This year has been really strange for me in the variety of music I have been lighting. I seem to lighting quite a few heavy metal bands this year. Nothing wrong with metal mind you, I just haven’t bought into it since Deep Purple and Led Zep hung up their rock n roll shoes. (Or did they?).
In the spring of next year I am looking to do some workshops for the Mass Communications and Theater departments of a local university. These workshops will introduce how video and lighting are work hand in hand in the live production industry today. I really want to get the ball rolling and get the students hip to what cool toys we get to work with out there nowadays and no matter what major you come from you can definitely find a niche in both. It's only introductory stuff, but I'm hoping they'll enjoy the workshops and I can get rolling with some more technical stuff for them after this trial run. Here's a rough draft I started…
So I’m working with another heavy metal artist this week. A band called Disturbed, a popular hard music act. They are extremely nice guys. If you were stopped at a red light and they got out of the car next to you, it could make you feel a tad uneasy about the impending future. But in real life, they are just good old boys who like to play loud music.
Exile in America Tour
In 2000, Benoit Richard was working on the Matchbox Twenty Mad Season tour with lighting designer Marc Brickman. When Rob Thomas struck out on his own in 2005, he brought Richard along as the lighting designer. From his experiences with the band and its front man, Richard has compiled quite a knowledgebase about the band’s likes and dislikes. “For this tour,” he said, “our goal was to top what we had done in the past. When I showed my concept to the band, they were very excited. One band member (Paul Doucette) actually participates in the creation of the show cues with me and we worked well together this time around.
BUSINESS
Who: Brian Friborg, President, Martin Professional, Inc. (U.S. division)
What: Manufactures automated lighting, effects lighting, LEDs, fog machines and controllers which are used in all aspects of the entertainment industry. Martin also has a line of architectural luminaires for architectural lighting applications.
In the live entertainment industry, certainly a very important aspect of a production is the set. With today’s technology, there are many options for what to do with a stage from a scenic standpoint, including new ways to incorporate video elements into the stage.
Horao, pictured here, is one of the manufacturers allowing designers to create LED arrays showing off dynamic graphics with depth.
In Part I of this article (PLSN, April 2008, page 50) I presented an argument for console agnosticism. Hopefully, by now you’ve had some time to think about the merits of being familiar with a wide range of consoles. These might include application specific virtues, cost factors and even political or historical reasons. So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to tell you why you should forget everything I’ve said and spend your every waking moment learning one console.
For many production and design professionals, the VectorWorks suite of computer aided drafting software has become an industry standard platform. A highly mature group of products, the VectorWorks family includes products that cater to architects, engineers, landscape artists and lighting designers.
I once walked into Bill Little’s office at Little Stage Lighting in Dallas in the late 1980s and he showed me a software program he was working on. This was in the very early days of desktop computers, before Windows, and he was working on a DOS-based lighting design system.
The entourage for Tori Amos’ latest tour just might be the easiest group to wrangle in the history of touring. That’s because the cast, which includes Pip, Isabel, Clyde, and Santa — a.k.a., the American Doll Posse — were all figments of Amos’ imagination.
Every month I see new products on the market. It seems the latest LED and media server technology is constantly outdating last year’s cool stuff. Automated lighting manufacturers are dueling to keep up with each other in terms of lumens while trying to come up with new features. This stuff is impressive, but it makes me wonder…“Why don’t people concentrate on making new cooler versions of existing gear?”
At the age of 23, Brian Sidney Bembridge moved to Chicago, the home of more than 200 small theatre companies, to try to make a name for himself as a lighting and scenic designer. After working on various small projects, he finally got his break in the local theatre community after he was invited to work on a film featuring a little green frog and his friends. He took time out of his busy schedule to talk to us about how his naivety helped him make the most important decision in his life and what he’s learned since relocating to the Windy City.