Scenic designer Peter J. Davison brings new angle to classical approach
The persepective of the set plays a role in Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, shown here with, L-R, Norbert Leo Putz, Michael McGrath, Jeremy Bobb and Tom Alan Robbins.
“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” — Duane Michals
I was surprised to learn that three out of five people think I can’t count, and the other three have no opinion. At least that was what I gathered from the e-mail after the article in this column about the five lighting metrics. Apparently the three lighting metrics that were covered in the article don’t account for all five.
Live performances have become the currency of the entertainment industry. It’s most obvious in music, where an ever-growing percentage of recording artists derive more revenues from their concert tours than from CD sales. But the rise in the number of live events is evident in many other sectors, from spectacular corporate presentations to events like the celebration at the start of the New York City Opera’s season last year, which saw Times Square filled with thousands of folding chairs facing huge video monitors beneath light and sound rigs. With gala events taking place in unique outdoor settings, it isn’t just Elvis who’s left the theatre.
Hey all, just dropping in to post some pics from the tour. It all went really good and the band was throwing down hardcore. A lot of new tunes were played and some really neat arrangements to a few classic covers were thrown into the mix. We ran through Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania I believe. Sometimes we all forget where the heck we are on most of these tours so I imagine I may be forgetting a state or two, hah!
Well I’m back at the old Sound Stage TV studio at WTTW in Chicago. Familiar building, but boy has the look changed. This is my fifth year doing shows down here, with 3 different directors. This time Bob Peterson is at the helm and the difference is quite noticeable.
If I have the option, I use a different console to program media servers than when I’m programming a bunch of moving lights. I find… Read More »Believe in console agnosticism
What makes club lighting work? Energy! The visuals in the room should match the energy of the music. A wash fixture with a shutter chase… Read More »Nightclub Lighting is All About Energy.
Lighting designer John Broderick once taught me that it is important on the first day to fully test the spare console. He stressed that I… Read More »Test Your Backup Plan
It's been 10 years since I went to Russia to light a gig. Last time I was there, I had one of those gigs from hell, where it took 2 days to set everything up and it still didn't work correctly. I'm here to say they've come a long way.
Part One
The past month not a whole lot has been going on with me. I’m sure I could have sat down and told you all about my personal life but who really wants to hear about that? I don’t even want to think about it from time to time. I learned from other colleagues that this is typically a slow part of the year for touring so it didn’t bum me out too much, but I am definitely a guy who likes to keep busy. So in brief I was bored off my tail but that didn’t stop me from getting things ready for this next tour with Bonerama. The tour kicked off at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado starting a two week run through 11 states. To get ready for it I had to do some organization and a little bit of shopping. Recently I got a new Hog 500 from t2k lighting. I spent my time doing mostly data entry and some programming offline with a capture visualizer. When you have a large catalogue of music to work with every night you have to perform a lot of data entry to organize the show in the way you see fit. So I guess we’ll see how it all goes down.
Bob Peterson and I didn’t use a single LED or piece of video gear on the Bob Seger tour last year, but it was not… Read More »Classic lighting for rock ‘n’ roll gigs
The first Strike Survival Workshop that IATSE’s hard-hit Local 728 in Hollywood ran late last year was standing-room-only, which suggests the impact that the strike by the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) was having on those who literally do set the stage for filmed and televised entertainment. The second one, held Feb. 8, a clinic for financial help and counseling from the Motion Picture Trust Fund, was just as packed.