It’s become painfully evident to me that this industry has been overrun with people who take too much responsibility for their actions. Every day it seems like I’m on a show where a technician double-checks his work, a programmer tests her backup console or a designer accepts the blame for an uneven front wash.
People! This has got to stop!
Days before InfoComm opened mid-June in Las Vegas, one of the world’s leading projection video purveyors announced the acquisition of one of the lighting industry’s most well known brands. Barco’s purchase of High End Systems further solidifies the ongoing convergence between video and lighting and in the process seeks to redefine what had been individual sectors under the rubric of the events market. High End Systems, Inc. was majority-owned by Generation Partners, a U.S. private equity firm, which acquired the company in 1998.
“In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.” — Henri Matisse
The world of stage productions has really grown complex in the last 10 to 15 years. Not only have automated lights become standard, but so have digital audio consoles, complex show control systems, motion control and networking. Often these systems must be synchronized via MIDI or SMPTE to ensure a reliable and repeatable production. While it can be amazing to sit back and watch a programmed light show run automatically, it is also a bit disheartening to walk away from a desk and have the show continue.
Often enough my work takes me abroad. And just when I thought I’d played a gig in every corner of the world, some band has found a new locale. There was a time when South America seemed like a distant land, an impossible place to do a proper show. But that’s in the past. Now I get to teach the locals how to do shows in lovely places like Ethiopia and Kazakhstan.
Last week I was out in San Diego and Anaheim doing rehearsal shows for Marco Antonio Solis. My priority to this gig is to board… Read More »Dos Rehearsals
When stage manager Michael Brunner worked on South Pacific in summer stock as a younger man, he had no idea that he would one day be tackling it full force at New York’s Lincoln Center. Now the 30-year theatre veteran is the production stage manager (PSM) for the first revival of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein show in 53 years at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. And as he has noted — with a production that includes a large cast, prop plane and two real Navy trucks converted for stage use — the larger scale “makes a difference.” Critics and audiences are agreeing, along with celebrities like Robert Redford, Jane Alexander and David Hasselhoff, all of whom have come to check out the show.
Lighting designer Abigail Rosen Holmes had a collaborator, of sorts, on her latest tour design for The Cure’s 4 Tour. Her collaborator had lots of insight to the material, since he wrote most of it himself.
Front man Robert Smith “is very involved in the design of the show,” Holmes said. She and Smith exchanged sketches of the lighting system, projection, and stage layout before arriving at the final design. Then they tossed around ideas for the individual songs.
All load-ins are a testament to the beauty of cooperation and madness. This gets amplified when you’re putting up the set as they’re finishing the theatre.
“They’re kind of building around us,” says Jim Fedigan, production electrician for the install of Jersey Boys in the Jersey Boys Theatre at the Palazzo Las Vegas — Resort, Hotel, Casino. We’re standing on the lip of the stage looking at lights that have been hung onto truss, and then wrapped in plastic bags to protect them from construction dust, which is everywhere. Fedigan started the load-in in a theatre that was far from complete.
Intense heat radiating from the streets and sidewalks outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center in June was no match for the cool gear at InfoComm 2008. True to form, LEDs, media servers and projection dominated the show, but not all exhibitors followed the formula. Some of them showed products to rig, power and network with LEDs, media servers and projection. Another dominant technology at the show was wireless DMX, with several dimming and control manufacturers offering it as an option as well as one or two automated lighting manufacturers.
It’s not the sexiest part of the world of rock ‘n’ roll, but few can argue with its importance. After all, the band can fly around in their private jets or arrive with all the creature comforts they want in their custom coaches, but if the gear doesn’t arrive on time, safely and soundly, there’s not a lot that can happen.
Before automated lighting, media servers, and LEDs, there were a handful of pioneering individuals who took truckloads of conventional lights and figured out how to rig them, power them, and run a show on the road. They borrowed heavily from the theatre industry and the school of hard knocks to put together the first touring packages. One of them was Bob See, founder and CEO of See Factor Lighting in Long Island City, New York. About 40 years after See starting working in the entertainment production industry, PLSN decided to take a look back at the genesis of the industry from a pioneer’s point of view.