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PROJECTION 

CONNECTION 

Starts on page 81 

Road Test: Vectorworks Spotlight 2009, page 70 

Vol. 9.9 

OCT. 

2008 

Backfield Scramble at Mile High Stadium 

DENVER — The 2008 Democratic National Convention assembled a record crowd of 84,000 at Invesco Field at 

Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech as the Democratic nominee. 

The crowd included plenty of advocates for change — and that was also something the creative design team 

had been tackling for weeks leading up to Obama’s speech. The DNC’s original plan called for Obama’s speech to 

be staged at Denver’s 19,000-seat Pepsi Center, the venue for most of the DNC activities. The decision to switch to 

Invesco Field took place even as the Pepsi Center’s load-in was underway. The crew suddenly needed to design, 

build and install a second set, with a load-in of only four days. For the full story, turn to page 21. 

Parnelli Voting Will Be Closing Soon — Vote Today! 

LAS VEGAS — Voting is still underway for the 2008 Parnelli Awards. If you haven’t done so already, go 

to www.parnelliawards.com and cast your ballot today! You can also get info and reserve your place at the 

2008 PLSN Parnelli Celebrity Golf Classic (Oct. 23) and the Parnelli Awards Dinner (Oct. 24), featuring Master 

of Ceremonies Alice Cooper. PLSN publisher Terry Lowe will present awards to the winners, and also honor 

Michael Tait, winner of the 2008 Parnelli Visionary Award, and Dennis Sheehan, winner of the 2008 Parnelli 

Lifetime Achievement Award. A profile of Tait appeared in the Sept. 2008 issue of PLSN; a profile of Sheehan 

begins on page 60. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF SEAN DOUGALL, TRIBE DESIGN 

Q1 and Ed & Ted’s 

Announce Merger 

WINNIPEG, VANCOUVER B.C., 

and OXNARD, CA — Marc Raymond, 

founder and CEO of Q1 Production 

Technologies, Ted Fowler, founder 

and president of Ed & Ted’s Excellent 

Lighting and Q1 partner and president 

Brian Konechny announced that 

the companies have merged under 

the newly created corporate banner 

Epic Production Technologies. 

The partners added that the 

newly formed company has received 

an unspecified equity injection from 

H.I.G. Capital, a Miami-based private 

investment firm. The investment 

was coordinated through H.I.G.’s San 

Francisco office and is expected to 

help Epic serve its client base with 

an expanded array of inventory. 

The new company combines Ed & 

Ted’s presence 

continued on page 8 

ESTA Receives 

CITT/ICTS Award 

NEW YORK — ESTA has received 

a 2008 CITT/ICTS Honorary Membership 

Award. The award is bestowed on 

an individual or organization not actively 

involved in technical disciplines 

of the Canadian live performance 

industry, but who by virtue of their 

position has contributed significantly 

to the development of technical disciplines 

within Canada. 

CITT/ICTS recognized ESTA’s contribution 

to the entertainment industry 

in North America and its ongoing 

collaboration with CITT/ICTS over the 

years, notably with the Entertainment 

Technician Certification Program 

(ETCP), which was cited for raising 

awareness about the need for better 

training and 


42 

44 

52 

Dark. Moody. 

Extraordinary. 

STEPHANIE BERGER 

Die Soldaten was not just your 

run-of-the-mill New York theatrical 

production. The avant-garde 

German opera was staged in New 

York’s cavernous Park Avenue 

Armory, transformed by close to 

a half-mile of truss, 149 motors, a 

thousand running feet of curtain 

and a T-shaped catwalk for a stage, 

splitting a 120-piece orchestra on 

opposing sides. 

Most dramatically, however, 

Die Soldaten seated its audience on 

metal bleachers attached to a giant 

C-shaped rostrum mounted on 

precisely-levelled rails, and “driven” 

by a crew member with a maximum 

speed of 40 feet per minute to 

provide a variety of vantage points 

as the opera’s story unfolded. 

For more, turn to page 36. 

An All-LED Rig 

Radiohead LD Andi Watson’s 

new 3D LED aesthetic. 

PLASA Show Report 

New product ripples from 

across the pond. 

PLSN Interview 

Rob Koenig, LD for Billy Idol 

and other tours, uses new gear 

for old school rock ‘n’ roll looks. 

Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info




www.plsn.com OCTOBER December 2008 

WHAT’S HOT 

WHAT’S HOT HOT 

PROJECTION, LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

Steve Jennings 


Wide Angle 

LD Paul Normandale and lighting programmer/director Mark “Sparky” Risk 

served up high-tech, classical and spherical visual elements for Coldplay’s 

Viva La Vida tour. 

Production Profile 

Brad Paisley’s toons helped animate his tunes for The Paisley Party tour, 

the latest traveling extravaganza featuring lighting looks from LD Dean 

Spurlock. 

38 

18 

18 58 

CONTENTS 

Features 

36 Inside Theatre 

The German opera Die Soldaten moved 

the audience — visibly. 

40 Production Profile 

O.A.R’s songs and sets are hard to predict, 

but their LD has learned to adapt. 

42 Radiohead’s All-LED Rig 

LD Andi Watson used a bulb-less rig for 

Radiohead in a novel 3D LED design. 

44 PLASA Show Report 

Innovation is alive and well, and not just 

for LEDs and media servers. 

52 PLSN Interview 

Rob Koenig relies on soft-edged, colorful 

beams and his own musical background 

to light Billy Idol’s shows. 

56 Countdown to Venue 68 

Asbury United Methodist Church’s new 

performance venue. 

60 Dennis Sheehan, Parnelli Lifetime 

Achievement Winner 

The tour manager for U2 since 1982 

combines attention to detail with a 

sense of humor and a talent for telling a 

good yarn. 

66 An Ice Rink Retrofit 

Shakespeare & Company’s $7.5 million 

new arts center. 

68 Wide Angle 

Two weeks into her Vortex tour, Erykah 

Badu changed gears. 

70 Road Test 

Vectorworks Spotlight 2009. 

72 Bandit Lites Marks 40 Years 

As it heads into its fifth decade, the lighting 

company takes a look back. 

77 Buyers Guide 

Automated lighting fixtures. 

80 Road Test 

We check out Elation’s LED 36 Tri-Brick. 

88 Take Me Out to the Opera 

Simulcast brings the San Francisco 

Opera to the home of the Giants. 

92 Product Spotlight 

Truck-ready, earth-friendly HUD Truss. 

Columns 

6 Editor’s Note 

Voting your conscience is never a drag. 

87 Video World 

TV’s switch to digital. 

91 The Biz 

Beijing’s enhanced fireworks. 

94 Feeding the Machines 

Pre-pre-production. 

95 Technopolis 

The value of RDM and ACN. 

96 Focus on Fundamentals 

Math is too useful to ignore. 

100 LD-at-Large 

Lighting that’s friendly to the planet, 

and your budget. 

Departments 

7 News 

10 Calendar 

12 Letters to the Editor 

24 International News 

29 On the Move 

32 New Products 

34 Showtime 

81 Projection Connection 

82 Projection Connection News 

86 Projection Connection New 

Products 



TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION 

EDITOR’S NOTE 

PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

By RichardCadena 

Ethics, Legality, and Politics: 

Ru Paul to the Rescue 

It’s not easy living in Texas during the 

Bush administration. At a party recently, 

I was introduced as the editor of PLSN 

who lives in Texas. In a considerable leap, a 

conclusion was drawn, and all of a sudden 

I was a McCain/Palin supporter. 

“Actually,” I said, “I voted for Ron Paul. 

I’m a libertarian,” I said. 

“Why would you want to throw your 

vote away?” came the reply. 

But voting for what I believe in, said 

I, is not what I would call “throwing your 

vote away.” It’s voting for what I believe 

in. I believe in small government and free 

enterprise with minimal government 

regulation. I recalled how long distance 

phone service used to be much more 

expensive until the telephone companies 

were de-regulated. The same goes, I 

said, for the airline industry. It used to be 

that flying was a luxury mostly enjoyed 

mostly by the rich before government 

de-regulation. 

“The rights of a patent owner include ‘the right 

to exclude others from making, using, offering 

for sale, or selling’ the invention in the U.S. or 

importing the invention into the U.S.” 

A Guy in a Dress 

PLSN 

My newfound friend was not impressed. 

“But, why,” he said, “would you 

vote for a drag queen?” 

“A drag queen?” I was puzzled. Then 

it hit me. “No, that’s Ru Paul, not Ron 

Paul.” 

Actually, I wouldn’t rule out voting 

for Ru Paul for president. A guy in a dress 

might restore some dignity to the office 

if he/she would lower taxes and cut government 

waste. Not that all government 

regulation is bad. Take, for example, the 

banking industry. Need I say more? 

Government does have its place. 

Where roads, bridges, fire fighting, ambulance 

service, and police are concerned, 

it’s the government’s responsibility 

to collect taxes and provide those 

services. There are also other areas where 

governmental regulation is vital, like patent 

protection. 

The Profit Mandate 


Economist Milton Friedman once 

wrote that “there is one and only one social 

responsibility of business — to use 

its resources and engage in activities designed 

to increase its profits so long as 

it stays within the rules of the game.” He 

describes the “rules of the game” as conforming 

to the legal and ethical rules of 

society. A business is only as ethical and 

moral as the people running it. If there 

is no government oversight, then the 

people running the business are left to 

decide what is ethical and moral according 

to society. 

In most societies, we recognize that 

intellectual property is the property of 

the inventor, and that she has certain 

rights associated with that property, just 

as she has rights with the land she owns. 

In the United States, the rights of a patent 

owner include “the right to exclude 

others from making, using, offering for 

sale, or selling” the invention in the U.S. 

or importing the invention into the U.S. 

This is an important right because it allows 

people the freedom to invest in innovation 

knowing that, should they find 

a breakthrough they will be allowed to 

profit from it without having to worry 

about others taking their innovation 

and profiting from it without the associated 

risk of investing in the R&D. 

The Publication of Record for the Lighting, 

Staging and Projection Industries 

Publisher 

Terry Lowe 

tlowe@plsn.com 

Editor 

Richard Cadena 

rcadena@plsn.com 

Editorial Director 

Bill Evans 

bevans@plsn.com 

Managing Editor 

Frank Hammel 

fhammel@plsn.com 

Associate Editor 

Breanne George 

bg@plsn.com 

Contributing Writers 

Arden Ash, David John Farinella, 

Vickie Claiborne, Phil Gilbert, Rob Ludwig, 

Kevin M. Mitchell, Bryan Reesman, Brad 

Schiller, Nook Schoenfeld, Paul J. Duryee 

Photographer 


Art Director 

Garret Petrov 

gpetrov@plsn.com 

Graphic Designers 

David Alan 

dalan@plsn.com 

Crystal Franklin 

cfranklin@plsn.com 

Web Master 

Josh Harris 

jharris@plsn.com 

National 

Advertising Director 

Gregory Gallardo 

gregg@plsn.com 

Account Manager 

James Leasing 

jleasing@plsn.com 

Production Manager 

Linda Evans 

levans@plsn.com 

General Manager 

William Hamilton Vanyo 

wvanyo@plsn.com 

Business and 

Advertising Office 

6000 South Eastern Ave. 

Suite 14J 

Las Vegas, NV 89119 

Ph: 702.932.5585 

Fax: 702.932.5584 

Toll Free: 800.252.2716 

Editorial Office 

10305 Salida Dr. 

Austin, TX 78749 

Ph: 512.280.0384 

Fax: 512.292.0183 

Circulation 

Stark Services 

P.O. Box 16147 

North Hollywood, CA 91615 

Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info 

Patents and Competition 


As an advocate of free markets, I believe 

that competition is healthy for the 

industry. But I understand the need for 

government enforcement of patent laws. 

When one company strikes an agreement 

with another company to license 

their intellectual property, then everyone 

wins. And that’s precisely what has 

happened between PRG and Robe. As of 

a couple of months ago, PRG and Robe 

entered into an agreement which allows 

Robe to build and sell their line of digital 

luminaires in the United States. Now the 

market can have the best of both worlds 

— free enterprise and ethical practice. 

As a result, the industry will have new 

technology available to it, new competition 

will spur further innovation, and 

everybody from the manufacturers to 

the end users will benefit. 

I love this country, despite that whole 

Texas Bush thing. 

Projection, Lights & Staging News (ISSN: 

1537-0046) Volume 09, Number 9 Published monthly 

by Timeless Communications Corp. 6000 South 

Eastern Ave., Suite 14J, Las Vegas, NV 89119. It is 

distributed free to qualified individuals in the 

lighting and staging industries in the United 

States and Canada. Periodical Postage paid 

at Las Vegas, NV, office and additional offices. 

Postmaster please send address changes to: 

Projection, Lights & Staging News, P.O. Box 

16147 North Hollywood, CA 91615. Mailed in 

Canada under Publications Mail Agreement 

Number 40033037, 1415 Janette Ave., Windsor, 

ON N8X 1Z1. Overseas subscriptions are available 

and can be obtained by calling 702.932.5585. 

Editorial submissions are encouraged, but must 

include a self-addressed stamped envelope to 

be returned. Projection, Lights & Staging News is a 

Registered Trademark. All Rights Reserved. 

Duplication, transmission by any method of 

this publication is strictly prohibited without 

permission of Projection, Lights & Staging News. 

ESTA 

ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES &


NEWS 

4Wall 

Expands in 

New York 

Metro Area 

MOONACHIE, NJ — 4Wall Entertainment 

doubled the size of its previous facility in the 

New York metropolitan region with 75,000 

square feet of space. The new facility, which 

has nine loading dock doors, is now the largest 

of the company’s three locations. (The 

other two are located in Phoenix and Las Vegas.) 

“We’re not only excited about the expanded 

space our new facility offers but also 

with our ability to now service an even greater 

portion of the East Coast’s lighting rental 

and sales needs,” said Michael Cannon, 4Wall 

Entertainment’s CEO. 

“Our client base is continually expanding,” 

Cannon added. “While the increase in both inventory 

and warehousing capabilities meets 

our needs, our first priority is always making 

sure we maintain the highest level of service 

for all our clients. The new facility will not 

only meet service demands, but do so with 

the widest range of inventory possible on the 

East Coast.” 

Hoffend & Sons Sues 

Daktronics, Seeks $12 Million 

VICTOR, NY — Daktronics Inc., which 

acquired the operating assets of Hoffend 

& Sons Inc. in Oct. 2006, was named in a 

lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme 

Court for failing to comply with the terms 

of the acquisition. 

Hoffend & Sons, which had been a designer 

and manufacturer of theatre and 

arena rigging systems and scoreboard 

hoist systems, alleged that its shareholders 

have not received agreed-upon financial 

reports and payments for Hoffend & 

Sons’ patented Vortek system. 

The legal complaint, filed in April, 

named as defendants both Daktronics 

Inc. and its Daktronics Hoist Inc. subsidiary, 

and sought damages in excess 

of $12 million plus attorney fees. Harris 

Beach PLLC of Pittsford, N.Y, represented 

the plaintiffs. 

Daktronics, based in Brookings, S.D., 

is a supplier of electronic scoreboards, 

computer-programmable displays, large 

screen video displays and sound and 

control systems. Hoffend & Sons, formerly 

located in Victor, N.Y., was established 

in 1917. 

NPS, IATSE 

Push for 

ETCP Riggers 

DALLAS — The IATSE and National 

Production Services, Inc. 

(NPS) have modified their current 

collective bargaining agreement 

to call for journeyman riggers employed 

by NPS to pass the Entertainment 

Technician Certification 

Program (ETCP) exam for either theater 

or arena rigging by Dec. 2008. 

NPS is a provider of rigging services 

at hotels and resorts throughout 

Florida and northeast Texas. 

“It is a pleasure to work with 

union officials who are as committed 

to safety as we are,” said Brad 

Kagel, the company’s president. 

“The Entertainment Technician Certification 

Program is the best way 

for all riggers to demonstrate that 

they are knowledgeable and experienced 

and in my opinion, knowledge 

and experience are the most 

important criteria to consider when 

determining if a person is competent 

to hang heavy equipment 

overhead.” 

Brian Lawlor, international vicepresident 

and co-director of stagecraft 

with the IATSE, commented 

on the collective bargaining agreement 

as well. “It became apparent 

after speaking with Brad at NPS 

that getting all of his riggers certified 

through the ETCP was necessary 

in order for his company to 

remain competitive and expand. 

Our affected locals responded affirmatively 

to this challenge and I 

congratulate them for stepping up 

to the plate on behalf of their members 

and the industry.” 


NEWS 


Feld Entertainment Acquires Live Nation Motor Sports 

VIENNA, VA — Feld Entertainment, Inc. 

announced the completion of its acquisition 

of Live Nation Motor Sports, Inc., a division 

of Live Nation, Inc. The acquisition marks the 

largest expansion in Feld Entertainment’s 

40-year history. As a result of the acquisition, 

Live Nation Motor Sports was immediately 

renamed Feld Entertainment Motor Sports. 

Feld Entertainment Motor Sports will 

continue operations in Aurora, Ill., and will 

maintain its current management, tour 

schedules, promotional partnerships and 

performance structure. As the newest addition 

to Feld Entertainment, Feld Entertainment 

Motor Sports will continue to produce 

Monster Jam Series, Monster Energy AMA 

Supercross, FIM Championship and other 

motor sports events. These also include the 

AMA Arenacross Series, Freestyle Motocross 

and International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) 

sanctioned events, including Knoll Gas Nitro 

Jam, Thunder Jam and Street Warriorz. 

“Today marks the single biggest expansion 

of Feld Entertainment in over 40 years,” 

said Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld 

Entertainment. “With the addition of Motor 

Sports, Feld Entertainment can now offer 

families everywhere an even wider range 

of live family entertainment options. The 

edge-of-the-seat excitement of all the Motor 

Sports events appeals to families in the 

US and around the world. We plan to take 

Monster Jam and all the Motor Sports spectaculars 

to more domestic and international 

markets than ever before.” 

With productions of Ringling Bros. and 

Barnum & Bailey, Disney On Ice, Disney Live! 

and Doodlebops Live, Feld Entertainment is 

the largest producer of live touring entertainment 

events. Live Nation Motor Sports, 

now Feld Entertainment Motor Sports, is 

the largest producer and promoter of specialized 

motor sports with more than 600 

performances a year. The acquisition of Motor 

Sports is expected to expand Feld Entertainment’s 

family spectaculars to where 

they reach more than 30 million people in 

55 countries with over 5,000 performances 

each year. 

For the acquisition of Live Nation Motor 

Sports, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. acted 

as financial advisor and Fulbright & Jaworski, 

L.L.P. served as outside legal counsel to Feld 

Entertainment. In addition, Bank of America, 

N.A. led a group of seven banks to provide 

financing to Feld Entertainment in connection 

with the transaction. 

ESTA Receives 

CITT/ICTS Award 

continued from cover 

for ongoing professional development 

opportunities for technical and production 

workers in Canada. ESTA was also 

recognized for providing the industry 

with valuable standards and research 

data and recommendations relative to 

stage technology. 

The award was presented at the CITT/ 

ICTS Rendez-vous Conference in Ottawa 

in August. Tim Hansen, chair of the ETCP 

Council, accepted the award on ESTA’s behalf. 

“ESTA is very honored to receive this 

award,” said Bill Groener, ESTA president. 

“CITT/ICTS has been supportive of ESTA 

and its activities since our earliest days 

and we greatly value the relationship and 

their participation in one of our key programs.” 


Q1 and Ed & Ted’s 

Announce Merger 

continued from cover 

in the concert touring market with Q1’s experience 

in both live theatre and system integration. 

The new Web site for the company is www. 

epicpt.com. 

Ed & Ted’s was established in 1994 in Salt 

Lake City, Utah and jumped from the local 

rental market to the national touring scene 

with their first major client, Alanis Morissette. 

The company relocated to Southern California 

and expanded into a 40,000-square-foot facility. 

Vari-Lite veteran Kevin Forster joined Ed & Ted’s 

in 2001 and worked with Fowler to build client 

relationships with touring artists that included 

Bon Jovi, The Eagles, Tom Petty, Foo Fighters, 

George Michael, Beyonce and Matchbox 20. 

The company has also built a large roster of corporate 

and event clients. 

Marc Raymond founded Q1 in 2001 after 

he brought Westsun International from a local 

lighting rental facility into a major supplier 

for the North American market. At Q1 he and 

Konechny have been involved in the North 

American stage productions of The Lord of the 

Rings and Dirty Dancing as well as several major 

installation projects for AEG including the lighting 

and rigging system for Nokia Theatre L.A. 

LIVE. In 2008 the company’s concert touring 

business included such artists as Kelly Clarkson, 

Mötley Crüe and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. 

Epic Production Technologies will focus on 

both rentals and sales with Ed & Ted’s Forster and 

Q1 concert touring VP Craig Redden continuing 

to service and build their touring clientele. Q1’s 

Konechny will oversee the new company’s system 

sales and integration projects. The newly 

merged companies will continue to operate on 

both sides of the border, maintaining the current 

facilities in Oxnard, Calif.; Winnipeg, Manitoba 

and Vancouver, B.C., with all business activities 

marketed and managed under the new 

corporate name. 

8 PLSN OCTOBER 2008


NEWS 

NEW YORK — The directors of the Theatre 

Engineering and Architecture (TEA) 

conference and the North American Theatre 

Engineering and Architecture Conference 

(NATEAC) have announced the dates and 

locations of future conferences. Continuing 

the cycle started by Richard Brett, the TEA 

director, and incorporating NATEAC into the 

schedule, the next TEA conference will take 

place in London in 2010 followed by NATEAC 

in New York City in 2012. 

“These specialist conferences have demonstrated 

a great desire for communication 

and the exchange of views between those 

involved in the planning, design, equipping 

and operation of performing arts buildings 

and we wish to continue that dialogue,” Brett 

said. 

The TEA conferences, which were held in 

London in 2002 and 2006, brought together 

a diverse group of attendees and encouraged 

an exchange of ideas on a wide array of 

topics. “I was extremely impressed with the 

willingness of the TEA delegates to share their 

experiences with each other,” said NATEAC director 

Bill Sapsis. “This theme carried over to 


Future Dates Announced for TEA, NATEAC Conferences 

NATEAC. Everywhere we looked there were 

groups of people talking about the issues 

raised in the panels and offering ideas and 

potential solutions. 

“The world grows smaller every day and, 

as design professionals, we cannot limit our 

experiences to our own backyards” Sapsis 

added. “The problems facing our colleagues 

in Europe are really not all that different from 

the ones we face here in the States. Being 

able to meet and hear about solutions from 

other parts of the world is a wonderful opportunity.” 

“The response we have received from the 

industry has certainly been overwhelmingly 

supportive,” Brett said. “The idea of these conferences 

being held on a biennial schedule 

has met with great enthusiasm.” 

“The conferences will remain under the 

overall management of their respective directors,” 

Brett added, “but Bill and I are forming a 

strategic alliance to facilitate the administration 

of these events. The world community 

has told us that these conferences should 

continue and we want to ensure their success 

for many years to come.” 


CORRECTIONS 

A news item in the Sept. 2008 issue 

of PLSN on Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah 

Tour misstated the artists’ touring activity 

in recent years. She’s had several tours 

and performances, including 2003’s 

In Brief 

Scharff Weisberg has expanded its inventory 

with new Barco/High End Systems 

DL.3 digital luminaires…Clay Paky’s Alpha 

Beam 300 won an Award for Innovation at 

PLASA 08…The Hilton San Diego Bayfront 

Worldwide Underground tour, 2005’s 

Sugar Water Festival Tour (with Jill Scott 

and Queen Latifah), 2006’s Block Party 

tour with Dave Chappelle and a variety 

of other performances, including show 

dates in Indonesia, Russia and Israel in 

2007 and 2008. Also, the Martin Maxxyz 

on the tour was a full size console with 

has chosen the American Audio Visual Center 

(AAVC) as their A/V partner…Holo-Walls, 

manufacturers of holographic products, was 

named “Cool New Product of the Year” at the 

2008 Adult Nightclub Awards program in 

Las Vegas…Laser supplier LOBO received 

its 100th award from ILDA…J.R. Clancy was 

named “best in class” in ESTA’s 2008 Customer 

Service Survey…Liberty Wire & Cable 

CALENDAR 

Basic Hog 3 Training 

Oct. 6-7; Oct. 13-14 

Ruehling Associates 

Maple Grove, Minn. 

www.ruehlingassoc.com 

Prolight + Sound Shanghai 

Oct. 9-12 

Shanghai New International 

Expo Centre 

Shanghai, China 

http://pls.messefrankfurt. 

com 

LDI 

Oct. 20-26 

Las Vegas, NV 

www.ldishow.org 

Parnelli Celebrity Classic 

Oct. 23 

Siena Golf Club 

Las Vegas, NV 

www.parnelliawards.com/ 

golf 

Parnelli Awards Gala 

Oct. 24 

Rio Hotel & Casino 

Las Vegas, NV 

www.parnelliawards.com 

Converging Technologies: 

Digital 

Lighting, Video & LED 

(Online Seminar) 

Oct. 30 

www.creativestagelighting.com 

a dual playback wing module, not a 

Maxxyz Compact. 

An item on NBC’s coverage of the 

Olympics should have credited Dan Kelley 

as the LD of the Prime Time Studio 

set. Steven Brill was the senior LD of 

NBC’s overall broadcast. 

PLSN regrets the errors. 

has published its first guide to fiber optic 

products, solutions and services…Atlanta 

Rigging Systems received a Top 10 Distributor 

Award from Columbus McKinnon for the 

second year in a row…Theatrical Lighting 

Systems, Inc. (TLS) is arranging a Carpool 

Bus from Jackson, Miss. to Houston Nov. 5 

for the Worship Facilities Conference & Expo 

(WFX), returning Nov. 7. 

Acuity AV/Milos Open House 

Oct 30-31 

Manassas VA 

www.milosamerica.com 

Guangzhou International 

Lighting Exhibition 

June 9-12, 2009 

China Import and Export Fair 

Pazhou Complex 

Guangzhou, China 

www.light-building.messefrankfurt.com 


LD Systems 

Survives 

Hurricane Ike 

HOUSTON — LD Systems, a supplier 

of lighting, video and sound equipment, 

reported that although it was affected 

by a disruption in electrical power and 

communications in the aftermath of Hurricane 

Ike, its Houston facility survived 

unscathed. The company’s San Antonio 

facility, which was unaffected by the hurricane, 

was also helping provide backup 

support in the storm’s wake. 

“A Texas-sized ‘thank you’ goes to everyone 

out there who has emailed and 

called with concern,” the company noted 

on its Web site. “We truly appreciate it and 

look forward to returning to business as 

usual post Ike. Our thoughts and prayers 

remain with those less fortunate as there 

has been severe devastation to many lives 

and businesses in this region.” 

OBITUARY 

Mike Liss, Driver for Upstaging 

S Y C A - 

MORE, IL — 

Mike Liss, a 

long-time 

driver for Upstaging 

Inc., 

passed away 

on Sept. 14, 

2008 from 

pneumonia. 

He was 63. He 

started his Upstaging driving career in 

1985 and spent more than 30 years working 

for the live entertainment industry. 

Upstaging associates said Liss had made a 

full recovery from lung transplant surgery 

in 2003, returning to work as if “nothing 

happened.” Liss’ final tour was the Kenny 

Chesney tour. 

“Always the consummate professional, 

Mike made sure the gear was delivered to 

the venue before notifying management 

that he ‘wasn’t feeling well,’” Upstaging 

said. “Sadly, four weeks later, Mike succumbed 

to complications from pneumonia,” 

a common occurrence among transplant 

recipients, the company noted. 

In addition to his career in live entertainment, 

Liss served in the U.S. Army and 

was buried with full military honors. Services 

were held Sept. 23 at Virginia Veterans 

Cemetery at Amelia in Amelia, Va. Upstaging 

will also be setting up a memorial 

fund benefiting disabled veterans in Mike 

Liss’ name. 



NEWS 

Letters to 

the Editor 

Focus on Safety 

I just wanted to 

tell you how much 

I enjoyed your Editor’s 

Note from last 

month. (“The Idiot Offset,” PLSN, Aug. 

