In the whacky world of Nook, (where I reside as king), I find myself lighting just about anything. This weekend I lit a Celtic folk trio for a PBS TV show. Upstaging lighting offered up my services to a local director (thanks guys) and he hired me to wiggle some lights.
I'm not good at describing experiences. If you ask me how many amps flows through a load at a certain voltage I might be able… Read More »Don’t Ask Me Why – It Just Rocked
Well this week past week for me was all about home depot and repairs, which triggered me to start saving cash for a few new consoles because of specific things that have happened with gear recently. So let’s start with what I had on my plate first shall we? I had to fix burnt out par 38 bulb sockets by soldering in new cables and new sockets. The 38s are a huge part of my show because their wide angle beam covers a lot of my drummer’s kit and it looks pretty damn good shining off the chrome while I’m hitting bumps with him playing. Next were the electric heads for the AC cables. Well as you all are aware grounds are the first to eat it on AC cable so our sound engineer and I were soldering on new heads on the dinner table. Hah, I never mentioned to you all before that the sound guy and I live with the band in a ranch house here in Cave Creek, Arizona.
Two words: click here -> www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmv Any questions?
Today I am in charge of eye candy. This involves throwing different pieces of media onto soft LED panels and some V9 hidef video modules that Nocturne has brought down to WTTW's TV studio in Chicago.
OK, so now that I have the introduction out of the way. I am going to speed up with the more recent things I’ve been up to. Recently I’ve been running some bigger shows through outside production. I got to run a great club show with an LSC Maxim XL console 6 Clay Paky mirrors and 6 Martin 250 washes with 200 pars at The Rams Head Live in Baltimore, MD. They have a fun rig and I think the pat pad on the Maxim was fun. You can pretty much use this pad like a touch screen but instead you can assign parameters by moving your finger right or left across a certain part of the pat pad.
Being found is important in our biz. I think that’s why people keep their old email addresses and phone #’s. I got a couple calls this week from cell phones with area codes I recognized as San Francisco and Atlanta. However, both of these calls originated from friends I know who now live in Seattle.
I just spent 90 minutes jumping up and down behind a lighting console. I wasn’t angry. I was lighting a punk rock band.
Complete refurbishment, acoustic overhaul and state-of-the-art lighting and video installations: it sounds like improvements made for a theatrical company of national significance, not a high school auditorium in Kentwood, Mich. But sometimes star treatment is found in strange places — and East Kentwood High School’s refurbished high school now contains technology and planning that puts it on par with many of the country’s top performance venues.
Who:
American Audio Visual Center, Inc. (AAVC). Within AAVC is Team Staging.
What:
Audio-visual and multimedia staging company providing turn-key presentation, multimedia and staging support for corporations, producers, meeting planners, associations, product launches, corporate meetings and events.
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.
“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.