possibilities were limitless
with creative ideas and I was very
happy with the outcome.”
XL worked directly with Woodbury, Christian Lamb, Chris Kantrowitz and Petro Papahadipoulos
of Frank the Plumber, who provided the video content, to facilitate the design. Touring on behalf
of XL Video was lead LED tech
Robert “Bo” Crowell and LED tech
George Keim.
NEW YORK—MB Productions (MBP), in
conjunction with Tangram International
Exhibitions, staged a 360-degree virtual set
for HIT Entertainment, a leading provider of
preschool entertainment, at the 26th Annual International Licensing show, Jacob Javits
Convention Center, New York.
According to MB Productions President
Brian Brooks, “The concept was to create a
booth that had maximum visibility and high
impact.” Eight Digital Projection Highlite
5100gv projectors perched on top of a circular structure built above the booth produced
eight individual nine-foot by 12-foot images
that featured edited DVDs of Bob the
Video Not Idle on Clarkson Tour
LOS ANGELES—Production designer
Ray Woodbury, in conjunction with XL
Touring Video, created a design for Kelly
Clarkson’s U.S. tour using 10 Barco O-lite
screens that tracked horizontally and vertically across the stage, allowing the design
to achieve as many as eight different looks
or one converged look. The video screen
tracking motion control was fabricated by
SGPS. According to Woodbury, “This design
was integrated with motion control to allow for a unique video design and capabil-
Panoramic Screen Showcases
Children’s Properties
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.47-50.PC.indd 47
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
47
8/31/06 9:52:13 PM
NEWS
Technology in the Arts: Hippo Helps ‘Hood
NEW YORK—The Robin Hood Foundation, a New York City-based organization that
fights poverty, hosted 4,000 guests at a gala
benefit. As they entered the Jacob K. Javits
Convention Center they were encompassed
in a meticulously designed décor reflecting
Robin Hood’s New York City base and the
evening’s theme of children and education.
High-definition video content was created by
Idyll Hands Imagery, whose principals include
Patrick Dierson and Rodd McLaughlin. Lighting design for the entire event was done by
Doug “Spike”Brant of Artfag.
Dierson wore two hats, not only providing content creation but also as the video
content director for Artfag. The 400+ dinner
tables were surrounded by 20 high-definition
screens in a 360° configuration. “We had four
quadrants, each with five screens,” says Dierson. “Each of the screens had an individual
movie playing back on it. It basically looks like
five individual, invisible artists are scribbling
on the screen. The very last things that get
drawn in are the edges of each of the screens,
and that is when the magic happens of all five
screens coming in together and making a full,
seamless panoramic image.”
Dierson specified eight Green Hippo Ltd.
Hippotizer HD units to playback the high-definition content. “We chose the Hippotizer for
Robin Hood specifically because in our past
experience we found it to have one of the
most reliable systems in terms of frame-rate
playback,” says Dierson. “The other very important part of the system for us was that we use
a lighting media server that could also handle
the output of audio files so
that we could run video with
audio. The Hippotizer filled all
our needs.”
The Hippotizers were supplied by Main Light Industries.
There was only one problem
with Dierson’s plan no one,
including Main Light, had
eight Hippotizer HDs in the
U.S. “TMB and Green Hippo
stepped up and saved my
ass,” states Dierson.“Jedd Taub
from TMB came over to help
out and Nigel Sadler from
Green Hippo, as luck would
have it, was on his way to
New York anyway, so we monopolized him for
a couple of days when he offered to also help. It
was a tough shop order to fill because what we
needed weren’t just eight regular Hippotizers,
but rather we specifically needed eight highdefinition Hippotizers and there weren’t eight
available in the States, nor could we get them
flown in from overseas in time for the production. So Nigel converted all of Main Light’s current Hippotizer Stage systems to Hippotizer
HD systems for us. You basically had the main
software engineer making these things as rocksolid as possible. And he did it; they were phenomenal; they worked great. The support from
both of them—Jedd and Nigel—was phenomenal. You couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Lisa Kerwath, TMB Sales Manager, believes
that the solution was an example of the technology supporting the art: Even with the most
Robin Hood Foundation
Benefit, grandMA and
Hippotizer monitors.
Photo: Rodd McLaughlin
fully featured and accessible media server on
the market, creative minds continually manage
to create new challenges.“It’s very gratifying to
work with a company, like Green Hippo, that always rises to the occasion.” Other companies contributing to the
event’s success included: Atomic Design (scenic), Ed & Ted’s Excellent Lighting (lighting coordination), Christie Lites (main room lighting),
Video West (video), and BML-Blackbird Theatrical Services (concert lighting).
The importance of support and working
together was evident in the success of the
evening, not only technical and artistically, but
also charitable, where the real rewards will be
enjoyed by school children in NYC. The Robin
Hood Foundation raised a record $48 million
at the event, which included $19 million that is
designated for a 1,500-student charter school.
First UK VersaPixel Installs
at Grosvenor Casino
100.0609.47-50.PC.indd 48
LONDON—Projected Image Digital has
supplied the first Element Labs’ VersaPixel installation in the UK, featuring over 3000 pointsources of light, at the newly-opened Grosvenor Casino, on Bury New Road Manchester.
The PID team worked closely with Cadmium
Design’s Paula Reason and Tina Chetnik, who
specified the VersaPixels.
Reason is well known for designing
light features into her innovative architectural and interior schemes. She likes spaces
to become live, interactive sources of energy as well as making a definite statement
about the environment.
PID coordinated the installation
process with Leisure Installation Services (LIS), including pixel stuffing over 150
square meters of ceiling tiles that arrived with pre-cut holes, all needing to
be fitted with VersaPixels. This task was
done at the warehouse of local friends
Lite Alternative, and took three people
two extremely long days to complete.
The cables and driver boards were
installed first, followed by the ceiling,
after which the bar was constructed
underneath, an operation needing
tight co-ordination. Once the bar was
in place, PID commissioned and programmed up the system – with every
pixel firing up first time.
Two Element Labs C1 controllers
drive the system, DMX-triggered by
the overall Crestron BMS that controls all things electrical throughout
the entire building.
For content, PID collaborated with
Reason and Kevin Price, who was hired
by Grosvenor to produce content running across all the plasmas and various
video surfaces. He came up with a storyboard
requiring a selection of clips exuding a range of
states from high energy to organic and soothing. Over 20 custom video clips were created
by PID. An on-site “first pass” of content was
arranged for the client, from which the final selection was honed and programmed into C1s.
The venue has been open a month and
the feedback and comments from everyone
—staff, visitors and clientele—has been overwhelmingly positive about the VersaPixel feature. It’s already become a local talking point,
and business is currently booming.
Grosvenor Casino
8/31/06 9:52:53 PM
NEWS
Microsoft Management Reaches Summit with Production
SAN DEIGO, CA—Microsoft Management
Summit is a fairly new event for Microsoft, but
it brings together the front line of the organization’s technology gurus. As you can imagine,
they aren’t easily impressed. This year the Summit took place at the San Diego Convention
Center, where Maverick Productions worked
with LMG, Inc. on the main sessions.
With a 40-foot by 60-foot stage and very
little scenery—by design—the team looked
to the graphics and show technology to carry
the sessions. The main production objective
was to make all the images look exactly like
an actual desktop—even though the “desktop” was 40 feet wide.
Each morning opened with a 30-second
HD video, produced by Maverick, to take the
audience behind the scenes and reinforce the
theme—the “Power to Manage Change.” With
LMG’s Kahuna switcher and its sidecar, they
were able to feed the screens with multiple formats. In addition, the HD system recorded the
high-definition presentation in standard-definition beta in real time.
“The HD package switched from keynote to
demo and integrated six to eight source computers with ease. And we were able to make
quick last minute changes, which isn’t the case
with all technology,” said Jim Angelo, partner
at Maverick Productions. “Its agile performance
proved to Microsoft that the LMG-built system
was the perfect solution.”
The HD/SD switching package includes
three MEs, 12 channels DVE, still store and motion store capability and 12 AUX out. The side
car enables a fourth ME to switch all sources to
a separate line cut. The entire system
can switch four different “destinations” at the same time—center
screen, side screens, delay screens
and the record switch.
The video graphics and desktop
demos were projected onto three
screens upfront—one center 18-foot
by 32-foot rear Stewart lumiflex screen,
and two side 22-foot, 6-inch by x 40foot rear Stewart lumiflex screens. Half
way back, LMG set up two 12’ x 21.5’
front projection truss delay screens.
Each main screen was projected by
two Digital Projections Lighting 35 HDs.
With virtually no set, the scenery was all
about the screen, stage and product. To complement the bare essentials, lighting added
imagery through the air—with lots of LED Colorblocks and gobos. LMG’s lighting department
had the added challenge of lighting for HD,
which requires very even—but not necessarily
brighter—light. So the crew worked to ensure
that the illumination was the same across the
entire stage.
“Having everything (lighting, audio and
video) come from LMG maximized our dollars
and logistically made life a lot simpler,” said
Angelo. “LMG is immersed in HD. They have the
equipment and the experience—an ideal show
solution. My goal is to get that system on every
show we do.”
“The show was pretty straight-forward,”
added Kurtz. “In the past, it would have been a
challenge to work with multiple formats, but
our HD Kahuna switching system made it a
breeze. Now, delivering a quality and flexible HD
product has become second nature to us.”
Media Servers Play Tasty
Clips for Dish Network
50
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.47-50.PC.indd 50
DENVER, CO—Vista Systems’ Spyder
344 and a Montage II console helped
support the general sessions at the
EchoStar/DISH Network Team Summit
2006, held at the Colorado Convention
Center’s Lecture Hall in Denver.
MPG Productions staged the annual
retailer trade show and conference, and
was tasked with delivering the first widescreen show for EchoStar/DISH Network
using Spyder technology. The event also
marked a first for the Colorado Convention Center—not even “Wheel of Fortune” brought in as big a screen during
its on-location tapings from the venue.