2008.) Your observation about the focus 

on safety is right on. We’ve spent 

(and will continue to spend) a good 

amount of money on stressing enduser 

training, on-going maintenance 

programs, and upgrades to equipment. 

In fact, we’re putting “service 

lights” on all our automated equipment 

which informs the user to seek 

regular maintenance and refresher 

training. Additionally, we’ve now gone 

to a three year warranty, but it’s conditioned 

on an annual inspection and 

training. 

—Bob Theis, J. R. Clancy, Inc 


Remembering Larry Nelson 

I met Larry Nelson in the fall of 

1967 at Colortran when I left Century 

Lighting and switched to Colortran. 

He worked in the engineering department 

and moved into sales. He was 

very bright, energetic, and turned into 

a terrific salesman. He left Colortran 

and went to work for Kliegl in TV lighting 

and control sales. Then he went to 

Strand where he did more of the same. 

He was a fierce competitor and was able 

to sell effectively because he spoke TV 

chief engineers’ language. When he 

had the opportunity to become Thorn 

USA’s studio lamp distributor, he developed 

an effective sales team that kept 

on growing. He and I talked for about 

an hour at LDI in Las Vegas about our 

lives and his health problems. He was 

fighting a battle to stay healthy. He was 

a tough competitor but a decent man 

and I will miss him. 

—Tom Pincu 


Lighting A Singer’s Night at the Pyramids 

OSA ImAgeS 

The scale of the ancient ruins posed a challenge for Parnelli Award nominee Matthieu Larivée, 

who lit Chantal Chamandy’s performance in Egypt last year. 

LAS VEGAS — Montreal-based Matthieu 

Larivée’s design for Egyptian-born 

singer/songwriter Chantal Chamandy’s 

performance last year at the Great Pyramid 

of Giza earned him a nomination for 2008 

Parnelli Lighting Designer of the Year. The 

winners will be announced at the Parnelli 

Awards dinner and gala at the Rio Hotel & 

Casino in Las Vegas on Oct. 24, 2008. (To 

see the full list of Parnelli nominees, go to 

www.parnelliawards.com .) 

Larivée designed a system using 54 Zap 

Technology BigLite 4.5k-watt fixtures, 100 

Griven Kolorado MK3 2400 exterior color 

wash fixtures, 

100 Color Kinetics 

Color 

Blast LED fixtures, 

72 Martin 

MAC 2000 

Wash fixtures, 

and over 100 

Vari*Lite fixtures 

of various 

types to 

light the vast 

space for the 

event, called 

Chantal Chamandy: 

Beladi, 

a Night at 

the Pyramids, 

which was 

captured on video for PBS and released 

this year on DVD. 

Chamandy, now based in Canada, 

called on several designers from Quebec 

including set designer Guy St-Amour, 

(Cirque du Soleil’s Love) and Larivée, with 

assistance from Valy Tremblay of Proluxon. 

Together, they created a design that transformed 

the ancient burial site into concert 

venue for the evening. The massive compound, 

which includes the 455-foot high 

Great Pyramid, was a huge space to light 

and transform into a more intimate backdrop. 

Lighting was a key element in highlighting 

the distinctiveness and the beauty 

of the setting. “Making the pyramids look 

mysterious was a real challenge,” Larivée 

said. “The televised result had to reflect 

the beauty of this archeological site. There 

were many challenges in the design, and 

I’m thrilled to have been able to create 

the lighting for this production. Having 

the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx as my 

work surface was a unique opportunity.” 

The scale of the project added to the 

challenge. “No washes had the specs to 

manage the pyramids,” Larivée said, noting 

the dimensions that spanned 245 meters 

in width and 140 meters in height. “I used 

BigLite 4.5s to light their edges,” Larivée 

said. “I chose the BigLites for their performance 

and speed. I went to Paris to try it 

out first and I was amazed. Zap Technology 

offered good support while we were 

VIENNA, VA — The Broadway touring 

production of Les Misérables set a record 

with 7,061 performances over a span of 17 

years until that run ended in mid-2006. But 

even that tour didn’t sate the appetite of 

American audiences for the musical adaptation 

of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel depicting 

the struggle of good versus evil during 

the French Revolution. 

This year, LD Ken Billington is lighting 

a new production co-produced by Atlanta’s 

Theater of the Stars with the Wolf 

Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, 

and Billington is relying on ETC Eos and Ion 

consoles to control the rig, which includes 

nine Mac 2000 Profiles, 12 Mac 2000 Washes 

and 22 Vari*Lite 5-Bs, as well as 190 ETC 

Source Four ellipsoidal spotlights and 36 

ETC Source Four PAR wash lights. 

“Moving lights light practically the 

whole show,” said Billington, whose company, 

KB Associates, is based in New York. 

“There are about 250 lighting cues in Les 

Misérables. The fixtures move all the time 

and do hundreds of things, but you don’t 

see them move.” 

ETC engineered 

Eos to control and program 

entire lighting 

rigs. Ion is the smaller 

counterpart to Eos. The 

system for this production 

of Les Misérables 

is partitioned, with Eos 

controlling the automated 

rig and Ion the 

conventional lighting. 

Two ETC RVIs (Remote 

Video Interfaces) at the 

tech table allowed the 

in Egypt as well.” 

Since there was no permanent structure 

on which to rig the lighting, Larivée 

had to come up with his own solution to 

light the large stage areas. He used tall 

towers that were constructed on site. 

“The MAC 2000 Washes were dispatched 

all around the scaffolding towers 

and used to light the stage and audience,” 

Larivée said. “The 2K’s were also on the 

upstage floor to create backlighting and 

depth of field.” 

The lights splayed the stones of the 

pyramids, highlighting its lines and revealing 

the rich texture of the surfaces. The 

LEDs and color wash fixtures added rich 

color while the moving heads provided 

articulating beams in the night sky. The 

lighting suppliers for the event were Procon 

Belgium and Solotech of Canada 

Controlling the Rig for Les Miserables 

design team visibility into the work of both 

programmers, Victor Seastone, who is using 

the Eos, and Steve Cooksey, who is using 

the Ion. 

Since making its debut on Broadway 

in 1987, Les Misérables productions have 

been seen by more than 51 million theatergoers 

worldwide. The current staging, 

starring Robert Evan as Jean Valjean, is 

being staged at two large-scale, open-air 

venues — Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va. and the 

Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, Kan., along 

with Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. The production 

was customized to accommodate stages of 

about 68 feet wide, as opposed to the more 

usual touring size of 40 feet. 

“This show isn’t as complex as it would 

be on Broadway,” says Billington, “but complex 

enough to let us try the Eos and see 

the improvements. It’s a good console — I 

like it. I would certainly use it again.” Two 

weeks after completing the design on Les 

Misérables, Billington did in fact use the Eos 

again, for a production of the new musical, 

Ace, at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, 

Va. 

LD Ken Billington relies upon 

ETC gear to manage close to 250 

lighting cues during the show. 




NEWS 

tures of the pen 

tablet graphics 

for the different 

room configurations. 

“I knew 

that being able 

to see each room 

layout’s lighting 

plot visually, 

combined with a 

timeline, would 

make it so much 

easier for the staff 

to operate the 

The 50,000 square-foot Premier Ballroom at Foxwoods can be divided into multiple smaller spaces lighting fixtures 

and lit for corporate functions and other gatherings. 

LEDYARD, CT – With two large ballroom 

spaces configurable with air walls into 230 

possible layout combinations, lighting supplier 

Barbizon chose a Jands Vista control 

solution for the MGM Grand portion of the 

Foxwoods casino resort — one that would let 

the staff control the lighting using a pen tablet’s 

graphic user interface for smaller-scale 

events. A console is used to control lighting 

for performances at larger functions. 

“The Vista is sophisticated, powerful, and 

the right solution for this environment,” said 

Scott Stipetic, system integrator for Bostonbased 

Barbizon, noting the user-friendly fea- 

than on a traditional 

console.” 

The Vista provides a flexible lighting control 

system that can handle the variety of ballroom 

layouts. Control of each room’s lighting 

is represented graphically on the pen tablet 

screens. If an air wall is moved, the Vista simply 

updates the lighting and the control screens 

of the newly adjoined rooms, so the operator 

can always see what they are controlling. “The 

Vista’s user interface also makes it very quick 

to manipulate cue structures, saving valuable 

room setup time,” Stipetic added. 

Tom Roach, Foxwoods Entertainment’s 

lighting supervisor, worked closely with Sti- 


Pen Tablet Graphics Help Control Foxwoods’ Ballroom Lighting 

petic and Barbizon to supply, install and integrate 

the architectural and entertainment 

lighting systems for the MGM Grand’s Premier 

and Celebrity ballrooms. Each is equipped 

with nearly 300 channels of ETC dimming and 

a variety of light fixtures, including Robe 700 

spot and wash moving lights. 

“I was also confident that the support 

would be there from Jands and A.C. Lighting 

Inc., should it be needed, when installing 

such a technically complex product application,” 

Stipetic said. “After Foxwoods saw the 

Vista demo they were adamant it had to be 

Jands Vista for this particular lighting control 

application.” 

Lighting for each of the 15 smaller 

room zones is controlled by a dedicated 

Vista PC, which is operated via VNC on a 

pen tablet screen from within the rooms. 

The casino also purchased two full size Vista 

T4 consoles and four Vista S3 playback 

control surfaces to operate conference or 

performance events taking place in the 

larger room configurations. All Vista products 

were supplied to Barbizon from A.C. 

Lighting Inc., the exclusive North American 

distributor for the Vista range. 

The Vista lighting control system and 

all associated equipment was installed by 

Jason Hoots, Andy Aldous, Tracey Costa 

and Mike Goudzwaard in Barbizon’s technical 

services team. 

“When I approached Scott Stipetic with 

the concept of having a permanently installed 

moving light system in the ballrooms 

which could be operated by banquets staff, 

he immediately recommended the Jands 

Vista for the application,” said Roach. “The 

Vista allows us to offer a top of the line lighting 

system to our clients without all the costs 

associated with trucking, rigging, flying truss, 

hanging fixtures, programming, running the 

event and strike and restore of the room. The 

banquet staff is able to turn on and operate 

the moving lights, which helps reduce the 

turn around time between events — meaning 

more revenue for the company. The Vista 

is the top notch lighting control system we 

were looking for.” 

The MGM Grand is part of the overall Foxwoods 

resort, the biggest casino complex in 

the world, with more than 40,000 guest visits 

each day. The Premier Ballroom at the MGM 

Grand is also the largest such ballroom in 

the Northeast, measuring up to 50,000 column-free 

square feet. Like the smaller Celebrity 

Ballroom, the spaces are equipped with 

moveable air walls that let the staff create 

smaller rooms for banquets and other functions 

and gatherings. 





NEWS 

LEDs Help Lighting Designer Hang Loose in Hawaii 

KOLOA, HI — Lighting corporate events can be stressful, 

even in laid-back Hawaii, but the spirit of the Hawaiian 

“hang loose” shaka symbol can also prevail. That appeared 

to be the case for LD Tim Nelson of Maui-based Major Show 

Productions (MSP), who used LEDs from Chauvet to address 

several challenges posed by a gig at the Grand Hyatt 

Kauai. 

First and foremost among the reasons for specifying 16 

Chauvet COLORado 6 LED bank systems was the need to 

prevent a potential fire hazard. The fixtures would have to 

be in constant touch with floor-to-ceiling chiffon curtains 

draped around the room’s perimeter. Because the all-LED 

gear from Chauvet had minimal heat emission, “we never 

had to worry about that,” Nelson said. 

Another challenge was posed by the minimal time 

permitted to set up and glamorize the room before the 

arrival of the guests. The COLORado 6 units weigh in at 

29 pounds each and helped reduce setup time. 

Finally, the client had specified specific color 

schemes to set different tones during the dinner/dance 

event. Nelson said the color choices and the color consistency 

offered by the fixtures helped him light the 

room with one set of color when the guests arrived, another 

when dinner was served, and helped him create 

multiple colors when the band started playing. “The 

client loved it,” Nelson said, and “couldn’t believe that 

these were LEDs,” adding that the client remarked on 

the LED unit’s brightness. 

LED lighting helped alleviate concerns about setting the soft goods ablaze. 

Lighting Designer Among 25 “Genius Grant” Recipients 

CHICAGO — The MacArthur Foundation’s 

MacArthur Fellows program, 

nicknamed the “genius grants,” gives artists, 

scientists, humanitarians and others 

$500,000 each in “no strings attached” 

support over a five-year span to simply do 

what they do best and make the world a 

better place. This year, a stage lighting designer 

was included among the 25 recipients 

— Jennifer Tipton. 

Tipton, 71, was chosen for her ability to 

push “the visual boundaries of her art form 

with painterly lighting that evokes mood 

and sculpts movement in dance, drama, and 

opera,” according to the MacArthur Foundation’s 

Web site. Known for her use of white 

light and fog effects, the foundation noted 

her strategic placement of both to help 

dancers in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room 

(1986) and Fait Accompli (1983) appear and 

disappear from the performance space from 

upstage, rather than from the wings. 

The MacArthur Foundation also recognized 

Tipton for her subtle, shifting lighting 

for Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the 

Misbegotten (2005), giving visual support 

to the play’s balance between vitality and 

deep sadness. The final scene, the MacArthur 

Foundation notes, provided a cleansing 

warmth of an approaching dawn, affirming 

the sense of peace and forgiveness 

finally achieved by the protagonists. 

The MacArthur Foundation also lauded 

Tipton for being a committed teacher, influencing 

a generation of lighting designers. 



2008 OCTOBER PLSN 

17


NEWS 


Dave Matthews Band Tour Features Spiral Truss, LEDs 

Spiral truss, toned by PixelPar 90s and PixelLine 110s, 

give the DMB set a distinctive look. 

LOS ANGELES — Dave Matthews’ hybrid 

fusion of jazz-rock music has a heartfelt feel, 

made all the more poignant 

by the artist’s tragic life story: 

a sister murdered by a brotherin-law, 

and the more recent ATV 

accident that led to the death of 

saxophonist LeRoi Moore this 

past summer. But Dave Matthews 

Band (DMB) is still touring, 

with a set and lighting show 

that wraps the band’s music 

with visual artistry. 

The centerpiece for the current 

tour is spiral truss custom 

built by Theatrical Media Services 

(TMS), which also supplied 

the lighting. The truss is lit with quick-moving 

chases by some of the 38 PixelPar 90s and 41 

PixelLine 110s travelling with the tour. 

Lighting designers Fenton Williams and 

Aaron Stinebrink have worked with Dave 

Matthews Band for many years and have a 

long history of experimenting with the latest 

versions of lighting fixtures available. 

“We choose fixtures primarily of how they 

will incorporate into the overall design,” said 

Stinebrink. We then consider the reliability of 

the fixtures — this is the one area that Pixel- 

Range has always excelled in. PixelRange are 

LAS VEGAS — 

Sin City is known 

for the energy it 

puts out, not for 

the energy it conserves. 

But that 

may be changing. 

The Palazzo Las 

Vegas, which has 

a LEED Silver certification 

from the 

U.S. Green Building 

Council, now 

ranks as the largest 

LEED-certified 

structure in the 

world, thanks in 

part to its extensive use of LED lighting. 

The Palazzo, a $1.9 billion, 50-story casino, 

hotel and resort, opened last year next to its 

sister property, The Venetian, and it’s not the 

only property on the Strip to be looking at alternatives 

to power-guzzling lighting fixtures. 

According to news reports, plans are underway 

to build more than 50 million square 

feet of new casino-resort projects to LEED 

standards on and around the Strip, and existing 

resorts are looking at improving their energy 

efficiency. 

ETC lighting products helped Palazzo 

Las Vegas to meet the standard. An ETC Unison 

lighting control system and ETC Sensor+ 

dimming were part of the installed lighting 

package, plus more than 100 ETC Source Four 

fixtures. The Unison system is programmed to 

save energy through such automated functions 

as occupancy sensing (dimming the 

lights when no people are present in a space) 

and daylight harvesting (dimming lights in 

response to the amount of available natural 

light). 

“We’re starting to automatically approach 

projects from a green mindset,” said Buddy 

Pope, senior project manager with the Las 

Vegas office of 4Wall Entertainment. 4Wall Entertainment 

established the general lighting 

control guidelines and specified the lighting 

control package that was provided to supplier 

Gexpro to meet the requirements of the various 

lighting designers for the space. 

“We plan up front to make the most of 

sky-lit areas through the use of daylight sensors, 

automatic dimming and the ability to 

turn off entire circuits,” Pope said. “The ETC 

Unison control is well suited to that because it 

is designed to perform astronomical functions 

and to interface with photo cells.” 

The Palazzo complex is a property of the 

Las Vegas Sands Corporation. It includes a hotel 

tower of some 3,066 guest suites surrounded 

by a large sky-lit atrium area designed by 

architect HKS Inc. The atrium features luxury 

retail shops and world-class dining and entertainment, 

including a theater that is a permanent 

venue for the Tony Award winning musi- 

great fixtures, well put together and thoughtout 

for touring applications.” A grandMA console 

from MA Lighting controlled the Pixel- 

Range fixtures. 

“The speed of LED products that Pixel- 

Range has offered us has allowed us to think 

of toning in a whole new way — and I am 

looking forward to the continued development 

of new fixtures,” Williams said. “The 

main purpose of the PixelRange fixtures on 

this tour is for toning truss and lighting soft 

goods — mainly architectural.” 

Palazzo’s LEDs Help it Rank as Largest LEED Structure 

Along with energy-saving LEDs used for accent lighting, the Palazzo 

conserves energy with lighting control and dimming from ETC. 

cal, Jersey Boys. 

Kaplan Gehring 

McCarroll Architectural 

Lighting 

Inc. (KGM) 

provided lighting 

design for The 

Palazzo, the Jersey 

Boys theatre, 

Paiza Club, Grand 

Lux Café, Entertainment 

Lounge 

and the building 

façade. “The 

aesthetic challenges 

are a little 

different when 

lighting an interior that already has so much 

natural light,” said KGM partner Martin van 

Koolbergen, AIA, LC. “You’re no longer dealing 

with space as a box. In certain areas, you have 

to counter the intensity of the natural light 

and balance it with uplighting and decorative 

features. 

“At night,” van Koolbergen continued, “the 

lighting control system has to be balanced 

to maintain the proper foot candles on the 

ground to meet emergency standards, deemphasize 

the ‘black holes’ of the skylights and 

retain the monumental feeling of the architecture. 

A lot depended on the use of energy-efficient 

lamps and sources and the ETC control 

system with its dimming capacity.” 

The Palazzo’s annual savings in electricity 

is estimated to be more than 10.6 million kilowatt 

hours, enough to power 700 homes for a 

year — or brew enough coffee for six million 

people. 

“This project is a new benchmark for 

the industry,” said van Koolbergen. “It demonstrates 

that the developer of a major upscale 

property — on the Strip or elsewhere 

— can maintain standards for quality, drama 

and experience and also be environmental 

good guys. Not only do you create 

more efficient spaces, you create a setting 

that is pleasant and healthier in which to 

live and work.” 

KGM worked closely with Las Vegas 

Sands Corp., with architecture firm HKS Inc. 

and with consulting firm Ernst & Young on 

the specifics of LEED compliance. Additional 

lighting designers on The Palazzo project 

included Pivotal Lighting Design (Canyon 

Ranch), First Circle (Cut Restaurant), IDC New 

Jersey (Carnevino Restaurant), Bliss-Fasman 

(Charlie Trotter Restaurant), Tom Ruzika (Morels 

Restaurant), Isometrix (Sushi Samba), Arc 

Lighting (Bath House) and Focus Lighting 

(Dos Caminos and Table Ten restaurants). 

The lighting gear list includes a total 

of 50 ETC dimmer racks, 97 ETC Unison 

stations, 1847 ETC dimmer modules, 52 

Source Four HID 150-watt fixtures, and 50 

Source Four 375-watt fixtures. 



NEWS 

Furnishing a Mega-Church with Draperies and Screens 

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — Not every church 

is big enough to support a full-service Starbucks 

café. But the new campus for the 

Crossroads Church, founded by Kevin Myers 

in 1987 and retitled 12Stone Church, measures 

105,000 square feet and can accommodate 

2,600 in the main sanctuary, which 

has a semicircular auditorium with graduated 

staircases, so that no seat is too far from 

the stage. The church also has a high school 

worship center that can seat 600 and centers 

for younger children that can accommodate 

hundreds more. It also has its own film and 

recording studios. 

12Stone selected the lighting crew from 

Atlanta based Television Production Service 

MTV Music Awards 

Glitter with LEDs 

HOLLYWOOD — LD Tom Kenny was looking 

to uncork some old-time/new-time cinematic 

pop for the 2008 MTV Music Awards show, held 

recently at Paramount Studios, and he used Coemar’s 

Infinity Wash XL and ParLite Led lights 

to do the job. Kenny, who was also tasked with 

lighting the prerecorded sequences filmed on 

Paramount’s back lot, rolled with a theme of classic 

movie theaters and film sets, and “designed 

with old movie lamps in mind. 

“My plan of action,” Kenny added, “was to 

let 110 Infinity Wash XLs and 200 ParLite Leds 

do the brunt of the work. Lighting the ornate, 

complexly-configured stage and depth-y sets 

was a great challenge, but we worked our way 

through to an extremely successful outcome.” 

Kenny chose the Infinity Wash XLs “for their 

beam effect, color and powerful source. On television, 

they read like big search lights. I like the 

look…they give me a great graphic overlay.” 

Infinity Wash XL features include dimming 

and electronic strobo zap, black out and synchronized 

or random strobe effect. A CMY-S 

color mixing system with new saturation mode, 

five colors plus white on the color wheel, proportional 

CTO filter and 5 to 84 zoom are also 

included. 

Kenny used the ParLite Leds for “all the architectural 

and scenic elements. They’re great little 

lights to fit into all the little nooks and crannies. 

And because they’re LED, they’re low-power.” 

Coemar ParLite Led lights come with dimming, 

synchronized or random strobe effects, 

and colors generated by a convergent RGB color 

system. They’re made with 36 luxeon LEDs, 

1-watt each, with a declared led life of 100,000 

hours. 

“I really appreciate Mark Villa of Illumination 

Dynamics and Susan Tesh and Dave Osesky of 

Video Equipment Rentals for supplying us with 

gear tailored to the specific needs of the show,” 

said Kenny. 

(TPS) to provide the production lighting experience 

they had envisioned. TPS worked 

alongside the selected 12Stone staff to provide 

the church with a very versatile Production 

Lighting System, and relied upon Gerriets 

to supply the church with draperies and 

projection screens. 

Gerriets provided a 45-foot-wide-by-30- 

foot-high Mega Screen with an Opera White 

front projection screen. “At 12Stone they perform 

very elaborate performances. Projection 

plays a huge and important role”, said TPS 

sales manager Derek Cook. The church uses 

projection in its main sanctuary and the auditoriums 

for high school, middle school, elementary 

and pre-K students. 

In addition, Gerriets provided velour 

drapes, borders and masking. The projection 

screen masking curtains, which measure 11 

feet high by 21 feet wide, are installed on 

curved curtain tracks. “This track system is 

most sturdy and silent system that I have 

ever used, and it also assembles easy,” Cook 

said. Gerriets manufactured and installed a 

total of about 2,000 yards of the flame retardant 

black Velour with 50 percent fullness 

for the various venues. 

“The installation went great. Gerriets’ 

staff provided excellent onsite evaluations 

of measurements, provided timelines and 

followed up with a smooth installation,” 

Cook added. 

The 12Stone Church has its own film and recording studios and a 

Starbucks on premises. 

LEDs from Coemar added to the glitz of the 

shimmering set elements. 



19

NEWS 


John Mayer Tour Gives LEDs a Try 

LOS ANGELES – When John Mayer drew 

up plans for his 2008 Summer Tour, the singer-guitarist-songwriter 

wanted to get back 

to his musical roots. For LD Michael Keller, 

that translated into a step away from video 

and a willingness to give LEDs a try. 

“On previous tours, we had video in the 

show,” Keller said. “But John decided he was 

tired of doing video. We were going to go 

more straightforward rock ‘n’ roll — the type 

of feeling where you’re watching a band, not 

video. John wanted to keep everything very 

organic.” 

Keller, who has been Mayer’s LD for 

three years, relied on Elation Professional’s 

Impression LED moving head. The moving 

RGB fixture was the main lighting unit being 

used on the 30-city tour, which played 

at 10,000-20,000-seat indoor and outdoor 

venues. 

“You might think an LED is the opposite 

of what ‘organic’ is,” said Keller, “but the Impression 

is such a versatile fixture that you 

can get some very organic, true saturation 

colors with it.” 

Keller, who initially discovered the Impression 

while visiting the Prockl Company, 

a lighting company in Europe, used them for 

the first time to light John Mayer’s shows. “I 

saw these little units and wondered, ‘What 

are these?’ Then I turned them on and it was 

For his summer tour, Mayer nixed the video graphics and used LEDs and soft goods for a more organic look. 

like, wow, these things put out a lot of light! 

It was the first LED fixture I’ve ever dealt with 

that actually puts out a shaft of light, so I was 

quite impressed.” 

Powered by 90 Luxeon K2 LEDs (30 each 

of red, green and blue), each Impression unit 

delivers an output comparable to or exceeding 

a 575W discharge fixture. Yet, it’s small 

enough to be mounted on a 14-inch center 

and weighs 16 pounds. The units also offer a 

50 percent or better savings in energy consumed 

by traditional 575W fixtures, with an 

output of 60 lumens per watt. 

Keller used a total of 34 Impressions on 

the Mayer set. Four overhead units — two 

at the back and two on the sides — illuminated 

each of the six band positions. The 

remaining 10 units were mounted eight feet 

high in a back row behind the band. 

“I’m getting much more output and a 

better color range than I ever could” with 

previous non-LED fixtures, Keller said. “I have 

an audience focus, and the 24 overhead 

units are bright enough to light the majority 

of the audience, too. I was very, very impressed 

with that. I can light the audience 

with a deep saturated color or a really bright 

color.” 

Another feature Keller liked was that “it 

gives you a full range of white color — probably 

the best white color I’ve seen on RGB 

fixtures without utilizing a white LED.” The 

fixture can also reach a 660° pan in two seconds 

and 300° tilt in 1 second. “John improvises 

so often, so what’s really nice about the 

lights is that they’re so quick. I can get them 

into a new position right away,” Keller said. 

The 10 Impression units positioned behind 

the band are used to create a more 

laid-back atmosphere during Mayer’s frequent 

forays into blues. “When we’re doing 

things like blues numbers, I like to bring it 

down to a real intimate club vibe, and the 

Impressions along the back of the stage 

have worked really well to give us this feeling,” 

Keller said. 

With its low power draw versus output, 

“the Impression is truly a ‘green’ fixture,” 

Keller added. “I’m saving a lot of electricity 

with it. John’s aware of what we’re using and 

he really likes the idea.” 

UVLD Adjusts to Livestrong 

Summit Challenges 



John McCain made an appearance, and an extra day was added to the agenda. The lighting look was 

contemporary but not glitzy or overdone. 

COLUMBUS, OH — The 2008 Livestrong 

Summit, a four-day conference sponsored 

by the Lance Armstrong Foundation to fight 

cancer, featured an appearance by Senator 

John McCain and required a professional 

look on a tight budget. It also required an 

ability to adjust to last-minute scheduling 

changes. 

When McCain agreed to appear at the 

conference, an additional day was added to 

the schedule to allow for a Thursday night 

opening on July 24, a full day earlier than 

the original plan. The crew from Unlimited 

Visibility Lighting Design (UVLD) was able 

to adjust their schedules and change their 

flights. 

Senator Barack Obama had also been 

invited to join the event, but was unable to 

do so due to scheduling conflicts. McCain 

shared his cancer plan at the Livestrong 

Presidential Town Hall on Cancer portion of 

the event and answered questions from the 

audience. The event was co-moderated by 

Lance Armstrong and Paula Zahn. 

“This is, on every scale, an important 

show,” said Gregory Cohen, lighting designer 

at UVLD, noting 

that cancer 

“affects, in some 

way, nearly 

everyone on 

the planet.” 

Staged at 

the Mershon 

Auditorium 

at Ohio State 

U n i v e r s i t y ’s 

Wexner Center 

for the Arts, 

the event drew 

thousands of 

healthcare 

providers and 

cancer survivors. 

