When the votes for the 2011 Hometown Hero nominees were tallied, PLSN readers once again came up with a good mix. There are some new faces in this crowd along with some companies that have been around a while (one since 1948!). They have their differences, but they share a lot of festival and corporate work. One thing they all have in common can be summed up by what Paradigm Production Service’s Jorge Valdez said: “I can say I clearly love what I’m doing, and I don’t do it for the money, that’s for sure.”
CANADA
Tour Tech East • Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Tour Tech East continues to expand, but they’re careful to ensure that growth doesn’t affect the quality of work they are doing. The proof is that they were voted once more by PLSN readers to be the best Hometown Hero lighting company in Canada. When owner Peter Hendrickson was reached, he was overseeing a move that, while close by (across the street from his previous location), was huge (moving from a 65,000 square foot warehouse to a 220,000 one). “The way it’s laid out, you could put eight of our old buildings into that footprint,” he says. “And we’re adding more people as we go, too.”
Tour Tech East has had a busy year, doing lighting for many festivals and other major events, such as the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo (RNSIT) in Halifax. They supplied lighting for big acts coming through, too, including Metallica, Kiss, INXS, Brad Paisley, Toby Keith and Arcade Fire, among others.
“We added video last year, and that’s been a big bonus,” he says of the new Visualed distributed by Theatrixx in Montreal. “We can now do huge walls, and that’s been going really well for us.”
Hendrickson was a freelance lighting designer from 1975 until he founded Tour Tech in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1984. Today, Tour Tech East is one of the largest live event companies in Canada, with 50 full-time employees.
“At the end of the day, as long as you provide good service to a customer who has faith in you, they will remain a good customer,” he says. “If they buy on price, then they really aren’t your customer, they are just someone you are servicing along the way. Price is a factor, because we all have to answer to the money god, but if they are a real customer, then they will believe in what you are doing and trust that you are sending them in the right direction.”
MIDWEST
Technical Productions Inc. • St. Louis, MO
Technical Productions has had a great season expanding their client base in both the entertainment and corporate markets. “The integration of lighting and video elements together has had a dramatic impact on how we design and create scenic environments,” says Michael O’Keefe, CEO of TPI. “By expanding our business in the sports team industry, network television and corporate markets, we continue to challenge our creative and engineering abilities. We force ourselves to think outside the box.”
Right now, the team is putting together a 30-plus-truck corporate event for about 50,000 attendees in Las Vegas. The plan calls for a large rig of lighting, video, LED, audio and fiber optic networking to transform a 100,000-square-foot ballroom into an environment that is high-tech yet warm and inviting. This event will create six discrete channels of live streaming video, an interactive website with 32 42-inch touch screens, 100 iPads and a fiber optic distribution system feeding 300 independent workstations and sending 1080p HD video to four 7.5-by-13 foot Barco i6 LED walls together with 44 large-format HD monitors. There are 122 motors and 3,800 feet of 20.5-inch truss holding 160 of Bandit Lites new GRNMoving Wash 3-120s and 32 Vari*Lite VL3500 Spot luminaires, all controlled by grandMA consoles. “It’s always rewarding to see all of this cutting edge technology come together and transform a space,” O’Keefe says. “It makes the creative and engineering challenges of consistently stepping up the event design worthwhile each and every time.”
TPI takes pride in their planning. “Starting out, I had a dream of uniting talented people I kept working with in different situations, all of us in this very up-and-down-world [of live production] and creating something that would provide steady work,” O’Keefe says. “That’s the idea on which I founded the company, and what it is today. We don’t tout lighting gear — we tout our people.”
O’Keefe has been in lighting since 1979 and founded his company a decade later. Today they have 17 employees, including his Parnelli Award-winning wife, Elizabeth O’Keefe. Seth Jackson, a perennial Parnelli nominee and winner, works out of their offices as well.
SOUTHWEST
Gemini Stage Lighting • Dallas, TX
“We’ve never been afraid to take on a challenge, and if there’s a piece of gear that is requested that we don’t have, we get it,” states Jason Cain. “We keep good inventory, and we’ve always maintained good people — some of the guys have been with the company a long time.”
Gemini has typical beginnings: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Terry Cain managed a band that his brother was in. Another brother was the sound man. “They got tired of renting equipment and started purchasing lighting and sound gear,” explains son Jason Cain. By 1981, the senior Cain had formed Gemini with partners Larry Rogers and Clark Richter. “Today we’re 2,000 moving lights strong and have many video walls.”
Cain says today they have many good longtime clients. They have 50 full-time people working for the company and a labor call sheet with another 200-plus names. They recently expanded their warehouse and added a showroom and take up around 70,000 square feet.
Other clients include the Texas State Fair and local sheds, amphitheater and performing art centers. Barney & Bailey and other circuses have called on them, and they had three summer tours out with Slayer/Rob Zombie, Bush and Dolly Parton. “We also stay busy with all the local live events at the House of Blues.” Most recently, they’ve been doing more installation work including big houses of worship. “I just did my first water park, the NRH2O,” he says. “We put a bunch of LED fixtures on a water ride.”
