New Eyes for the Old
“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (9/16/1893 – 10/22/1986), Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian physiologist.
No Crack Problem Here
The electrician is master of the theatre domain
“It seems the expectation is that an entertainment electrician should be an engineer, licensed electrician and theatre technician.” Virginia Croskey, an adjunct professor at Prince George Community College in Largo, Md., wrote those words after taking a two-day entertainment electrician’s course. The course is designed to teach the principles behind the practice of being an entertainment electrician. Yes, Virginia, there is more to the entertainment electrician than meets the eye.
The Amazing Power of Community
“I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow.” — Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States (1856-1924)
I, Swami Candela of the third millennium, know all, see all and tell all, except that which I do not know, see or tell. I know the words to “Louie, Louie,” and I know how many LEDs fit on the head of a pin. I hold all the answers to your lighting questions.
Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around; Your Show is falling Down
Just the other day I was driving along, just another contestant in the rat race, navigating all those little mazes, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a car that had been driving along in the lane right next to me swerved into my lane and almost rearranged my left front fender. The little rat that was driving had decided to make a U-turn, and he swung very wide to make the turn, very nearly denting my chariot. He looked left and swerved right when he should have looked right and stayed left.
The Illusion of Diffusion
A couple of months ago, I came face to face with the realization that all I had known to be true about diffusion was little more than illusion. For several years I put those little square pieces of plastic in front of my luminaires to magically transform the subject by changing the quality of the light. But by sheer accident I found it wasn’t changing it as much as I thought.
Illumination Inflation: But It Goes to 11!
A funny thing happened on the way to the top of the grand master fader. I found out that it not only goes up, but it also comes down. It was a complete accident, but it turned out to be a discovery that was right up there with the time I found out my VCR wasn’t supposed to flash “12:00.”
When a tour manager voiced concerns about the pacing of a show, I listened intently as he described what he wanted to see. He wanted the show to build. He wanted a steady building of lighting looks, punctuated by a climax. He wanted to hold back the best for last. In short, he wanted the impossible.
White Lies, Black Magic and Gray Matter
Have you ever been so mad that you saw green?
Probably not. Green is supposed to be the most restful color to the eye because the lens of your eyes focus green right on the retina, and you know how much work it can be focusing all those heavy non-green photons. More likely, you’ve sat in a green room to calm down before an appearance on stage. You might have a greenhouse, or gotten the green light to join Greenpeace. Or perhaps you’re a greenhorn drinking green beer on Saint Patrick’s Day. If you’re lucky you might have a pocket full of greenbacks. Or if you’re environmentally conscious you might be working on a green lighting design. But if you’re angry you probably won’t see green.
The Dark Side of Chiaroscuro
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Pop quiz: What are the two most important tools of a lighting designer?
If you said Starbucks or the Internet, maybe you should consider a career in audio. If you said light and dark—congratulations, you just might have a future in this business.
Killer Color Combos
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Several years ago I was on a job site completing a lighting design and programming a show when the producer asked me a great question: “How do you use color theory in lighting a show?”
Hike Up Your Skirt and Plan Like a Man
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I 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.
Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud
“No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.” – Christian Nevell Bovee, author/lawyer
If ever you feel like the deposits in your self-esteem account are outpacing your withdrawals, you might consider letting your significant other loose with your ego credit card. That should take care of any excess balance you might have.
Pre-empting Plotter Envy
“If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”
– Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, statesman and author
Several years ago, a friend of mine got a pen plotter. It was a big, beautiful instrument. It was shiny and gleaming, and it stood on its own two legs in the corner of his office. I was envious of him and his plotter for two reasons—one was that he could create blueprints and crank out professional- looking drawings at will, and the other was that everyone who saw it immediately knew he was an AutoCAD stud. It was more than a convenient tool to aide him in his work; it was a status symbol.
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