PLSN Interview

PLSN recently had the opportunity to sit down with Ken Jones, a prominent lighting programmer and designer based in Las Vegas. Ken is probably one of the busiest and most talented programmers in the corporate theatre world that I’ve ever met, and his affection for media server technology is a passion we share. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a few events with him, and I always find myself challenging the boundaries of both my own knowledge and the limitations of the equipment when we work together.

Since environmental artist Joy Wulke founded Projects for a New Millenium in 1993, the nonprofit organization, now called Projects2K (www.projects2k.org), has been raising awareness of ecology and the natural world through a fusion of art and science. The group has staged a variety of site-specific shows, turning to the Stony Creek Quarry near its home base in Branford, CT for a number of productions over the years. They include Visualization of Time (1995), Terra Continuum (1999), Terra Lumina (2001), Terra Alchemica (2002) and Terra Mirabila: If Rocks Could Dream (2005).

Volt Lites LD/Programmer Energized by Fresh Looks

On behalf of PLSN, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with LD and programmer Matt Shimamoto while he was working on the ACM Fan Jam. This was no easy task to schedule. He has been working seemingly non-stop ever since I first met him during tapings for Q’Viva, the TV reality series that culminated in a live stage show in Las Vegas in 2012.

Marshall Bissett has played a key role in  the live event industry for four decades, and is the founder of TMB, long rumored to stand for either “Too Many Beers” or “Too Much Bull****.” He was in the live event industry before “there even was an industry.” He sat down with PLSN recently and reflected on his career, the business and what’s next.

Lighting Director Scott Cunningham Helps ‘The Line” Shine

Country music’s Florida Georgia Line, comprised of Floridian Brian Kelley and Georgian Tyler Hubbard, are hotter than a $10 pistol. Their sextuple-platinum song “Cruise” broke the record for longest Number One on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart, scoring more than 6.3 million downloads in the U.S. alone. It is the second-highest-selling country single ever. Entertainment Weekly magazine called “Cruise (Remix) featuring Nelly” the eighth-best single of 2013. Their first three singles hit Number One for several weeks each, an accomplishment equaled only by Brooks & Dunn. Their debut album, Here’s to the Good Times, earned the highest album sales of 2012 for a new country act.

When Don Pugh and Robert Mokry founded LightParts in early 2004, they weren’t just launching a company, they were launching a new industry niche: a lighting parts and repair center for entertainment lighting. The High End Systems alums have since expanded their focus from legacy HES gear such as Intellabeam, Emulator, Dataflash and Laser Chorus fixtures to gear from Martin, Element Labs, Vari-Lite, Flying Pig Systems, Jands, Wybron, Coemar, Color Kinetics, ETC and Clay Paky — and the list goes on.

Andrew Gumper is only 31 years old, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have decades of experience in the live event industry. He has spent the last 20 years immersed in activities ranging from programming lighting consoles, designing the look of various shows and running a production company that took him from his parent’s basement to the helm of AG Light and Sound, one of the fastest-growing production companies in the U.S. PLSN caught up with Gumper to talk about how he did it.

Like many in the live entertainment production industry, for Andre Serafini, it started with the music. In the late 1980s, he was a drummer/songwriter and part of an alternative/punk band called Quit, known for its 1990 album, Earlier Thoughts, which receive substantial air play on local radio stations. The Miami native gravitated toward the technical side of the entertainment industry, becoming a partner in Tapeworm Studios. With his many contacts and connections on the thriving local music scene, it wasn’t long before the gear he had been accumulating was being loaned, then rented, for a variety of gigs, and a major regional rental company, Beachsound & Lighting, was born.

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.