The Team Summit general sessions
featured executives who made extensive use of TV segments, prepackaged
HD material, and internally-produced
Standard and High Definition clips to
present new programs and technology.
Capping the daily sessions were the evenings’ entertainment headlined by The
Beach Boys and John Fogerty.
MPG taped the Spyder’s capabilities
for PIP, moving/multiple PIP, full-filling
of the 15x50-foot Stewart Aeroview 100
screen, three-screen/three-source split
and keying sponsor logos. Changes coming up until show time every day were
not a problem for MPG Spyder programmer/operator, Frank Musgrove.
The Spyder output was fiber optic
DVI to six Christie Roadster S+16K 16,000
lumen dark chip DLP projectors while
interfacing with four cameras, graphics
computers for PowerPoint elements, a
Doremi HD SDI HDD recorder/player and
a 1080i HD deck. The lighting console
was a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog III.
For MPG, Mike Prince served as
project manager and Doug Grebenc
account manager.
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:53:34 PM
»
For-A FRC-7000 Frame Rate Converter
»
VIDEO PRODUCTS
Vista Systems Spyder V2.5
The HD Frame Rate Converter FRC-7000 from For-A uses a motion compensation processing technique based on motion vectors. The motion vector of the object is detected, and movement of the interpolation frame object is generated based on the object’s amount of vector
movement in the frames just before and after the calculated area. The result is frame rate conversion with minimum judder. The FRC-7000 incorporates a scene cut detection function which
automatically detects scene changes so that frame rate conversion is performed without using
motion compensation processing on unrelated data for the frames before and after scene cuts.
Vista Systems has released version 2.5 software for Vista Advanced and Spyder
Server applications. In addition to linear keying allowing for cut and fill channels
to be created using live source inputs, the new DX4 quad-output digital board features four DVI outputs on a single card, enabling more inputs or output boards to be
placed into a single frame. The DX4 also allows horizontal and vertical edge blending,
black level compensation and output rotation. SpyderPoint is also included in this
release. Spyder’s scripting controls have been enhanced as well, and many new dragdrop features have been added.
For-A America • 714.894.3311 • www.for-a.com
Vista Systems • 602.943.5700 • www.vistasystems.net
»
»
High End Systems DL.2 Curved
Surface Support
High End Systems Inc. is introducing Curved Surface Support, a new software feature for its DL.2™ Digital Light fixture. Curved Surface Support corrects for shape distortions, which happen when the DL.2 projects onto surfaces that are not flat. It allows
the user to project the DL.2 onto convex or concave cylinders, angular screens, spheres
and disk- shaped surfaces and control the amount of correction needed, as well as
control the vertical and horizontal center points of the image. The Curved Surface Support software v1.2.3 may be downloaded free of charge from the support section of
the High End Systems website at www.highend.com.
Doremi HDG-20
Video Test Generator
The HDG-20 portable video test generator from
Doremi Labs provides still and moving test patterns
in SD and HD formats at full broadcast quality. It also
outputs audio tone, time code and closed caption
characters. It features a dual-link 2k resolution video output and an optional sync input (for genlock). The HDG-20 fits in
the palm of your hand and has four buttons to operate the menu
displayed on its LCD screen. RS-422 firmware upgrade provides easy updates. Doremi Labs designed the HDG-20 to offer video professionals a low
cost portable test generator to calibrate and test video equipment and displays.
Doremi Labs Inc. • 818.562.1101 • www.doremilabs.com
»
Altinex
The Altinex AC101-202 is an RF Adapter designed for wireless communication between the Altinex MT101-151 LCD front panel and any
computer/controller using standard RS-232 communication software. It transmits and receives RS-232 data. Wireless communication is possible from any PC and allows control to
be changed from one computer to another by moving the AC101-202. It incorporates a 4-digit RF identification number allowing flexibility in areas where
several MultiTaskers are in use. A single AC101-202
may be used to control several MultiTaskers with
the same ID, or several AC101-202s and their accompanying MultiTaskers can be assigned their own
unique IDs for independent and simultaneous control.
Altinex, Inc. • 800.258.4639 • www.altinex.com
High End Systems • 800.890.8989 • www.highend.com
www.PLSN.com
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
51
VIDEO DIGERATI
VIDEOOEDIV
in
captivity
M
edia servers allow the lighting
designer to easily call up and
play back video clips in real-time
via a lighting console. Another advantage, however, of using a media server is
having the ability to integrate live video
images into your lighting cues.
Most media servers come stocked with,
or provide as an option, some type of video card that accepts digital video input via
Firewire (IEEE1394), S-Video, and/or composite. This capability allows live video
“...It’s not unusual to be asked to
incorporate a clip from a pre-existing
DVD into a production.”
into the show. Since the media server is
a computer, it can be simple to connect a
digital video camera and incorporate live
to be called up and displayed in real-time
during the show through the media server,
displaying the live output from the camera
when the video input channel is enabled from the lighting console. For
this type of application, a video card
(which the manufacturer will typically recommend and install prior to
leaving the factory) with an S-Video,
composite or Firewire input is all that
you will need. But in some cases, you
may find that you want to capture a
specific live image and replay that
image later on in the future. This is
where a video capture card comes in
handy.
Video capture cards are either
internal or external devices that
record video or TV to your
computer’s hard drive.
Internal video capture cards
can be installed in a PCI slot
on the computer’s motherboard, while external cards
often attach via USB. Much
like standard video cards, there
are video capture cards that record digital video via Firewire or
using analog inputs such as S-video
and composite. Specific cards are also
available that allow you to capture and
record output from your TV with a coaxial
cable input, for instance, in your house, to
record your favorite TV shows. Since applications can vary widely, there are many
choices for capture cards, so it’s important
to know the options that are available
when deciding on your approach. Here’s
an overview of some of the different
types of video capture cards from which
you can choose.
Video and TV
Capture Card
A video and TV capture card is used to
record an analog video or TV signal and will
usually have S-Video and composite inputs
to record both video and audio. These types
of cards can be attached via USB or installed
internally in a PCI slot, and usually come
bundled with a TV and/or video capture
software package. A big advantage of these
types of cards is that they can also be used
to record analog video from a camcorder,
DVD player/recorder or VCR. And trust me
when I say that it’s not unusual to be asked
to incorporate a clip from a pre-existing DVD
into a production from time to time.
Video-only
Capture Card
52
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
A video-only capture card is typically
used when you want to edit the video
being captured. These cards capture with
DV/Firewire inputs from digital camcorders, analog signals and/or hardware such
as DVD, Video Compact Discs (VCD) and
Super Video CD (SVCD) while also providing excellent control of video capturing
aspects including constant or variable bit
rates, video digitizing, oversampling and
comb filters such as brightness, contrast,
chroma, saturation and hue.
www.PLSN.com
By VickieClaiborne
TV Tuner Card
The TV tuner capture card captures TV from a coaxial cable
input, tunes the channels
available from your
cable company
or from an
re c
ptu
ca
deo
ard
Vi
antenna,
and allows you
to watch TV directly on your PC in a window
or full screen. They will typically provide an electronic programming guide so you can easily schedule recordings in advance. They may also function
as a digital video recorder, so you can pause
and rewind live TV and record TV programs to
disk in formats like MPEG or DivX®.
Some capture cards function as video
capture cards as well as TV tuner cards. They
include analog inputs as well as a coaxial
cable input, Firewire connectors to attach
to digital video (DV) camcorders as well as
RCA, S-Video and stereo audio inputs. Many
come bundled with TV and video capture
software, video editing software and/or
DVD authoring and burning software that
you can use to edit your DV movies on your
PC, add effects, then record back to video
tape in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.
Video capture cards,like video cards, range
in price depending on the processor and
amount of memory that is needed for the application. When purchasing a video capture
card, make sure to understand what your requirements are, because these cards do vary
in features, and one size does not fit all.
When working with video, there are many
options to consider when choosing an approach to integrating and programming the
show with a media server. While there are all
kinds of video equipment available that do
these sorts of tasks, the advantage of using
a media server is in its flexibility and concise
package. When one piece of equipment can
deliver the desired results, then it’s an attractive option to the time, money and energy
spent rounding up the gear and the manpower to operate it. Just remember to weigh the
options before committing to one direction
only to possibly later find it doesn’t suit the
application. In other words, choose the option
that makes the most sense.
Vickie Claiborne (www.vickieclaiborne.
com) is an independent programmer and
training consultant and can be reached at
[email protected].
roadtest
Anidea Innovations Gadget
One for the Road
By RichardCadena
The Gadget is a very compact (3-5/16” x
3- /16” x 1-3/8”, 6.2 ounces) lighting control interface and tester. As a DMX recorder, it has
16 MB of storage, or over 30,000 individual
DMX scenes that can be stored across 64
sequences. What’s that in real time? That
depends on the number of channels of
control and the complexity of the programming, but it can be anywhere from about
an hour up to ten or more hours for an average show. The “gas gauge” feature allows
you to monitor the available memory while
you’re recording so you won’t be surprised
if you run out of storage. There are three
ways to play back the programming: from
the menu display of the device itself, from
a USB connected PC, or by using the builtin real-time clock/calendar. Scenes are captured in real-time from another console.
In Monitor Mode, the Gadget displays
the incoming DMX data for any selected
channel. It can display in hex, decimal or
percentage. It also gives you the ability to
manually send individual channels or DMX
data (or all channels at once) in order to test
your data system and DMX devices. And if
you really want to get down to the nittygritty, in Diagnostic Mode it analyzes individual DMX packets of data, including the
frame rate, packet length and data level.
The menu display looks an awful lot like
one you would see on an automated light,
which makes it very intuitive (if you’ve ever
worked with automated lights) and easy to
use. It has a four-digit, seven-segment red
5
100.0609.53.RT.indd 53
Though I didn’t
use the Gadget extensively on this
particular job, I
can definitely see
its potential and
I think it would be a very valuable asset on
any lighting gig. It’s a versatile DMX tool.
Not only does it magically prevent cabling
problems just by carrying it in your briefcase (that’s my theory anyway), but it’s also
a great diagnostic tool should any of those
pesky problems defy you and make themselves known in its presence. And should
you need a real-time DMX recorder and
playback device, it is the most compact one
that I remember seeing.