Because the event was held within a theatre, 

lighting positions were dictated by the 

architecture of the room, Cohen noted. Clark 

Zampella, technical director for Ray Bloch, 

integrated the overall needs of the productions 

with the requirements of the space. 

“Clark did a great site survey,” Cohen 

said, “and then continued to be a conduit 

between the design team and the venue.” 

Ray Bloch principal Jeremy Driesen and executive 

producer Karen McGetrick called for 

a load-in followed by ample rehearsal for 

both the executive speakers as well as cancer 

survivors. 

“Greg Cohen did a fantastic job, as always,” 

said Ray Bloch’s Driesen. “He struck 

the right balance of having an exciting, dynamic 

lighting design but without making 

the show look glitzy or over-produced.” 

Dan Hicks of Onset Design, with Sal Restuccia 

serving as production electrician, 

designed the set. 4 Wall Lighting provided 

the lighting equipment and the console was 

a grandMA. 



NEWS 

Design, Technology and Politics Join Forces in Denver 

DENVER — A month before the start of the 

Democratic National Convention (DNC), with 

load-in already underway at the 19,000-seat 

Pepsi Center, the Obama campaign decided to 

move the acceptance speech to Invesco Field, 

home of the Denver Broncos in Mile High Stadium. 

Obama would now speak in front of 

84,000 people plus the television audience. It 

was exciting for the campaign but a tall order 

with a tight schedule for the creative team, 

which now had to design, build and install a 

second set and a second light plot with a loadin 

of only four days. 

Bruce Rodgers, who had finalized the 

gracefully-curved LED screen surfaces for the 

main DNC stage at Pepsi Center, quickly came 

up with the design for Invesco Field as well, 

using the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther 

King’s “Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln 

Memorial for the backdrop of the historic 

event. “I knew the Pepsi Center design was 

unique; it didn’t really reference anything except 

modern set design. But for the speech 

at Invesco the set needed to be a little bit 

more specific; it needed to be Presidential. So 

I thought, why not use the Lincoln Memorial 

as inspiration.” 

The biggest challenge to the change of 

venue was the time to fabricate, to load in and 

load out. “For fabrication,” Rodgers notes, “I 

went immediately to three shops that I knew 

could build, deliver and install in the tight time. 

Between PRG Scenic Technologies, All Access 

and ShowRig, we pulled it off with a lot of their 

people working full out and turning things 

around unbelievable quickly. They had just 

four days to load in and only 24 hours to get off 

the field. All the credit goes to the hard work of 

the crews who went above and beyond.” 

Rodgers was working for the first time on 

a national convention, but was surrounded by 

veteran convention lighting designers including 

Bob Dickinson and Bob Barnhart of Full 

Flood, as well as screens producer Allan Wells 

from Mdots/Fontastics. 

The Pepsi Center Stage 

For the Pepsi Center stage, which had the 

luxury of an extended planning time frame, 

Rodgers had strived to create “a strong abstract 

that had some weight of purpose to 

it. I thought it needed to be tall, it needed to 

have grace, and it needed to have a strong 

base so that everybody felt like they were part 

of what’s on stage. We knew we wanted to be 

green; that was an important aspect, yet we 

wanted to be able to change the look throughout. 

I wanted it to be primarily made of video 

technology so that way we could change the 

scenery around in the most modern way possible, 

through imagery. That’s how I came to 

the arching LED screen surfaces, which we refer 

to as ‘fingers.’” 

The Invesco Field stage shared some of the 

Pepsi Center stage’s features, to create visual 

uniformity as a foundation. Both sets, after all, 

belonged as part of the same convention, so 

Rodgers replicated the exact footprint and 

design of the podium at the Pepsi Center. But 

at Invesco Field, Rodgers placed the podium 

at the end of a ramp at Invesco Field, which 

moved Obama out into the audience. Both 

venues also had the same carpeting. Rodgers 

relied heavily on PRG to build his vision and 

still meet the DNC green mandate. (See sidebar, 

page 22.) 

“Scenery is notoriously difficult to make 

green, yet PRG’s staff worked hard to do that,” 

Rodgers said. “One of the real joys of doing this 

project was working with PRG Scenic Technologies. 

Lincoln Maynard and his crew in Vegas 

put in so much amazing detail, the carpenters 

and painters did beautiful work plus Lincoln’s 

attention to the green aspect will set new standards 

for us all.” 

A Backfield Scramble 

For the Invesco Field venue, home of the 

Denver Broncos, LDs Dickinson and Barnhart 

faced a backfield scramble of sorts — finding 

enough gear. “We knew instruments would be 

a challenge,” recalls Dickinson. “We ourselves 

were involved at the same time with several 

other large shows and we knew that even as 

big as PRG is there are only so many instruments 

available at the same time. We had to 

cobble together enough of the long-throw instruments 

of several different varieties to get 

what we needed.” 


Tribe Design’s gracefully curved LED screen surfaces at the Pepsi Center were brought to life with video content from Mdots/Fontastics. 

Photo courtesy of sean Dougall, tribe Design 



21

NEWS 




Tribe Design provided computerized sketches to the Mdots/Fontastics team. 

continued from page 21 

“We used a light plot designed by the same 

people who make coleslaw,” says Barnhart. “We 

used a little bit of everything; whatever was 

available. Tony Ward and the others at PRG were 

fantastic; they told us what they could get and 

we made our light plot out of it.” The Invesco 

Field ceremony was lit by a combination of longthrow 

wash lights and various followspots. 

Back at Pepsi Center, the LDs were resourceful 

making their plot work with Rodgers 

set. “We mimicked the LED finger concept 

with the trussing that we ran between 

the fingers.” says Dickinson, “It looked great 

visually but it did put lights in unusual positions 

considering what our goals were; it took 

some figuring to work out what each light, 

not in the ideal location, could do.” Barnhart 

adds that backlight was another concern. 

“The set caused some challenges in getting 

proper backlight angles for the speakers. 

We ended up hiding fixtures within the set 

and were able to negotiate some angles that 

came in from just slightly off center.” 

Sketch courteSy of tribe DeSign 

Center Stage for Video 

The predominance of the LED fingers 

in the production design meant that the 

work of Wells and his team from Mdots/ 

Fontastics was critical to the final look. 

“Allan’s work was so important because it 

was a huge part of the visual,” says Rodgers. 

“My team from Tribe Design did 

some inspirational sketches for the video 

screens and Allan really made use of the 

way I saw the set conceptually. They did 

some really cool stuff; they brought it to 

life.” On a mix of both high and low resolution 

screens Wells’ team created visuals 

that were exciting but not upstaging and 

still worked great for television whether 

in a wide shot or a close-up. 

To stay on top of the nature of a 

live event, Wells’ team used UnitedVisualArtists’ 

d3 Show Production Suite 

provided by XL Touring Video to map 

and create all of projection surfaces as 

3D objects, allowing them to solve the 

challenge of the five LED fingers. They 

designed and created all the animation 

on Mac with Photoshop, Illustrator, 

and After Effects, getting down to 

five separate hi-definition resolution 

movies, which they then transferred to 

Tektronix profile video servers. Wells 

used their own GakWorks custom 

screen system to control nine dissolving 

feeds, allowing all the screens to 

dissolve at the same time. 

XL Touring Video provided all the 

screens consisting of both Barco MiTrix 

and iLite6 products and at Invesco Field 

they brought in Lighthouse R7 for the 

screens. All of the very complex rigging 

was handled by Kish Rigging who told 

Rodgers, “This is like threading together 

the makings of a watch” as they made 

the LED fingers rise above the delegates. 

Rodgers appreciated the efforts of all involved. 

“I have never been involved with 

a team that came to work with the idea 

we are doing something bigger than us. 

We got the chance to be involved in history. 

It was an honor really.” 

Making the DNC Green 

Lincoln Maynard, General Manager 

of PRG Scenic Technologies, is 

based in Las Vegas but has a more 

global view about the environmental 

impact of the scenery his shop 

builds. When production designer 

Bruce Rodgers’ Democratic National 

Convention (DNC) plans came into 

the shop, Maynard knew it would 

take creative thinking and lots of 

research to meet the green mandate 

of the DNC. 

“One of the things that made 

this different from a regular show 

was from the designer, and certainly 

the DNC, their emphasis on being 

green,” Maynard says. “We had a set 

that started off concept-wise with 

roughly 10,000 square feet of red 

oak, which meant we needed an alternative 

green option. We talked 

about a lot of ways to create that 

look, but in the end, it came down 

to two very talented scenic artists 

and a soy-based paint, which gave 

us an elegant result. All the ‘red oak’ 

is faux; it’s MDF painted with a soybased 

paint that looks incredible. 

We did not buy one square foot of 

oak, not one. We have an incredible 

scenic artist, Bernard “BJ” Lipari. He 

and one assistant painted that entire 

set. We sourced out the paint 

because of its green properties but 

BJ kept telling me it was some of the 

best paint he had ever worked with 

and it looked great.” 

Besides using paints that had no 

VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) 

and not painting the unseen structure, 

Maynard also found some 

glues that were low VOC. Throughout 

they used the minimum amount 

of adhesives and nails needed. Most 

of the MDF that all the skins were 

made with was LEEDs-compliant 

non-formaldehyde product. However, 

Maynard is particularly proud 

of what happened after the convention, 

“The half-inch MDF was a reused 

product from a recent set so it 

got a second life at the DNC and it is 

now on its third life because much 

of it went to Habitat for Humanity in 

Denver to be used building homes. 

The signature blue carpet was 40 

percent post-consumer waste when 

installed and became 100 percent 

recycled going to both Habitat and 

FEMA afterwards. Everything else 

came back, via bio-diesel, to PRG 

and we use a great recycler here 

in Las Vegas, Evergreen Recycling, 

which commits to recycling 75 to 

90 percent of everything we bring 

them.” 

It took effort, but as Maynard explains, 

“The products are out there; 

they haven’t been heavily utilized 

but we are finding them and we will 

continue to using them going forward 

in our shop. The DNC and PRG 

worked together and I believe really 

moved the bar in having a comprehensive 

approach to a green set. I 

think everyone is excited in the industry, 

certainly here at PRG, about 

taking these lessons into the future 

projects.” 



INTERNATIONAL NEWS 



More Than 5,000 Performers Lit for Singapore National Day 

Singapore’s National Day celebration took place one day after the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing. 

24 PLSN OCTOBER 2008 

SINGAPORE — Over 5,000 performers 

formed a mass tableau on a floating 

platform to mark Singapore’s National 

Day, Aug. 9. The platform was 120 meters 

wide by 83 meters deep, with a grandstand 

holding over 30,000 spectators by 

its side. Between the grandstand and the 

platform was one of the straightaways for 

the inaugural 2008 Singapore Formula 1 

Grand Prix racecourse. 

Paul Collison, who was responsible for 

the control system and broadcast lighting 

at the Olympics, also served as LD for the 

second year for the Singapore festival. The 

show was controlled via two grandMA fullsize, 

two grandMA ultra-light and 16 NSPs 

from MA Lighting. 

Video loomed larger this year, with 

1,800 square meters of custom-made 

LED netting framing the back of the 

stage. Four grandMA media servers controlled 

the screen. 

“The influence this had on the view 

was amazing,” said Collison, “I’ve always 

liked playing with video and lighting, 

however I’ve never had the chance to 

work with it on such a massive screen 

and have total creative freedom to entwine 

it into the scenic landscape. Playing 

between the lighting fixtures and the 

screens is a lot of fun. On such a big scale 

as this, you need to be careful to not take 

over the whole stage.” 

One session handled almost 16,000 

parameters. The lighting rig included hundreds 

of Vari*Lite, DTS and Martin moving 

lights as the backbone of the lighting system 

with over one kilometer of Multi Mode 

Optic fiber connecting four data distribution 

points on the platform. 

“The MAC 2000 Wash XBs are awesome,” 

Collison said, of Martin’s MAC 2000 

Wash fixtures. In all, 320 MAC 2000 Washes, 

60 MAC 2000 Wash XBs and 20 MAC 2000 

Performances were used. 

The 60 MAC 2000 Wash XB fixtures 

formed the bulk of the stage’s front 

wash, replacing 180 standard MAC 2000 

Washes from 2007’s event. The MAC 2000 

Wash XBs were also fitted with a new micro-Fresnel 

Lens. 

“With the XBs I’m getting more level 

on stage and much better control, and 

the new lens has taken them to a whole 

new level,” Collison said. “They were sent 

directly from Martin’s Danish headquarters 

and gave much more control over the 100 

meter throw distance to the stage. 

“The shallow angle of the FOH position 

caused all sorts of grief last year with 

excess ambient light being thrown on to 

the construction site on the other side of 

Marina Bay,” Collison added “The new lens’ 

nine degree spread was perfect to tidy 

this up.” Martin notes that using the micro-Fresnel 

lens at that angle gives a fixture 

efficiency of 31 percent. “It’s like they 

were designed for this show. I wouldn’t 

do another show of this scale without the 

micro-Fresnel Lens in the arsenal.” 

Also in the system were some 320 MAC 

2000 Washes along with 20 MAC 2000 

Performances, which Collison said were 

ideal for locking down performers on 

the promenade. “I love the Performances, 

they are so very versatile. I’d have them 

on every show I do if I could.” 

Lighting Production was done by 

Showtec Group Singapore. Addam Crawford 

was lighting project manager and 

Stuart Anderson served as lighting design 

assistant.




Solar-Powered Stage Making Festivals Greener 

Orion solar panels powered the energy-efficient rig with a 63A 

power supply. 

BRIGHTON, U.K. — Firefly Solar, a 

nonprofit organization that aims to 

reduce the carbon footprint for live 

events, has been touring the U.K. summer 

festival circuit with a solar-powered 

stage. The group uses an Orion 

solar powered generator that can produce 

up to 63A (15kW) of mains voltage 

power. A battery backup system 

keeps the stage lit silently at night. 

Firefly’s production manager Andy 

Mead and lighting designer Doug 

Currie have relied on an Avolites Pearl 


2008 console to control all lighting on the 

Firefly Stage throughout its summer festival 

tour, with stops in Glastonbury, Shambala in 

Northamptonshire, Lovebox, The Secret Garden 

Party, Retrofest in Scotland and the Loop 

Festival in Brighton, among others. 

“We’ve been working with a number of 

different companies and organizations over 

the years to find high end, low energy technologies 

with which we can work for live 

events,” said Mead. 

The Firefly Stage was based around a 

40-foot-wide wide S2000 Saddlespan structure. 

Firefly supplied all the necessary technical 

production and crew. The stage can be 

configured with an 18 meter geodesic dome 

or with a 30-meter-by 20-meter big top. 

Lighting included 20 EasilyLED Beamcans, 

a 38-watt homogenous LED lightsource 

offering energy efficiency through its “throttling” 

technique. It is designed to run on solar, 

battery or mains power. 

Also on the rig was the daftDATA KillerLED 

flood, a 4.5K equivalent LED light source in 

panel format with full color mixing facilities, 

allowing for effects like texting and chases, 

strobing and washing large areas with saturated 

colors. 

This gear was joined by six Martin Professional 

MAC 250 Entours, two MAC 600s and 

eight custom LED low voltage Birdies. All gear 

ran off the 63A power supply provided by the 

Orion solar panels. 

Chris Crockford of EasilyLED originally 

specified the Pearl 2008 after consulting with 

Firefly Solar’s Doug Currie. Currie wanted a 

rock ‘n’ roll style desk that was easy to use, and 

fast and practical to program in multiple act 

situations. With its reputation as a “buskable” 

console, the Avolites Pearl got the nod. 

“We’ve been very happy with the Pearl. 

It’s been the perfect control solution. The 

support from Avolites has been fantastic,” 

Mead said. 

A wide variety of performers took to the 

Firefly stage over the summer, including a variety 

of gypsy, folk and ska bands. Performers 

included the Young Blood Brass Band, Hayseed 

Dixie, UK Beat Box, Champion Beardy 

Man, Rachael Unthank and The Winter Set 

and Four Good Men. 

The Firefly Solar stage and gear was 

trucked around the U.K. using locally-sourced 

biofuels made from recycled cooking oil. 

Next summer, Firefly Solar plans to roll with a 

60-foot-wide S5000 Saddlespan structure 

Angling for Viewers 

in Poland 


Aram Multimedia, a Polish event 

engineering company specializing in 

multimedia and LED technology, supplied 

over 90 square meters of Fourlight 

LED grid curtains and 20 square meters 

of Fourlight LED flooring for the Polish 

edition of “The Kids” TV program. Aram 

also supplied three Sanyo projectors, 

a Wholehog 3 console and a Catalyst 

Media Server for control. Adam Tyszka 

served as LD. 


Wynn Macau 

Casino’s 

Changing Tree 

of Prosperity 


BERLIN — ETC, Inc. has forged a 

partnership with ARRI Lighting Solutions 

GmbH for broadcast lighting in 

central and eastern Europe, the Middle 

East and Africa. The partnership is intended 

to help ARRI LS provide clients 

with turn-key design and installation 

services using ETC control systems 

and products with ARRI lighting and 

suspension products. The partnership 

is for broadcast lighting only; it does 

not extend to the theatrical market. 

“E TC and ARRI have developed 

some of the best lighting technologies 

for the broadcast industry,” said 


ETC, ARRI Announce Partnership 

ETC CEO Fred Foster. “This partnership 

with ARRI Lighting Solutions will 

capitalize on the strengths of both 

companies to provide complete lighting 

systems made with ETC and ARRI 

products.” 

“ETC has provided the best products 

and services to broadcast customers 

for more than 30 years,” said 

Klaus Althoff, sales director of ETC 

GmbH. “There will be a smooth transition 

to this new partnership.” 

ETC and ARRI LS will work together 

to maintain close contact with broadcast 

customers and continue to develop 

products to meet their needs. ARRI 

LS will provide overall project design, 

the product deliver y and installation 

services for broadcast installations. 

ETC and ARRI LS will also support and 

service the ETC products provided 

through this partnership. 

This is not the first significant 

partnership between the two companies. 

London-based ARRI(GB) was 

the distributor of ETC-manufactured 

lighting control desks in a arrangement 

that lasted 10 years. The two 

companies have also worked together 

to equip TV stations in Germany. 

This time-lapse photo shows the colors changing. 

MACAU — With its tropical climate, 

the trees in Macau off China’s southeastern 

coast don’t change as much in 

the autumn months as trees in colder 

climates. But the “Tree of Prosperity” 

architectural installation at the Wynn 

Macau Resort and Casino is equipped 

with close to 100 SeaChanger Color 

Engines from Ocean Optics to add 

to the spectacle of the audiovisual 

show, which happens more than just 

once a year. The five-minute show, in 

fact, is programmed to run at halfhour 

intervals. 

When the show’s music starts, 

the tree sculpture is nowhere to be 

seen. Within moments, however, a 

20-meter wide ceiling iris, with the 

Chinese horoscope sculpted on it, 

opens to reveal an LED display flashing 

with abstract video graphics. 

The LED ceiling itself parts and a 

10-meter-by10-meter chandelier, lit 

by thousands of LEDs, descends. 

At this point, the visual focus 

shifts to the ground floor where 

a copper dome, with the Western 

horoscope sculpted on it, opens 

and a 20-meter tall golden tree rises 

from a vault below the floor. The 

gilded tree sculpture rotates to the 

music until the show ends and all 

the mechanical elements return to 

their home positions. 

The SeaChanger xG (Extreme 

Green) Profile version color engines 

ring the lobby rotunda of 

the resort. The four-filter CYMG 

SeaChangers are designed to be 

attached to the reflector housing 

of any Source Four Ellipsoidal and 

create a wide variety of colors using 

dichroic filter technology. 

The SeaChangers were specified 

by lighting designer Patrick 

Woodroffe and installed by Ocean 

Optics distributor Peter Chong of 

Prosperity Lamps & Components 

Ltd. 



27



Moving Lights Help Electrify 

Irish Arts Festival 



Robe moving lights were selected in part for their reliability in unpredictable weather conditions. 

STRADBALLY, Ireland — The 2008 Electric 

Picnic Arts & Music Festival, which featured 

15 performance stages, was lit with over 200 

Robe units, supplied by Irish lighting rental 

company Just Lite. The three-day festival, the 

brainchild of John Reynolds, marked its fifth 

year, and was presented by Pod Concerts & 

Aiken Promotions. 

Liam McCarthy, who also stage-managed 

the main stage, designed lighting for all stages. 

His designs were based on the need to 

accommodate the requirements of the headlining 

acts along with any specials packages, 

while also providing a house rig for everyone’s 

shows. “Robe is an excellent moving light for 

events like this — they are mega bright, reliable 

and stand up well to the unpredictable 

weather,” said McCarthy. 

The five music stages including the Main 

Open Air Stage, The Electric Arena, Crawdaddy, 

The Little Big Stage, Cosby and the Body 

Tonic Dance arena, which also included two 

smaller areas, Twisted Pepper and Bernard 

Shaw. The festival’s other performance stages 

were used for performances ranging from poetry 

and the spoken word to cabaret, circus, 

physical theatre, live and installation art. 

The main stage, which measured 60 feet 

by 60 feet, consisted of four arches, and the 

lighting rig was hung off a series of sub-hung 

overhead and side trusses. Headliners included 

Sigor Ros, Goldfrapp, George Clinton, 

Franz Ferdinand, The Gossip and the Sex Pistols, 

and the stage’s moving lights included 

28 Robe ColorWash and 24 ColorSpot 1200E 

ATs arranged across all the trusses. 

Six ColorSpot and six ColorWash 2500E ATs 

were also rigged along the top of the PA wings 

and used to shoot beams into the audience, 

and additional lighting included 2-lite and 

8-lite blinders, single PAR cans and ETC Source 

Four profiles. Darragh McAuliffe operated the 

two Road Hog Full Boars and a Wing. Brendan 

Swanton served as crew chief for the stage. 

For the Electric Arena, a tent with a capacity 

for 6,000 fans, the Just Lite team erected a 

large ground support system onto which the 

lighting and PA was rigged. The core lighting 

was 18 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs, joined by PC 

Beams and Atomic strobes, along with 4-lite 

Moles, Source Fours and 11 bars of 6 PARs. 

These were all arranged for maximum flexibility 

and stage coverage. Nick Malbon controlled 

the rig with a Hog iPC console and a Wing. 

The Electric Arena featured a dance orientated 

mix, with Digitalism, Underworld, 

My Bloody Valentine, Sinead O’Connor, 

New Young Pony Club, CSS and Grace Jones 

among the performers. 

The Crawdaddy Stage featured an eclectic 

mix of performance from Christie Moore to 

Tindersticks, lit with kit rigged from a flown 

12-meter front truss and a 15-meter rear 

truss on Superlifts. Moving lights included 12 

Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs. Generics included 

Source Fours, 6 bars of 6 PARs, 4-lites, ACLs 

and strobes. John Ryan controlled the rig 

with a Hog II and a Wing. 

The Body Tonic area used four Robe Color- 

Spot 575E ATs and eight ColorWash 575E ATs 

with an assortment of generics, all controlled 

by Kristian Berzins, who used an Avolites Diamond 

4 Elite console. 

Most of the other stages included a basic 

rig of 48 PARs and between six and 12 Robe 

moving lights, depending on size, along with 

Avolites Pearls for control. 

The festival locale, Stradbally Hall, was 

also architecturally lit. The lighting scheme 

was designed by Paul Smith and included 

six ColorSpot 2500E ATs, used to produce 

gobo chases at strategic moments throughout 

the evening. 

Just Lite’s crew of 22 were project managed 

coordinated by Alan Smith and Lisa Browne, 

and the live stages production manager was 

Ian Smith. The company has been involved 

with the event since its launch in 2004. 


Alliant Event Services announced that Zack 

Thoeun has joined the company as a national 

project manager. Alliant also appointed Claudia 

Goodsell as branch manager for the company’s 

office in Los Angeles and Ehren Rutherford as account 

executive for its Dallas location. 

Artistic Licence 

has appointed Louise 

L’Homme to the 

role of technical 

sales manager. She 

will be responsible 

for developing new 

business, primarily 

within the U.K. 

Audio & Light 

has appointed Natalie 

Vail as production 

manager. Vail 

graduated Phi Theta 

Kappa from Peace 

College in Raleigh, 

N.C., with a minor in 

business. 

Broadcast Pix 

Inc. announced the 

addition of Michael 

“Aussie” Holten as 

senior workflow engineer. 

Holten has 

experience as a video 

producer, editor, 

theatrical sound designer 

and software 

designer. 

Louise L’Homme 

Natalie Vail 

Michael “Aussie” Holten 


ChainMaster Bühnentechnik GmbH 

named ULA Universal Lighting Audio Pty 

Ltd., based near Brisbane and with branches 

in Melbourne and Sydney, as the company’s 

sales and distribution partner in 

Australia. 

Creative Stage Lighting (CSL) has appointed 

Fushion, Inc. of St. Lazare, Quebec 

as CSL’s representative for Canada, according 

to CSL president George B. Studnicky III. 

Fushion had already offered the CSL product 

line to the Quebec, Ontario, and the Canadian 

Maritime markets. 

Electrosonic 

has appointed Linda 

Danet as sales 

consultant based in 

the company’s Burbank 

office. Danet 

is a Thea award-winning 

freelance producer 

of theme park 

attractions, sporting Linda Danet 

events and television. Her credits include 

Terminator 2: 3D, Star Trek: The Experience 

and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Winter 

Games. She was the producer of Helpline, a 

TV talk show, and served as a four-time liveevent 

producer of the Bassmaster Classic for 

ESPN. She also served as production manager 

for the Crystal Cathedral’s Creation live 

multimedia show and as installation producer 

for Mistify at SeaWorld Orlando. 

Global Design Solutions has appointed 

Andy Duffield to the newly-created position 

of business development manager. Duffield 

has worked within the technical production 

industries since 1993, most recently concentrating 

on brand strategy and development. 

He will be supporting the company’s global 

distributor, TMB, in its existing markets, and 

also developing new business. 

GoVision LP recently expanded its staff. 

Jeff Williams has been named production 

manager, Stephen Moore joins GoVision 

as account executive and Brett Amman has 

been named account executive for GoTron, 

a new company division. 

New Light Marketing is the name of a 

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm established 

by industry veteran Jerry Seay. The company 

will represent products offered from Italybased 

Coemar and Haze Base products and 

fluid from Germany. 

John Nicastro 

Susan Byron 

ON THE MOVE 

Rose Brand has 

added John Nicastro 

to its outside 

sales force, and 

Susan Byron to the 

creative sewing division 

of the company’s 

Los Angeles 

facility. Nicastro’s 

background includes 

work in the 

technology sector, 

retail fashion, 

home furnishings 

and décor/textiles 

markets. Byron, 

who will work with 

Rose Brand’s stretch 

shape team, has 

worked with designer 

Mia Gyzander, producing costumes 

such as the “Bug Girl” and “Buzz Girl” for 

Disney’s Pixar Play Parade. 

Shat-R-Shield 

announced that 

George Mabin has 

joined the company 

as vice president 

sales and marketing. 

Mabin has more 

than 30 years experience, 

most recently 

George Mabin 

with Westinghouse 

Lighting Corp. Mabin, a graduate of William 

Paterson University, will oversee national 

accounts, national distribution, regional 

managers, manufacturer’s representatives, 

inside sales, and all marketing activities and 

communications. 

Showcall USA, Inc. announced that 

Tim Brouse has joined the company to lead 

its business development efforts. Brouse 

comes to Showcall from Marriott International. 

He is expected to focus on new business, 

mostly through corporate and association 

events. 

Stagecraft Industries, Inc. said Tom 

Apperson, presently chief financial officer, 

has been named president of the company. 

He will manage day-to-day operations and 

advise Mark Walter, the company’s CEO 

and chairman of the board. Stagecraft also 

designated Kevin Shetterly as Stagecraft 

corporate officer. Shetterly, Stagecraft’s 

sales manager for rigging and drapery 

products, has been with the company for 

15 years. 


29

ON THE MOVE 

Terrier Marketing 

is a marketing 

firm founded 

recently by Graham 

Likeness, a 

former executive 

with Strand Lighting 

Canada and 

Pathway Connectivity. 

