The United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) reported a banner year for its four-day Annual Conference & Stage Expo. Held March 20-23, 2013 at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Delta Center, the event attracted more people and products than any other in the conference’s 53-year history.
For more than a decade, The Killers have been pumping out hard-driving, danceable and emotionally-charged rock music, with glimmers of techno pop. Through his eight years (and counting) as a member of the band’s production team, lighting designer/director Steven Douglas has kept the visuals as fresh as the music.
The British trio, Muse — including Matthew Bellamy (lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, vocals, keyboards, rhythm guitar) and drummer/percussionist/synthesist Dominic Howard, with the addition of keyboardist/percussionist Morgan Nicholls on their live performances — offer an engaging blend of electronica, metal, classical and space rock.
This year, NBC Sports launched their new headquarters in Stamford, CT — a new home for everything sports-related for the media giant which, after a merger with Comcast in Jan. 2011, led to the re-branding of Versus, Golf Channel and other Comcast-launched entities as part of the newly-created NBC Sports Network in Jan. 2012. Most NBC Sports operations are now Stamford-based, including Bob Costas’ Costas Tonight; an exception is Football Night in America, which remains at Rockefeller Center in NYC.
Television lighting designer Ted Wells has been honing his craft since the early 1970s. He starting out in Topeka, KS where, while still a student, he got work at the local PBS station and the CBS affiliate. He didn’t even have dimmers at the PBS station, but came up with lighting cues using a breaker panel, which no one at the station had ever seen done before.
The history of lighting dates back to a distant time when there wasn’t any artificial lighting at all. In fact, in the early days, some film studios were designed with a rotating open roof to allow the maximum amount of natural light to fill the stage. Film companies moved to Hollywood in droves, where natural light was plentiful. Inevitably, directors wanted to film in the evenings, and they had the audacity to want a little “visual mood” in their scenes. Thankfully, along came Thomas Edison, followed closely by Mr. Mole, Mr. Richardson, and the Kliegl Brothers. Suddenly, the “electric” lighting industry was born.
Shania Twain’s new show, Still the One, began its two-year, 110-show residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Dec. 1, 2012. During the 100-minute, 18-song show, the venue’s 34-by-109-foot-wide 11mm HD LED screen is used to display a variety of images — from kaleidoscopic abstractions to clips featuring Twain, a Wild West saloon, leopards and a campfire scene in a forest.