What it is: Anidea Innovations Gadget
Lighting Control Interface and DMX Tester.
Who it’s for: Anyone who uses DMX—
installers, programmers, techs, operators.
Pros: Very compact, lightweight, powerful,
versatile, plenty of storage, easy to operate.
Cons: Setting individual DMX levels
channel-by-channel takes a while.
Retail Price: $599
The Gig
Recently, I went to an install job with
the Gadget in my ATA briefcase, confident
that, should there be any problems with
the cabling I would be able to troubleshoot
it very quickly. Unfortunately, the automated lighting system, cabling and all, worked
flawlessly the first time. That almost never
happens. Nevertheless, I was able to try out
the Gadget.
There were a couple of instances where
we had some automated lights acting funny during programming—changing color
and gobo and moving around seemingly
by themselves. After confirming that the
problem was not caused by a missing DMX
terminator in the data run, I pulled out the
Gadget, plugged it into the data line and
in a few button pushes I was monitoring
the incoming DMX data from the console.
Changing the data cable around, I then
switched modes, set the outgoing DMX address and was able to send a DMX signal
to the fixture. By setting the level of each
parameter, I was able to confirm that the
fixture was working properly. It turned out
to be a fixture mode problem—it was in
audio active mode.
The Gear
LED display with four membrane switches
labeled “Menu,” “Enter,” “Up,” and “Down.”
(Sound familiar?) Besides the “Power On”
indicator it also has a USB Activity indicator, a Play indicator, a Timer indicator, and
each of the two DMX ports has an activity
indicator (red = transmit, green = receive).
It comes with a wall-wart external power
supply and a lithium-ion rechargeable battery so you can operate the device without having to be chained to the wall with
a power cable. The
battery also charges when the unit
is connected to a
computer through
the USB port. The
operating time is
five to seven hours
on one full battery
charge.
The USB interface serves as a link
to a PC in order to
run the GadgetMon software and
to get firmware
updates. The GadgetMon software
allows you to set
DMX parameters
such as packet frequency, packet length,
break length, inter-packet gap and interframe gap. It also allows you to store shows
on your PC and use them as backup or for
additional storage. Lastly, GadgetMon allows you to program time of day settings
to play back your recorded shows. The
playback feature also allows you to repeat
cues a number of times, and you can also
repeat the entire set of cues. You can have
up to 32 scheduled events, each with their
own start and stop times for any day of the
week. It’s great for stand-alone applications
like amusement parks, museums, airports
and exterior lighting.
I
f you’ve ever spent any time chasing
down DMX data problems, then you’ll
appreciate this little Gadget from Anidea Innovations, Inc. I once went to a job
site at a permanent installation to program
a console after being assured that all of the
automated lights were installed, powered,
cabled and working. When I got there I
found all of that to be true except for the
“working” part. Oops.
The installers spent the next day and
a
half
chasing down what
turned out to be
problems with
the data cables
they built. The
problem was exacerbated by the
fact that they
were using an
audio cable tester to check the
integrity of their
soldering
job,
despite my admonition against
doing so. DMX is
a high frequency
digital signal and
a simple DC tester doesn’t always find problems with data
cables, so it’s almost a prerequisite to have
a DMX tester when you do installations.
And it’s not a bad idea to have an alternate
means of control in case you want to generate or capture DMX data. That’s where
the Gadget comes in.
8/31/06 9:55:30 PM
FEEDINGTHEMACHINES
prep time for these things, so the more ready
you are the better.
What
is
an
size rig that
working with?
average
you are
I’ve been on sets with fewer than 20 dimmers and as many as 6,500 dimmers. I find it
interesting that on a live
show the rig only consists
of the lights that are part
of that show. If there are
100 moving lights and 100
conventionals, that’s all
that the console has patched in. On a movie
rig, in addition to all the lights that are hanging in the rig, there will also be numerous dimmer floor drops scattered around the set. A
floor drop is a standard Socopex cable with
an Edison breakout, or a 100-amp dimmer
lead dropped to the floor behind the set walls.
These additional dimmers are added to the
set for all the lights that will be used around
camera on that day. Gaffers and cinematographers are often using dimmers all over the set
for the ability to control the lighting of a shot
more quickly.
Lighting Films for a Living
W
hile most programmers work in a variety of production categories, some
specialize
in a unique segment
of our market. Scott
Barnes is one of these
programmers. For the
last 10 years he has
been located in Hollywood working on feature films. If you have
seen Poseidon, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of
Unfortunate Events, or Zathura: A Space Adventure, then you have seen his work. I sat down
with Scott to learn more about his application
of automated lighting programming.
Most recently I programmed a TV musical
special for Tony Bennett.
“In motion pictures, it’s more
about programming on the fly.”
How did you get to this
point in your career?
I was born and raised in Carrollton, Texas.
Technical theatre was a big part of my high
school years, but I never got involved with
lighting. I started working for a rental house in
Dallas just out of high school. In 1996, I decided to move to Los Angeles. While working on
a movie, an opportunity to work an Expression
console came up, and I found that I really enjoyed programming. Within the following year
I started using automated lighting on some
small shows which led to my introduction to
automated lighting consoles. In 2003, an opportunity came up for me to purchase my own
console. I am still using my own console on
just about any show I do.
What other types of production have you been
involved with?
Mostly motion pictures, but I have
done TV, commercials and music videos.
What do you think separates the kind of productions you work with from
the “normal” touring or
theatrical shows?
Touring and theatrical shows are all
about programming for a live audience.
There is usually plenty of programming time
and numerous rehearsals to create the show.
In motion pictures, it’s more about programming on the fly.
In terms of programming,
what
special
requirements or procedures are
required with films?
Although we do record cues, we typically
are not playing back cues like you would on
a live show. We do have our moments when
we have to create some sort of cue list to
play back, but mostly we set a look in a cue,
and then we shoot that shot. We label the
cue with the scene number that matches
the camera slate. Once that shot is done and
they are moving to the next shot, we start
to create the next cue as they light it. The
reason for using an advanced console is to
have a greater amount of efficiency and to
be ready for anything that they might throw
at you last minute. There’s usually not a lot of
Is there generally an LD
that guides you through
programming, or are you
on your own?
We take direction from the chief lighting
technician (CLT), or gaffer. He communicates to
us what he wants on or off and at what level.
How we do it is entirely up to us. Also, any effects
type of lighting is in our hands as well. The CLT
would just say, “Make that flicker” or “Make that
chase.” And it would be up to us to do whatever
we do to achieve what he or she wants.
Are conventionals programmed on your console
with
the
automated
lighting
or
on
another desk?
On movies, everything is programmed
from the one console. The only time there
would be two consoles would be in cases like
Dreamgirls, which I just finished earlier this
year. Since Dreamgirls is a musical with numerous musical performances, the producers
By BradSchiller
brought in Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer
from New York to LD all the theatrical lighting using another console. This allowed the
theatrical lighting to be handled by people
who were experienced in this type of lighting,
and leaving the movie lighting to be handled
by us. There was one number in the movie
that Jules and Peggy did not do, and for that
number I handled the movie lighting and the
theatrical lighting.
What’s your favorite horror story?
Believe it or not the movie that gave me
a lot of positive press is also the movie with
my scariest moment. I thought I was going to
lose my job. The reason I got the programmer
job for Lemony Snicket is because before the
movie started I had heard through the grapevine that there was going to be a rather large
rig with thousands of dimmers. They were
planning on using multiple consoles to run
the rig. I made them aware of the fact that
I had a console that could do the whole rig,
and this got me the job. The very first week
we started I noticed major flickering problems with the 20K dimmers in the rig. They
were getting very nervous with me about this
flickering problem. After troubleshooting,
we determined that the flickering wasn’t because of a console problem. It turns out that
the chipset in the 20K stand-alone dimmers
was a bit old, and when addressed into a full
universe of DMX, it can cause some unstable
data transfer. The solution was to separate
the 20K dimmers out of the universes they
were in, and put them into their own universe.
For the rest of the show we had no problems
with them again.
What is your proudest
lighting moment?
On the Tony Bennett special, the number
titled “Sing You Sinners” was a great number,
and I’m pretty proud of how that one turned
out. I’m also proud of the one number I did
on Dreamgirls called “Heavy.” Since I wasn’t
given any kind of prep time or programming
time for this, I did most of the work with my visualizer, which not only saved me, but turned
a lot of heads while doing so.
Is there anything else you
would like to share?
I’m very excited about the direction entertainment lighting is going with the addition of media servers, LED panels and digital
fixtures. I have a big graphic arts background,
and the thought of taking what I can do with
graphics and applying them to lighting really
piques my interest. When things slow down
for me and I can make time, I plan on learning
more about these new tools.
54
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
Contact brad at [email protected] or
www.bradschiller.com
www.PLSN.com
THEBIZ
t doesn’t take an inordinate
amount of scrutiny to see that the
technical jobs in entertainment
are a male-dominated domain. Look
around at concerts and theatrical productions
or on the credits after a television program or
a feature film—the LDs, the mixers, the gaffers
and the techs are overwhelmingly male. (They
don’t call them best “boys” for nothing.)
There are women in the ranks, however,
more and more of them every year. On top
music tours, on Broadway and in the media
arts, the number of women working as lighting designers, lighting programmers and
lighting directors is mushrooming. The trend
comes from a confluence of factors: digital
technology has removed some of the physical barriers to lighting with lighter consoles
and less bulky lighting elements (though
digital will never eliminate the need to crawl
along a truss 50 feet in the air), changes in
local and federal laws that have significantly
banished genderism from the workplace
and changes in social attitudes that make at
least the perception of equality the baseline
in most situations.
It wasn’t always that way. Anne Militello, owner of Vortex Lighting, was a pioneer
woman in the lighting business, working
first as a roadie for mid-sized companies in
the Bay Area in the late 1970s while also running lights at punk clubs in San Francisco.
