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Sin City Puts The Spectacle In The Phantom Of The Opera

Sin City Puts The Spectacle In The Phantom Of The Opera

phantom224.jpgSubtlety doesn’t exist in Las Vegas. Ask a local and they’ll probably tell you it’s a new Starbucks drink. But don’t tell this to the designers and crew of Phantom—The Las Vegas Spectacular at the Venetian Hotel-Resort-Casino. Despite a title that includes the word “Spectacular,” despite a budget that ballooned from $25 million to $40 million, despite recreating the interior of the Paris Opera House from 1894, LD Andy Bridge still insists the strongest design element of the show is subtlety.

Da Gilmour Code

If you were among the few to catch David Gilmour’s first U.S. solo theatre tour, you can count yourself among the very lucky, given he would normally be seen in an arena or stadium setting. We have seen some great performances from him of late; his show at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002 that was recorded for a DVD and that rare performance that only Bob Geldolf could pull off, the reformation of Pink Floyd with Roger Waters at the Live 8 spectacular in London last year. It’s been twelve years since we’ve seen a Pink Floyd tour, so Gilmour’s outing has been long anticipated. In support of his third solo album On An Island, he plays it in its entirety for the first half of the show, then all Pink Floyd songs in the second half, some of which have never before been played live. We spoke with lighting designer Marc Brickman about covering the show and he graciously wanted to turn the spotlight over to his colleagues on the tour.

Mothra Attacks!

Nightmare_June06.jpgIn 1973, a gig at the Pocono State Fair in Pennsylvania offered a regional lighting company a wonderful summer break from daily four-hour load-ins and load-outs and endless driving. It was like a paid vacation. What could be better than a week of easy work and an eclectic mix of great acts from Bob Hope and Sammy Davis, Jr. to rock and even The Jackson Five?

Rehearsal, Cue, Performance OH MY!

PLSN_LDatLarge_June06.jpgAlmost every show I light involves scripting cues. This is the process of breaking down a show’s events. If it’s a corporate production, most likely I will be handed many pages showing the schedule of rehearsals and performance times for the next week. If it’s a musical or theatrical play, the lighting department may get a full script with hundreds of hand-written notes detailing potential lighting cues. If it’s a rock show, we may get a set list with some discs of music you can expect the band to perform.
   

Hike Up Your Skirt and Plan Like a Man

raceway detail.jpgI belong to a group of people who would sooner wrestle an alligator than to have to plan ahead. There’s even a name for people like us—men. We don’t make lists before we go to the store, or plan routes before we drive across the country, and we don’t put on our blinkers before we change lanes. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re going to change lanes until we see all the cars around us scrambling to get out of our way. But give me a job where thousands upon thousands of dollars are at stake, and I’ll be the first to hike up my skirt and wade through the deep waters of planning and plotting.

How Bright is Right?

VidWorld_June06.jpgWhen we’re deciding on a projector and screen (or screen placement), the question that always comes up is, “Will it be bright enough?”

Lots of folks think that they can just get a brighter projector and that will solve their problems, but it ain’t always that simple. The more common problem encountered when we’re trying to project in a well-lit space is the contrast — or lack thereof. No matter how many lumens the projector outputs, if there is too much ambient light we will have a poor image.

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Programming with a Media Server

So, we’ve got our content ready, and we’ve loaded all of it into our media server. What do we do next? Here are a few things to get us started.

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The Controlled Chaos Of The Black Eyed Peas

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with changing venues, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Envision touring with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are no production rehearsals—ever. In fact, they never had any prior to the tour.

Clay Paky Revitalizes Itself with Alpha Series

Nuova sede CLAY PAKY 1.jpgThough Italian entertainment lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has been around since 1976, it was about 10 years later when they became one of the first to offer an automated luminaire that you could purchase instead of rent. The Golden Scan was an innovative product for its time, featuring stepper motors and crisp optics with a uniform beam and a sharp focus. After many years of partnering with Group One, their former U.S. distributor, Clay Paky has recently set up Clay Paky America with managing director Francesco Romagnoli and former High End Systems account rep Eric Mueller. This article is part of the ongoing series of automated lighting manufacturer profiles leading up to the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Vari-Lite.

VectorWorks12

In the past decade, the use of drafting software has become rote for designers in this industry, and the available offerings have increased dramatically, with each software package offering various industry-specific tools and an eye toward ease of use, much to the delight of those of us without engineering or CAD degrees. (see PLSN Product Gallery, February 2006 – ed.)

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“It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll” to LD Steve Cohen

You may know Steve Cohen’s work through some of the mega tours that he’s designed lately – Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Justin Timberlake… But you may not know that inside the business-savvy exterior of the man beats the heart of an artist who sees his craft as an extension of the music, who approaches the console like a band instrument and his job like performance art. After running the gamut from the early days with Billy Joel to the over-the-top productions of late, Cohen is settling back into the groove of a pure lighting show and loving every minute of it. He’s currently on the road with Billy Joel again, running the console and getting back to his roots. We caught up to the tour at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas where we spoke with Cohen.

The Rebirth of a Legend

Balcony side wide small.jpgAmerica saw one of its most difficult economic eras in the 1930s. In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression put an effective halt to the boom-time spending of the previous two decades. Oddly, the movie industry was one of few to not only survive, but flourish, during the thirties. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the online encyclopedia, has this to say about the trend:

“The emergence of sound films in the late 1920s, combined with the escapism that film provided to a nation down on its luck, made the film industry one of the few that succeeded in profits and in setting a national mood.”

So it should come as no surprise that some of the most beautiful and ornate theaters were built during an otherwise pennywise period.