Graham Likeness 

TV One announced the addition of two 

manufacturer rep companies that will start selling 

the TV One, TVOne-task and AVToolbox product 

lines. OmniVue will represent these products 

in the Northeast, including Virginia, Maryland, 

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, 

Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire 

and Maine. Anew Communications Technology 

will represent the Western portion of the U.S., including 

the Rocky Mountain region. 

Unlimited Visibility 

Lighting 

Design (UVLD) announced 

that Andy 

Henry has joined as a 

design partner. Henry 

moves to UVLD from 

Corporate Lighting 

Services, where he 

designed lighting for Andy Henry 

pharmaceutical, financial, insurance, automotive 

and technology firms. 

Unusual Rigging 

reports that 

Alan Thomson has 

joined the firm to 

help with its expansion 

in Dubai, with 

a new office set to 

open in early 2009. 

It will handle specialized 

rigging projects, Alan Thomson 

rentals and sales of rigging equipment. Thomson 

is a former director of PRG Europe. 

Vitec Group’s Staging Systems Division 

announced that Tomcat UK’s manufacturing 

would shift from the U.K. to Slovakia 

and Italy, and that Tomcat UK would 

be replaced by Tomcat Europe. The division 

also named White Light as the exclusive 

distributor in the U.K. for the Tomcat 

One product line. 

Wireless Solution 

Sweden AB has 

appointed Mikael 

Uddh as key account 

sales manager for 

Europe. Uddh brings 

with him more than 

20 years experience 

in the entertainment 

lighting industry, including 

posts at OneTwoSales and Spectra 

Mikael Uddh 

Stage & Event Technologies. 




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Elation Opti Tri Par 

Elation Professional’s new Opti Tri Par is an RGB color mixing light 

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33

SHOWTIME PROJECTION 

LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

ST 

Paul Van Dyk 

Credit 

Venue 

Metropolis 

Montreal, Quebec, Canada 

Crew 

Lighting Designer: Gil Perron 

Lighting Director: Fred Lamquin 

Video Director: Daniel “DeeJay” Jean 

Video Company: Productions Reno 

Promoter/Producer: Produkt 

Production Manager: Steeve Henry 

Automated Lighting Operators: Paul 

Pelletier, Andre D’aigle 

Lighting Technicians: Equipe Spectra 

Lighting 

Set Design: Gil Perron/Steeve Henry 

Set Construction: Eliot Smith 

Rigger: Stephane “Becane” Richard 

Staging Company: JD International 

Staging Carpenter: Equipe Spectra 

Staging Products: Equipe Spectra 

Gear 

Lighting Consoles: 2 Martin Maxxyzs + 

Subwings + Touch-monitors 

12 Martin MAC 500s 


12 Martin MAC600s 

2 Martin Maxedia media servers 

8 Martin LC Panels 

8 Martin Atomic 3K strobes 

1 Martin Laser 1.6 

1 Martin AF fan 

2 Christie Digital LX120 projectors 

12 Pulsar ChromaBatten 200s 

12 Pulsar ChromaBatten 50s 

36 Pulsar ChromaParCans 

60m Pulsar Flexi-Flash 

1 JEM ZR33 fog machine 

1 MDG Atmospheres fog machine 

8 CM 1-ton motors 


13’x10’ Super Duty truss 

32’x20’ truss grid 

Lighting Co 

Productions Reno 

Credit 

Virgin Mobile Festival 

ST 

Lighting Co 

BSL Productions, Inc. 

Venue 

Pimlico Racetrack, 

Laurel, Md. 

Crew 

Lighting Designer/Director: Hans Shoop 

Promoter/Producer: IMP, Inc. 

Production Manager: Karen Hill, Sean 

Brosnan 

Lighting Operators: Hans Shoop, Frank 

Salerno, Brandon Eckstorm, Ryan Anderson 

Lighting Technicians: Frank Salerno, 

Brandon Eckstorm, Briana Binker-Dale, Ryan 

Anderson, Andrew Dooley 

Rigging: IATSE Local 22 

Staging Company: Mountain Productions 

Gear 

Lighting Console: 4 MA Lighting grandMA 

Full Size consoles 

Lighting Equipment — North Stage: 

20 Martin MAC 2000 Spots 

20 Martin MAC 700 Profiles 

20 High End Systems Studio Colors 

5 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes 

10 Mole Richardson 8-Lites 


200’ Thomas 12”x12” truss 

150’ Thomas 20.5” x20.5” truss 

120k Thomas PRT Rig 

Lighting Equipment — South Stage: 

28 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots 

28 Vari*Lite VL3000 Wash fixtures 


6 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes 

150’ Thomas 12”x 12” box truss 

70’ Thomas 20.5”x20.5” truss 

120K Thomas PRT Rig 


CM Lodestar motors 



Primerica Road Show 

ST 

Lighting Co 

Artech Communications 

Venue 

Hershey Centre 

Toronto, Ontario, Canada 

Crew 

Lighting Director: Colin Moore 

Promoter/Producer: Primerica 

Production Manager/Lighting Designer: 

Mike Emmons 

Lighting Technicians: Tim Wiersma, Takeshi 

Ochiai, Jonathan Kok 

Set Design: Artech Communications 

Set Construction: Artech Communications 

Rigger: Takeshi Ochiai, Tim Wiersma 

Staging Company: Hershey Centre 

Video Director: Dale Lofranco 

Video Company: Artech Communications, 

See and Hear Productions 

Gear 

Lighting Console: SGM Regia 2048 Live 


10 Martin MAC 600NTs 

24 SGM Palco LEDs 

6 SGM X-Line spots 

6 SGM X-Line wash fixtures 

24 16-Lite blinders 

1 ETC 24-channel Sensor dimmer rack 

320’ 12X12 truss 

280’ 16X16 truss 

28 1-ton motors 

5 8-way motor distros 

ST 

Scarlet Haze 

Venue 

Lakeside Tavern, 

Detroit Lakes, Minn. 

Crew 

Lighting Designer/Director: Al Madison 

Staging Company: M-1 Productions 

Staging Carpenter: Todd Sausag 

Gear 

Lighting Console: NSI PMC Series Touring 

Console, NSI MLC-16 Moving Light Console 

24 American DJ PL-4450 Rainlights 



8 Martin Pro 518s 

32 Martin Robocolor IIs 

4 Martin Robocolor Pro 400s 

10 PAR 56s 

16 ETC Source Four PARs 

7 High End Systems Dataflash Strobes 

136 curtain strobes 

2 NSI ND4600 Dimmers 

4 NSI ND5000 Dimmers 

1 Martin Magnum 2000 Fogger 

2 Martin Magnum Hazers 

2 Applied Electronics L-16 lifts 

100’ Global Truss 

Lighting Co 

RSI Lighting Productions 

Good Charlotte 

ST 

Lighting Co 

Performance Lighting, Chicago 

Venue 

Joyce Center, 

South Bend, Ind. 

Crew 

Lighting Designer/Director: Randell 

Gillespie 

Promoter/Producer: Stewart Independent, 

UND Events 

Production Manager: Shannon Stewart 

Lighting Technicians: Kevin McWhorter, 

Nate Davis, Ben Root 

Gear 

Lighting Console: Avolites Pearl Expert 

16 High End Systems Studio Beams 


6 ETC Source Four Parnels 

118 ETC Source Four PARs 


2 Lycian 1.2k followspots 

2 ETC 48-channel sensor racks 

1 Leprecon Data Distro rack 

2 Reel EFX DF-50 diffusion hazers 


2 Motion Labs 8-way motor distro 

systems 



35

INSIDE THEATRE 


Hermann and ClärCHen Baus 

The Dark and 

Moody World of 

Die Soldaten 

Stark lighting and deep shadows set the mood for the opera, which unfolds as the rostrom moves along a track to change the audience’s vantage point. 

stepHanie Berger 

During the course of the four years 

that I have covered live theatre, I have 

witnessed shows as haunting as The 

Woman in Black, as dream-like as Slava’s Snowshow, 

and as flamboyant as Mary Poppins. But 

the recent revival of the radical 1960s German 

opera Die Soldaten, performed recently 

at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan as 

part of the annual Lincoln Center Festival, is 

perhaps one of the most surreal and radical 

productions I have ever seen. Head carpenter 

Jeff Turner — a veteran who has worked the 

Festival for years, works with Lincoln Center 

Jazz, and is currently the contract electrician 

on the Broadway revival of Equus — concurs: 

“I am a jaded old Local One stagehand, but I 

view this as a remarkable event.” 

With a T-shaped catwalk for a stage, a 

210-piece orchestra split on its opposing 

sides, and metal bleachers attached to a 

C-shaped rostrum that actually rolls back 

and forth over the catwalk to offer different 

vantage points, Die Soldaten presented an 

incredible contrast to traditional Broadway 

fare. The story, an overwrought opera about 

a modest draper whose beloved is seduced 

away by a cold, cruel military nobleman, thus 

setting the stage for revenge, was performed 

with passion and flair, and the unusual staging 

heightened the dark narrative. 

Nine Months, 14 Containers Later… 

plsn 

Die Soldaten required a lot of planning 

because the one-truck dock at the Armory 

was blocked once the T stage was laid in. 

Planning for the New York City production 

had been discussed earlier in 2007 and started 

properly around October 2007, and the 

show played nine months later. There were 

many teams involved, including the German 

production crew, the Armory, Lincoln Center, 

the Lincoln Center Festival, and the Local One 

stagehands. The size of the production encompassed 

fourteen containers from Germany 

plus, domestically, five trailers of rigging, 

five trailers of lighting gear and two trucks of 

sound gear, not including the 980 seats. The 

opera, which only ran for five performances 

during the Festival, allegedly cost between 

$2.2 and $2.5 million. 

This was the first theatrical production to 

have been done at the Armory in some time 

— the multi-room, quasi-interactive Tamara 

“A big part of it was the tracks because 

they have to be within a millimeter each in 

height, and the floor is plus or minus four 

and half inches.” 

— Jeff Turner, head carpenter 

played there over 15 years ago — and it effectively 

utilized the industrial space to fit the 

story. The crew repainted some of the walls 

of the venue, and the windows were part of 

the set piece. The dirty warehouse windows 

at the end of the T-shaped set “hide the dirty 

warehouse door,” quipped Turner on the 

night of the fourth performance. “I saw a DVD 

of when they did it in Bochum, Germany in a 

turbine factory, and they were lucky because 

they had gantry cranes that rolled, so they 

could actually hang lighting off of the gantry 

cranes. Here we had to put in a full truss 

rig. Sapsis Rigging was the consultant on the 

thing and provided a lead rigger, and it was 

pretty much built by Local One Stagehands 

and the German crew.” 

The stage was approximately 10 feet wide, 

and the moving rostrum — comprised of aluminum 

on the top and steel on the bottom — 

was about 70 feet wide and 110 feet long. The 

wooden stage was painted to look like metal, 

and one section featured tile, wood, and 

brick to comprise a disco floor that lit up during 

one sequence. Lights were mounted on a 

truss above the staging, while audio speakers 

were mounted on a grid placed right above 

the audience’s heads. The concept of backstage 

certainly was different for Die Soldaten 

as crew stations were located underneath the 

moving bleachers. 

An “Ambitious Project” 

plsn 

It took the crew three weeks to get to 

the show’s first piano rehearsal. “A big part 

of it was the tracks because (they) have to be 

within a millimeter each in height, and the 

floor is plus or minus four and half inches,” 

explained Turner. “It’s a pretty big spread, 

so we had to lay the tracks, level them all 

out, and also get them the proper width. It’s 

little bit more forgiving on the width right 

to left, but it’s an ambitious project. I had a 

crew of two guys who did the majority of 

the leveling because they had the mentality 

for it.” 

This duo spent four days going around 

the tracks with a crowbar and aligning 

them by sliding shims underneath. Turner 

estimates the rolling rostrum with a full 

audience at a weight of a quarter million 

pounds. “There are 12 traction motors in 

there,” he reported. “The lower section, 

called the rostrum by the Germans, was all 

built by them. The seating platforms were 

built by a company called Seating Solutions 

in Long Island, so it’s custom fab from the 

first angle change. When they did the show 

originally, in two German locations, it ran 

another 110 feet longer, so what they did 

was change the stage into a T and did some 

re-blocking and re-lighting.” 

According to Turner, there were eight 

props people combined between the German 

and American crews, and four people 

were assigned to wield an emergency stop 

device called “the pickle,” a large box with 

buttons to coordinate motion. “We have 

emergency stops,” stated Turner. “In each 

corner of the rostrum there is what we call 

a pickle. You have someone at each one of 

the pickles, and when you get the warning 

call to go green, you make sure that nobody 

is in front of or around or underneath 

it. When everyone hits the green button on 

their pickle, it tells the driver, who sits at the 

top, that we’re ready to go. When the cue 

is called we start it, and we can release the 

button. We all have emergency stops. So 

the rule is if you hear stop, hit your button. 

Don’t question why; hit a button.” 

STOP! 

plsn 

There were at least two occasions when 

emergency stops were necessary. Turner 

recalls that during one rehearsal, an actor 

dropped something between the rostrum 

and the runway, which is a tight space. It 

looked like the actor was going to retrieve 

the item, and as the rostrum went into motion, 

one of the other performers started 

screaming to stop, so they did. On another 

occasion, a soundman was working underneath 

the rostrum on one of the six suspended 

subs located there. 

“I looked down there and saw this 

strange light and wondered, ‘What the hell 

is that?’” recollected Turner. “It moved as 

they called the go, so I hit the stop button. 

He was rerunning cable or something, but 

it was in a particularly bad spot because it 

was low, and he was behind the speaker. The 

mass is so big on this that you won’t slow it 

down. All it will do is knock you down and 

break things.” In describing the actual motion 

of the rostrum, he added: “The weird 

part is if you sit near the slot where the 

runway goes underneath, you know in your 

mind that you’re moving, but it looks like a 

conveyor belt, and you wonder who turned 

it on. It’s the strangest thing.” 

The top speed that the rolling rostrum 

achieved was approximately 40 feet per 

minute. Assistant carpenter and rostrum 

“driver” Dan Gilloon said that it was more 

stable and quieter when one was on it, and 

that proved to be the case when PLSN saw 

the show. It did make a little noise when 

it moved, but it was acceptable; besides, 

the actual motion drew attention from the 

sound. Allegedly the Armory was the quietest 

venue the Germans have staged the 

show in. One main difference between the 

German and American productions was 

that overseas the audience faced the runway/stage 

and did not pass over it. The 

stage was also longer there, so the audience 

would pass the orchestra entirely. 

“Sorry, It’s Not Safe” 

plsn 

Turner proudly noted (and joked) that 

when the president of Lincoln Center 

wanted to drive the stage, Gilloon would 

not let him. “Sorry, it’s just not safe,” explained 

Gilloon. “It’s set by a laser in the 

back, so your presets hit your marks, but 

there is one final cue that has an internal 

time sequence that changes. So as the 

actress walks the length of the runway, 

because it has to be timed with the score, 


Elliott Kaufman 

Hermann and Clärchen Baus 

Hermann and Clärchen Baus 

The cavernous space of the Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory required truss to be installed for the space to be lit properly. 

A limited color palette for lighting and costumes works with the linear performance space to constrict Die Soldaten’s paths of visual escape. 

“There’s a half a mile 

of trussing in here 

and 149 motors.” 

— Jeff Turner 

and the score varies subtly every night, 

what we have is a series of marks on the 

rails and an infrared camera. The German 

operator, who understands and knows 

the score, has a series of marks that he 

follows and knows there is a time code 

that runs on the monitor. According to 

the time code he has to reach a certain 

point on the rails that’s highlighted by 

the infrared camera, and so he has to 

change the speed faster or slower in order 

to hit that mark. This is a precise and 

highly engineered system. It’s like driving 

a Mercedes: you have power but you 

also have that security and stability and 

you know that it’s highway engineered. 

There are emergency stops that are set 

in and there are actuators that stop the 

thing in case of an emergency.” 

On the night that PLSN attended Die 

Soldaten, the show went off without a 

hitch. But such fluidity came thanks to 

a Herculean effort by the hard-working 

crew. Turner remarked that when he first 

came in to the production, he put up big 

signs for everything, particularly as “stage 

right” and “stage left” had little meaning, 

with designations of north, south, east, 

and west being easier. 

“People laughed at me, but we 

worked from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. six nights a 

week to get to this point. So when you’re 

tired you can’t be trying to figure out 

where you are,” the head carpenter noted. 

“You tell someone to take something 

to the west end, and they look at the sign 

and go. It’s just the scale of it. We’ve got 

almost a thousand running feet of curtain 

in here. When you go to hang your 

masking curtains in a regular theatre, you 

might have 80 to 120 feet. There’s a half 

a mile of trussing in here and 149 motors. 

I was talking to the electrician, Neil 

McShane, and he said, ‘When you look at 

the drawings everything looks good, but 

you just know we’re going to get killed 

because if you’ve got to go get something 

out of your tool box, it’s a 400-foot 

round-trip walk. You’re going longer than 

a football field and have to plan for that.’ 

But we made it.” 

Laughing, Turner added: “The only 

thing I wish is that we’d gotten Segways 

for the old guys because my feet started 

to hurt about the third day in.” 


37 


WIDE ANGLE 


COLDPLAY’S 

La Vida Tour 

LD Paul Normandale needed to work around the band’s aversion to LED screens and side IMAG for a 320° arena show. 

Paul Normandale: I flew from Tokyo to London and back in 48 hours to meet the band 

on two days off. They had many ideas about the shows look which was useful in some ways. 

I worked with Mark ‘Sparky’ Risk, who programmed the show and is the lighting director. His 

patience and my inabilities are the stuff of minor legends. 

Photos & Text by SteveJennings 

“Where do you get your ideas?” The question is trite, perhaps, whether you’re a novelist 

or a lighting designer, but it gets asked so often because the answer is so mysterious. 

For lighting designer Paul Normandale, it’s “the most exciting part of what we do” — that 

outpouring of creativity in the “scribble-CAD-to-fruition” zone. For Coldplay’s Viva La Vida 

tour Normandale designed the lighting, Mark “Sparky” Risk served as lighting programmer/ 

director, and Justine Catterall worked as part of the video content production crew. Here are 

a few details on how they achieved the looks for the tour. 

Amid lasers and moving lights, imagery from Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings archive filled the stage-wide backdrop. 

A red wash, green lasers and classic artwork combine to create one of the tour’s eclectic visual moments. 

Normandale: The early thoughts about the design are as you would expect — sketches 

and half ideas, some of which, upon reflection, amused many. But this scribble-CAD-to-fruition 

is, I think, by far the most exciting part of what we do. Temporary, transient, lost forever in many 

ways, the sketches to renders produce an odd period of limbo as you prepare to show the artist, 

and then indeed the other members of the production, a concept. I used Vectorworks for 

2D, Studio 3D for 3D renders and visualization via ESP. 

Mark “Sparky” Risk: Paul and I have worked together before, most notably on the Bjork 

Vespertine Tour. We’ve known each other as friends for a good long while, so it was a pleasure 

to be working together again. Rehearsals for the tour were held in both London and Los Angeles 

and so we had plenty of programming time at our disposal. Everything worked out pretty 

well. The spheres didn’t present too much of a problem at all. It would be fair to say that we 

experienced relatively little in the way of technical problems. 

The backdrop graphics were fed via a Catalyst media server. 

The graphics may be programmed, but the shows for Coldplay on tour are always subject to change, keeping the crew on their toes. 


Normandale: The band has a total aversion to both LED screens and side IMAG, so it was 

really an interesting challenge to come up with something new to fulfill the video and IMAG 

realities for a 320° arena show. The spheres had three and four meter inflatable rear projection 

surfaces with amazing lenses that allow internal projection for 95 percent of the surface, 

mapped with spherical software, in all a six month process of testing and trails to produce what 

I hope is a quite unique solution — always a nice thing. 

New gear, an unconventional set and old art fuse to form the looks for Coldplay’s performances. 

Puffafish of Edinburgh and XL Video in London contributed to the spherical visual elements used for Coldplay. 

Justine Catterall: “We created material 

for both the spheres and the stage wide 

backdrop behind the band. The material 

generated included video created from the 

bands own artwork and that of Brian Eno 

(from the 77 Millions Paintings archive). 

Matt Whitecross, a previous contact of the 

band, had generated some material already 

— a “dancing politicians” piece used as an 

Internet viral for the first single released 

from the new album Violet Hill and a library 

footage-based piece that was previously 

used as a backdrop for the Lovers In Japan 

promo. Coldplay is certainly not a band to 

get complacent! The show is always subject 

to change which certainly keeps the 

road crew on their toes. 

CREW 

Lighting Company (U.S.): Upstaging 

Inc. (John “Coach” Bahnick) 

Lighting Company (Europe): Lite Alternative 

(Jon Greaves) 

Lighting Designer: Paul Normandale 

Lighting Director/Programmer: Mark 

“Sparky” Risk 

Lighting Crew Chief: Dave Favorita 

Lighting Techs: Jason Blaylock, Dan 

Swalec, Wayne Kwiat, Ben Bain, Dave 

Cox, Dave Jolly, Niall Ogilvy 

Motion Control: Tommy Green, Steve 

Richards 

Production Manager: Craig “Fin” Finley 

Tour Manager: Andy Franks 

Staging: All Access Staging & Production 

Video: XL Video (Des Fallon) 

Video Director: Andy Bramley 

Video Content: Justine Catteral 

Catalyst Programmer: Ben Miles 

Lasers & Confetti: Strictly FX USA (Ted 

Macabee), Mike Hartle, Brook 

Blomquist 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: Flying Pig Systems 

Wholehog 3 and Wing, Catalyst and 

Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers 

17 Martin MAC 2000 Wash XBs 

7 Martin MAC 2000 Wash Fixtures 


20 Martin MAC 250 Wash Fixtures 

27 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes 

(10 w/ scrollers) 

4 Nova Flowers 

12 i-Pix BB4s 

10 Omni Wash Lights 

28 Mole Richardson 4-Lite Blinders 

8 Mole Richardson 2K Mole Beams 

4 Custom Clip Light Fixtures 

4 Reel EFX DF 50s 

4 Look Solutions Unique Haze Machines 

Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info 


39

PRODUCTION PROFILE 


Jamming Along with 

By David JohnFarinella 

o.A.R. 

LD Joe Labbe is concentrating hard on 

the stage. The lights are out and he’s 

waiting for the band to come back 

into a song. It’s just like any other night until 

Of a Revolution’s lead singer Marc Roberge 

says to his bandmates, “Let’s go into another 

song.” Labbe, who is on his first tour 

with the band, hears about the switch in his 

personal monitors and panics. 

“In a matter of seconds I had to find the 

right page where the song is,” he recalls. “I 

thought, “Why are you doing this to me?’ 

It turned out to be a fun night. I made it 

through and got it to where it needs to 

be. It was one of those nights that I walked 

away feeling awesome.” 

Taking a set list or a song in a new direction 

is nothing new for Of a Revolution 

(O.A.R.), an upbeat jam band that’s currently 

touring to support their latest offering, All 

Sides. The quintet includes singer/guitarist 

Roberge, guitarist Richard On, saxophonist 

Jerry DePizzo, bassist Benj Gershman and 

drummer Chris Culos. 

Labbe got the gig after submitting a 

design idea to production manager Kevin 

“Gigbut” Cassidy and started with the band 

in mid-June. He immediately realized the 

challenges of working with O.A.R. included 

becoming familiar with the band’s 72 songs, 

learning how the bands likes to jam during 

the show and then designing a show that 

can follow the fluidity of the band while entertaining 

a rabid fan base. 

Different Directions 


“They do play from a set list, but songs 

can go in different directions depending on 

the way the vibe is going,” Labbe explains. 

“Almost every song can go in totally different 

tangents. On one night a song will last 

20 minutes, the next night it can last five. 

Their music makes for a very involved lighting 

show with a lot of cues and there is a lot 

of crowd interaction from an audience that 

knows the songs backwards and forwards.” 

Initial design ideas, Labbe says, came 

from listening to the band’s catalog and 

then catching their vibe. “Then I had to 

ask about the concept for the new tour 

and what they were looking for,” he says. 

“They wanted to incorporate some video 

elements along with the lighting elements 

and go a different route.” 

That different route meant that Labbe 

started thinking about a variety of design 

ideas. The one that stuck had him video 

mapping the entire rig, using 132 Element 

Labs Versa Tubes, 18 one-meter by onemeter 

Versa Frames, 12 one-meter by twometer 

Versa Frames, 16 PixelRange Pixel- 

Lines and a Catalyst V4 Media Server with 

Pixelmad software. The system is run off of 

two ChamSys Magic Q100 consoles with 

a ChampSys Magic Q Wing using an ELC 

dmXLAN. 

Lighting includes 24 Vari*Lite VL500 80v 

Wash fixtures, 14 VL2500 Spots, nine Martin 

MAC 2000 Profiles and six Martin Atomic 

3000 Strobes. 

A Uniform Set of Looks 


Zenith Lighting out of Orlando, Fla. 

supplied all the lighting, video and rigging 

gear for the tour and Labbe has not had 

to supplement his inventory as the band 

moves from sheds that seat anywhere from 

2,000 to 24,000 fans. 

“Part of my design included looking 

at the venues they were about to play,” he 

explains of his rig consistency. “I wanted 

it to stay the same for all of the venues. 

There may have been two shows where we 

changed something a little, but besides 

that it’s the same for every show.” 

The show was first designed on VectorWorks 

and then Labbe did the pre-programming 

and visualization with ESP Vision. 

“I was quite impressed with how easy 

it was to go from VectorWorks to ESP,” he 

reports. “I’ve never done that before and after 

a couple phone conversations with the 

guys over at ESP Studios they had me up 

and running in about two hours.” 

The ChampSys consoles are new to 

North America, but Labbe liked them immediately 

because of the ease of use and references 

back to older consoles. “Also, the way 

it will directly connect to the media server 

and give me a preview of what the server 

is doing,” he explains, “and the speed of it 

has been phenomenal.” Estabon Carralaccio 

and Tim Brennan from PRG introduced the 

LD to the ChampSys products. 

Going with the Flow 


The ChampSys board became an important 

pick during Labbe’s early shows with 

O.A.R., especially since this is a band that 

can push or pull a song from concise to jam 

in a moment’s time. Sure that’s great for a 

fan, but for a LD it’s a potential nightmare. 

To ensure that there were no snafus, Labbe 

programmed a handful of standard looks and 

then dedicated a wing-it area on the Magic Q. 

“So, if the band goes one way I’ve got different 

stuff and if they go another way I bring 

up other stuff,” he says. “The hardest part was 

getting it to work with the video elements.” 

That specific issue was overcome, he explains, 

by pre-programming certain looks 

before the band hit the stage and then by listening 

carefully to the band during the show. 

“I had to get to know them and their style,” 

O.A.R.’s performance space glows with Element Labs Versa Tubes, Versa Frames and PixelRange PixelLines. 

The density of the Versa Tubes increases toward the middle and on both sides of the set, creating a visual push and pull. 


The entire rig is video-mapped, and Labbe uses a Catalyst V4 media server, two 

ChampSys Magic Q100s and a ChampSys Magic Q Wing for control. 

Labbe has some of the looks set up to react to audio. But O.A.R. changes its song sets, and the 

songs themselves, too frequently to allow for a totally preprogrammed show. 

he says. “There were a couple of nights where 

I was like, ‘Hey, where is this going? I didn’t 

know about this.’ They are a very energetic 

band and they go a lot of different directions. 

It’s like hearing a different story every day.” 

The board’s speed and adaptability also 

helped, he says. “The way you copy and move 

cue stacks on the fly is very helpful,” he says. 

“When the band would go a different way 

during a song I’d go back into the library and 

quickly copy that cue onto a page in a matter 

of seconds. That was very handy.” 

going to revamp my show,” he says. “The 

overall concept is not going to change, but 

it’s going to be better designed for their 

purpose. I haven’t gotten too far in planning 

it, but I’m thinking about fixture locations 

and fixture purposes. Everything I 

have for them works great now, but there’s 

always room for improvement and that’s 

what we’re going to do.” 

