Each year, the industry gathers to see the latest and greatest at LDI. This year, it was in PLSN’s home base, Las Vegas. At the time of this writing, I am still recovering from a jam-packed weekend of events, training, parties and, oh yeah, LDI!
The one thing you can expect at the Parnelli Awards is the unexpected. That was certainly true at the 12th Annual Parnelli Awards gala held Oct. 20 at the Mirage Las Vegas when Jake Berry (tour manager for Madonna, U2) showed up and then after him, Billy Squier. Both wanted to surprise Lifetime Achievement honoree Charlie Hernandez, and that they did (and everyone else).
For more than 20 years, the PLASA Show has called London’s Earls Court home. Sadly, 2012 is the last year the show will take place in the legendary hall — PLASA 2013 moves to London’s ExCel Oct. 6-9. With more than a 125-year heritage filled with history, stories and shows, Earls Court is closing and being demolished to be replaced with 8,000 new apartments, retail stores, and, possibly, a new meeting center.
To download PLSN’s 2012 PLASA Show Report, CLICK HERE
Somebody had to do it. Who else but Charlie Hernandez?
A menacing rainstorm in Rio de Janeiro flooded the Formula 1 racing field where the next insane episode of the Guns N’ Roses tour of South America was going down. A delay in getting Guns N’ Roses on stage was nothing new, though this time the weather was not helping. Unwisely, the local promoter let the crowd onto the field during load in. Hernandez and associate Lori Tierney were above in the announcer tower, surveying the mayhem. “Charlie and I were looking out on this seething crowd when [Dale] “Opie” [Skjerseth] comes in and announces that we still needed to run the snake from the stage to FOH. I looked down at that riot, and I said, ‘are you kidding me?’”
Then a wide-eyed grinning Hernandez chirped: “I’ll do it!”
LS-Live Updates Prolyte’s LiteConsole with Video for Ibiza Rocks
LS-Live has created a custom triple-size DJ booth to amp up the visual performance of well-known DJs for live music/dance hotel brand Ibiza Rocks. The three-meter-long DJ booth featured a front wall of LED panels which, from an audience perspective, merges visually with the big LED screen behind the DJ, allowing the artist to become immersed in the show.
All the developments in sound and lighting, all the visual candy designed by our greatest, most imaginative scenic designers, wouldn’t mean anything if an equally creative visionary did not know how to make it all fly. That’s the conclusion the Parnelli Board of Advisors came to in choosing to bestow the Parnelli Visionary Award to Joe Branam. Not only is he one of the rigging pioneers; he founded Branam Enterprises, an institution that has always and continues to create endless possibilities.
The readers have put the spotlight on who they think are the best of the best of their region when it comes to lighting, staging, and/or video. We have some fresh faces and some “repeat offenders.” All of these are bestowed with a little something to hang on their wall with the Parnelli logo and all the honor, glory, and bragging rights that go with it. Take a look at the companies here that you might not be familiar with, and reacquaint yourself with others — before heading on over to www.parnelliawards.com to vote for the best of the best. The winning company will be honored with the Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year award at the Parnelli Awards Oct. 20, 2012 at the Mirage in Las Vegas.
“When someone goes to a concert, they shouldn’t come home in a body bag,” says production manager Jim Digby. This is just one example of the frank conversation that ensued when PLSN gathered six industry leaders for a roundtable discussion about recent staging tragedies.
Along with Digby, co-founder of the Event Safety Alliance (eventsafetyalliance.org), five other industry professionals offered their thoughts for this roundtable: LD Chip Monck, rigger Roy Bickel and staging providers John Brown (Brown United), Jim Evans Sr. (Mountain Productions) and Yvan Miron (Stageline Mobile Stage Inc.).
InfoComm continues to grow each year. Last year, Orlando set a record for the most attendees. In true Las Vegas style, InfoComm 2012 exceeded that number by 4 percent, with more than 34,000 attendees walking the Las Vegas Convention Center over three days. In all, there were 933 exhibitors occupying more than 487,000 square feet, along with numerous training and certification sessions happening over three days. There never seems to be enough time to see it all.
Donald Guzauckas is president of the Rental and Staging Network (RSN), a nationwide network of 21 geographically diverse rental and staging companies committed to continual improvements in their business operations and profitability. Here, Guzauckas articulates five trends that the members have discussed recently about live event production and, in particular, digital AV. Evidence for all of these trends could be found at the NAB and InfoComm shows earlier this year.