Her résumé has many instantly recognizable
names, including Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Pearl
Jam, Josh Groban, Carlos Santana, The Dead
Kennedys and The Band. Her memoirs of that
era, though, will read with a bit more grit.
“During those ‘ancient’ times, which
seemed like it was the Wild West, I slept with
a crescent wrench in my hand,” Militello recalls.“I was once fired because the head electrician on tour told me he couldn’t get laid if I
was the one controlling the lighting console
during the show! In the ‘70s, Bill Graham’s
production company, FM productions, told
me flatly they wouldn’t hire me because I
was female. I tried to get some kind of legal
action going but at that time it was still difficult. Finally, after encountering a pretty serious violent physical attack on the road that
left me on tranquilizers for a year, I re-evaluated life and moved over to theatre, where I
flourished for many years.”
It’s ironic that the entertainment industry, which tends to wear its putatively
enlightened social and political views
on its sleeve—the Dixie Chicks weren’t
breaking any new ground in London three
years ago—has been one of the worst offender when it came to letting women rise
through the ranks.
“It’s endemic to the music industry,” Militello asserts. “After working in architecture
and on construction sites in the last few
years where there are not gender issues
anymore, I now see that the music industry is the one of the last holdouts of sexism
in the United States. However, artists and
managers are responsible for the overall atmosphere of their tours, and I’ve seen both
Who Light-And Lit-The Way
extremes, good and bad. But look at commercial music these days and the message
to men how to treat their ‘bitches’ and you
see why there is a problem.”
Susan Rose got into lighting in 1994. At
the time she was an aspiring singer in Nashville and working at the now-defunct Opryland theme park. There she encountered
one of the first Flying Pig Systems Wholehog consoles and her enthusiastic curiosity
convinced the park’s LD to teach her to run
it. It didn’t take long for her to end up in the
driver’s seat on that thennew technology platform,
and she never lost sight of
the fact that knowing just a
little bit more than the next
guy—literally—would be
the key to success.
“I didn’t encounter really
blatant sexism as I was coming up, but a lot of things
had changed by then,” she
says, speaking on a day off
from her role of lighting director on Ringo Starr’s “All-Star” tour. “What
I’ve learned is that I could create a niche for
myself by becoming proficient at lighting
design and programming. There are shows
that I’ll do the programming for another designer. It ensures that I’m always busy.”
Rose agrees that this is one way in which
technology has propelled greater equality
between men and women in entertainment
lighting. She says her pay has consistently
been on a par with that of men for nearly
a decade. “Once in blue moon I’ll get a guy
who says girls shouldn’t be doing this kind
of work,” she says. “But by the end of the day
they’ll have a new respect for what I can do. I
know my limits—if I need help lifting something, I ask for it, and I get it. But anyone can
climb a truss if they’re careful.”
When Anne Militello was coming up,
the idea of learning lighting technology in
an academic environment was still a dream.
She’s impressed with how that’s changed.
“There are now excellent theatrical and architectural lighting programs that offer Masters Degrees,” she says. “Unfortunately, there
are no extensive programs in concert lighting, though I recently taught a semester of
this at California Institute of Arts.”
Susan Rose also teaches Hog operation and programming classes. She also
authored a short book—the Whole Hog Reference Guide—that has traveled the world
over the Internet and been translated into
a dozen languages. Rose never tried to
protect her intellectual property; instead,
though she barely made a dime from the
sales of the book, she says, “The PR was
great for my career,” an attitude that suggests she will never suffer from heart disease or grinding of the teeth.
Both women see the road for women in
lighting as being far more open and without
obstacles, except perhaps for the ones that
they put there themselves. Rose, who lectures
on lighting at Full Sail, says the question the fe-
male students never fail to ask is, “What’s it like
to be on the bus with all guys?”“I laugh but tell
them to take themselves and their craft seriously, and so will everyone else,” she says.
Anne Militello is a bit more forceful. She
reminds us that the leading pioneers in the
field of theatrical lighting designers were
women—Jean Rosenthal, Tharon Musser and
others, and that Jennifer Tipton, a renowned
contemporary theatre designer and head
of the Yale University lighting program, was
the first to receive MacArthur Genius Grant
By DanDaley
REM and has lit AOL’s music webcasts (an
area worth a future column itself ), agrees
that music touring is the least-evolved area
of entertainment, to put it bluntly. “TV and
film seem more responsive than touring,”
she says. “In 20 years of touring I still haven’t
seen the number of female personnel on
tours increase very much, whereas film and
TV sets seem to at least have a much better
“Once in blue moon I’ll get a guy who says
girls shouldn’t be doing this kind of work,
but by the end of the day they’ll have a new
respect for what I can do.” –Susan Rose
for work as a lighting designer. “This is considered the Nobel prize for artists and one
of the highest honors for American artists,
never before given to a lighting designer and
may never again,” she says. She’s also wary of
what she suspects is a trend towards shutting
women out of more lighting roles on Broadway and theatre, the one area she feels has
been where women have been able to gain
consistent career traction.
Susanne Sasic, who since 1986 has toured
with artists like Sonic Youth, David Byrne and
www.PLSN.com
gender balance, even if women are still underrepresented in key positions.”
Gender issues are never completely avoidable because, simply put, men and women
are different. But I’ve never met anyone of any
gender who finds that problematic. The problems arise when the differences are perceived
and used as barriers instead of complementary forces. That will also change as time goes
by, to everyone’s benefit.
Dan Daley can be reached at [email protected]
I
WOMEN
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
55
PRODUCTSPOTLIGHT
Nexera
LX 19-26º
By PhilGilbert
F
or the past decade, industry pundits
have been predicting the rise of the
“dichroic theatre.” The promise of
low-cost theatrical fixtures with reliable
and long-lasting color-mixing capabilities has seemed at times to be fleeting
at best.
There is still hope, though, with new
products coming to market from old and
new companies alike. Both High End Systems and Ocean Optics have been producing add-on units designed specifically
for ETC’s hugely popular Source Four line
of ellipsoidals, allowing users to add CMY
color mixing capabilities to their stock of
Source Four fixtures. The coming paragraphs will give you a little more insight
into the latest of these “dichroic theatre”
products to hit the tradeshow floor.
The Hardware
Wybron’s Nexera range of products
has grown to include a handful of wash
and spot fixtures, all of which include a
proprietary color mixing system making
use of gradient density cyan, magenta
and yellow dichroic color filters. The newest addition to the line is the NexeraLX
19-26° Profile. This 575-watt fixture includes all of the standard features that
you expect in a professional ellipsoidal,
including manually adjustable focus, four
framing shutters, tool-free lamp calibration, and 6.25” accessory slots.
The spot also includes a manually adjustable zoom, allowing the user to manipulate the beam angle with the simple
twist of a knob. Adjustable from 19° to
26°, the available field angles slot the fixture into the most frequently used beam
sizes for standard applications.
The Firmware
The color mixing apparatus in the fixture is a three-color CMY system, allowing the user to mix a broad range of colors from the unit. The unit is convection
cooled, allowing the fixture to be installed
in noise-sensitive environments without
the intrusion of fan noise.
Power and data are supplied to the
module from a Nexera power supply that
supports six, 12 or 24 units depending on
the model. Four pin XLR in and out connections are found on each color module,
allowing multiple fixtures to be daisychained to the power supply.
The color mixing mechanism for each
unit is controlled via three channels of
DMX protocol, with each channel operating one of the three colors. (A useful
appendix to the manual includes CMY
conversions for over sixty popular filter colors from GAM, Lee and Rosco.) No
other controls—such as effects or reset
commands—are available, though future firmware upgrades are possible via a
third-party firmware updater.
Housing
All Nexera fixtures share a set
of
common
parts, including
the lamp housing,
reflector
and color-mixing
module. Each fixture is constructed
of milled aluminum.
The fixture weighs
just less than 25 pounds. By
comparison, a 19° Source Four
with a High End Systems Color
Merge unit installed weighs approximately 27 pounds. The critical
dimensions of the fixture stack up very
closely to an equivalent Source Four.
Operation
Since the Nexera has an incandescent source, the red colors are deeper
than most discharge source CMY color
mixing luminaires. The blues don’t have
the deep indigos that discharge sources
naturally have, but it does a very good
job with them, as well as with the greens.
The secondary colors, cyan, magenta and
yellow, are the strong points of this color
mixing system.
With the use of common modules and
parts throughout the line, owners and
operators will enjoy the ability to reduce
inventories of everything from lamps to
lenses. It uses a 575-watt Philips GLC
or GLA biplane tungsten halogen
lamp. The GLA is a longer-life version of the GLC, with 2,000 hours
average service life. The tradeoff
is that it has a slightly lower color
temperature of 3,050K as opposed
to 3,250K in a GLC.
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
Phil Gilbert is a freelance lighting designer / programmer. He can be reached at
pgilbert@ plsn.com.
56
Also worth noting is that each model
in the Nexera line of fixtures is available
in a “CDM” version with a 150-watt metal
halide light source. These fixtures include
a four-channel version of the Nexera color-mixing module that adds a mechanical
dimmer to the assembly.
The latest product from Wybron appears to round out their Nexera range of
products with a zoom fixture capable of
covering medium- to longer-throw applications. At the 19° setting, the fixture
produces a 10-foot diameter beam with
a 30-foot throw, and at the 26° setting, it
produces a 10-foot diameter beam with
a 21-foot, eight-inch throw. With a wash
fixture, a short throw profile and a medium throw profile now added to the
line, Wybron is aggressively taking on this
market segment with a fairly well rounded product offering.
www.PLSN.com
To vote for an
individual or company
for a Parnelli Award, visit
www.parnelliawards.com/vote.
Be front and center
as the industry salutes
its finest companies
and practitioners
at the 6th Annual
Parnelli Awards
Special
reunion during
cocktail hour
When: October 20th, 2006
Where: The Venetian • Las Vegas, NV
And the Parnelli goes to...