Tweaking the Video Visuals 


As far as the video portion of the show, 

Labbe aimed for a new look for the band 

without going too far afield from industry 

norms. Standing at the FOH position, he 

explains, the Versa Tubes are denser on 

the left, center and right parts of the stage 

but lighter in between. “So, your eyes fill 

in the gaps,” he says, “and the Versa Tubes 

don’t line up top to bottom, so it’s kind of 

unique.” 

According to Labbe there is no live acquisition 

during a show, but there is a part 

during the song “Lay Down” from the band’s 

2005 release Stories of a Stranger where he 

will take an audio input from the stage and 

create a custom VU meter using the lighting 

rig. “When Chris [Culos, the drummer] goes 

into a little drum break we take the audio 

signal from a wireless belt pack and plug 

it into the audio input on the Catalyst,” he 

says. “The video reacts to audio, bouncing 

up and down with what he plays. That’s the 

only element of the show that incorporates 

video, lights and sound all together as far as 

one specific item. That’s kind of cool.” 

While “Lay Down” has been fun to play 

with each night, Labbe has liked the songs 

“Shattered” and “This Town,” which was the 

theme song to this year’s College World Series 

broadcasts on ESPN. “Some of the older 

songs are fantastic, too,” he says. “I dig a 

lot of their music. The greatest part about 

their show, I think, is that there’s nothing 

depressing or sad. It’s all upbeat, crowd oriented, 

and let’s have a good time tonight 

kind of thing.” 

Preparing for 2009 


And as the first leg of the tour comes 

to a close in early October, Labbe is already 

looking forward to the winter and 2009 

dates. In fact, so is the band, and they’re 

coming to him with ideas for the next run. 

“They are getting more involved every day, 

because they understand it better now,” he 

reports. “They come up with some ideas 

and then I give them input with my ideas. 

Everything has its pros and cons, so we talk 

about it and then we come up with a compromise 

that works for them. That helps the 

overall show.” 

At the same time, the new ideas are 

going to keep him busy during the break. 

“Now that I’m more familiar with the band 

and understand their music a lot better, I’m 



41

FEATURE 


Green, from 

Radiohead 

to Toe 

The Band Steps Up with a 

Smaller Carbon Footprint 

By ArdenAsh 

Colors pulsed through Radiohead’s 3D array of more than 65,000 individual LED light sources. 

If others see that this is both beautiful and 

that it works, then they just might be willing 

to try it themselves. Such is the hope of the 

lighting and visuals designer Andi Watson and 

the planet-friendly band, Radiohead. 

Lead singer Thom Yorke is a member of the 

environmental advocacy group Friends of the 

Earth, and the other band members and crew 

join his interest in taking the steps necessary, 

however inconvenient, to tread as lightly as 

possible on a fragile planet. 

On tour, the band and crew use, and reuse, 

a motley assortment of non-disposable 

dishes, cups and utensils and go to the trouble 

of recycling as much of their trash as possible. 

And in 2003, the band started assessing 

the “carbon footprint” of its tours. The band 

went to the trouble of meticulously analyzing 

its carbon footprint again in 2006. For their 

2008 In Rainbows tour, they used those benchmarks 

to reduce their carbon footprint further. 

Fans watching the spectacle of a touring 

show might imagine that the dramatic visuals 

account for a major portion of the energy 

consumed, and a whopping portion of the 

tour’s overall carbon footprint. But that’s because 

their attention is drawn to the stage, not 

to nightly stampede of tens of thousands of 

other fans drawn to each show, and the little 

things, like the cool-looking T-shirts that everybody 

was buying, that really add up. 

The Fan Factor 


Richard Young, Radiohead’s production 

manager and co-author of Ecological Footprint 

& Carbon Audit of Radiohead North American 

Tours, 2003 & 2006, found that it’s actually the 

fans who account for between 87 and 93 percent 

of the Radiohead tour’s environmental 

impact. 

The solution, of course, isn’t to tell the fans 

to stay home. Without fans, there’s no show, 

and with no show, there’s no reason for 70,000 

to 250,000 people to descend upon one location 

on a school night. 

So Radiohead took a closer look at the 7 to 

13 percent of the footprint they could control 

directly. Surely lighting would loom large for 

the total footprint contributed directly by the 

band’s performance. Wrong again. Lighting 

takes a back seat to fuels burned by vehicles 

to carry the band, crew and gear from venue 

to venue. Those fuels account for about 20 to 

44 percent of the carbon footprint generated 

directly by the band. 

So it seems Radiohead couldn’t dramatically 

diminish the overall size of its carbon 

footprint, even if the band played in the dark. 

Why, then, should the band make the effort to 

seek out alternatives to traditional lighting fixtures? 

What kind of real dent could it make? 

A small one, admittedly, when compared 

with the bigger picture. But when you look at 

the energy requirements of the lighting rig itself, 

the energy savings of an entirely bulb-free 

show can indeed be significant, and the numbers 

speak for themselves. 

Numbers Talk, Carbon Walks 


The lighting design for Radiohead’s 2003 

tour used conventional lamps, gels, discharge 

lamps and one LED display. It pulled 600 amps 

3-phase for a total of 1800 amps. The lighting 

design for this year’s In Rainbows tour, using 

100 percent LED lighting, is pulling 140 amps 

3-phase for a total of 420 amps. They’re using 

two-thirds less power than they did before. 

Two-thirds less power. That’s huge. 

To get there, Watson first considered everything 

from discharge lamps to candles. But 

each of these alternatives carried with them 

compromises that made their gains negligible. 

For example, compact fluorescents, though 

efficient, contain mercury and other harmful 

materials that can become a long-term hazard 

in landfills. 

“After doing research, I decided that the 

only way to do that would be to use the most 

efficient light source available, which is LED 

and to use that exclusively and solely,” Watson 

said. 

To design a show using 100 percent LED 

light fixtures, however, you need more than 

the fixtures themselves. You need to throw 

out all the preconceived templates and lighting 

designs that worked with conventional 

fixtures, and come up with some ideas that 

are radically new. “This is where Andi’s genius 

came in,” Young said. 

An LED Aesthetic 


To compare an LED lighting system to the 

traditional light rigs of the last 50 to 100 years 

is to compare apples to oranges. Yes, they both 

emit light, but their composition, structure 

and flavors are completely different. Stripped 

of the comforts of conventional lighting rig 

effects, in fact, Watson almost couldn’t have 

avoided coming up with a series of radically 

new looks. 

Aesthetically speaking, however, this 

show, which could not have been achieved 

without the latest in LED lighting technology 

and the software used to control it, is delivering. 

Watson describes the tour’s look as a 3D 

video display with a very low resolution, with 

12 pixels horizontally, 288 pixels vertically and 

six panels deep. 

There are tubes and lights all mapped in 

3D space onto which 3D objects can be sliced 

into 2D video and played back in the 3D space 

on the stage. 

When an object is passed through the 

space, each observer will perceive that object 

differently, because they will view it from a 

different position and perspective. A person 

needs only to move two feet and the arrangement 

of the tubes will be different, thus projecting 

a new total image. “It’s a very subjective 

user experience,” Watson said. 

“The ultimate goal is to introduce 

schemes that, once proven effective, will 

be perpetuated by the venues and demanded 

by other acts.” —Richard Young, 

production manager, from Radiohead’s 

Flying Mouth Blog 

Precise colors and dramatically lower energy requirements made LD Andi Watson a believer in an all-LED rig. 


Gearing up for 2008 


If a new aesthetic is required for an all-LED 

lighting design, that design can, in turn, lead to 

new advances in LED gear. Young and Watson 

spent hours conversing with each other and 

with manufacturers about the new directions 

they were taking, and i-Pix, High End Systems/ 

Catalyst, Element Labs, Pulsar, Architainment, 

Nocturne Productions, Scenographic, Specialz 

and Negearth were just some of the companies 

involved in the larger dialogue. 

Watson presented his first design for the 

all-LED tour to Young in Nov. 2007, and the 

two worked with Catalyst software designer, 

Richard Bleasdale and i-Pix’s Chris Ewington to 

push both the software and LED hardware technologies 

to the next stage in their evolutionary 

process. 

i-Pix’s BB 4s had just gone into production 

in January. In March, Ewington met with Young 

and Radiohead lighting crew chief Andy Beller 

to talk about the next fixture in development, 

the BB 7. The petal-shaped fixture is a sevencell 

homogenized 10° RGB lightsource, which 

has since been used by tours for The Killers and 

other bands. 

Watson said he thought the fixture would 

be what he wanted, and i-Pix priced the units 

for Young, which led to an order for 206 of the 

fixtures, enough for two rigs, to be built from 

scratch and completed in just over five weeks. 

The i-Pix team, which had sourced the BB 4 

LEDs from Lamina Ceramics in New York, came 

up with the first batch of BB 7s with four days 

to spare. 

“Andi put his trust in us before, when he 

integrated PixelLines into his groundbreaking 

show for Radiohead back in 2003,” Ewington 

said. “He relied on us in 2005, and in 2008 he really 

upped the ante.” 

i-Pix’s petal-shaped BB 7s, hung above the stage in five-way frames fabricated by Specialz, added 

visual interest even when dimmed. 

Scenographic Ltd. gear was used to control the video screens from Nocturne Productions. 

LED Pros and Cons 


Although much has been made of the energy-efficient 

aspects of LED lighting, and of the 

brightness of the fixtures, their ability to shine 

with less heat output has advantages that go 

beyond a lower bill for air conditioning in the 

hot summer months. As with the BB 7s used 

with the Killers, they can be deployed in close 

proximity to the performers without causing 

discomfort to the band members. 

In Watson’s view, that’s not the only advantage 

for making the LED switch, however. In 

terms of achieving just the right color, “they’re 

absolutely fantastic,” he said. “It’s very hard 

to get a moving light rig with over a hundred 

lights in it with lights that are all the same color. 

There’s a big color shift with incandescent color 

fixtures. But this is achievable with LEDs. They 

are the color you want them to be.” 

When asked about the “steppiness” inherent 

in a lot of LED dimming technology, Watson 

said that, indeed, it was present, but minimal. 

It’s that first jump from “off” to “on” that still 

needs the attention of programmers. Beyond 

that, he said, the lights behave very well. Watson’s 

message to his fellow lighting designers is 

that if it makes sense to use LEDs in the design 

you have created, then he whole-heartedly recommends 

them because the technology has 

advanced enough to be very usable. 

Radiohead’s In Rainbows tour may not have 

a single incandescent bulb. But it has more than 

65,000 individual LED components lighting up 

the stage in an artistic array of melodic kinetic 

energy. It is pulling a third of the power of a conventional 

rig while emitting minimal heat on 

the performers. By stepping up with their own 

creative energies, the band and its designer 

have taken a big step toward a more energy-efficient 

future for the live event and production 

industry. 



43

FEATURE 


By Richard Cadena 

Fifteenth century Italy had its Renaissance men, but we have our Renaissance machines — 

software and hardware in a variety of areas that will redefine the entertainment lighting 

industry as we know it. This year’s PLASA differed from last year’s in that there seemed to 

be much more change and more innovative new products. And unlike years past, there was more 

than LEDs and media servers. 

Some of the highlights of the show included new automated lights from PRG, Martin, Robe, 

SGM, High End Systems and a number of other manufacturers. What’s that you say? That’s nothing 

new? Ah, but they are new in many ways. This year’s crop of automated lights are innovative 

in the way they are engineered, the way they render color and 

even the light sources they use. 

At least one manufacturer is experimenting with a new plasma 

source that’s the size of a Tic Tac with an efficacy of about 60 

lumens per watt and a CRI of up to 94. Although it’s still in prototype 

form, Robe showed a moving head fixture using the Luxim 

LIFI Entertainment 30 Series lamp and RF power supply and it 

had an incredibly uniform field and surprisingly high output for 

such a small source. This may not be the be-all and end-all for 

green stage lighting, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. 

Other noteworthy moving lights debuting at the show include the PRG Bad Boy, Martin’s 

new MAC III, High End Systems StudioPix and SGM’s Giotto 1500, among many others. The Bad 

Boy is aptly named — it’s bright, it has great optics, great color and it’s very fast. The newly designed 

optical train projects gobos with impressive clarity, even at its widest 56° zoom. The color 

system uses four color wheels, each with seven colors in a series of stepped color gradients with 

increases in saturation. The resulting colors range from pastel to incredible. 

The Martin MAC III is a third generation MAC fixture and it uses the new Osram 1500-watt 

single-ended short arc lamp with a FastFit base. It features several engineering innovations like 

pressure die-cast and ceramic-coated magnesium parts that are lightweight yet very strong, absolute 

value encoders with their own internal zero reference, “semi-hot” re-strike within 120 seconds 

of dousing and a new gyro-like lamp adjustment. It has a separate dimmer and shutter, a 

new all glass animation wheel, and the 5:1 zoom that can go from 11° to 55° in under a second. 

SGM’s new Giotto 1500 is a modular fixture that can be changed from a spot to wash or to a 

The show was dominated 

by innovation across the 

board, which is a good 

indicator of what’s going 

on in the industry. 

digital light. The digital module consists of a 0.7” XGA (1024x768) DLP chip and two color wheels 

and it enables the projection of animated gobos. The lamp source is a Philips MSR Gold 1500 

FastFit or a 1200-watt MSR. 

Even some of the LED fixtures demonstrated innovation that we have not seen in a while. On 

the High End /Barco stand, the new StudioPix, the LED fixtures with a circular array of 61 3-watt 

LEDs. In brief, they are a smaller, more affordable version of the ShowPix. Vari-Lite was showing 

a new LED light engine by appointment in a private area of the exhibition hall. It, too, is in prototype 

form, but it represents a big step forward in terms of getting to an LED solution for stage 

lighting. The LED light engine had 800 watts of RBGW LEDs packaged 

in a moving yoke fixture. The output lens had hexagonal 

cells that helped to homogenize the field, producing a beautifully 

uniform and surprisingly bright output. It seemed to have 

a high CRI and very good efficiency in the range of almost 17 lumens 

per watt. Though the prototype had a fixed field angle, the 

finished product is supposed to range from 15° to 44°. Delivery 

is expected to be in early 2009. There were also some LED moving 

yoke fixtures, like the JB Lighting VaryLED A7 Zoom and the 

Mushroom Lighting Technology Moving LED Zoom, with clever 

beam shaping features. 

The presence of new digital luminaires on the Robe stand and their intention to show them 

at LDI was proof positive that they have worked out a licensing agreement with PRG. That will 

allow Robe to start selling their line of digital lighting products in the U.S., which is good news 

for the industry because it will make the digital luminaire market more competitive and perhaps 

more affordable. Robe is ready with their new DigitalSpot 7000 DT and DigitalSpot 3000 DT. 

But automated lighting and LEDs didn’t define the show; it was dominated by innovation 

across the board, which is a good indicator of what’s going on the in the industry. And what’s 

going on in the industry is that RDM is finally seeing the light of day. Robe, Martin and High End 

Systems all showed new products with RDM capability that can talk back to the controller and 

provide information and remote operability from their menu displays. This could be the first 

true implementation of RDM in automated lighting fixtures. The word is that other manufacturers 

are working on their own implementations of RDM. If that’s true, then we’re witnessing 

a true Renaissance in the industry. 

Graham Eales, managing 

director of Zero 88 (left) and 

Martin Searanck, managing 

director of LightFactory announced 

Zero 88’s appointment 

as exclusive global 

distribution partner for 

LightFactory PC-based lighting 

control software. Cooper 

Controls, parent company of 

Zero 88, will now provide 

marketing, distribution, service 

and support worldwide. 

Stage Research will continue to be a distributor in North America and A.C.T Lighting, the 

North American distributor for Zero 88, will also distribute the product. Zero 88 also introduced 

two new lighting consoles, the Orb and the Jester TL. The Orb is designed for 

control of LEDs, moving lights and media servers with four DMX512 universes. Jester TL is 

a theatrical version of Zero 88’s Jester consoles, with control of up to 120 dimmer channels 

from a numeric keypad using standard industry syntax. It features a cue stack, submaster 

playback (via DMX-in), a monitor port, USB storage and control of up to 30 moving lights 

using palettes, effects engines and a fixture library. 

PLASA 08 drew a record crowd of more than 13,000 visitors to Earls Court in London for 

four days in early September, an 11 percent gain in attendance. 

Green Hippo was previewing 

their forthcoming Hippotizer 

V3.1 to be released in the fourth 

quarter of this year. It features 

UberPan for multi-screen/server 

configuration from one ‘virtual 

screen’ area. This software release 

contains over 100 new features 

and improvements. Also being 

shown was the HippoCritter, a 

new entry-level Hippotizer with 

a small form-factor and seamless 

integration with HippoNet control 

protocol. The new HippoPortamus is a laptop-based Hippotizer with portability for those 

wishing to take their show with them. It provides all the Hippotizer features. Hippotizer Stage 

and Hippotizer HD are also now shipping in Green Hippo’s new road-ready enclosure. 



FEATURE 


Strand introduced two new consoles 

at the show, the Palette II (update to the 

Palette family of consoles) and the new 

Palette VL consoles, which are mid-sized 

desks for control of conventional and automated 

lights. Also on the Strand stand 

was the Vision.net range of architectural 

lighting controls with new photo cells 

and occupancy sensors added to the 

range as part of Strand Europe’s Green 

Theatre initiative. Robert Bell is shown here with the new Palette 

II, which he programmed on the new musical Tale of Two Cities on 

Broadway (lighting design by Richard Pilbrow). The display shows 

the Virtual Magic Sheet, which integrates with the Palette II. 

Apollo Design Technology previewed 

their new Smart Color Pro gel scroller with 

24 color frames, push button menu with 

LED display, 25 percent less power consumption, 

universal mounting and 17 percent 

less weight. Also on display were the 

EZ Iris DMX, a remote iris accessory that fits 

in the gate of a conventional ERS fixture, 

three new models of Smart Power Supplies, 

Gel Miser with IR filtering and built-in fan, 

and Gelwrap color for fluorescent tubes. 

Clay Paky’s new Alpha Beam creates a 

parallel light beam with the look of an ACL. 

The 1500-watt fixture features a patentpending 

focus system for variable field 

width, 14 gobos (six rotating and eight fixed), 

two rotating prisms, CMY + color wheel, rotating 

beam shaper, dimmer, iris, strobe and 

three linear frost effects on dedicated channels. 

The Alpha Beam 300 was shown at LDI 

2007 but got its official launch at PLASA 08. 

It has eight fixed gobos (four gobo images 

plus four beam angle reduction gobos, a patented 

frost effect with “soft mode” and “hard 

edge” mode, CMY color mixing and color 

wheel and an electronic ballast. 

Robe is preparing to launch its Robe Digital campaign in North 

America after signing a licensing agreement with PRG, allowing 

them to sell their line of digital luminaires in the U.S. The new DigitalSpot 

7000 DT is a combination 6500 ANSI lumen digital projector 

and RGBW LED modules with a contrast ratio of 2000:1, two LED 

modules with 48 Luxeon Rebel RGBW LEDs, DVI input and SDI input/output. 

The new DigitalSpot 3000 DT is a combination 2700 

ANSI lumen projector with a REDWash LED module. It has a contrast 

ratio of 2000:1 and it uses a 200-watt lamp. 

PRG brought out three new 

products, including the V676 

Console; the Bad Boy large venue 

luminaire; and the Mbox EXtreme 

v3 media server. The Bad 

Boy Luminaire outputs 48,000 

lumens with a very wide ranging 

zoom (8:1 from 7° to 56°) and 

its servo motors provide speedy 

movements between colors and 

gobos as well as fast pan and 

tilt for a large fixture. The PRG 

V676 console features eight 

touchscreen monitors, including 

five monitors built into the lowprofile 

face panel, Super Palettes 

with a graphical interface for color, 

template, preset, macro, snapshot and timing selection. 

Greg Jesse of Zzyzx, 

Inc. with the latest version 

of ESP Vision visualization 

software. The beta version of 

ESP Vision V2.3 was used in 

Beijing during the opening 

ceremonies of the Games of 

the XXIX Olympiad, driving 

10,000 LEDs and more than 

800 lights. Among the new 

features will be dockable 

windows. 

Compulite’s latest software for the 

Vector consoles displays thumbnails of 

media from the Arkaos and Hippotizer 

V3 media servers. Streaming media from 

the Hippo to Vector consoles is coming 

in version 3.2 of the Hippo. New features 

in the Vector include drag and drop with 

groups, palettes, etc, editing time values 

from the cue sheet, pixel mapping to LED 

matrices using animated GIF files, new 

workspaces (similar to Excel spreadsheet), 

DMX512 input to play back cues, 26 MIDI 

notes for remote control and a new EPort 

which converts VC to DMX or ArtNet to 

DMX. Also new this year is USB backup on 

the DLite console. 

On the A.C. Lighting stand was Jands’ 

new Vista I3, a mid-range lighting desk 

the same features as the full-size T4/T2 

consoles but in a smaller, more economical 

package. Also on the stand was the 

complete range of Chroma-Q products, 

including the new Color Span configurable 

LED fixture for indoor or outdoor 

applications. The system allows you to 

choose IP rating, body length, body color, 

LED colors and optics. 

Coolux was celebrating their recent 

Primetime Emmy Engineering Award, 

which they received August 23. Their 

new Pandoras Box software release 4.1 

features the Pandoras Box Warp Engine, 

the processing of video material with 

field- and frame blending and new deinterlacing 

options. The PB Warper allows 

a quick start into the creation of 

complex objects to adjust the output of 

Pandora’s Box to curved and non-planar 

screens. Frame blending allows a continuously 

adjustable playback speed 

variation of videos in real time. And all 

Pandoras Box products now include the 

de-interlacing options top field, bottom 

field and field blending. 



FEATURE 


SGM’s new Giotto 1500 is a 

modular automated fixture that 

can be changed from a spot to 

wash or, with the addition of the 

new digital module, to a digital 

light. The digital module consists 

of a 0.7” XGA (1024x768) DLP chip 

and two color wheels and it gives 

it the ability to project animated 

gobos in black and white with a 

color overlay. The lamp source is a 

Philips MSR Gold 1500 FastFit or a 

1200-watt MSR. 

Lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe discusses 

the new MAC III on the Martin stand. The MAC III has 

been designed and engineered from the bottom up, 

using the new Osram 1500-watt single-ended short 

arc lamp with a FastFit base. Among its many features 

are a separate dimmer and shutter so it can perform a 

complete blackout while strobing and a new all glass 

animation wheel. The 5:1 zoom can go from 11° to 

55° in under a second. Also new on the Martin stand 

was the MAC 2000 Wash XB, an “extra bright” version 

of the MAC 2000 Wash, EvenLED, a modular 

LED system with uniform field projection, new hazers 

in the Jem and Magnum lines, several new products 

and product updates in Martin’s controller range, the 

Exterior 1200 Image Projector and new indoor and 

outdoor LED luminaires. 

Barco/High End Systems debuted the new StudioPix, 

a hybrid wide-angle moving LED wash light 

with programmable graphic imaging. It’s the second 

product in High End Systems’ new line of Pixelation 

Luminaires. Based on ShowPix LED technology, StudioPix 

can project a color wash and display low-res 

graphic images and effects. Also on the stand was the 

DML-1200 digital moving luminaire. The dual-mode 

DML-1200 features a zoom range from 11° to 40° beam 

angle, instant switching between video and lighting 

modes, CMY changer and an optional on-board media 

player. The DL.3 Digital Light fixture with integrated 

Axon media server — also on the stand — features 

110/220V power mode, a Collage Generator to create 

seamless images from multiple DL.3 units, a HAD sensor 

camera and an infrared illumination system. 

The new Philips MSR Gold 1500 FastFit lamp debuted 

on the Philips stand and in the SGM Giotto 1500 

fixtures. The FastFit lamp has an arc gap of 5.5 mm, an 

efficiency of 82 lumens per watt, a color temperature of 

6000K and a CRI of 80. It is dimmable to 800 watts. Since 

the initial launch of the Philips FastFit system two and 

a half years ago, 16 manufacturers have used them in a 

total of 20 fixtures. 




On the PRG stand was Vari-Lite, Pathway Connectivity and Wybron. They are the European 

distributors for those product lines. 

The news on the 

Pulsar stand was that 

several product lines 

have been upgraded 

with tri-color LEDs, 

increasing the LED 

density by a factor of 

three and eliminating 

multi-colored 

shadows. Among the 

upgraded products 

are the ChromaLink 

TC, ChromaPoint TC, 

ChromaStrip 2/25/X1 

TC, ChromaFlood 50 

TC, ChromaGround 

50 TC, ChromaGround 

MR16 (available with RGB or tri-color LEDs) and ChromaBatten TC. Shown here is Pulsar’s 

head of sales and marketing Andy Graves. 

Swisson introduced 

the new XSD- 

I48 Sine Wave Dimmer 

installation racks. 

The first installation 

was recently commissioned 

at the New Vic 

Theatre in Staffordshire, 

UK. Shown here 

is Swisson’s Simon 

Beck. 

On the DTS stand, 

the XR1200 Wash fixture 

debuted as a new 

moving head projector 

with a Philips MSR 

Gold 1200W discharge 

lamp, outputting 

27,000 lux at five meters. 

Features include a 

motorized zoom from 

20° to 45°, rotating indexable 

beam shaper 

(0° to 180°), two frost 

filters, two color conversion 

filters (3.200°K 

and 5.600°K), CMY plus 

a color wheel with six dichroic filters plus open and the choice of an electromagnetic 

or electronic ballast. Other new products on the stand included the XR700 Spot and 

Wash, XR4 Wash, XM 250 Spot and the Pharus Followspot. 



49

FEATURE 


Lex Products 

exhibited at PLASA 

for the first time. 

They recently introduced 

a new 

data multicable 

with four Cat 5e 

Ethernet lines in a 

single cable. It has 

a thermoplasticelastomer 

jacket 

and Neutrik Ethercon 

connectors. 

Vari-Lite was showing prototypes of the soonto-be 

released versions of the VL500 and VL1000 

with 400-watt ceramic metal halide lamps. The 

units will carry on-board power supplies and offer 

10,000 hours of lamp life. They are expected 

to start shipping in the second quarter of 2009. 

Also on the stand was the new VL3500 Wash FX 

fixture with four indexable rotating gobos and 

a new ground glass and coated output lens. The 

new fixture is a hybrid wash/projector and outputs 

60,000 lumens. 

PixelRange launched the new PixelMax 

at PLASA. Sixteen of the six-cell LED wash 

lights highlighted their stand designed by 

lighting designer Vince Foster. Other new 

products on the stand included the high 

resolution PixelMax Pro and a compact 

36 by 6 pixels half-length PixelArt. Pixel- 

Max Pro is a combined wash and pixellation 

luminaire, featuring 288 RGBA Luxeon 

Rebel LEDs with the same housing as the 

PixelMax Wash but with 18 individually 

controlled cells in a 3x6 matrix. Also introduced 

was a new software upgrade for PixelArt 

that allows it to be used standalone 

without other set-up utilities or a media 

server to generate content 

PR Lighting introduced 

the V-LED 

display screen and 

opened up two new 

rental companies in 

Europe. One of the 

companies bought 

a supply of XL-1200 

Spots for a local television 

station. Their 

French distributor 

bought a large supply 

of the new XL-250s. 

A very busy Avolites 

stand was home base 

for Brad White of Avolites 

America. The show 

served as a launching 

pad for Avo’s new Titan 

operating system for 

the Pearl and Diamond 

4 series consoles and a 

new digital media server, 

The Addict Server, 

which was developed 

by Dave Green, Mark 

Calvert and Ralph Lambert 

of Pixel Addicts 

Ltd. 

ETC introduced their 

new Unison architectural 

lighting control system, 

and its centerpiece is the 

Paradigm. The Paradigm’s 

library of lighting products 

(conventionals, moving 

lights, LEDs and more) 

with touchscreen control 

helps create dynamic effects 

while networking 

devices from different 

manufacturers — both 

wired and wireless — to 

inter-operate over the 

same control system. 

Columbus McKinnon introduced the 

Prostar with double DC brake system. 

The new ArchiBar 150 from Studio 

Due is a linear batten with 16 modules of 

5-watt RGBW LEDs. It has an IP rating of 

67 and a built-in power supply. Nine channels 

of DMX512 are required for control. 

