Product Spotlight

Charles H. Duell, the former commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said in 1899 that everything that can be invented, has been invented. Of course, everyone knows that wasn’t true until 2002 when Martin introduced the animation wheel in the MAC 2000. Then and only then had everything been invented, at least in terms of automated lighting. Sure, lots of new automated lighting products were introduced since then, but true innovation seemed to be lacking. Not anymore.

When the price of fuel began its dizzying ascent a few years ago, few of us could have predicted the far reaching implications. But it might not have been so difficult to predict that the truck pack would become more important than ever, especially for those of us who have to pay the fuel bills. Upstaging, Inc., who is planted firmly both in the lighting and trucking side of the business, understands as well as anyone the implications. That’s one of the motivating reasons that they helped develop the new High-Performance Utility Design (HUD) Truss.

Do you know how you can tell a rookie entertainment professional from a veteran? When they walk into a show, the rookie cranes his neck to admire the lighting rig while the veteran cranes his neck to see if it’s safe to walk under the rig.

Amid a growing field of computer-based lighting pre-visualization systems, lighting designer Charles Kirby and his company have been busy building and improving on a more organic and interactive method of modeling light. By taking advantage of today’s fiber-optic and LED technologies, Thematics is giving designers — and students of the craft — a way to build fully-operational scale models of their lighting designs.

Over the last three years, while their Series 2 Syncrolites were out generating revenue on seemingly every production with a budget, the Dallas-based company was busy developing and patenting the next generation of Syncrolite products. Now they’re ready to trot out their Series 3 line of high-powered xenon, moving yoke fixtures with what are possibly the most innovative new features in an automated light in several years.

Compulite is an Israeli-based lighting console manufacturer that has been in business for over 25 years. During the last few years, the company has expanded its range to include several new models. The Compulite Vector now comes in four models that vary according to how many faders and DMX512 outputs you need for your purposes.  The company also manufactures programming wings and playback wings that can be used with an outboard PC. The playback wing can be used in conjunction with any model to add an additional 10 faders and cue keys. We had an opportunity to Road Test the Vector Red.

Attendees at last year’s LDI tradeshow were introduced to the newest addition to Vari-Lite’s flagship 3000 series of auto-mated lighting fixtures. The VL3500 Wash fixture fills in a gap in the very top echelon of Vari-Lite’s fixture offerings. Build-ing on the line’s already rich feature set, the fixture is an evolutionary step from its closest sibling, the VL3000 Wash, with at least one trick up its sleeve that’s not found anywhere else in the series. 

The Martin MAC 2000 line of luminaires is arguably the most successful series of moving lights sold to date. It is almost impossible to accurately predict what combination of features, reliability and cost makes up the perfect product. Chalk it up to a whole lot of skill and at least a little bit of luck.

One nice thing about writing a product spotlight is all the cool toys we get to play with. The Sharp XGMB67X is one such cool toy. Especially since I had a number of movies to catch up on.

The XG-MB67X is a “compact” projector that packs all the features that you would expect to find on larger models. While certain accommodations have been made for its small footprint, Sharp does not compromise on its performance. It does all this while staying at a very competitive price point.