VOTING NOW OPEN!
www.parn elli awards.com /vo t e
• Lighting Designer of the Year • Set/Scenic Designer of the Year • Lighting Company of the Year
• Staging Company of the Year • Set Construction Company of the Year • Video Rental Company of
the Year • Rigging Company of the Year • Regional Lighting Company of the Year • Pyro Company
of the Year • FOH Mixer of the Year • Monitor Mixer of the Year • Sound Company of the Year
• Regional Sound Company of the Year • Production Manager of the Year • Tour Manager of the Year
• Coach Company of the Year • Trucking Company of the Year • Freight Forwarding Company of the Year
Jere Harris
Bill Hanley
Parnelli Lifetime
Achievement
Award
Audio Innovator
Award
Named after Rick “Parnelli” O’Brien, an extraordinary production manager and human
being, the award is given to those who, like O’Brien, exemplify the “Four H’s”:
Participating Sponsors of the Parnellis include:
GOLD SPONSORS
PRODUCTGALLERY
When it comes to entertainment
lighting, automated is king. For the last
25 years, manufacturers have worked
tirelessly to make them more affordable,
smaller and more efficient, brighter and
with more features than ever before. Their
hard work has paid off, as evidenced by
the number of moving lights in existence.
High End Systems sold about 10,000 Intellabeams in about two years. Several years
later, some people claim that Martin Professional sold 10,000 MAC 2000s in about
one year. But as lighting manufacturers
know all too well, yesterday’s marketplace
victories are today’s blurry memories and
slow-moving inventory. The competition,
it seems, is always nipping at the heels of
the market leaders.
This month’s Product Gallery is a repeat of last year’s survey of automated
profile spot luminaires. It’s interesting to
compare the two because it shows you
not only what the current state-of-the-art
in automated lighting looks like, but also
the progress of the technology from year
to year. In this case, some participants
have new offerings and some don’t.
In the meanwhile, production companies are scouring trade shows and web
pages looking for new technology that
will differentiate them from their competition. But every new purchase is a roll of
the dice with huge stakes. New technology is unproven technology and older
technology is already commoditized,
barely fetching a break-even price on the
rental market. What’s a production company to do?
gobos
Manufacturer /Website
reflector type/
construction
static
rotating gogobos/type
bos/type
indexing
CMY
number replacevarigobo gobo morcolor
color comcolor
of
able
fixed CTO able
mixing phing
wheels
binations
mixing
colors colors
CTO
XM1200 Spot
MSR 1200/SA
cold-mirror
electronic or
parabolic faceted
magnetic
reflector
-
2 gobo wheels:
6 gobos each
(glass,metal)
yes
yes
-
yes
1
7
-
“virtually
endless”
v
-
-
-
yes
XR7 Spot
MSR 575/2
electronic or parabolic aluminmagnetic
ium reflector
-
7 gobos
(glass,metal)
yes
-
-
-
1
8
-
8
-
-
-
-
-
Design Spot
250
MSD-250/2
magnetic
parbolic/dichroic
7/metal
7/glass and
metal
yes
-
yes
-
1
8
-
8
-
-
-
-
yes
Power Spot
575IE
HTI-575/DE
electronic
parbolic/dichroic
9/metal
6/glass and
metal
yes
-
yes
-
1
12
-
12
-
-
-
-
-
-
multiple
combo’s of
overlapping multicolor gobo
& color
wheels
-
-
-
-
yes
see note
see
note
see
note
-
yes
Power Spot
700
MSR 700/2
ETC (Electronic Theatre
Controls, Inc.)
www.etcconnect.com
Source Four
Revolution®
QXL 750 watt
High End Systems
www.highend.com
elliptical faceted cold-mirror
reflector/dichroic glass, art
glass, LithoPatterns
glass
glass
16-bit indexing
yes
MAC 2000
Profile
Philips MSR
Gold 1200
short arc discharge
magnetic or
electronic
multi-layered
dichroic glass
MAC 700
Osram HTI
700W short arc
discharge
electronic
MAC 550
Osram HTI
400W short arc
discharge
ColorSpot
1200E AT
Robe Show Lighting
www.robe.cz
iris
Lamp Source
Elation Professional
www.elationlighting.com
Martin Professional
www.martin.com
fixed variable
CTB
CTB
Model
D.T.S. Illuminazione srl
www.dts-lighting.it
ballast
colors
electronic
dichroic glass
7/glass and
metal
yes
-
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
3/dichroic
glass
10/dichroic
glass
yes
yes
yes
yes
multi-layered
dichroic glass
9/metal
6 / (5 metal, 1
glass)
yes
yes
yes
yes
electronic
multi-layered
dichroic glass
9/metal
6 / (5 metal, 1
glass)
yes
yes
yes
MSR 1200W SA
electronic
parabolic/glass
12/dichroic
glass
yes
yes
-
ColorSpot
575E AT
MSR 575W/2
electronic
parabolic/glass
7/dichroic
glass
yes
yes
ColorSpot
250AT
MSD 250W/2
magnetic
parabolic/glass
-
7/dichroic
glass
yes
Giotto Synthesis
HTI 700W SE
(both 7200K
and 5600K)
electronic
parabolic glass
none
16/glass &
metal
Giotto 400
Spot CMY
MSR400HR
electronic
parabolic glass
none
16/glass &
metal
UXL-50-SC
8/scrollable
magnetic/
parabolic dichroic metallized
electronic
film
elliptical/dichroic
glass
9/metal
3/M-sized
3/M-sized
metal or
metal or glass
glass
-
9/metal
opt.
2
16
gel
up to 20
scroller
6-wheel
color
5+1
mixing open
system
yes
yes
unlimited
0
yes
0
yes
variable
-
1
4
yes
Unlimited
-
yes
-
-
yes
1
8
yes
Unlimited
yes
yes
-
yes
2
16
yes
64
yes
yes
-
yes
yes
1
6
yes
6
-
yes
yes
-
yes
-
-
2
17
yes
72
yes
-
yes
-
yes
-
-
-
1
10
yes
10
-
-
-
-
-
yes
yes
yes
yes
1
6
yes
infinite
-
yes
yes
-
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
1
6
yes
infinite
-
yes
yes
-
yes
12 w/
crossfading
of adjacent
colors
yes
opt.
yes
yes
SGM
www.sgm.it
Syncrolite
www.syncrolite.com
SXB-5/2 with
OmniColor
Tracker 575
Spot
CSR575/2SE or
MSR575/2
Tracker 250
Spot
CSD250/2 or
MSD250/2
magnetic
parabolic glass
Techni-Lux
www.techni-lux.com
VL3500 Spot
Vari-Lite
www.vari-lite.com
VL3000 Spot
VL2500 Spot
58
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
100.0609.58-59.PRODGALLERY.indd 58
Osram SharkXS
HTI 1200W
short arc
MSR 700SA
short arc
magnetic
parabolic glass
electronic
cold mirror coating/dichroic glass
electronic
electronic
opt.
yes
6/3 metal,
1 1-color
dichroic, 1 red
textured (fire),
1 textured
clear (water)
yes
yes
yes
-
2
18
-
81
-
-
-
-
yes
6/2 metal,
5/2 metal, 2 11 glass, 3
color dichroic,
dichroic
1 textured
(magenta,
waffle glass
yellow, UV)
yes
yes
yes
-
1
7
-
21
-
-
-
-
-
5/glass
yes
yes
yes
yes
1
6
yes
virtually
unlimited
-
yes
-
-
14/glass
yes
yes
yes
yes
1
6
yes
virtually
unlimited
-
yes
-
-
yes
5/glass
yes
yes
yes
yes
1
11
yes
virtually
unlimited
-
-
-
yes
9/metal
6/glass
11/glass
www.PLSN.com
8/31/06 9:34:39 PM
The options are few: get out of the business or keep plugging away, looking for a
niche, an edge, a new approach, a viable way
of making a living. One of the keys to finding
success in this industry is to stay on top of
the market trends, keeping one eye on the
market, one eye on the competition and one
eye on the technology. And the most successful of us are the ones who figure out how
to grow that third eye. So don’t be third-eyeblind, check out our latest Product Gallery.
Elation Design
Spot 250
High End Systems
X.Spot Extreme
AUTOMATED PROFILE SP T LUMINAIRES
variable
CTB
iris
zoom
variable
frost
fixed
frost
rotating prisms
static
prisms
-
yes
13° - 31°
-
yes
(3) 3, 4 and 5
facets
-
-
electronic +
5-pin XLR,
mechanical
3-pin XLR
0,86-25 fps
-
-
13,18, 21º
stepped
yes
-
(1) 3 facets
-
-
5-pin XLR,
3-pin XLR
1-10 fps
90-245V (electr.);
230V, 120V (megnetic ballast)
17.7”x14.1”x25”
-
yes
14, 18, 20º
replaceable
yes
-
(1) 3-facet
(1) 3facet
-
3-pin XLR
mechanical
1-13 fps
100, 120, 208, 230V
sectable
-
-
15, 18º replaceable
-
-
(1) 3-facet
(1) 3facet
-
3-pin XLR
mechanical
1-10 fps
-
yes
14 - 32º
yes
-
(1) 3-facet
(1) 3facet
-
yes
15° - 35°
-
2:1 lens w/
15-30 zoom; vari4:1 lens w/ able
12-48 zoom
yes
-
-
animation data ports
wheel
Optional 3-pin XLR
-
5-pin XLR
strobe
other effects
retail price
comments
$8,150.00
Available with electronic or magnetic
ballast
57.3 lbs
(26 kg)
$2,990 .00
Available with electronic or magnetic
ballast; with black or white finish
14”x14”x22”
57 lbs
$2,399.95
250W moving yoke with iris and frost.