Lars Wernlund of Capture Sweden 

demonstrates the new Capture Polar 

featuring real-time shadows, volumetric 

beams, more realistic color mixing and 

HDR mapping, which prevents whiteouts 

and improves contrast. 

The TMB Lounge. 



INTERVIEW 

Rob 

PROJECTION 

Koenig 

LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

The LD for Billy Idol uses new gear for old-school rock ‘n’ roll looks. 

Rob Koenig, owner, World View Touring 

By Rob Ludwig 

Koenig says his musical training helps him keep the visual beat for Billy Idol, shown here, and other artists. 

Although you can’t download lighting 

design from iTunes, in many ways it 

is a lot like music. So says up-andcoming 

lighting designer Rob Koenig. Koenig 

is the owner of World View Touring and he’s 

currently viewing the world and touring with 

Billy Idol. In this PLSN interview, Koenig tells 

us how music is like lighting design, why he 

prefers soft edge fixtures, and why he loves 

rock ‘n’ roll design. 

PLSN: What possessed you to get into the 

lighting industry? 

Rob Koenig: I started off wanting to do 

sound. In the early 1990s I got out of high 

school and I started doing sound, and it really 

just didn’t do much for me. I continued playing 

in bands and around 1995 I started working 

for a local sound company in Orlando. 

They had a small sound and lighting rig and 

the lighting guy left to move onto bigger and 

better things. I believe he went to go work 

for Bash, and they needed a lighting guy. So 

I stepped into the lighting position and that’s 

when it all just came alive to me. 

I’m guessing that you were probably exposed 

to sound and lighting when you 

were playing in bands, right? 

I was a drummer and played piano for 

about 12 years of my youth — from about 

age five to 17. I started playing drums when I 

was nine and did the whole high school drum 

line thing. 

When you switched to lighting, did the 

light go on for you so to speak? 

It was a real awakening experience. I didn’t 

enjoy the ear candy as much as I enjoyed the 

eye candy. I appreciate a good mix, but I just 

fell in love with lighting overnight. 

What type of shows were you lighting? 

We were doing a lot of different stuff. We 

were doing a lot of the club circuit in Florida 

— a lot of metal bands, punk bands. So, (let’s) 

say we’d do a run with Mighty Mighty Boss 

Tones. We’d work for a promoter and do two 

or three shows providing lights and sound. 

We’d do Faith No More, Bad Religion, Marilyn 

Manson and those types of shows. I had a 

blast doing those shows. 

How did your background in music help 

you understand cue changes and other elements 

of lighting? 

Most rock ‘n’ roll bands have a certain 

structure to their music, a certain feel to it. To 

me, what is lighting but rhythm and mood? 

I grew up playing drums and piano, so that 

definitely helped me understand what lighting 

is all about. Drums are all about finding 

that pocket and a groove; sectioning the music. 

The piano can be a rhythmic instrument, 

as well. It can also establish the harmony and 

the overall feel of a song. My musical background 

is a major factor in my approach to 

lighting. I want my lighting to be rhythmic 

and to establish the harmony and the overall 

feel of the song. 

For how long did you do the club circuit? 

I did that for about two years; 1995 and 

1996. Then, some of friends of mine got signed 

and needed a lighting designer. They were on 

tour and they were getting their first bus and 

they were all excited. I went out to work for 

them for little money, and they weren’t making 

any money at the time, either. The band 

was Matchbox 20. That was my first tour and 

it lasted 10 months. We were all rookies and 

none of us knew what was going on. We were 

like a deer in the headlights — from the band 

all the way through the crew. 

Did that tour start out in clubs? 

And small theatres. “Push” had just come 

out as a single and it was slow going at first, 

but after a couple weeks of it being on the radio, 

they were picking up momentum. Their 

record sales — and this is when we still had 

record sales — were doubling every week. It 

just got more exciting every day. 

Were you carrying gear or using whatever 

was available? 

We were carrying a small package; six 

Martin 518’s, some (High End Systems) Dataflash 

and some pipe and using whatever else 

was in-house. 

I take it you were the designer, programmer 

and tech? 

Yeah, the whole nine. I was using an NSI 

MLC-16 for a controller, if you can believe that. 

“I would like to be as respected as Butch 

Allen, John Broderick, or Roy Bennett. 

Those guys are my heroes.” —Rob Koenig 

Was that a lot of work? 

I’ve got to tell you, it helped me tighten 

up my skills. At the time, that console had no 

way to preset palettes, at all. So I had to go 

into every cue to adjust all my pan and tilt 

settings. 

So when you went into a new venue, you 

couldn’t just go into your show file and update 

your position palettes and it would 

update your cues; you had to go in a touch 

up every cue, right? 

Every cue. 

Well, it’s like you said; you really learn the 

basics that way. 

You really do. You learn how to streamline 

your programming and how to get quick on 

a console. 

That tour must have been a great learning 

experience for you. 

It was awesome. 

That takes you into the late 1990s. What 

was next? 

That was all of 1997 for me. Late in 1997 

and early 1998, I went out to LD for Deep Purple 

for a while. 

Was that a more elaborate rig or the same 

type of thing? 

They were doing a lot of fly dates, so we 

didn’t carry a lot. But it was more elaborate because 

were working with an established legendary 

rock band that was selling tickets, opposed 

to an up-and-coming band. We were using a 

180K, three-truss system with some movers, so 

it was a lot more elaborate than what I was able 

to get on Matchbox at the time. 

What were you using for control, then? 

Whatever was available. We were doing 

a lot of multi-dates at the House of Blues, so 

we got Avolites Pearls a lot, which helped 

me learn those very rapidly. Then we went 

down through Mexico and on those dates it 

was whatever they would throw at me. After 

Deep Purple, I began working at the House of 

Blues in Orlando, and it gave me the opportunity 

to program continuously and work with 

a myriad of directors and designers over the 

years. I love working there, and I continue to 

work there when I am home. 

Do you own your own independent design 

firm now? 

Yes, it’s called World View Touring. 

What are you guys up to? 

Right now I'm working on Billy Idol. 

Prior to that, the past two years, mainly 

was the band Live. Prior to Live, I spent 

about four months with Papa Roach. Rock 

‘n’ roll design and touring is where I enjoy 


52 

PLSN OCTOBER 2008


INTERVIEW 


“I went out to 

work for them 

for little money, 

and they 

weren’t making 

any money at 

the time, either. 

The band was 

Matchbox 20.” 

—Rob Koenig 

being. I do some corporate work as well, 

but I truly love rock ‘n’ roll design. Ministry, 

Better than Ezra, Machine Head and 

Lit are a few of the artists that I’ve had the 

pleasure of working with. 

That’s a great resume. Different designers 

have their own unique styles. What do 

you like to do when you’re designing? 

I think I’ve become very good about 

treating every artist individually. One 

thing I am a huge fan of is a lot of wash 

lights. I tend to stay away from a lot of 

spot luminaires. A lot of the time I use 

them for accents, but I’ve found, for me, 

that I really enjoy soft-edge beams a lot 

more. 

Why is that? 

I think with spot luminaires, everybody 

uses them, everybody carries them 

— we see them everywhere. We see them 

on American Idol and Who Wants to be a 

Millionaire, and, as much as I admire those 

designers, I think the look has been copied 

so much that it has become typical. So, 

sometimes I use them. I splash them in here 

or there, especially if they are requested. 

But I really enjoy working with color, strobe 

effects and strategically placed movement. 

Can I do that with spot luminaires? 

Absolutely. But I try to stay away from that 

because I feel that look has been done 

enough. 

Is it fair to say that you’re using automated 

fixtures to achieve, in some 

ways, the same look you would achieve 

with multiple PAR fixtures while cutting 

down the size of your rig, coming up 

with that subtle look, and using movement, 

in time, to get that true rock ‘n’ 

roll feel? 

Absolutely. You go back and look at 

some of the old shows — my favorites are 

some of the old Mötley Crüe and Ozzie 

shows — where there are just huge PAR 

can pods in the air. Do I want to carry that 

around today? No, because it’s a nightmare. 

But, thankfully those guys did it 

back in the day because it’s brilliant stuff. 

But I thoroughly enjoy that heavy wash 

look on the stage because I can take that 

same beam and isolate it on a performer 

as well, and make it a soft look. To me, you 

put a (Martin) MAC 2K Spot and a MAC 2K 

Wash in a room and I’m going to go hug 

that MAC 2K Wash because that is a beautiful 

looking light. 

In your wildest dreams, where do you see 

yourself in the future? 

I’ll make it simple. I would like to be as 

respected as Butch Allen, John Broderick, 

or Roy Bennett. Those guys are my heroes. 

I’d love to design multiple shows a year; go 

out and program them up, see my finished 

work, and go right into the next one. That is 

the ultimate dream. 

Koenig will use spot luminaires on occasion, but prefers the soft-edge beams of wash fixture. Shown here, Billy Idol’s Tour. 

Koenig tries to give each artist he works with a different 

set of looks. Here, he lights a performance by Julien-K. 





w 

INStALLAtIONS 

Venue 68 

AV-interiors Helps Asbury United Methodist Church Turn Rink into Ministry 

Krystyn Bramlett 

Marcus Walker and Colby Bramlett of AV-i mounted moving lights on truss 

towers of varying height to give the performance platform more visual depth. 

By Thomas S.Freeman 

One of the biggest issues facing Asbury 

United Methodist Church a 

few years back was parking space. 

The fast growing church was severely challenged 

for places to put all of the cars carrying 

new worshipers. When Senior Pastor 

Dr. Tom Harrison heard that the ice rink adjacent 

to the church had become available, 

he didn’t give it much thought. Then, one 

day, he drove through the parking lot and 

started counting parking spaces. He counted 

220 of them. 

When Harrison realized the potential for 

the additional parking, he told executive director 

Dwight Yoder about the availability. 

Much to Harrison’s surprise, Yoder revealed 

that he had a vision for the now empty rink. 

His vision was to transform it into a venue 

for great music, world-changing projects, 

and the center of the church youth community. 

Within a short time, the church had 

purchased the building and lot, renovated 

it, and re-launched it as Venue 68 in honor 

of Yoder’s favorite passage from the bible, 

Micah 6:8. 

A Year in the Making 

56 PLSN OctOber 2008 


Oklahoma City-based AV-interiors (AV-i) 

was consulted in the early stages to design 

and build the audio, video, and lighting 

systems. For over a year, Marcus Walker and 

Colby Bramlett, co-owners of the company, 

worked on the design of the systems in conjunction 

with the church, the architect, the 

electrical contractor and the other trades. 

“Asbury had a technologically advanced 

vision for the new facility,” said Walker, “including 

the desire to have it function as a 

stand alone intimate worship experience, 

a video venue satellite campus, as well as 

a full concert house,” Bramlett said, adding 

that “they wanted the system to not only 

meet the needs of their creative staff, but 

meet or exceed most of the technical riders 

for all of the bands they anticipate having 

in the facility.” 

Clearly, the parking lot was going to 

need a lot of help from the renovation of the 

building to meet the needs of the church. 

From 2D To 3D 


When the architect handed over 2D 

AutoCAD drawings of the building, including 

the 10,000 square foot youth sanctuary, 

AV-i went to work sketching out the system. 

Using LD Assistant lighting design software, 

they imported the AutoCAD file and began 

to develop a 3D model. They laid in the 

walls, the platform, the risers, and the soft 

goods. Then they went about designing the 

lighting system. 

“The primary goal of the lighting system 

was to provide enough lighting to see 

the band on the platform and then to have 

enough color and projection to transform 

the music into a concert experience. In a 

lot of churches, the video wash takes precedence, 

and that tends to wash out a lot of 

the eye candy — the color, the projection, 

and the effects. But in this case, we wanted 

there to be enough light for IMAg, but still 

have enough contrast to make the colors 

and projections pop.” 

Moving Lights On Towers 


In order to create a more three-dimensional 

look on the platform, Walker and 

Bramlett came up with the idea to create 

spatial lighting positions by using truss towers 

of varying height. On top of each truss 

tower a single moving light would provide 

aerial beams and effects as well as allowing 

them to splay the softgoods behind them. 

Two more moving lights were positioned 

on the downstage lip of the platform for 

side lighting and to give it more of a concert 

feel. 

Video projection screens were placed 

offstage right and left and two Panasonic 

PT-DW5100U projectors provided graphics 

support. A larger 16-foot wide center electric 

projection screen was placed upstage 

center and a Panasonic PT-DW7000U-K projector 

was specified to supply the satellite 

campus video feed to the facility. Two 52- 

inch flat panel LCD monitors were rigged 

on the upstage truss towers to provide a 

more graphics-intensive look and to provide 

front fill video coverage to the first two 

rows of seating. Three light natural velour 

The Leprecon console lets volunteers quickly “bring up the house lights, the stage wash or any number of preset looks,” Bramlett says. 

backdrops with 100 percent fullness were 

brought in to provide more surfaces for 

color wash and projection. 

After several months of design meetings, 

presentations, and associated budget 

discussions, AV-i created conceptual renderings 

for final approval from the church 

committee. When the church approved the 

design and associated budget, they fully 

understood what was going to be installed 

and how the final product would “look.” In 

the end, the design included 28 ETC Source 

Fours of varying beam angles, 16 PAR 64s, 

six Martin MAC TW1s, four MAC 575 Kryptons, 

two MAC 250 Kryptons, and two MAC 

250 Washes. The control console was a Leprecon 

LPX-48 and the dimmer packs were 

Leprecon VX-2400s. 

The video suite was designed around a 

volunteer based approach to include several 

workstations equipped with Production 

Intercom and Sony upstream LCD video 

monitors. AV-i used two Edirol V-44SW video 

switchers due to the limited rack space and 

ease of volunteer operation. IMAg camera 

connectivity was provided in three main locations 

on the floor as well as several other 

locations throughout the room for future 

roaming cameras and jib shots. 

“One of the most unique aspects of this 

project,” said Walker, “was the fact that it 

still functions as a satellite campus, or video 

venue, although it is physically across the 

parking lot from the broadcast campus.” 

A fiber optic audio and video infrastructure 

was implemented to deliver the main 

pastoral message to this venue. “Not only 

is this fiber optic feed bi-directional,” said 

Bramlett, “it can be transmitted live or time 

delayed to suit the programming that is going 

on during the services in each venue. 

This allows the venues the ability to not be 

completely dependent upon service programming 

and timing for smooth productions.” 

Countdown to Opening 


AV-i came in to install the infrastructure 

and oversee the electrical installation 

a month before the scheduled opening. 

The electrical contractor ran the dimming 

circuits from the electrical closet to the 

raceways rigged 22 feet in the ceiling of the 

sanctuary. They carefully numbered each 

circuit and terminated the dimmers. Everything 

went smoothly and in two weeks the 

AV-i crew was receiving gear and rigging 

it in the ceiling. Four days before the first 

service everything was rigged and working 

properly. All that remained was to focus 

the lights, program the console, dial in the 

video and train the staff. 

“The idea behind using the Leprecon 

console,” said Bramlett, “was to create a 

platform that is easy for volunteers to use. 

We wanted to stuff the console with as 

many different looks as possible and give 

them easy access to them. Also, the 24 conventional 

faders at the top of the console 

and the 12 preset playbacks makes it easy 

for them to grab a fader and bring up the 

house lights, the stage wash, or any number 

of preset looks.” 

It took about a day to focus and gel the 

conventional lights, then another day to 

set up the console with all the presets including 

focus positions, colors, gobos, and 

effects. The last couple of days were spent


getting as many looks as possible into the 

console and training the staff to play them 

back as well as to program their own looks. 

Coordination in the video suite was 

simple. Once the staff arrived for the introduction 

to the system, they were assembled 

in their respective workstations and were 

trained individually on their specific tasks. 

On the Saturday morning before the 

first service, the risers were brought in and 

the band set up. That was the first time the 

AV-i crew got a look at the final layout on 

the platform. Then a quick run through of 

program for the first service provided a 

quick opportunity to prepare for the big 

event. 

Racing the Downbeat 


Early Sunday morning of the first service 

in the new facility, the AV-i crew arrived 

on site to start the system. The band started 

filing in about an hour later for one last run 

through before the doors opened for the 

first time. It was then that the final video 

content and worship graphics were delivered 

by Asbury’s creative team and put up 

on the screens for the first time. 

It would have been easy for the AV-i 

crew to panic, given that the new video 

content didn’t quite match the colors that 

were programmed for the seven songs to 

be played during the service. Instead, they 

went to work to change the programming. 

“We were programming right up until 

the doors opened, and it was a race between 

us and the doors. Fortunately, we 

programmed using preset color palettes, so 

we just had to go through the material slide 

by slide and try to match the colors on the 

screen or throw up complementary colors.” 

By the time the band played the first 

downbeat, it looked as if they had spent 

weeks, not hours, programming the lights 

and preparing the video. 

“The TW1s really put out a lot of light, so 

we could wash the entire backdrop with just 

a couple of them and use the other ones to 

create big fat aerial beams with color. I wish 

we had more of them. But the combination 

of those with the 575s and even the 250s 

worked well because of their relative positions 

on the platform.” 

Chris Cleveland led the band while a capacity 

house filed into the new sanctuary. 

When the service began, Pastor Harrison recounted 

how he had once driven through the 

parking lot of the former skating rink counting 

parking spaces. But on that day, he was 

counting heads and hearts in the house. 

“We usually have a walk in look when 

the doors open to welcome people into 

the space. And we could hear them kind of 

gasp when they first saw the place. I wish 

that we could have saved the lighting for 

the first song so we could hear the collective 

gasp.” 

The once-empty ice rink and its ample parking lot 

now get filled with worshippers on a regular basis. 

The final worship graphics and video content were delivered by Asbury’s creative team and put on the screens 

for the first time just minutes before the first service in the new facility. 



2008 OctOber PLSN 

57

z 

PRODUCTION PrOFILe 


brad 

Paisley 

The Fun Continues with the “Paisley Party Tour 2008” 

Photos & Text by Steve Jennings 

Tyler Truss designed and constructed a 48-foot-long carpeted video riser for the “Paisley Party” tour. 

No sooner had Brad Paisley’s highly 

successful last tour, “Bonfires and 

Amplifiers”, come to end did he announce 

his next tour, The “Paisley Party.” 

Lighting designer and director Dean Spurlock, 

who has been with Paisley for about 

seven years, was called on to keep the 2008 

Grammy Award-winner and the Academy of 

Country Music Top Male Vocalist of 2007 and 

2008 out of the dark, with visuals that would 

meet Paisley’s goal of achieving his “most 

spectacular concert yet.” 

“The show is basically an all Vari-Lite 

show,” Spurlock says. “I really love the Vari- 

Lite product — the color palette, the patterns 

and most of all the reliability.” The Element 

Labs Versa Tubes are a hold-over from 

the last tour. “The tubes make for a great 

backdrop with all you can do with graphics,” 

he says. “Actually our side tube walls look 

like PA clusters but really give us a cinema 

wide look.” 

Croons to Toons 


Paisley actively contributed to the video 

content for the tour. “Brad actually did the 

animation for the cartoon video segment of 

the show,” Spurlock reveals. “He created it all 

himself. I told him it was the coolest thing in 

the whole show.” 

“He drew the cartoons for the instrumental 

song ‘Throttleneck’ and ‘It’s Amazing,’” 

notes Bailey Prior, who has been on the road 

with Paisley for the last two tours on behalf 

of Moo TV, Paisley’s video production supplier 

for about five years. According to Prior, 

switching the show can be an adventure. 

“Due to Brad’s show being live, we hang 

on for the ride. That being said, we utilize 

three manned cameras, two robo cameras 

and one POV camera that I cut for the 

screens and LED wall. We add in some B-roll 

and special effects as well. Most of the preshot 

footage was shot and edited by Tim 

Monnig and the crew at Moo-TV post production 

in Nashville. The video is switched 

using a Grass Valley 250 Video Switcher and 

a Watchout server system. The video is displayed 

on an LED wall. 

Setting the Stage 


Pendleton, Ind.-based Tyler Truss and its 

sister company, Dodd Technologies (DTI), 

were both involved in the tour. DTI was outsourced 

to handle various scenic elements 

such as painting and refurbishing of the amplifier 

set pieces, ramp and stage carpet, etc. 

In addition to refurbishing the main staging 

components featured in last year’s tour, 

Tyler Truss, under the supervision of Scott Almand, 

general manager, designed and constructed 

a 48-foot-by-8-foot-by-7-foot-2-inch 

carpeted video wall riser with a free span, tech 

and gear “housing” room underneath. 

“The video wall,” supplied by Moo TV, “is 

massive for a reason,” said Bill Edwards, director 

of marketing at DTI, and that is “to clearly 

display the many complex graphics, animations 

and videos that literally put the show 

up close and in your face.” 

The muy grandé video riser, Edwards 

adds, comes in handy. “To bridge the band 

risers and platforms, an upstage ramp and 

downstage mini ramp connect the band risers 

to the video riser, allowing ample room 

for Brad to make his way up, around and 

down the set and video wall platform as his 

performance is laced with movement and 

effects.” 

From Stadiums to Sheds 


Kevin Freeman, production manager, and 

Bill Ferris, stage manager, asked Tyler Truss 

to design and fabricate a set that included a 

ramp, poser and thrust system. 

“It had to be flexible in a number of ways,” 

Edwards says, “including being height adjustable 

to being solid to walk and run on, no 

matter the particular length, layout, or height. 

The center thrust spec called for angular and 

side-to-side adjustable legs from 3 feet to 5 

feet-5 inches, capable of a 100-foot run.” 

The system had to be designed to accommodate 

either stadiums or sheds, and the 

platforms had to be seating-friendly so they 

could be used without having to force the 

venue to physically remove any seats. 

“On top of all of this,” Edwards adds, 

“Dean’s lighting requirements led to Tyler developing 

an innovative solution and system 

that included translucent platform tops, selfcontained, 

with ride-along Versa Tube lighting 

pods in ready-to-connect mode.” 

Playing Traffic Cop 


This is Bill Farris’ second tour with Paisley. He 

worked as set carpenter for Reba McEntire from 

1990 to 1997 and as production manager with 

LeAnn Rimes from 1998 to 2006. Farris credits a 

great crew with making it a great ride. 

“All I have to do is be the daily traffic cop. 

This tour has plenty of veterans in all departments. 

Kevin Freeman does a great job looking 

after the crew and band, so I just stay out 

of their way.” Lead driver Eddie White “makes 

my job easy every day.” Spurlock and crew 

chief Brian “Sweet Pea” Carico, he added, “did 

a great prep job for this year's tour, so when 

we were in May rehearsals, it was easy incorporating 

the other tour elements.” 

The video riser, LED wall and other video elements display a variety of complex graphics, animations and looks. 

Brad Paisley’s own toons animate instrumentals “Throttleneck” and “It’s Amazing.” 

58 PLSN OctOber 2008

An upstage ramp and downstage mini-ramp connect the band risers to the video riser. 

Prior agrees. “I’ve been doing this for a 

while so I’m always up for more challenges. 

So far, they have not been huge. Working 

with Kevin Freeman, Bill Ferris and the rest 

of the crew makes everything run smooth 

as silk. My video crew,” including Bo O’Brien, 

crew chief and LED tech, Joe Monahan, Watchout 

system engineer, Bill Overstreet, FOH 

camera operator, Mark Ellis, stage camera 

operator and Cole Duddleson, stage camera 

operator — “are the best in the business.” 

As Paisley moves around the set, the video elements combine to create visual movement and effects. 

The Fun Goes On 


Spurlock started his own company, 

Spurlock Lighting, but “I’m just a small 

company starting out,” he says. Much of 

the lighting gear for the tour is hired from 

Theatrical Lighting Systems (TLS), which is 

owned by David Milly. 

Paisley’s last tour was so successful that 

a third leg was added. Spurlock is upbeat 

about the current tour as well. “This year 

has been our best year so far. I’m so glad to 

see this show grow like it has.” 

He adds that he enjoys working for the 

man who wrote “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The 

Fishin’ Song)” and titled one of his albums 

Time Well Wasted. Paisley obviously has a 

sense of humor. “You couldn’t ask for anybody 

better to work for,” Spurlock says. “I 

can’t thank him enough.” 

CREW 

Lighting Companies: Theatrical Lighting 

Systems (TLS), Spurlock Lighting 

Lighting Designer/Director: 

Dean Spurlock 

Production Manager: Kevin Freeman 

Tour Manager: Brent Long 

Stage Manager: Bill Ferris 

Lighting Programmer: Benny Kirkham 

Lighting Crew Chief: 

Brian “Sweet Pea” Carico 

Lighting Tech: Brace “Cowboy” Baltrop, 

Johnathan “Magic Shoes” Edwards, Jason 

“King Jr” Hicks, Ira “LB” Wilkens 

Set Design/Fabrication: Tyler Truss, 

Dodd Technologies 

Video Company: Moo TV 

Video Director: Bailey Prior 

Video Crew Chief/LED Tech: Bo O’Brien 

Watchout System Engineer: Joe Monahan 

FOH Camera Op: Bill Overstreet 

Stage Camera Ops: Mark Ellis, Cole Duddleson 

GEAR 

Lighting console: MA Lighting grandMA 






800m Element Labs Versa Tube HDs 

18 Color Kinetics Color Blasts 

120’ Stardrop 

12 Martin QFX 

2 Catalyst Media Servers 

1 Lycian Truss Spot 



2008 October PLSN 

59

FEATURE 


2008 Parnelli Lifetime 

Achievement Award Winner 

Dennis 

Sheehan 

Dennis Sheehan has earned the respect and admiration from everyone from U2’s Bono 

to fellow crewmembers since he started working as a tour manager in the 1960s. 

By Kevin M.Mitchell 

Attention to Detail, Sense of Humor Key 

to U2 Tour Manager’s Success 

Dennis Sheehan has had a backstage 

pass to rock and roll history. For a quarter 

of a century he has shepherded U2 

to the four corners of the globe and back again. 

Prior to that, he assisted Led Zeppelin on their 

historic tours. The one-time professional guitarist 

has also served a host of acts including 

Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Siouxie and 

the Banshees and members of the Sex Pistols, 

among many others. 

“Dennis is a great, hardworking and loyal 

tour manager who always has everyone’s best 

interest at heart all the time,” says production 

manager Jake Berry. “I think it’s his enthusiasm 

and love of the industry that has enabled him 

to maintain the breakneck speed that the job 

requires for all these years. And he’s maintained 

his enthusiasm for 40 years! It’s very hard to 

put into words why he’s so great at his job.” 

“Dennis is basically a saint,” adds Sam 

O’Sullivan, U2’s drum tech and studio manager. 

“I’ve seen him drag bags around airports 

and run to the stage with a late set list — still 

things he does today! The industry is a better 

place having Dennis Sheehan being part of it.” 

“Dennis Sheehan is a wise and trusted 

colleague and the best tour manager in the 

world,” Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, says. 

Mutual Respect 

Sheehan’s career is a case study of not only 

showing respect, but also receiving it. “You do 

“Money is important, but so is respect. 

I’d never let anyone treat me badly.” 

—Dennis Sheehan 

a job you like, you do it well, and you should 

be given respect,” he said. “A lot of artists would 

pay highly for a good tour manager, but the respect 

didn’t come with it. Money is important, 

but so is respect. I’d never let anyone treat me 

badly.” 

Sheehan was born in 1946 in Wolverhampton, 

England, where his parents had 

gone to work during World War II. Six months 

later, the family, originally from Ireland, returned 

to the costal shipping town of Dungarvan, 

Ireland. “The people of the town 

weren’t wealthy by any means, and I don’t 

ever remember seeing a car,” Sheehan says 

of his early years. “But music was around me 

all the time.” At age 10, Sheehan returned 

to England with his family. There, a science 

teacher who practiced the art of finger picking 

the guitar inspired the young Sheehan. 

“Everyone was a huge Burl Ives fan and I was 

fascinated by his playing,” Sheehan says, adding 

with a laugh: “I believed in three months I 

could play as well!” 

He must have gotten fairly close, because 

a few years later he was in a group and performing 

professionally throughout Europe, 

eventually playing more blues-oriented music. 

“On the U.S. Army bases we would play 

“House of the Rising Sun” and they would 

just throw money on the stage,” he laughs. 

“We’d play it a half a dozen times a night! It 

was good fun.” 

