LD at Large

I spend a lot of time traveling, but I’m home a lot more often than I was when I toured the world with rock bands. I’m frequently asked by lots of young folks how to get into the road business. But lately, I’ve been asked by older people a more important question: How do you get off the road? 

This month I welcome a little change. I have no musical tours to design or program, but because I have a lot of friends who do the same thing as I do for a living, I have plenty of work as their substitute for a few gigs.

The music business is quite different from other sides of lighting. The main thing is that it isn’t consistent, and it often leaves holes in your schedule — and by “holes,” I mean time periods where we aren’t gigging and we ain’t making no cash. It pays to keep in touch with your fellow lighting brethren. Besides the fact that they are your friends, there’s an old adage that really applies to the music biz: “Out of sight, out of mind.”

I work a lot of corporate shows each year. Many are events where a company brings its national sales staff to a nice resort for four days of motivational speaking and sales pitches. These events usually include a dinner followed by a big-name musical act. These acts are usually bands that were big 20 years ago and had a slew of hits that they gladly replay for a phenomenal fee at your corporate dinner party.

I’ve been hearing some disturbing stories lately. And I’m getting upset. It seems like its becoming normal for touring shows to fire lighting techs. On several occasions in the last two years, I’ve heard stories of whole crews being replaced. I get calls from people who hate working with techs that I know do great work for me. I don’t get it. Is it the new generation of youngsters and their attitudes? Or the fact that many techs don’t know what they’re doing these days?

I am blessed in that I am busy all the time. It’s also a curse as it cuts down on time at home and the amount of preproduction I can do on-site. So I depend on visualizers to get a jump start on my lighting programming for most of my shows.

In the last few months I received two offers to light a symphony. I thought to myself, “How hard can this be? Set a pretty look for each segment and key light a couple of solos. Simple, right?” Now add some flamenco dancers, jugglers, acrobats, assorted guest vocalists and 100 choir members. What I ended up with is a variety show, featuring the symphony.

Hey, it’s New Year’s in Rio. No worries.

Last month I got a call from my friend, Alex Skowron, the LD for the Black Eyed Peas. The band had booked themselves on a beach in Rio for New Year’s Eve, but they had another gig on the 29th in Las Vegas. He couldn’t make it to Brazil until the show, so I covered for him. Dave Hill had designed a replica stage and lighting rig for Rio and five other cities around the globe. I was to clone Alex’s show to Dave’s rig for a show that would be broadcast worldwide. I kept a running diary of observations, and you’re in luck because I’d like to share them with you. 

Lighting theories for the working designer

This New Year’s Eve I was in Rio with LD Alex Skowron lighting the Black Eyed Peas as part of a worldwide celebration Nokia was throwing in six cities. English LD Dave Hill designed the same lighting rig for six different festivals in separate time zones with different directors. It’s a TV thing. I imagine none of them looked close to the same, and that’s the beauty of this project. Everyone has their own style of lighting events.

[In the last two columns, lighting designer Nook Schoenfeld and a posse of LDs including Bob Peterson, John Featherstone and Olivier Ilisca sat down for lunch to discuss how they got into the industry and what makes them successful. What we’ve learned so far is that, of the four designers, none of them were formally educated, but they all recognize the value of a good education. But when it comes to work, nothing can replace experience and handson training. And, if you really want to excel, there’s one more very impor tant ingredient. To find out what that is, read this, the last installment of the three-par t series, “Sushi in Chicago.”-ed.]

[If last month’s LD-at-Large column resolved anything, it’s that sushi is definitely the cuisine of choice among most lighting designers. Four of them, Nook Schoenfeld, Bob Peterson, John Featherstone and Olivier Ilisca, got together for an informal lunch discussion at Nook’s urging. On the menu? Sushi, of course. Once the sushi connection was established, the four LDs talked about how they started in the business and how they ended up where they are, all the while working on their appetizer. By the time the main course arrived, they were on to bigger and better things, like what it takes to get ahead in this business. This is the second of a three-part series. – ed.]

Young people often ask me how I achieved my position in the lighting profession and how I ended up in Chicago. I started thinking about the fact that the majority of successful U.S. lighting designers hail from New York or California. But Chicago is right up there with the rest of the world, and what better way to discuss how to advance in the industry than to invite three renowned Chicago lighting designers to dinner to discuss it.