Avaliable in white finish ($2799.95)
built-in movements,
90-250V Auto-sensbuilt-in programs,
ing
sound active
16”x16”x 21”
42.5 lbs
$4,199.95
color scrolling in both
mechanical
90-260V Auto-sensdirections (rainbow
1-10 fps
ing
effects)
19”x14”x 29”
63 lbs
$7,999.99
Optional dual road case: DRC-700; Optional accessories: CMY color mixing
module w/animation wheel
33.7”x15.5”x18.5”
75 lbs
$3895.00 + optional modules
Revolution has 2 module bays for 4
module options: iris, static wheel, rotating wheel and shutter. Integrated gel
scroller allows user choice of color or
color correction option.
prism effects with 2
prisms, and 3-D effects using lenticular
90-250V auto-sensglass on effects
ing
wheel; LithoPatterns
project photo-quality
images
20.5”x20.6”x32”
70 lbs
$9,190.00
Models have 2:1 lens or 4:1 lens
16” x 19.3” x 29.3”
90V-264V autosensing
(1) 3-facet and
(1) 5-facet
0
-
yes
-
-
3-pin and
5-pin XLR
yes
200-260V (M)
beam shaper; option(switchable),
al Beam Expander
100-260V (E) (Auto
Lens
sensing)
yes
-
yes
-
yes
3-pin and
5-pin XLR
yes
additional ‘beam’
gobos supplied with
fixture
yes
yes
-
yes
-
yes
3-pin and
5-pin XLR
yes
-
yes
13°-42°
yes
-
(4) 3-facet,
5-facet
-
-
-
yes
15°,18°,22º
yes
-
(1) 3-facet
-
-
-
-
-
-
(1) 3-facet
-
yes
9º-36º
yes
-
-
yes
9º-24º
yes
yes
collimated
to variable
beam angle
flood
-
yes
-
-
-
-
yes
yes
-
yes
-
-
yes
L”xW”xH”
weight
190-245V (electr.) 97 lbs (44
220-230-240V (mag- 20.8”x16.1”x34.2”
kg)
netic ballast)
-
2 rotating
indexing
electronic +
Litho
5-pin XLR mechanical
wheels, 1
strobe
rotating
effects
wheel
voltage
yes
variable
Vari*Lite
3500 Spot
Magnetic
99 lbs (M), $13,415.00
84 lbs (E)
Electronic
$16,315.00
10-lens optical system; automatic feedback system, modular design, tilt lock
100-250 V auto
sensing
17.7” x 14.4” x 25.0”
76 lbs
$12,727.00
Automatic feedback system; modular
design, tilt lock
100-250 V auto
sensing
17.7” x 14.4” x 25.0”
68 lbs
$7,552.00
Automatic feedback system; modular
design, tilt lock
shaking gobos,CMY
Ethernet, electronic +
100, 120,
macros,pan/tilt
5-pin XLR, mechanical
208,230,250V selectmacros,prism/gobo
3-pin XLR
1-33 fps
able
macros
25”x21”x24”
93 lbs
$14,632.00
-
Ethernet, electronic + shaking gobos,prism
100, 120,
5-pin XLR, mechanical
macros,pan/tilt
208,230,250V select3-pin XLR
1-33 fps
macros
able
22”x19”x18”
57 lbs
$8,212.00
-
-
5-pin XLR,
3-pin XLR
shaking gobos,prism
100, 120,
macros,pan/tilt
208,230,240V selectmacros
able
19”x17”x17”
52 lbs
$3,514.00
(1) 4-facet
1
yes
5-pin XLR,
additional multi1-12 fps w/
90-245v (protection
ethernet,
function lens, audio
29.6”x15.8”x18.2”
music synch
to 380)
wireless
synch
86 lbs
$12,500.00
Wireless DMX. Ethernet ACN ready, hot
re-strike, silent operation, positionable
animation wheel, 7200 or 5600 K lamp
available, modular construction
-
(1) 4-facet
-
yes
5-pin XLR
1-12 fps w/
music synch
72.8 lbs
$8,400.00
Interchangeable animation wheel, hot
re-strike, silent operation, fast-lock
clamps
yes
-
-
-
-
5-pin DMX
mechanical;
electronic
w/ elec. ballast
Available with sound-deadening “Q”
package or full weatherproof package
15º, 18º, 22º
-
yes
(1) 3-facet
-
-
3-pin XLR
yes
15º, 18º, 21º,
24º, 26º
-
yes
(1) 3-facet
-
-
3-pin XLR
yes
10-60º
-
-
-
-
-
dual blade
5-pin DMX strobe system
1-10 fps
UV light
90-245v
120, 208, 220, 240,
380, 400 configurable
30”x45.5”x22.5”
190 lbs
$39,000.00
UV light
120v or 230v
27”x18”x18”
91 lbs
$2,799.00
UV light
120v or 230v
21”x17”x17”
73 lbs
$1,679.00
four-blade shutter
mechanism
200-264 VAC
18”x20”x 31.57”
91 lbs
$14,415.00
Available in “Q” model for silent
operation
18”x20”x 31.57”
91 lbs
$13,045.00
Available in “Q” model for silent
operation
-
yes
10-60º
-
-
-
-
-
dual blade
200-264 VAC
-
yes
18.5-42º
-
-
-
-
-
dual blade
90-264 VAC
18”x18.80”x 27.63” 59.2 lbs
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.58-59.PRODGALLERY.indd 59
$10,825.00
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
59
8/31/06 9:35:21 PM
FOCUSONDESIGN
The Dark Side
of Chiaroscuro
Baglione’s Sacred Love Versus Profane Love
“Music is the silence
between the notes.”
– Claude Debussy
By RichardCadena
Pop quiz: What are the two most important
tools of a lighting designer?
If you said Starbucks or the Internet, maybe you should consider a career in audio. If
you said light and dark—congratulations, you
just might have a future in this business.
As the saying goes, if the only tool you
have is a hammer, then everything starts
looking like a nail. Some lighting designers
use light as a hammer, forcefully applying it
to every “nail” they see. What we often neglect
to recognize is that we have a lot of tools at
our disposal, including the dark. And nothing
can better emphasize the light better than
the dark.
As the editor of the most widely circulated
lighting magazine in North America (according to BPS audits) I get lots of lighting pictures
e-mailed to me and I’ve been keeping an archive for the past three or four years. Lately
I’ve been searching through them looking for
examples of chiaroscuro in lighting. They are
difficult to come by. What is chiaroscuro? Glad
you asked.
Chiaroscuro is Italian for light/dark. It’s a
word that artists use to describe the bold use
of light and dark for dramatic emphasis. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the early pioneers of
chiaroscuro in painting and it was later more
fully developed by Giovanni Baglione, Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
Notice the two words, light and dark.
Many of us use light to the exclusion of dark.
We are, after all, lighting designers and not
shadow designers. But da Vinci, arguably
one of the greatest artists of all time, placed
special emphasis on shadows to breathe life
into his work. “Shadows,” he said, “have their
boundaries at certain determinable points.
He who is ignorant of these will produce work
without relief; and the relief is the summit and
the soul of painting.”
Relief is the yin and the yang, the shadow
and light, in a composition. Relief is to visuals what silence is to music. As Michael J. Gelb
said in How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci,
“Great musicians claim that their art comes to
life in the spaces between the notes.” By the
same token, great lighting comes to life in the
dark spaces between the light.
So I’ve been searching through hundreds
and hundreds of pictures, looking for examples in light that will hold up to some of the
strongest examples of chiaroscuro in painting, such as Baglione’s Sacred Love Versus Profane Love. They’re hard to come by.
I have, however, seen great examples in
real life. The one that sticks out in my mind
I was not allowed to photograph. It was a
Prince show, two years ago, that was lit by
Peter Morse. Morse clearly gets it. His use of
light and dark is phenomenal, and given the
chance, he will use it to great advantage. In
this case he was given the chance because
“his purple badness” kept the video crew in
check and asked Morse to use as much dark
as he used light. And Morse pulled it off like a
modern-day Rembrandt.
My own attempts at using chiaroscuro
in lighting have met with limited success.
My favorite is from a show with Rocketown
Records recording artists Watermark, Shaun
Groves, Michael Olsen, Ginny Owens and
Taylor Sorensen. I set up two 250-watt automated fixtures on the floor off stage right and
left and I had two other fixtures back lighting
from the floor. When I only used these lights,
giant shadows were projected on the wings
of the stage.
But it’s not always easy to work in an en-
vironment with deep darkness. A number
of issues conspire against the adventurous
lighting designer looking for chiaroscuro,
not the least of which is the proliferation of
video. Videots—and I mean that in the best
of ways—are trained to work in light, not
light and dark conditions. I have yet to work
with a video director who asked for less light
or more shadows. No, videots like lots of soft
light and they abhor shadows, the very antithesis to chiaroscuro.
Then there’s the ubiquitous LED video
backdrop, most of which have to be turned
down to two percent to keep from completely washing out the lighting. And if the
video displays don’t completely kill the
chiaroscuro vibe, then the profusion of LED
menu displays on the automated lights will.
Or the scads of “exit” signs, aisle lights, light
leaks or other stray photons. That’s the dark
side of chiaroscuro.
For these reasons I believe in a singular
approach to production design, where one
person is in charge of lighting design, set design and, yes, the integration of video into the
design, particularly the video displays and the
content. A holistic approach to lighting and
video forces the designer to balance every
element of the design. It forces us to lose our
tunnel vision and focus on the big picture. It
makes possible the creation of lighting looks
with soul.
Don’t leave the author in the dark. Send
your e-mail to [email protected].
Rocketown Records recording artists Watermark
www.PLSN.com
100.0609.60.FOD.indd 60
8/31/06 9:57:34 PM
continued from page 41
Tom Walsh: “When we were working
to develop the VL0, I was not really thinking
about the future so much as I was trying to
ensure that my part of the system would do
its job and work. I think we all were just very
happy that the VL0 worked as we had intended at that point. It wasn’t until later, when we
first had the first VL1 system in operation for
the first time at the Genesis rehearsals at Shepperton Studios in England that we saw the full
effect of what automated lighting could do.
When we saw the full rig in operation for the
first time, the effect was truly breathtaking,
and it was at that point, I think, that we could
see the true impact that automated lighting could have on the art of stage lighting.
”As for the future of automated lighting,
I would hope that the systems will become
more reliable and easier to use, as well as being more cost effective. I have always thought
that a widespread integrated control network
could be valuable in coordinating control of
all aspects of a performance. I would hope
that more new ideas can be developed along
those lines and standards adopted in a timely
manner to allow proliferation across the entertainment industry. I hope that in the future
the technology of automated lighting will
become more and more invisible, and that
the art of stage lighting will shine through.