From Architecture to Touring 

By the time he was 19 he was still playing 

but was mostly trying to focus on being an apprentice 

architect. He was less than enthused 

by where that road was headed, and when the 

opportunity came up to travel with a band, he 

grabbed it. That band was Jimmy James and 

the Vagabonds, which was one of the biggest 

soul bands in the 1960s. When the original 

tour manager landed in the U.K., he had to return 

to the band’s homeland of Jamaica, and 

Sheehan was called into action. “I had driven 

my own band around, and at that point I knew 

I wasn’t going to miss playing very much.” 

The methods were primitive by today’s 

standard, but Sheehan moved the eight-piece 

group around Europe competently. “It was 

pretty basic,” he laughs, shaking his hand. “It 

was me and a roadie. And we’d play seven 

nights a week, twice on Saturday, and in some 

clubs the audience was as many as 1,500 people.” 

Discovering America 

Despite the grueling schedule, the young 

Sheehan managed to show up for regular 

soccer games at a park in London on Sunday 

mornings. The pick up game involved a lot of 

the people from the burgeoning live event industry, 

and next thing he knew he was working 

for the Scottish act Cartoone, managed by 

Peter Grant and Mark London. The band was 

on the way to America. 

“I had never been to America, and I was 

looking forward to it,” he says. “And we were 

one of a whole series of acts on that tour, back 

when you’d do a 45 minute set and get off 

stage. We didn’t have an extra roadie at the 

time so it was up to me to get them on, get the 

mics up and take care of the equipment.” 

The bills had a wide variety of acts; Sun Ra, 

Led Zeppelin, MC5, Spirit, Everly Brothers — all 

appearing together. “All these different musicians 

playing together in these big clubs. And 

we didn’t have separate dressing rooms. You 

each just took your own section. It was a great 

time with great shows.” The tour lasted a mere 

five weeks but it cemented Sheehan’s passion 

for the live event industry. 

Witness to Tragedy 

Back in England, he would work for the 

band Stone the Crows, which led him to witness 

an tragedy that has become a case study 

in the importance of proper electrical grounding 

in the live production industry. 

“They were a great and hugely popular 

band. One night they were supposed to play 

at a university in Wales, but at the last minute, 

due to a demand on tickets, they moved the 

band to a bigger ballroom to accommodate 

more people,” Sheehan recalls. It was May of 

1972, and as was typical of the times, Sheehan 

did double duty as the tour manager and 

soundman. Guitarist Les Howard touched an 

unearthed microphone with wet hands, and 

the ungrounded power source electrocuted 

him. Sheehan himself would get thrown back 

10 feet when he touched the soundboard. 

“I ran and pulled all the plugs as quickly as I 

could, and an ambulance was called … but 

Les would be declared D.O.A.” 

Stairway to Zeppelin 

Grant and London had had also started 

managing Led Zeppelin, and Sheehan would 

get his next big break — assisting on the 1975 

and 1977 tours. “We had our own 727 and had 



FEATURE 

a lot of people on the road, including a few undesirables.” 

That tour would come to a “grinding 

halt” on the tragic news that Robert Plant’s sixyear-old 

son, Karac, died of respiratory failure. 

He would be called back to work with the 

1979 concerts and he proved himself ably 

enough to secure his future as a top tier tour 

manager. He would also gain plenty of storytelling 

fodder to regale and delight all those 

who would be fortunate enough to find themselves 

in his company for years to come. 

Cementing a Bond 

“Of course 25 years ago, he had been working 

in England for a few years for some other 

groups, and he had picked up a bit of an English 

accent. That was the first thing that had to go 

... along with his mohawk. Now he looks and 

sounds as if he never left Dungarvan!” 

Sheehan confirms that he immediately 

gelled with McGuiness and the band. “We developed 

mutual respect for each other,” he 

says. McGuiness, then as now, had a business 


“I’m not a big guy, but I’m not afraid of 

anybody.” —Dennis Sheehan 

“Arista Records were having problems in 

communicating with their new acts, especially 

one in particular,” he says of one of his more 

interesting assignments, Patti Smith. “Patti had 

just released Easter, and so they asked if I would 

work as artist liaison and local record label manager 

on a European tour. They were always trying 

to get these types of acts to talk to the commercial 

press for obvious reasons, but all people 

like Patti were interested in was talking to the 

underground magazines. Patti didn’t want to 

talk at all to commercial press.” 

Acts of Kindness 

But Sheehan won her over by acts of kindness. 

“At one point, we had met Nico (a.k.a. 

Christa Päffgen, singer/songwriter/actress/ 

model) in Paris, and Patti was taken by her even 

though at the time she was heavily dependent 

on drugs.” 

Later while she was out walking with Dennis, 

Patti saw this little Harmonium in an antique 

shop and commented that Nico would love it. 

At that point, the tour had done well and as 

usual, Sheehan had expertly handled the budget 

so he didn’t hesitate picking it up for Patti to 

give to Nico. “I told Patti, ‘You know what she’ll 

do with it? She’ll play it for a few minutes then 

sell it for drugs.’ And Patti said, ‘I know, Dennis, 

but these things are so important. She misses 

her music. We still love these artists and must 

honor their contribution.’” 

During this period he also had a run in with 

a club manager in Arkansas who not so subtly 

threatened him when he was working with The 

Professionals. “I was trying to get our fair share 

of the door that night based on a guarantee 

against percentage, not just our minimum,” 

he tells with a twinkle in his eye. “I kept telling 

him that there were a lot of people there that 

night, well over the agreed number, and we deserved 

extra money. He disagreed and when he 

opened his briefcase filled with cash there was 

a gun on top of it. Then he ‘assured’ me that we 

had just the right amount of people and I wasn’t 

getting a penny more than the guarantee. Well, 

you don’t argue with stuff like that!” 

resemblance to Peter Grant as a great manager. 

“They are incredibly hard working, and they go 

to extreme lengths to achieve what they want. 

You think you get to a peak with them, but you 

don’t. With U2 they are always still climbing the 

mountain.” 

Looking back on that first tour he did with 

them, he says it seems positively pedestrian 

by today’s standards of the band. “This was the 

pre War album and tour, and we had a scrim, a 

couple of aluminum poles with white flags, a 

wind machine, a red carpet, a drum riser and 

that’s it!” he laughs. But at McGuinness’ request, 

Sheehan put his budgetary prowess to work 

immediately. “He asked me to look at expenses 

on touring, and I did. They had a crew bus and 

a band bus, and I got rid of both drivers. I drove 

the band and made the crew drive themselves. 

That saved £40,000 on the European tour!” 

A Group of Individuals 

While huge financial success for the band 

was still a few years off, Sheehan was at least 

able to turn things around so the bills were paid 

and they were mostly debt-free. 

But he stresses that even in the early days 

he was only just a part of an otherwise terrific 

organization. “They had a really formative team 

of people including Joe O’Herlihy, Mark Fisher, 

Willie Williams, Steve Iredale, Bob Koch, Jake 

Berry, good security, good accounting… These 

people were all necessary to what we were 

building. I just tried to keep a step ahead.” 

Sheehan also studied the band’s lifestyles. 

“They are individuals who make up a group, and 

it’s obvious that they all have different needs.” 

While he’s been with them more than a 

quarter of a century, Sheehan maintains that every 

tour is different and he has to approach it all 

with fresh eyes. Just now starting a world tour, 

he’s been scheming and planning all spring and 

summer. “I sit down and I look at renting houses 

for Bono and Edge as they both have large 

families, and like spending break times with 

them. They need to be in private houses. Larry 

[Mullens Jr] and Adam [Clayton] are more hotel 

guys.” 

Inspired by Burl Ives, Sheehan, third from left, took up the guitar and started performing professionally throughout Europe. 

Sheehan, left, and Paul McGuinness, right, have been working together for U2 since 1982. 

The “Perfect” Tour Manager 

“In 1982 I was looking for the perfect tour 

manager for U2,” McGuinness recalls. “We’d had 

a couple of duds. It was before the band was 

successful but we were touring constantly. I arranged 

to meet Robbie McGrath who had been 

the tour manager and sound engineer for the 

Boomtown Rats. The meeting was arranged for 

the Portobello Hotel in Notting Hill, U2’s home 

away from home for most of the 1980s. 

“But Robbie didn’t show up. He got a better 

offer or changed his mind. He sent Dennis 

Sheehan along instead. I was a bit annoyed with 

Robbie but I didn’t take it out on Dennis. I hired 

him on the spot. That was 25 years ago. He's 

the best in the world. I can’t imagine the last 25 

years without him. He has been absolutely fundamental 

to U2’s success. 

Covering the Basics 

Everything is taken into consideration and 

scrutinized. The rock and roll lifestyle lends itself 

to late hours and less-than-perfect eating habits, 

so he works to make sure the band eats well 

by hiring good caterers. Also, a fitness professional 

is on hand to keep the rigors of the road 

from deteriorating their health. 

Travel is always challenging. These days the 

band has 26 people on staff traveling with them. 

Sometimes, given personal considerations like 

in 2005 when a family member was quite ill, 

Sheehan finds himself managing the comings 

and goings of not only the Airbus 320 the band 

typically flies in, but also the two small jets that 

shuttles band mates to and from Dublin. 

With stars of this caliber security is always 

an issue. Reflecting on how things have 

Sheehan and guitar, early 1950s. 

Sheehan, left, and U2’s Adam Clayton, right. 

U2’s The Edge, left, and Sheehan, right. 

Sheehan and Bono. 



FEATURE 


Principle Management’s Sheila Roche, Bill Clinton, Paul McGuinness and Dennis Sheehan share a moment. Perks of the job included an overnight stay at the White House. 

Sheehan with U2’s Larry Mullens Jr. 

changed, Sheehan notes that back in his 

days with Zeppelin, “brute force” was used by 

bouncers that were called to duty. “But today 

security is more in tune with using the head 

rather than the hand.” 

An Agenda for Fun 

Fun also needs to put in the itinerary. “Because 

the band members are so close to each 

other, we all go out together occasionally. 

Sometimes we go out on a boat and enjoy 

the day off, and sometimes it’s the band that 

will organize something for all of us to do.” 

Locations for any event need to be scouted. 

When they stayed in Morocco to do some 

recording last spring, Sheehan went on a factfinding 

mission to scout out suitable housing. “I 

spent four days looking at 38 properties, from 

real crappy small places to palaces.” And the secret 

ingredient to making nearly a month’s stay 

by the world’s biggest rock group comfortable? 

“Lots of cash,” he laughs. “You walk into those 

situations with a pocket full of money and half 

the time you don’t know where it goes!” 

In addition to the mammoth success of 

the band and its comings and goings related 

to music, Sheehan has also been called in to 

assist in the high-profile activities of Bono 

and the rest of the group. Whether they go to 

Africa, New Orleans, or to appear before Congress 

to raise awareness for a cause, you can 

bet it was Sheehan who worked out the tricky 

details necessary to get them there. Of course 

that has perks. Sheehan stayed at the White 

House when Bono was invited by Bill and Hillary 

Clinton for the Millennium. 

A Great Storyteller 

Along the way, Sheehan has become an 

integral U2 family member, and one with 

wonderful tales to tell. And while it’s questionable 

how much that helped him succeed, 

it sure has made working with him 

more entertaining. “He’s one of the world’s 

greatest storytellers,” Berry says. His stories 

of the 1970s certainly entertained U2 — so 

much so that on one of Sheehan’s birthdays 

the band dressed up like members of Led 

Zeppelin for him. “It was [fricking] hilarious,” 

Barry recalls. 

Recently the band brought Sheehan up 

on stage for the first time at a Las Vegas gig in 

honor of his birthday. “Later at a party for me 

in a club I was presented by a big cake by two 

busty girls — it was the crowning glory!” 

Today, he’s working hard for the new 

tour, and not slowing down. 

“I wish I could retire,” jokes the 67-yearold. 

“My youngest will be 14 and I have to 

see him through college. But more than anything, 

I enjoy working. I have a nice balance 

between being on tour and being off and 

getting a chance to relax.” 

“Dennis is a hard working, loyal and talented 

tour manager who always has everyone’s 

best interest at heart all the time,” says 

Berry. “He always has a smile on his face.” 

“I never drank until I was 30, I never did 

drugs and I was always honest,” Sheehan 

says of his success. “I think people knew my 

history at the time, and knew I was straight 

and had a sense of responsibility. I always 

got the job done regardless.” 





INSTALLATIONS 

to Shakespeare 

The formal grand opening for the PaPA 

center isn’t until the 2009-2010 season, but 

the revamped building has already allowed 

for a longer theatre season and expanded 

training program. 

Shakespeare & Company Transforms a 70,000 

Square Foot Ice Rink and Field House 

By JenniferWillis 

Shakespeare & Company was running out 

of space. The theatre company, founded 

in 1978 with a mission of combining the 

strengths of classical British and American 

acting, first secured residency in the turn-ofthe-century 

estate that was home to writer 

Edith Wharton, then in 2000 expanded to 30 

acres with multiple buildings one mile away 

in Lenox, Mass. 

Even after moving to the larger location 

in 2001, however, Shakespeare & Company 

found it needed additional rehearsal and performance 

space for its Elizabethan productions, 

more room for workshops, youth programs, 

seminars and retreats, and more space 

for its prop shops and costume storage. 

With an annual budget stretched by a 

variety of ambitious programs and projects, 

Shakespeare & Co. opted to convert a 40-yearold 

hockey rink and field house already on 

the property. The challenge was to convert 

that building into usable space, while taking 

building codes, costs and even environmental 

concerns into consideration. 

Coming to PaPA 


After several of years of planning, $7.5 

million, and six months of active construction, 

from December 2007 to June 2008, the 

building has become home to the customdesigned 

Production and Performing Arts 

(PaPA) Center, including the new Elayne P. 

Bernstein Theatre. 

“New construction is so much easier because 

you start with a flat piece of ground,” 

says Nicholas J. Puma, Shakespeare & Company’s 

managing director, CFO and project 

manager of PaPA. “There’s nothing in your 

way.” 

At 70,000-square-feet, the building was 

oversized, understructured, and older than 

many current building codes. Seismic resistance 

requirements were met by reinforcing masonry 

walls. The building was also subdivided by a fire 

wall to help bring the structure up to code. 

“When you renovate an existing building, 

you almost hear it saying to you, ‘Wait ‘til 

you see what I got over here!’” Puma laughs, 

explaining that the project required a designbuild 

approach. “When you get into what’s 

behind a certain wall, or underneath a certain 

floor, or up in a rafter, you then find you can’t 

do what you’d originally wanted to do on paper.” 

The finished project, says architect 

Stephan Green of Clark & Green, Inc., “essentially 

brought everybody — all the components 

of Shakespeare & Company — under 

one roof: the artistic staff, the technical 

staff and the public.” 

The scene shop, finish shop and production 

shops sit next to rehearsal studios, theatre 

offices and experimental theatre space. 

Circulation patterns within the renovated 

building force people from different departments 

to collide. It’s something that hasn’t 

been tried before. 

“The people from the performing arts can 

get together and discuss things with the people 

in the scene shop, and that’s not usual,” 

Puma says. “It was important to not only have 

everyone under one roof, but to design the 

interior so they came together.” 

Lighting on a Budget 


The lighting system was designed by Jeff 

Harris, lighting director for the New York City 

Opera, and was provided by theatrical supply 

company High Output, Inc. Harris says 

the biggest challenge presented by the PaPA 

Center was budgetary. 

“They have a lot of space, but not a great 

deal of money,” Harris says, noting that the 

new space has been designed for expansion 

as Shakespeare & Company continues to 

evolve. “It was a challenge to make it versatile 

and as complete a theatre as possible. We had 

to make it workable and interesting without 

spending a fortune.” 

One of the goals for the Bernstein Theatre 

was to achieve a performance space that is at 

once flexible and intimate. In comparison to 

Shakespeare & Company’s Founders Theatre 

with 425 seats, the Bernstein Theatre can vary 

from 156 to 180 seats in three different configurations. 

“We wanted something that was both 

large enough to put at least 150 people, but 

intimate where we can do these new productions 

that we’re doing,” says Puma. “You need 

a more intimate setting than when you do 

King John, this huge Shakespearian play that 

has 100,000 people in it and fireworks and 

smoke, and you need to hand out Hazmat 

suits before the people sit down,” Puma says, 

of an early play in the Bard’s oeuvre which 

Shakespeare & Company tackled in 2005. 

A Lower Ceiling 


But an intimate space brings its own challenges 

when it comes to technical design — 

in this case, how to work around the new theatre’s 

lower ceiling height. 

“We spent a lot of time trying to get the 

grid as high as we could above the floor,” Harris 

explains. “We needed to make sure there’s 

plenty of grid to light the stage, wherever it 

ends up.” 

The theatre ceiling was already constructed 

of open-web steel joists, from which 

the pipe grid has been dead-hung. The theatre 

grid covers the entire space, not just the 

stage area, maximizing flexibility. No matter 

what configuration the theatre might take for 

a given production, the lighting is there to 

cover it. 

“In the theatre, we have a special lighting 

grid that’s all in one plane,” says Green. “We 

don’t have a cross-grid, so it’s a very low-profile 

grid. The grid itself becomes the ceiling of 

the theatre.” 

The rehearsal studios have a more conventional 

cross-grid. 

“They have portable dimmers in those 

rooms,” Green says. “They will just use those 

rooms for rehearsals and temporary lighting 

to stage things.” 

Value Engineering 


Budgetary restrictions meant Shakespeare 

& Company found they couldn’t afford the original 

lighting design for the new space, so the 

design was altered to accommodate not only 

immediate needs but also future expansion. 

“The challenge was trying to keep those 

spaces viable for the future so lights could 

be added as money came in,” Harris explains. 

“We wanted to make it friendly for future development.” 

Harris added grids for future expansion, 

left room for running additional cable and 

places for additional dimmers to plug into — 

as more funds become available, and as the 

future needs of the theatre will dictate. 

“We put in the number of circuits that I 

thought was appropriate,” Harris says. “But 

they couldn’t afford that many dimmers.” 

Harris chose ETC, praising their products’ 

reliability as well as the company’s service 

and support. He says he appreciates the attention 

ETC gives to “the little guy.” 

“You don’t have to be huge for them to 

care about you,” Harris says. “It’s also a fabulous 

product — it’s very even, very forgiving.” 

Because of cost concerns, the lighting kit 

is not extensive, with equipment limited to a 

minimum of what the space requires. 

There are four ETCNet2 ports located 

within the theatre — one in the control booth 

and three on the walls of the theatre. The 

equipment in the new space includes three 

ETC Sensor+ dimmer racks, 94 D20E dimmer 

modules, one R20AF relay module, one 

CC20 constant circuit module, 48 AFM air flow 

modules and 47 six-circuit outlet boxes. 

Efficiency Versus Practicality 


Energy efficiency was a component of the 

design, but practicality won out. 

“Unfortunately, the fluorescents don’t 

dim so nicely through theatrical dimmers, so 

we ended up with incandescents,” Harris says. 

“The highest priority was to make it a workable 

and usable space and theatre, and those 

standards made it not so energy efficient.” 

There had been discussion about using 

LEDs as aisle lights, with a nod toward environmental 

concerns, but the available technology 

wasn’t dimmable. 

“We’re on the cusp of it,” Harris says. “Also, 

LED technology is still pretty expensive.” 

With this backbone in place, and with 



room for future development, Harris says additional 

systems can be rented and temporarily 

installed as needed, with an eye toward 

permanent lighting installs when additional 

funding is available. 

Lighting control is through an ETC Ion and 

is completely Ethernet-based. An ETC Unison 

is being used to control the architectural system 

with preset stations so the room can be 

configured easily. 

“There are presets by each door,” Harris 

says. “You don’t have to be a lighting tech to 

get the look in the room you want. You can 

have a party in there without having to call in 

an electrician.” 

Intensity for More than Just Lighting 


The impact of the Bernstein Theatre’s intimate 

design is nothing short of “intense,” according 

to April Carmack, stage manager for 

The Goatwoman of Corvis County, which ran 

Aug. 1-31 in the new theatre. 

“The furthest the audience gets from the 

stage at any point is probably about 20 feet 

here in the Bernstein,” Carmack says. “They are 

very, very close.” 

The play features several flashback scenes, 

requiring quick changes in the lighting. Carmack, 

who had never run a lighting board 

before, says the process is a snap. 

“Basically there’s nothing I can do wrong 

to it,” she laughs. 

The play even features “live food” being 

cooked on stage, making the audience part 

of the action. 

“They get to smell the coffee, and they 

smell the bacon, which really puts them into 

the space and into the reality of the show” she 

says. 

Carmack likes the closeness offered by 

the Bernstein and thinks it’s key to the show’s 

success. 

“There are quite a few things that are just 

right in the audience’s face,” she says. “It’s just 

so intense and it really gives them something 

to walk away with at the end of the night.” 

Let the Sun Shine 


The rest of the new PaPA center relies on 

natural light as part of its sustainable design, 

and to reduce costs. 

“We’ve opened up the walls of the existing 

building,” Green says. “The theatrical studios 

have natural light, and the scene shop 

has translucent panels that bring in natural 

light. That not only lowers electrical bills, but 

it improves the health and welfare of the people 

working in those spaces.” 

Green says the first order of business at the 

beginning of the renovation was to organize 

the grading around the site to both protect 

and organize the wetlands, and to preserve it 

for future development. This involved creating 

a new, 4,000-square-foot wetland garden 

and cleaning up and reseeding an existing 

8,000-square-foot area with native species. 

“We’re using the wetland garden as an 

enhancement to the entry experience,” says 

Green. “People get out of their car and they 

walk down along a wetland garden to the 

front entry of the building.” 

Though the formal grand opening for 

the PaPA Center won’t take place until the 

2009-2010 season, the new facility is already 

making waves. The new theatre allows for a 

longer season — and an expanded training 

program, costume rental business, and education 

department — which means increased 

revenue for Shakespeare & Company. 

“It’s really been my privilege,” Puma says 

of being involved in the development and 

renovation of the new center. “It’s really sensational. 

We’re going to make history here. 

There’s nothing like this.” 

The 70,000 square-foot former ice rink and field house required 

extensive renovations to bring it up to code. 

The current lighting system is limited, but is expected to expand when additional funding becomes available. 

2008 OcTOBER PLSN 

67

WIDE ANGLE 


The Touring Set’s Backdrop Changed from Video Panels to Mirrors. 

By FrankHammel 

The early look of the Vortex tour featured semi-transparent Martin LC-2140 LED video panels. 

Some people get themselves stuck in 

a rut. Erykah Badu is not one of them. 

Her music bridges multiple genres, she 

sports an astonishing array of couture and 

hair styles and she’s not afraid to change the 

name of her tour or the look of the set two 

weeks into the tour. The 2008 tour, in support 

of her most recent album, New Amerykah Part 

One (4th World War), started off as the New 

Amerykah tour, but became known as the 

Vortex Tour to reflect, as Badu reportedly put 

it, “a swirling cloud of energy that sucks everything 

into its orbit.” 

Likewise, the touring set changed dramatically 

from video panels to a mirrored look 

used previously for Badu’s 2005 Sugarwater 

Festival tour with Queen Latifah and Jill Scott, 

according to Martin “Yoda” Thomas, production 

manager and lighting designer. Thomas 

has worked with Badu on previous tours, including 

2003’s Worldwide Underground tour, 

2005’s Sugarwater Festival tour, 2006’s Block 

Party tour with Dave Chappelle and a variety 

of other performances, including show 

dates in Indonesia, Russia and Israel in 2007 

and 2008. He and the rest of the crew seemed 

to have little trouble taking the enormous 

changes to the set’s look, and the lighting requirements, 

in stride. 

Before… 

…and After 

The video panels were swapped out… 

…with an awning made from MirrorLite panels. 

Martin “Yoda” Thomas notes that the initial design included 18 Martin Professional LC-2140 

LED panels on 50 feet of traveler track, five 25-foot tall towers that supported Coemar and 

MAC 700 fixtures and a Martin Maxedia video server, programmed by Eric Kennedy from New 

Mexico Event Technology. 

This equipment was either swapped out or reconfigured for use with a 40 foot wide by 16 

foot tall wall of lightweight MirrorLite panels from Rose Brand, and supplied by Badu Production, 

two weeks into the tour, as Ms. Badu had a creative change of heart (somewhat brought 

on and enhanced by her pregnancy) and felt that her show should “look nothing like a Britney 

Spears concert,” according to Thomas. 

Before the change… 

…and after. 


The View from Above 

The effect was dramatic, as the actions of the drummer, percussion player, guitarist and 

bassist were captured in a never-before seen top view. 

A Mirrored Awning 

The MirrorLite wall was a holdover from 

the 2005 Sugarwater Festival tour, reconfigured 

to create an awning over the band 

members on the upstage risers. 

Production Manager/Lighting 

Director: Martin “Yoda” Thomas 

Tour Manager: Michael Knight, Sr. 

Lighting Crew Chief: Dylan Haines 

Lighting Tech: William Couzens 

Stage Manager: Anthony Moore 

Monitor Engineer: Kenneth Nash 

Production Assistant: Adiclere Hunter 

Lighting Supplier: Creative Stage 

Lighting 

Lighting Console: Martin Maxxyz 

console with 2 playback modules and 

Wing extension 

24 Coemar Infinity XL Washes 

7 Vari*Lite VL3500 wash 

fixtures (all on floor) 

14 Martin MAC 700 Profile Spots 

8 MR-16 Striplights with 

hanging clamps (six foot) 

20 Rose Brand MirrorLite 

Panels w/ hanging apparatus 

16 Source Four 19º 750-watt 

Ellipsoidals 

10pcs Black Box Truss (10’ x 18,” 

for five towers) 


for three towers) 


for tower cross bars) 


upstage curtain truss) 

1 48x 2.4K Dimmer Rack 

2 DMX Opto-Splitters 

5 Active 1 ton motorpoints 

5 Active 1/2 ton motorpoints 

2 Active block & fall cable picks 

1 DF 50 atmospheric hazer 

w/ fans 

2 Active followspots on 

show call w/ operators 

1 50’ x 25’ Black Velour curtain 

1 50’x 25’ Opening Act Black 

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69

ROAD teSt 

Vectorworks Spotlight 2009 


On the surface, the latest version 

of Vectorworks computer-aided 

design, visualization and rendering 

software may not look as if it has 

had a radical upgrade, but when you 

replace the 3D modeling engine with a 

new kernel, there’s a good argument for 

saying so. 

For the last several months, Nemetschek, 

the maker of the program, has 

been stealthily working with Siemens 

PLM to incorporate their 3D modeling 

engine called Parasolid. Now they’ve 

unveiled the result by launching Vectorworks 

2009 with the Parasolid engine. 

This 3D modeling kernel technology 

is used in hundreds of computer-aided 

design, manufacturing and engineering 

applications in various industries and 

there are over already over 2.5 million 

end-users of Parasolid-enabled applications. 

The newly embedded kernel 

delivers added speed and power to the 

Vectorworks suite of applications. 

Speedier Modeling 

FTM 

The new modeling engine speeds up 

modeling operations four to five times, 

we’re told, and there are over 70 new 

features in this upgrade. Not all of them 

are applicable to the live event production 

industry, but the ones that are represent 

some nice improvements. 

Among them is an expanded lighting 

fixture library with new fixtures 

from several different manufacturers. 

This is a challenge for lighting software 

developers because there are so many 

existing fixtures and new ones are introduced 

all the time. The Vectorworks 

Spotlight fixture library continues to 

expand with the addition of fixtures 

A lot of people who use Vectorworks 

also use Lightwright, and those people 

will be happy to learn that the new version 

of VW has a real-time link to the 

soon-to-be released Lightwright 5. 

from Color Kinetics, truss from James 

Thomas Engineering and several other 

items for our audio brethren. 

A lot of people who use Vectorworks 

also use Lightwright, and those people 

will be happy to learn that the new version 

of VW has a real-time link to the 

soon-to-be-released Lightwright 5. You 

can set up automatic data exchange so 

that it exports updated information to 

Lightwright when you make changes 

to the plot, and if you make changes in 

Lightwright it also imports the changes 

into VW. I didn’t get to try out this feature 

because I’m writing this before the 

release of LW5, but it’s easy to see how 

it could be a big time saver and, more 

importantly, a sanity saver. 

