I once saw a show where an artist had a wall of low-res video panels hanging upstage, with lights upstage of the video panels. So they hung a bunch of blinky lights behind the video. The lights chased at times and flashed on cue, but they really didn’t do much. It kept an extra lighting guy busy each day to hang those fixtures. The video was all custom content played through a media server, and it was good. During the show, I would occasionally see these upstage lights flash white on the screen. After the show, all I could think was a better way to achieve the same visuals: Hang these particular lights one time. Then shoot video of every chase and flash they do. Then play those same flash effects on a different layer on the media server at the precise time. The show was all time coded, so it would’ve worked the exact same. But it would have saved the band probably $10K per week in gear, labor and truck space.
—From “LD-at-Large” by Nook Schoenfeld, PLSN, Nov. 2013