What Ever
Happened to...?
A r kansas
native
A l a n
O w e n
was the
Genesis
LD from
the early
‘70s
through
the 1986-87 tour. As one of the earlier
Showco LDs, he designed many big
rock shows in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Owen
died of cancer in the mid-‘90s.
Walsh is a senior engineer with PRG Lighting.
Jim Bornhorst: “Looking back, I remember
two ‘Ah ha!’ moments in the early days of VL0.
The first was when I initially got dichroics from
a mail order house and noticed the color shift
with angle. The optical filter was tunable like a
parametrically variable audio filter. (Remember,
I was a sound guy.) Maybe the dichro could
be used to make a variable color changer? A
couple people in our company, including Tom
Walsh, had been thinking about variable color
for a PAR can. Tom even built crude prototype. The dichro color changer seemed the most
practical idea so I began experimenting with
Crew for’80s Genesis Japan Tour.
Bornhorst is a senior engineer with PRG Lighting
John Covington
John Covington: “The VL0 was developed to reduce the number of fixtures in
a light rig to save weight and truck space.
Instead of carrying 100 PAR 64 lamps in
each color, (usually red, blue, yellow, and
green), we planned to carry 100 luminaires that could be any of those colors.
directors. Soon, we were off to talk to Tony
Smith (manager of Genesis).”
On the future of automated lighting:
“I initially thought that the proliferation of
automated lighting would happen at a much
faster rate than it did. But the economics of
limited lighting budgets kept the expansion
of automation slow. But here we are, 25 years
later, and automation is everywhere. Innovation and competition has driven the cost of
automation down to reasonable levels but it
still hasn’t penetrated the third-tier markets
like civic and academic theatre to the extent
it should, because of the economics. I predict
that prices will continue to drop as manufacturers limit feature sets and fine tune their
product lines for the lower tiers. Modernization of manufacturing techniques along with
the economy of larger volume builds will bring
the technology within the reach of all but the
most limited budget.
“Technologically, I think we will see major changes in two areas. Digital lighting will
happen. The Icon M whet our appetite with
a glimpse of what is to come in 1997. High
End’s DL2 is improving rapidly. The industry
is abuzz with rumors of manufacturers working on high output projectors in a yoke. Economics and the lack of professional brightness
levels are pacing the technology’s progress in
our business. The economics are driven by the
complex nature of the optics and image-producing systems currently available. “LEDs! At last, something suitable for the
architectural or ‘architainment’ lighting market where a simple color changing luminaire
L-R: Tom LIttrell, Princess Di, Craig Schertz, Allan Owen.
with extremely long life is very useful. Output and color matching will improve while
costs will tumble as yields rise in the chip
foundries. What’s missing is a good white
light source for shop displays and beam
control. Nevertheless, I think the potential is
huge. We’ll see...”
www.PLSN.com
I knew that once someone had seen the
depth of colors from our lights, they would
find new creative ways to deploy them.
We anticipated that 100 hanging fixtures
could do the job of 400, so load-in and
load-out would be faster, too. The reality
was that everyone wanted just as many
or more of the automated fixtures as they
had conventionals. Shows got larger and
lighting rigs covered more area over, under and on the stage. Genesis, Fleetwood
Mac and Pink Floyd all tried to out-rig each
other until the Rolling Stones took it over
the top with more than 50 semi-trailers full
of gear.
“I think we have reached the absurd
limits of how large a ‘portable’ show can
be, so I think that using fewer lights to
do the task of many could be the future,
if not the past, of automated lighting.
This will come when video projectors
have reached the brightness of the current automated fixtures, allowing gobos
to be software instead of hardware, and
color selection to bump or glide between
hues silently. We will be ready to implement and control the next generation of
luminaires with our focus on making the
cost of deploying such a rig compatible
with today’s budgetary restrictions and
tight schedules while allowing unlimited
creative input.”
Covington is a senior scientist with PRG
Lighting.
Tom Walsh
the colors I had. I immediately started getting
good results and remember thinking that this
could be pretty big and could be a disruptive
technology in lighting.
“The second realization of the potential
impact of VL0 came when Wally Russell, then
the president of Strand Lighting, Inc., was invited for a visit and a look at VL0. We had shown
the prototype system to a very few people, one
or two lighting manufacturers and one rock
“n” roll industry lighting mogul. No one had
been particularly impressed. But when I heard
Wally was coming, I knew that what we had
must be important. Rusty Brutsché and his
two partners at the time, Jack Maxson and Jim
Clark, Wally and I adjourned to the local country club after a demo of the system. Wally obviously saw the potential from his experienced
position in the industry. I knew at that time
we were really on to something and that we
needed to move quickly beyond VL0 to something more road-worthy. Wally’s vision and his
penchant for technology were unknown to us
at the time. We were extremely lucky to have
invited him as his interest in the concept of automation quickly built excitement in Showco’s
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
61
8/31/06 9:43:49 PM
MARKETPLACE
Employment
Lighting Designer / Technician
True Grip & Lighting LLC, a growing East
Tennessee Lighting Company seeks
experienced Lighting Designer / Technician
capable of managing complete projects.
Duties would include lighting design, crew
chief and electrician. Must have strong
attention to detail and work well with a wide
range of clients. Competitive pay, excellent
benefits and progressive work environment.
Email resume to [email protected] or call
865.523.5018.
RCS Corporation, a full service event
production company, is seeking experienced
lighting technicians for our Cleveland, OH
office. Please submit resume, salary history,
and salary requirements to [email protected]
or fax at 216-281-6601. www.rcscorp.cc
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PLSN september 2006
www.PLSN.com
ADVERTISER’SINDEX
COMPANY
PG# PH#
URL
COMPANY
PG# PH#
URL
AC Lighting
64
416.255.9494
www.aclighting.com/northamerica
Navigator
42
615.547.1895
www.hiretrack.com
A.C.T Lighting, Inc.
5
818.707.0884
www.actlighting.com
Ocean Optics
41
727.545.0741
www.oceanoptics.com
All Access Staging & Prod.
30
310.784.2464
www.allaccessinc.com
Olesen/Hollywood Rentals
42
800.223.7830
www.hollywoodrentals.com
American DJ
39
800.322.6337
www.americandj.com
Omni-sistems
52
253.395.9500
www.omnisistem.com
Apollo Design Technology, Inc.
9
800.288.4626
www.internetapollo.com
Orion Software
31
877.755.2012
www.orion-soft.com
Applied Electronics
15, 47
800.883.0008
www.appliednn.com
Paradigm Production Services
38
954.933.9210
www.paradigmlighting.com
Atlanta Rigging
16
404.355.4370
www.atlantarigging.com
PR Lighting LTD
33
253.395.9494
www.omnisistem.com
Branam
3
661.295.3300
www.branament.com
Precise Corporate Staging LLC
29
480.759.9700
www.pcstaging.com
Bulbtronics
61
800.227.2852
www.bulbtronics.com
Pro-Tapes and Specialities
53
800.345.0234
www.protapes.com
Chauvet Lighting
45
800.762.1084
www.chauvetlighting.com
R&M Materials Handling
51
800.955.9967
www.rmhoist.cm
Checkers Industrial Prod.
18
800.438.9336
www.checkersindustrial.com
Robe America
2
954.615.9100
www.robeamerica.com
City Theatrical Inc.
36, 62
800.230.9497
www.citytheatrical.com
Robert Juliat USA
21
203.294.0481
www.robertjuliat.com
Clay Paky America
1
661.702.1800
www.claypakyamerica.com
Roc-Off
12
877.978.2437
www.roc-off.com
CM Rigging Products
11
800.888.0985
www.cmrigging.com
Sanyo Fisher Company
49
888.337.1215
www.sanyolcd.com
Coast Wire & Plastic Tech., Inc.
37
800.514.9473
www.coastwire.com
Scharff Weisberg
12
212.582.3860
swinyc.com
Creative Stage Lighting
12, 18
518.251.3302
www.creativestagelighting.com
Set Wear/Studio Depot
19
818.340.0540
www.setwear.com
Doug Fleenor Design
56
888.436.9512
www.dfd.com
Sew What
15
866.444.2062
www.sewwhatinc.com
Elation
C4
866.245.6726
www.elationlighting.com
Show Distribution
48
877.632.6622
www.showdistribution.com
Element Labs
50
512.491.9111
www.elementlabs.com
Staging Dimensions
23
866.591.3471
www.stagingdimensionsinc.com
ESP Vision
20
702.492.6923
www.esp-vision.com
Syncrolite
60
214.350.7696
www.syncrolite.com
ETC
7
800.668.4116
www.etcconnect.com
Techni-Lux
C2, 31
407.857.8770
www.techni-lux.com
Full Sail
43
800.226.7625
www.fullsail.com
TLS
20
866.254.7803
www.tlsinc.com
GE Specialty Lighting
17
800.435.2677
www.ge.com
TMB
55
818.899.8818
www.tmb.com
High End Systems
35
512.836.2242
www.highend.com
Tyler Truss Systems
50
317.485.5465
www.tylertruss.com
Infinite Designs
54
404.367.8070
www.infinitedesignsonline.com
Vari-Lite
13, 14
877.827.4548
www.vari-lite.com
Inner Circle Distribution/Coemar
27
954.578.8881
www.coemar.com
Wybron
8
800.624.0146
www.wybron.com/plsn
Inner Circle Distribution/Compulite
10
954.578.8881
www.compulite.com
Xtreme Structures & Fabrication
6
903.473.1100
www.xtremestructures.com
Intelevent Systems
32
800.348.2486
www.intelevent.com
Legend Theatrical
19
888.485.2485
www.legendtheatrical.com
MARKET PLACE
Leprecon/Cae Inc.
22
810.231.9373
www.leprecon.com
City Theatrical Inc.
