In terms of video, I like to have panels that can move around and stagger heights for different songs. But renting a motion control system to move LED panels constantly was out of my budget, as were hi-def LED walls themselves. I thought about moving shoji panels, and projecting on them. Shojis are basically panels of rice paper with artistic drawn scenery on them. They’ve been used for years in Asia to separate larger rooms into smaller ones. Now if I combined them into some sort of airwall hanger apparatus, I may be onto something. What I came up with was eight custom Shoji panels measuring 14 by 6 feet (HxW) that hung on a series of traveler tracks. I needed simple travelers with no ropes or motors. A quick call over to Joe at Gallagher Staging solves everything. He quickly manufactures a simple metal piece that consists of five traveler tracks welded together into a single piece, which attaches to a stick of 20-inch truss. Then he rented it to me at an affordable price. Three 20K projectors on the front truss, some media servers and a video tech from PRG Nocturne finished it off. No automation necessary. The touring carp and a light guy would move the panels to various configurations during the show. With minimum practice, I had myself a giant 48-by-14-foot (WxH) video wall, all for $11,000 per week.
—Nook Schoenfeld, from LD-at-Large, PLSN, Feb. 2014