Gemini is also apparently a good neighbor — Vari*Lite is right down the street, and they carry a lot of their products. “We’ve had a longstanding relationship with them, and almost all their new products get into our hands.”
They also just updated their inventory with 200 panels of the Elation EPV762 moving head video screen. “We’re always looking at doing bigger and better stuff and always keeping our nose to the grindstone.”
NORTHEAST
Excel Lighting Services • Baltimore, MD
“I started up the company out of my garage, like a lot of people,” says Excel Lighting Services owner Frank Serruto, Jr. Fair enough — but what’s impressive is that Excel is a relatively new company; they are barely six years in business. But you could say he has the business in his blood — his father was a union stagehand.
His first official job in the business was with Bash Theatrical lighting in 1993. When PRG bought it in 1997, Serruto continued on with his freelance lighting career until he started Excel in 2006.
Serruto says there was no one big “break” that established the company, just a lot of hard work and building relationships with local unions. Today, they do a lot of local festivals and radio events and have done some high profile gigs like the Fox News Correspondents’ Dinner and the North American Bengali Conference. Corporate events and theme entertainment installations are also part of their mix, as are full-on rock ‘n’ roll stadium shows and houses of worship.
Today, Excel Lighting Services has eight full-time employees, including Serruto’s wife Julie (CFO) and his brother Mario (operations/rentals manager) who — prior to joining the company — was assistant technical director for the Baltimore Opera Company. They handle full production needs, installations and do repair and services. They currently are working with the Baltimore County Public Schools, doing a big installation for one of their middle schools. Another recent project was the unscripted show, ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Excel has been increasingly updating their inventory with LEDs and recently brought in a dozen Elation Design Wash LED Pros. “Our clients absolutely love those.” Currently, they are looking at a larger facility to keep up the growth in inventory and want to double the 4,000 square feet they have now.
“Our primary goal is customer satisfaction,” he says. “We started on that and we built on that from the beginning. Obviously we want to continue to expand, but it must be so we can maintain the same level of service.”
SOUTHEAST
Paradigm Production Service • Miami, FL
However you feel about the Backstreet Boys, it has this distinction: Without them, they’d likely be no Paradigm Production Service.
“From 1987 to 2000 I did everything from sound to building stages to lighting and touring,” explains owner Jorge Valdez. But in 2000, he did one last, very big tour working for the Backstreet Boys. “That helped me financially to the point that I was ready to invest into starting my own company.”
By the time he hung out his shingle, he had built up an impressive diversity of experience. He had spent three years working as a lighting director for the Telemundo Network and another three years with Martin Professional. “After seeing how other companies did business, I realized that, in south Florida, the gear you got was never quite right,” he says. With the money he made on the Backstreet Boys, he immediately purchased of 150 moving lights. “I took over the market locally, and then I started doing a lot of South American events and tours.” Today, he handles a many Latin artists who tour the U.S. for six to eight weeks at a time.
Paradigm is also getting plenty of festival work, including the Santa Dominican Presidente Festival, which features six international artists nightly over a four-dauy span, for 60,000 people. “It’s out of control! We also do the Ultra Music Festival, the SunFest in West Palm Beach and a Brazilian Carnival in New York every year.”
Today, Paradigm keeps 14 full-time employees busy in a 15,000-square-foot facility. He’s in no hurry to get much bigger though. “Frankly, I’m not a whore,” he states bluntly. “I’m not expensive, but I like to work with the right people. I like the idea of hanging out with my friends and putting up some lights. As long as I can do that, I’m excited. I still pack the truck and drive it because I enjoy it. Today, I was excited to play with the new Martin 2k Wash lens kits!”
NORTHWEST
Hollywood Lights • Portland, OR
Hollywood Lights production lighting manager Greg Eggen reports that it’s been a great year for the company. “It’s been an especially good summer,” he says. Highlights include the Sasquatch Music Festival and concerts at Edgefield and Spirit Mountain Casino. “We’ve also done a lot of corporate work, including Nike, and we were there when the new basketball arena at the University of Oregon opened.” Called the Matthew Knight Arena, Hollywood Lights is called on for a lot of gobo work. They are on hand at all the Portland Trail Blazers games and events, too.
Like any quality-minded regional lighting company, they are constantly updating their gear. Eggen, who has been with the company 15 years, says they’ve brought in some Martin M1 lighting controllers and MAC 700 washes and increased their overall inventory including more dimmers, trussing and LEDs.
The company, previously known as Hollywood Lighting Services, has a long, rich history. Founded in 1948 by Don Cameron and George Howard in Portland, the company went through several owners and partners before Tom Neal joined in 1969. Then came Richard Fuller, who started in the company’s rental department in 1973. In 1978 Fuller bought into the business, and in 1989 he became sole owner. In 1994, a Seattle office was opened. In 1995, the company acquired Superior Stage Lighting, further expanding its inventory and talent base. Today the company boasts 9,200 square-foot showroom and warehouse. They have 18 employees at the Portland office and 15 at their Seattle location.
As for the immediate future, “I guess we’ll just continue providing the best possible customer service going over and beyond our client’s expectations!”