36, 62
800.230.9497
www.citytheatrical.com
Lex Products
16
800.643.4460
www.lexproducts.com
DK Capital
62
517.347.7844
www.dkcapitalinc.com
Light Source
4, 58
803.547.4765
www.coolclamps.com
ELS
62
800.357.5444
www.elslights.com
Lightronics
62, C3
757.486.3588
www.lightronics.com/plsn
Hybrid Case
62
800.346.4638
www.discount-distributors.com
Martin
C1
954.858.1800
www.martinpro.com
Light Source Inc.
62
248.685.0102
MDG Fog Generators Limited
25
800.663.3020
www.mdgfog.com
Lightronics
62, C3
757.486.3588
www.lightronics.com/plsn
Mole Richardson
30
323.851.0111
www.mole.com
RC4
62
866.258.4577
www.theatrewireless.com
Mountain Productions
56
570.826.5566
www.mountainproductions.com
Upstaging
62
815.899.9888
www.upstaging.com
Panormaic Screen Showcases
Children’s Properties
Builder™, Barney™, Thomas & Friends™,
The Wiggles™ and Angelina Ballerina™.
Each projector was fed via its own Silicon Opix Image Anyplace enabling
MBP’s lead projectionists Joe Mayers
and Carlos Bohorquez to precisely maneuver all the images to fit the curvature contour of the screens.
To contend with the exhibition
show lighting and create bright, even
images, special consideration was
given to the projection material that
was utilized. MBP’s Chief Engineer Ed
D’Amico explains; “In venues with high
ambient light levels, high contrast and
bright images are difficult to achieve. Hot-spotting and irregular diffusion, on
the screen surface, are constant challenges. In our design we paid careful
attention to projector angle and screen
surface. That is why we selected a grey
1.5 gain rear projection surface.” After the projection material was
stretched and secured onto a pair of
circular trusses, the 32-foot diameter
structure was elevated twenty feet off
the show floor via six half-ton chain
motors. MBP, along with Bestek Lighting
and Staging completed the installation.
HIT Entertainment’s booth was an
instant “hit” with visitors that came from
across the world to attend the show.
A-Z of Lighting Terms
Author: Brian Fitt
Pages: 256 Book/Paperback
Your #1 resource
for continued
education.
$36.95
This pocket-sized A-Z guide will be
of use to all those in the industry,
particularly students, who have
heard expressions or terms and
wondered what they meant.
Although most technical books have
glossaries, The A-Z of Lighting
Terms has expanded on many of
these terms using illustrations to
clarify some of the more complicated principles, formulae and laws.
Production Design
delivers for Fedex
measure,” concludes Cohen. “We
had a well-equipped moving light
package as well as the responsibility
for all the background visuals. That
is why I am so proud of our team
and their work; I was able to concentrate on the overall picture and
developing a collaborative relationship with the outstanding PineRock
staff. I knew the UVLD team seated
next to me would carry the vision
to reality.”
Marty Goldenberg of Marlyn
Production was the technical director on the event. Angus Sinex served
as production electrician with Chris
Nye acting as his assistant.
Lighting Control
Technology and Applications
Second Edition
Author: Robert Simpson
$79.99
"A work of awesome scholarship...
It's eminently readable, with
ultra-clear diagrams...This is the
definitive book the industry didn't
know it needed by an author totally
on top of his subject - it's a must for
anyone who needs to know what's
under the bonnet of a lighting
control system." Lighting Equipment
News
www.PLSN.com
Color Web Keeps
PokerFace
HIGH WYCOMBE, UKLighting Designer
Mark Kenyon used 207 square meters of
Chroma-Q Color Web for the set of new TV
gameshow PokerFacethe largest single application of the LED webbing system to date.
PokerFace is the brand new ITV1 quiz show
where one person is guaranteed to win £1
million pounds.
Concert Lighting - Second Edition
$47.95
Techniques, Art and Business
Author: James L Moody
Concert Tour Production
Management $31.95
Author: John Vasey
Thoroughly updated with new sections on Computer Aided Drafting,
moving lights and other new equipment and techniques. A real-life look
at what a lighting designer doesfrom fighting for contracts to designing a show. Special emphasis on
rock-and-roll concert lighting.
All you need to know about
concert touring by an industry
expert. Appendices provide
industry standard forms and
information. Only book dedicated to production management
for concert tours.
Order on-line TODAY
at www.plsnbookshelf.com
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
63
Lighting Designers
Lack Looksz z z z
I
’m always asked how I get lighting design
gigs. Half the time they are return gigs,
meaning it’s the same trade show or band
that goes on tour every year. Forty percent of
the time I am called by production people or
other designer friends to cover a gig. The other
10% are people calling because they’ve seen
one of my shows and want to hire me based
on what they’ve seen. You never know who’s in
the crowd watching your work.
I constantly get calls from old friends who
are passing through Chicago. They ask me to
come down and say hi. I like to visit and I get to
see different productions. Half the time I don’t
know the LD and vice versa. But I’ll go and introduce myself. If the show’s well lit, I’ll make it
a point to remember who lit it. If not, I forget
who the LD was by the next day. People come
up to my console and introduce themselves all
the time when I’m running a show. I like meeting them. My point is that you never know
who’s in the audience at any show. A project
manager may walk past your beautifully lit
booth at a trade show and ask if you can help
him with his next project. I’ve had guitar players call their managers and tell them to hire
me, not by name, but as that guy who lit this
certain band he saw last month.
I was having a beer with fellow designer
Joe Paradise last week at Barney’s in Hollywood. We started talking about a particular
artist we would both like to light, because—
quite frankly—their last designer did not do
a good job. This designer is a nice guy who
gets along with everyone, and that’s why the
production manager hired him. As I’ve noted
before, people in our biz get more gigs based
on their personalities as opposed to their talent. I asked Joe why he thought this designer
wasn’t very good. He said it all in one phrase:
“He’s lazy.”
zzzzzzz
z
z
z
z
zz
zz
LA Z
z z zY
z
z z z z z z z z zz
z
LDATLARGE
z
z
zz
I pondered
this for a few
seconds before
agreeing
with
him. When I saw
this guy’s light
show last year I
noticed that he
had about 100
moving
lights
and only one focus position for
all of them. He
simply changed
color on every
song. And all the
colors were pastels. He would
go from lavender/pink
looks
on one song
to blue-green/
Congo blue on the next. When the management asked him to make his show look
more rock ‘n’ roll, he added eight bars of
ACL PARs in wide focused fans. With all the
moving lights he had he could have easily built a few more focus positions, added
some primary colors to his looks and have a
rock show. This LD was not asked back.
A few years ago I was brought in to re-program a console for a tour that had been out
the year before. The artist was adding a few
new songs, but basically playing the same 20
hits he had been playing for years. So we were
going to use last year’s show disks and spice
them up. The show was in the round with well
over 100 moving lights. When I went to focus
for the first time, I learned that there were only
five focus positions for all the lights. It took
me all of 15 minutes to refocus. I asked the
PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
zzzzzzz
By NookSchoenfeld
[email protected]
“I asked Joe why he thought this
designer wasn’t very good. He said
it all in one phrase: ‘He’s lazy.’ ”
designer if this was correct and she informed
me that this was all she ever needed.
As we were programming the new songs
I showed her some cool stuff we could do.
She pondered it for less than a second and
instructed me to just take one of our existing
songs and change the color. As a programmer
you should never offer advice unless it is requested, so I just did as I was told. Now I had
another song that looked just like all the others. She didn’t want to spend more than half
an hour touching up her focus positions each
day, so the show looked about half as good
as it could have been. The designer was lazy.
Who notices these things? Other lighting designers and production managers do.
About five years ago my friend George
asked me to run a typical business meeting/
ballroom show. There wasn’t a big budget
64
zzz
and I was limited to about six Cyberlights for
movement and an assortment of conventional fixtures. When I got to the gig I asked
the producer what she wanted to see and
she told me to just give her one red, one blue
and one amber look, and each time a different speaker came to the stage, swap scenes
between the three looks. I did so and didn’t
think anything of it. Everything was fine until
the next time I ran into George.
George is one of those people who speaks
his mind. And he told me point blank that his
client was disappointed that there wasn’t a
lot more variety in my lighting looks. I hung
my head in shame. He was absolutely right;
I had been incredibly lazy as a programmer.
Plus, this was after he had spoken so highly
of my skills beforehand. It took me about a
year before George let me run another corporate show for him. By this time I had a new
attitude about doing these small shows. Plus,
I adhered to my own advice that I try and tell
others: Never bring up the same look twice.
Six moving lights may not be many, but
if they are hard edge fixtures, you can get a
hundred different looks. Here are a few clues
about how you can make six lights do a lot of
work. You just can’t be lazy.
On all these ballroom jobs, there is some
sort of scenery to light. Whether it’s chiffon
columns or fancy drapes, there is always something on which you can change the color and
texture. Use your moving lights to light the
scenery. Use some Fresnels and Lekos to light
people and product displays. I would generally
place these fixtures on a front truss because
that is the best vantage point for the lights to
illuminate the scenery without any obstacles in
the sight lines. Plus you can always turn these
fixtures around to ballyhoo the audience.
Any moving light will have at least seven
colors. And if there is no color mixing, chances
are it can do split colors. This gives you about
14 colors to light the scenery. You can mix and
match these colors in pairs to create about 30
color combos.
Now add your textures—gobos or prism
effects. If you have seven different gobos, you
actually have 21 different looks right there.
Each gobo will look different depending on
whether you rotate it or leave it static. They
will also look different if you throw the light
beam out of focus so that it just looks like ruffles or waves. Adding a prism on top of a gobo
is a great way to diffuse the beam as well as
widen it to cover more of the scenery.
The important part of being a lighting
designer is to use your imagination while
figuring out the best way to utilize the tools
you have to work with. Complaining that you
don’t have the right lights simply makes you
look weak and wastes what programming
time you will need to come up with many different looks . . . if you’re not lazy.
E-mail Nook at [email protected].
www.PLSN.com

25th Anniversary of Vari*Lite VL1, page 40

Transcription

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