(or “How I Learned to Climb Truss”)
When I think about how fast the entertainment lighting industry has grown over the last 10 years alone, it makes my head spin an infinite number of pan rotations.
I mean, wasn’t it just a few minutes ago that some company developed limitless rotation in a moving head, no one had any idea about using RF frequencies to fire up a Tic-tac-sized light source to a ridiculously high CRI, and RDM was something that was surely going to be implemented “sooner or later” in everything?
Are you current on recent lighting industry technology developments and terminologies? I write a blog about all things light (www.JimOnLight.com). I’m always looking for the next cool thing to blog about, and my research leads me into some really interesting avenues: medical implementations of light, Department of Defense uses of light, laser technology, light and urban planning, and more. I find some extremely interesting and rare bits of information in industries that are only slightly related to lighting. My first lighting industry love is as a lighting designer in the entertainment industry, so I always find myself asking, “How is this new technological development going to impact the entertainment lighting industry?”
Developments in light and lighting technology are moving so fast that sometimes it seems like an invention is obsolete as soon as it hits the market. Look at LED and OLED research and development lately: the LED market is a rapid growth market full of players that all have great ideas and huge teams of really intelligent people, and major advances within that industry happen all the time. Sooner or later we’ll have OLED wallpaper rolls that we can apply to sets and adjust to an appropriate level of intensity, LED chips that are somehow RGB, and white light that is actually “good.” We’re already starting to see examples of LED spotlights with optics that are actually decent.
You may ask yourself: how do these technological developments impact the entertainment lighting industry? How could enormous sheets of illuminating surface material be used in theatrical or film lighting? Vari-Lite has its new baby, the VLX LED wash luminaire, but how will the growth of LED color trueness and intensity affect the development of the fixture? As far as all LED products go, what happens when LED substrate technology becomes cheaper? Will we actually see a boom of affordable high-quality LED luminaires? You would not believe the amount of LED-based street lights that are hitting the market right now. How can that technology be used to develop an entertainment lighting product?
Another interesting development lately is the progression of high output sources. Ceramic gas-discharge metal halide (CDM) lamps are pretty popular right now, as is the technology. The SeaChanger people have made CDM lamp an available choice for their color engines, and retail stores of all shapes and sizes are adopting the CDM technology to make their products very well lit and brilliantly colored.
Next time you go to a Hollister’s or Aeropostale, look up at the lights illuminating the merchandise. Do the really, really white lights illuminating the newest clothing line say “PowerBall” on them? Chances are fairly good that it’s a CDM lamp.
In the high output lamp growth universe, companies have been developing and implementing the use of extremely high RF frequencies to turn the metal halide inside a small pill-sized high intensity discharge lamp to plasma. It’s called induction technology, and it’s also being developed and sold in a fluorescent form factor as well.
The interesting thing with this source is that it has no electrodes, which makes the lamp more rugged — no more reseating lamps in moving heads after a 500 mile cross-Alaskan trek on a semi. Automated lighting manufacturer Robe has already grabbed onto the induction-HID technology and produced a moving light that utilizes the capsule-sized lamp with a bright beam. (See Road Test, page 56.)
Ask yourself: what else can new developments in induction technology do for entertainment lighting? If a light source the size of a Good & Plenty candy can be used inside a moving light, what other fixture types might it improve? Personally, I want to see an RF-induced fluorescent wash fixture realized. But also ask yourself things like, What would a Police comeback tour look like with a rig full of plasma sources? How creepy would Robert DeNiro look when he’s playing the gangster with Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in the Broadway hit musical, The Godfather, European Vacation lit by a mix of plasma sources and induction fluorescents? These are all pertinent questions to ask when considering applications of new technology.
The point is that there is a lot going on in the industries that deal with light. You would be surprised how many of them across different disciplines of light are connected, and how a single company’s progress affects other parts of the lighting industry. Companies like Barco are involved in so many different lighting business ventures that it’s hard to keep track, from video and projections to medical imaging technology and military training facilities. PRG (Production Resource Group) has its own line of moving lights now (the Bad Boy) and a large format lighting console (the V-676).
Most, if not all of the progress in the lighting industry is from trying to solve a problem — how do we make it bigger, better, brighter, and more awesome than it was previously? Keeping up with other lighting industries is a good way to find new and perhaps more creative answers to problems you might find yourself trying to solve. Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan invented the light bulb apparently near the same time, but with different results. They didn’t even have Twitter.
The entertainment lighting industry is a wonderful, amazing thing. We love it and feed it, and we watch it grow right before our eyes, just like a potted plant. The only difference is that I never had a potted plant that could shower me in Congo Blue light while it was continuously rotating.
Jim Hutchison is the founder and chief design consultant of Alive Design (www.alivelighting.com). He maintains a blog about lighting at JimOnLight.com.