Some of the other features include: 

Automatic DMX512 universe assignment. 

This prevents the DMX512 

slot footprint from bridging two universes. 

This feature should probably 

have been implemented from the start, 

but it’s here now. 

Improved DWG/DXF import and 

export functionality, including support 

for AutoCAD 2009. I imported a 

very large AutoCAD file with trusses, 

soft goods and lots of lighting blocks, 

and, much to my amazement, it imported 

rather well. The really cool thing 

about it was that I did it with the new 

drag and drop feature; just open a 

browser window, find your file and drag 

it into the workspace. Voila! 

Pre-selection indication. Objects 

are highlighted when you hover your 

cursor so that you know exactly which 

object you’re about to select. I call this 

a frustration saver because it helps to 

keep me from selecting the wrong object 

and then throwing my laptop across 

the room. 

Create plot and separate model 

view. You can create a 2D plot view and 

a 3D model view, each with a unique 

3D rotation angle. This allows you to 

display things like booms in a plot view 

that shows a horizontal view as well, 

and when you switch to an isometric 

view the illustrative horizontal boom 

disappears. 

Number instruments sequentially. 

Multiple data fields in a device can be 

automatically modified and incremented 

and the increment can be optionally 

based on channel number. 

Improved snapping. The cursor 

gives you feedback about where it 

wants to snap before you click, and you 

can actually snap to lines on imported 

PDF files. I think this would work well 

for “tracing” new fixture 2D drawings 

from PDF files without having to totally 

draw them from scratch. 

Similar object creation. Lets you 

match an object already in a drawing, 

including the properties, like the layer 

and class, of the object. 

Editing mode improvements. 

I’m told that people who have used 

V W in the past will appreciate this 

The new version of Vectorworks Spotlight includes a real-time link to Lightwright 5. 

feature. It allows you to view and 

snap to objects outside of the group, 

symbol, solid, or viewport group and 

you can edit them without leaving 

the edit mode. 

Extrude along path enhancements 

and enhanced 3D modeling tools. 

There are a lot of new features that came 

along with the Parasolid engine, including 

the ability to extrude profile curves 

with sharp corners along a path, as well 

as a more efficient fillet tool, stitch and 

trim surfaces tool, loft surfaces tool, 

project and add tool mode, and the protrusion 

cutout tool to generate generic 

solid objects, or NURBS surfaces. These 

improvements will help tremendously 

in the virtual construction of set pieces 

or when you are drawing a 3D model of 

a venue. 

New visibility tool. You can more 

easily manage your drawing visibility 

settings by selecting or isolating objects 

in your file based on their layer or 

class. This can help save time, especially 

when an architect hands you an Auto- 

CAD file and you have to see past all of 

the structural, plumbing, HVAC and all 

the other things that typically get in 

your way. 

The new features are designed to 

speed up and streamline your workflow, 

making it quicker and easier to get to 

the bar for a pint of Guinness. One of 

the coolest things about the new engine 

is that it speeds up renderings. I 

attended a demonstration in Baltimore, 

and for the gathered press, the renderings 

were flying. Of course, it was done 

on a high-end machine with two quadcore 

processors, but it was really quick. 

I’m coming at this as an AutoCAD 

user and a new user of Vectorworks, but 

I was able to get up the learning curve 

fairly quickly. I’m by no means a power 

user, but I like what I’ve seen in the new 

Vectorworks 2009. It is very powerful, it 

has a lot of features to help streamline 

your workflow, and it is capable of producing 

some fabulous documentation. 

70 PLSN OCtOber 2008


The new modeling engine speeds up modeling 

operations four to five times, and there are 

over 70 new features in this upgrade. 

What it is: CAD software with custom lighting module and interactivity with ESP Vision 

and Lightwright. 

Who it’s for: Lighting and set designers, architects. 

Pros: Very powerful features, fast, custom lighting specific features. 

Cons: Takes time to get to learn. 

Retail Price: New Designer 2009 license with Renderworks (includes Architect, Landmark, 

Spotlight, and Machine Design): $2,895. Upgrade from Designer 2008: $580 

This screen shot shows a 2D rendering of the profile view of a theatrical performance space. 

This screen shot provides a 2D sketch of a custom-built set with truss and runway-styled thrust. 

Ad info:http:// foh.hotims.com 

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2008 October PLSN 

71

FEATURE 


Innovative rigging and lighting 

designs for Garth Brooks helped 

support his rise to fame in the 

1990s. 

Bandit Lites 

Marks 40 Years 

The company, like the industry it serves, 

has grown and diversified. 

By FrankHammel 

Bandit Lites founder and 

chairman Michael T. Strickland. 

Bandit Lites got its start when 

founder and chairman Michael 

Strickland was just 12 years old. In 

the early years, Strickland would have 

to “borrow” the lights from a local high 

school theatre to light the Monkees, 

the Beach Boys and other bands of the 

1960s — hence the name. 

Today, Strickland’s company has 

emerged as a global leader in the 

entertainment lighting industry, with 

offices in Knoxville, Nashville, San 

Francisco, the U.K., Hong Kong and 

Taiwan, and while the company is still 

called Bandit Lites, Strickland no longer 

scours local high schools for gear. 

This year, as Peter Heffernan 

assumes the role of president of the 

privately held firm, Bandit Lites has 

produced a six-part history of the 

changes and challenges it faced, 

providing an in-depth look at how the 

entertainment business as changed 

over four decades. 

The Early Years 


In its first few years, the company’s 

biggest challenge was to co-exist with 

Strickland’s other pursuits, including a 

driver’s license, a spot on the football 

and basketball team, a high school and 

college diploma and a law degree. 

“We’d do a show one night for the 

Beach Boys, and they’d ask us to go the 

next night to another city,” Strickland 

recalls. “The first time they asked, I had 

to say no. I was 12 years old, I couldn’t 

drive.” The next such opportunity, 

however, the youthful Strickland was 

ready. “I hired a friend with a car and a 

U-Haul trailer.” 

In those days, Strickland says, “we 

worked most of the major rock concerts 

within 300 miles of Kingsport. We did it 

mainly to see free concerts and meet 

girls. Making money was never really 

part of the equation at that point. Most 

of the shows took place on Thursdays, 

Fridays and Saturdays so we were able 

to travel to them.” 

From 1968 to 1971, the young 

company’s client roster included, along 

with Beach Boys and The Monkees, The 

Grassroots, Frankie Valli and The Four 

Seasons, Dennis Yost and the Classics 

Four, BJ Thomas, Mitch Ryder and the 

Detroit Wheels, Kris Kristofferson and 

others. 

Juggling Business with School 


In the 1970s, Strickland ran Bandit 

Lites from his dorm room at the 

University of Tennessee while earning 

a degree in business and then law. 

Bandit Lites’ client roster expanded 

to include a blend of well-known acts 

in country and rock ‘n’ roll: Black Oak 

Arkansas, The James Gang, Blue Oyster 

Cult, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Merle 

Haggard, Goose Creek Symphony, Dr. 

Hook, Parliament Funkadelic, NRPS and 

others. Few knew that the company 

was headed by a college student. 

“While going to undergraduate and 

law school the company experienced 

phenomenal growth,” Strickland 

recalls. “All of the funding came from 

operations, and we never used outside 

financing. I am not sure anyone 

would have loaned us money even if 

we had asked,” he adds. “I was on the 

road more than in class during that 

time. During law school I was lighting 

director and production manager for 

Kenny Rogers and this was during his 

breakout period,” Strickland notes, of 

the performer’s 1977-1978 Gambler 

tour. 

It was shortly after this taste of bigtime 

touring success, however, that the 

still-young Bandit Lites faced what was 

perhaps its gravest threat. In 1979, the 

the company, which was uninsured 

at the time, lost a big chunk of its net 

worth in a warehouse fire. Determined 

to “hold ‘em,” and not fold, Strickland and 

his crew were able to parlay their early 

success into a significant expansion in 

the 1980s, 1990s and beyond. 

A Country/Rock Theme 


Bandit supplied gear for the tours of 

“hair bands” Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot 

and Ratt in the 1980s. But like Kenny 

Rogers’ tours, Bandit Lites continued to 

benefit from the country side of the pop 

music biz, with acts that were touring 

with bigger rigs. 

In 1982, the company expanded 

from its Knoxville roots and opened 

up its facility in Nashville. Bandit Lites 

handled the growing rigs for country 

and Southern rock standouts including 

Alabama, Molly Hatchet, Blackfoot, the 

Outlaws, Dolly Parton, Eddie Rabbit, 

Crystal Gayle, Charlie Rich and Mickey 

Gilley. 

Bandit’s team gathers for its 1996 annual global meeting. At that point, the company had established offices in London, Dublin, Hong Kong and Taiwan. 



FEATURE 


Supporting Kenny Rogers in the late 1970s are, from left, Michael Golden, Kent Shafferman, Tom Cox, Mark Lowrance, Pete Heffernan, Ken 

Whitehead, Steve Strickland, Brent Barrett and founder Michael T. Strickland. 

Along with concerts, Bandit Lites has supported large sporting events, including the Half Time Show for Super Bowl 

XXIX in Miami and Wrestlemania 2007, shown here. 

The “Bandit Standard” also emerged 

in the 1980s. The company became better 

known for fully pre-building its systems 

and for its attention to detail, such as 

its signature silver aluminum flight 

cases. Bandit also added personalized 

case labels, P-Touch and Bandit Tour 

Books as well as extensive training of 

staff, full-time pay, health insurance and 

retirement programs. 

A significant development was the 

Bandit Custom Motor Controller. The 

added safety of having the motor control 

switches laid out on a graphic of the 

lighting system made it more difficult 

to accidentally select the incorrect 

hoist for movement. This would lay the 

groundwork for other advances in motor 

control device in the 1990s. 

Most of the metal bands and rock acts 

Bandit worked with in the 1980s toured 

Europe, leading to a cross-fertilization 

of ideas between Bandit Lites and U.K.- 

based Thomas Engineering and Avolites. 

Those alliances helped introduce prerigged 

truss and temporary roofing 

structures, and also helped popularize 

PARs, Avo dimming and control and 

Socapex cable in the U.S. 

Garth Who? 


The 1990s was another decade 

marked by growth for the company, 

along with the career of Garth Brooks, 

who shot from obscurity early in the 

decade to a live performance before 

a record-setting crowd in New York’s 

Central Park in 1997. 

If the Big Apple seemed like an 

unlikely setting for a major country 

music concert, Brooks’ tours also defied 

conventional wisdom with the size of 

the lighting rig. His tours set up lighting 

systems that rivalled the most metallic 

of the heavy metal acts of the day. 

Bandit Lites worked with gear makers 

like High End Systems early in the 

decade, helping to put the Intellabeam, 

Studio Color, Studio Spot, F-100, 

Dataflash and other High End products 

into mainstream touring. 

At that same time, Bandit delved 

heavily into film and television work. 

Bandit worked on over 200 feature films 

in the 1990s, including What About Bob, 

Delta Force 2, Sleeping With The Enemy, 

Hellraiser 3, Wayne’s World 2, Hoffa, Pet 

Semitary and Earnest Scared Stupid. 

On the TV front, Bandit worked with 

regularity on HBO Boxing, HBO Comedy, 

MTV Spring Break, The Dove Awards, 

Fox on Ice, CBS Ice Wars, Larry King Live, 

Clinton’s Economic Summit, CNN, Hot Ice, 

Garth Brooks Live, Paul Simon in Central 

Park and other shows. One of the biggest 

events Bandit was involved with was the 

Half Time Show for Super Bowl XXIX in 

1995, which took place in Miami. 

New Motor Control System 


Other 1990s achievements for 

Bandit Lites included the Moto Data 

computerized motor control system 

developed for Garth Brooks and 

Aerosmith, where chain hoists can be 

controlled from a touchscreen, and an 

expansion of Bandit’s philanthropic 

efforts, such as its support for Farm Aid 

Along with country music and rock bands, Bandit Lites signed on a number of Christian rock acts in the 1980s, including Stryper, whose 

rig is shown here. 

Van Halen, shown here with a performance in 2004, became a longtime Bandit Lites client. 



FEATURE 


Bandit Lites provided the gear for 

a 2006 performance by Queen. 

Recently-named president Peter Heffernan, who 

retains his previous title as COO, toured with bands 

like Quiet Riot, whose rig is shown here. 

since 1991. 

The 1990s was also a time of 

advancement for Bandit’s training and 

safety programs. The company coined 

the term, Humanomics, to capsulize 

the idea of business planning based on 

concern for people along with profits. 

And it expanded its international 

reach with offices in Hong Kong and 

Taiwan. Bandit also bought out its U.K. 

partner and opened its own office in 

London and established its office in 

San Francisco as well. 



Growing and Diversifying 


The development of real estate 

ownership became a part of the Bandit 

business plan in the 1990s, along with 

partnerships with lighting companies, 

including High End Systems, Martin 

and Vari-Lite. Today Bandit continues 

those relationships as media control 

and LED products are racing to the 

forefront of the industry. 

Looking back, Strickland’s 

company has grown far beyond his 

teenage ambitions of finding a cool 

way to attend rock concerts for free. 

The company has supplied lighting 

for Super Bowl halftime shows, 

Woodstock, Bonnaroo, WWE, CMA 

Music Festival, Presidential Inaugural 

Balls, Blenheim Palace Festivals and 

hundreds of other such shows. Van 

Halen, Queen, Garth Brooks, Jimmy 

Buffett, R.E.M., Radiohead and many 

others have become clients. The 

company has also delved into film, TV 

and corporate events. 

New Technologies and Territories 


Going forward, Bandit is investing 

in new media servers, control consoles 

and new digital lighting products and 

LED products as clients request them. 

The company is also expanding in 

London, with the addition of new gear, 

staff and a new 50,000 square foot 

facility. The company is also expanding 

its Nashville base, with improvements 

to the facility it calls “Venue One” that 

include upgraded programming suites 

and a second hang room. 

As it embarks on its fifth decade, 

the company is prepared to adapt to 

change while holding firm to principles 

articulated by its founder. “If one were 

to sum up the last 40 years of Bandit 

Lites’ success it would be simply put: 

humility, humanomics and the Bandit 

standard,” said Strickland. “As long as 

Bandit delivers these three things with 

grace and passion, the sky will be the 

limit.” 



Automated Lighting 

BUYERS GUIDE 


If there was an economic stimulus package 

for the live event production industry, 

it would have to have a passel of 

automated lights. The multi-parameter luminaire 

has done more to stimulate the industry 

than any other technology, with the 

possible exception of the multi-pixel LED 

luminaire or display device. But automated 

lighting was first, and, as such, deserves recognition 

as the technology that started the 

exponential growth of the DMX512 channel 

count in a rig. That, in turn, triggered 

the need for multiple universes of DMX512 

and the onslaught of DMX-to-Ethernet solutions. 

As automated lights became more 

reliable and more readily available, lighting 

rigs grew to monstrous proportions and, as 

happened in the opening and closing ceremonies 

of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad 

in Beijing, some of them became manageable 

only by networking multiple consoles 

and dividing the programming work among 

several programmers. This is the state of the 

industry. 

But now, automated lighting is about 

to take it up a notch as manufacturers 

refine their R&D engines. The latest crop 

of fixtures exhibit exceptionally well-engineered 

optics, modularity, mechanics, 

electronics, and high light output. Fixtures 

like the Bad Boy from PRG are breaking out 

of the mold by using servo motors instead 

of stepper motors, and the Martin MAC 

III has such innovations as absolute value 

encoders with their own internal zero reference 

(which should do away with that 

annoying clacking sound during homing). 

There are plenty of new automated moving 

LED heads, but some, like the Barco/ 

High End Systems StudioPix, are particularly 

difficult to classify as either a color 

wash or an LED display device. Either way, 

they are clearly forging their own path. But 

the hardest of all to classify might be the 

SGM Giotto 1500, which is so modular that 

it can go from a spot to a wash to a digital 

luminaire. 

Forget billion dollar bailouts. What 

this country needs is an automated lighting 

stimulus package. For the price of the 

taxpayer-funded bailout, every family in 

the U.S. could have their own brand new 

automated lighting rig. Just in case this 

proposal goes through, you can use this 

Buyers Guide to help you put together 

your shopping list. Enjoy! 

Elation Design Spot 1400 

G-Lites 1500 SZ 

Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500 

DTS XR700 SPOT CMY 

ETC Source Four Revolution 

High End Systems Showgun 

SGM Giotto Digital 1500 

Syncrolite XL10 

Robe ColorSpot 2500E 

Martin MAC TW1

BUYERS GUIDe 

Manufacturer 

Web Address 

Clay Paky 

www.claypaky.it 

D.T.S. Illuminazione srl 

www.dts-lighting.it 

Elation Professional 

www.elation 

lighting.com 

U.S. 

Distributor 

PRG 

AC Lighting 

Elation 

Model Lamp Source Ballast 

Alpha Spot HPE 

1200 

Alpha Beam 

1500 

XR700 Wash 

XR700 Spot 

CMY 

Power Spot 

700 II 

Power Spot 700 

CMY II 

Design Spot 

1400 

HTI 1200W/D7/75 

discharge lamp 

HTI 1500W/60/SR 

Lock-it discharge 

lamp 

MSR Gold 700 FastFit 

MSR 700/2 SA DE 

Static Gobos/ 

Type 

electronic 8 

electronic or 

magnetic 

electronic 

Gobos 

Rotating Gobos/ 

Type 

CMY Color 

Mixing 

Color 

Wheels 

Colors 

Number Of 

Colors 

Fixed Cto 

Variable 

Cto 

Iris 

Zoom 

12 — 1 6+1 - — — 10°-40° 

6 — 1 6+1 — - — n/a 

- - — 1 6 — - - 20° - 45° 

- 

2 gobo wheels: 

7 gobos each (glass) 

— 1 6 — - — 10° - 30° 

9/metal 

14/glass and metal optional 2 16 — optional — 14 - 32º 

7/glass and metal — 1 8 - — — 15 - 32º 

MSR 1200 GOLD SE/2 none 10 glass — 1 6 - — — 12° - 32° 

ETC 

(Electronic Theatre 

Controls, Inc.) 

www.etcconnect.com 

Source Four® 

Revolution® 

QXL 750 watt 

tungsten 

n/a (onboard 

dimmer) 

3/M-sized metal or 

glass 

3/M-sized metal or glass - 

gel 

scroller 

up to 24 see note see note — 15° - 35° 

1500SZ 

HTI 1500 W/D7/60 

(6000K) 

electronic - 9 glass — 1 8 — 8° - 28° 

G-Lites, Inc. 

www.g-lites.com 

G-Lites 

600SZ 

1200SZ 

HMI 575W/GS 

(6000K) 

HTI 1200 W/D7/60 or 

MSR 1200 SA/2 DE 

magnetic 8 metal 6 glass 

2 15 — 13° - 32° 

2 15 — — 13° - 32° 

High End Systems 

www.highend.com 

Martin Professional 

www.martin.com 

PR Lighting Ltd. 

www.pr-lighting.com 

Production Resource 

Group 

www.prg.com 

see web site 

Omnisistem 

www. 

omnisistem. 

com 

Showpix 

Showgun 

Martin Mac III 

127 3-watt RGB LEDs 

w/ homogenizing 

system 

2000-watt Philips 

MSR Gold SA/SE 

proprietary short-arc 

lamp 

Osram HTI 1500W/60/ 

P50 (Fast FIT) 

n/a unlimited digital unlimited digital 

electronic - 

3 glass LithoPatterns, 1 

open plus 1 UV/blacklight 

effect 

RGB color 

mixing 

n/a u 0 0 0 0 

— - - - - — 9°-18° 

- 10 / dichroic glass — 1 7 — — — 

Philips Hi-Brite electronic 

Mac TW1 

— — — 

1200/80 FastFit 

Osram HTI 700W 

MAC 700 

9 / metal 6 / (5 metal, 1 glass) 1 8 — — — 

short arc discharge 

12° - 34° and 

XL 1200 

7 plus open 10 plus open — 1 6 — — 

Philips MSR Gold magnetic or 

40° 

1200 SA/2 DE electronic 

XL-250 8 plus open 5 plus open — 1 6 — 12° - 34° 

XL 700 

VL6C Plus 

Luminaire 

AutoPar Wash 

Luminaire 

Bad Boy 

Philips MSR Gold 700 

SA/2 DE 

700W short arc metal 

halide 

MSR 700 

Phillips MSR Gold 

1200W FastFit 

electronic 9 plus open 6 plus open — 1 6 — — 12° - 34° 

remote 11 glass 5, glass - 1 11 - - — 19°-43° 

electronic 

- - - - - - - - - 

- 14 - 4 28 - - — 7°- 56° 

ColorSpot 

1200E AT 

Philips MSR 1200 SA 

12/dichroic glass — 1 6 — — 13°-42° 

Robe Lighting s.r.o 

www.robe.cz 

ColorSpot 700E 

AT 

Philips MSR Gold 700 

FastFit 

electronic 

9/glass,replaceable 7/glass,replaceable — 1 7 — — 15°-51° 

ColorSpot 

2500E AT 

Philips MSR Gold 

1200 FastFit 

12/dichroic glass — 1 6 — — 10°-30° 

SGM 

www.sgm.it 

Techni-Lux, 

Inc. 

Giotto Digital 

1500 

Giotto Spot 

1500 

MSR Gold 1200 

FastFit or MSR Gold 

1500 FastFit 

electronic 

customizable *.avimpeg4 

format video 

clip library 

customizable *.bmp or 

*.jpg format image library 

— 2 6+5 - — — 10°-30° 

none 12/glass & metal — 1 6 - — — 12°-36° 

Syncrolite 

www.syncrolite.com 

MX3000 

XL10 

2000-watt Xenon 

7000-watt, 8000-watt 

or 10,000-watt xenon 

magnetic/ 

electronic 

3/scrollable 

metallized film; 1/ 

effects engine 

n/a standard n/a 

dichroic 

CYMRGBOV 

optional 

— — 

— — 

variable 

collimated 

spot to 20° 

flood 

Vari-Lite 

www.vari-lite.com 

see web site 

VL3500 Spot Osram SharkXS HTI 

7 position/glass 5 position - glass — 

— 

1 6 

1200W/D7/60 

VL3000 Spot n/a 14 position - glass — — — 

VL3500 Wash 

FX 

Osram SharkXS HTI 

1500W/D7/60 

electronic 

n/a — 2 9 — — 

10-60º 

29-52º w/ 

Buxom lens; 

22-35º w/ 

Fresnel lens 

(additional 

options - see 

web site) 



Variable 

Frost 

Fixed 

Frost 

n/a 3 

Rotating 

Prisms 

Static 

Prisms 

Animation 

Wheel 

yes 

2 n/a 

— n/a no 

Data Ports Other Effects Voltage L” × W” × H” Weight Retail Price Comments 

3-pin and 

5-pin XLR 

dimmer 0-100% 

dimmer 0-100%, rotating 

beam shaper 

200-240V 50/60hz; 

100-120V 50/60Hz 

200-240V 50/60hz 

19.09” × 18.11” × 

29.13” 

19.65” × 18.90” × 

33.66” 

85 lbs n/a 

88 lbs n/a 

- — - - - 

90-245V (electr.) 

18.5” × 16.9” × 23.6” 50.7 lbs $7,500 

2 x 5-pin XLR; 

-230V (magnetic 

- — 1 (3-facet) - - 2 x 3-pin XLR 

18.5” × 19.6” × 23.6” 57.3 lbs $5,800 

ballast) 

— - 

- CMY ver 

color scrolling in both 

63 lbs $7,999.99 

3-pin and 

90-260V Autosensing 

(1) 3-facet 

directions (rainbow 

19” × 14” × 29”H 

5-pin XLR 

effects) 

— - - — 64 lbs $8,999.95 

— - 

3-, 5-facet, 

and 3D 

prism 

- — 

3-pin and 

5-pin XLR & 

EWDMX 

— 5-pin XLR 

— 

— 

(1) 3-facet 

3-pin and 

5-pin DMX 

wireless DMX receiver 

built in 

200-220V/60Hz 21.1” × 19.7” × 24.6” 114lbs $11,999.95 

90V-264V autosensing 

110V - 240V - 50/60 

Hz 

200V-220V-60 Hz 

100V-120V-60 Hz 

220V-240V-50Hz 

33.7” × 15.5” × 18.5” 75 lbs 

1515mm × 406mm × 

851mm 

470mm × 365mm × 

697mm 

54.5 kg. 

net/84.5 gross 

$4405 + 

optional 

modules 

n/a 

43.5 kg n/a 

— 200-220V/60Hz 18.5” × 14.37” × 27.44” 102.5 lbs n/a 

0 0 0 0 0 

soft-edge 

mode 

5-pin 

male and 

female XLR 

connectors 

0 0 0 - 5-pin XLR 

(1) 4-facet — 

— — — 

— 1 3-facet — 

5-pin locking 

XLR & RJ-45 

(Artnet/RDM) 

3-pin and 

5-pin 

locking XLR 

dissolves between 

layers, transitions, wipes, 

rotation, synchronize to 

music 

LED tracking system, tricolor 

beam mode 

additional ‘beam’ gobos 

supplied with fixture 

3-pin and 

— 1 3-facet — framing shutters 

5-pin XLR 

100-230 V 23.4” × 20.6” × 33” 108 lbs $16,500 

208, 240, autoswitching 

power 

supply 

200-240 V nominal, 

50/60 Hz 

100-260V (Auto 

sensing) 

100-250 V auto 

sensing 

electronic ballast: 

100-240V magnetic 

ballast: 200-240V 

23.5” × 25.2” × 37.8” 

27.2” × 21.1” × 36” 

140 lbs. (63.5 

kg) 

117.9 lbs. 

$18,000 

60.4 $9,010.00 

“Long-life” self-charging buffer battery; pre-set macros; 

energy saving function 

available with electronic or magnetic ballast 

Includes accessories kit; optional dual roadcase - DRC- 

700; optional accessories - CMY color mixing module w/ 

animation wheel 

Includes 5 animation wheels and accessories kit; optional 

dual roadcase 

Features battery powered LCD full color menu for 

programming w/o power and EWDMX receiver built in 

Source Four Revolution has 2 module bays for 4 module 

options: iris, static wheel, rotating wheel and shutter. 

Integrated gel scroller allows user choice of color or color 

correction option. Internal Media Frame allows userselectable 

diffusion. 

ShowPix is an LED wash light and prgrammable grahic 

image-display fixture equipped w/ art and media files 

or you can download your own. Features: color mixing, 

rotation, scale, wipes, dissolves between layers, sstrobing 

and dimming. Individual control of each of 127 LEDs. 

Mechanical pan and tilt locks; includes tour-grade 

roadcase 

New series from Martin w/ new 1500-watt lamp 

technology. 

Tungsten wash light w/ soft-edged beam can be run from 

built-in dimmer or from external dimmer. 

17.7” × 14.4” × 25.0” 76 lb $12,695.00 Automatic feedback system; modular design, tilt lock 

29.7”× 25.5” × 21” 

electronic: 

77 lbs 

magnetic: 

104 lbs 

— 1 3-facet — 100-240V 29.7” × 25.5” × 21” 66 lbs 

- - - - - 

5-pin XLR 

(remote) 

- 90-264V 8.5” × 16.5” × 22” 29 lbs 

- - - - - 5-pin XLR rotating front lens 120V/8A, 208V/4A 11.4” × 16.7” × 25.32” 44 lbs 

- - 

— 

1 3-facet on 

the gobo 

wheel 

(4) 

3-facet,5- 

facet, 

Estriado, 

Diamante 

- - 

— (1) 3-facet — 

— 

(4) 

3-facet,5- 

facet, 

Estriado, 

Diamante 

— - (1) 4-facet 

— - (1) 4-facet 

— 

(1) 

5-facet 

(1) 

5-facet 

digital 

effects 

— 

5-pin XLR and 

2 Ethercons 

Ethernet, 

5-pin XLR, 

3-pin XLR 

5 pin XLR, 

Ethernet, 

wireless DMX, 

WiFi 

5 pin XLR, 

Ethernet, 

wireless DMX 

5-pin DMX 

full field dimming, auto 

lock/unlock pan/tilt, 

touch screen control 

shaking gobos,CMY 

macros,pan/tilt 

macros,prism/gobo 

macros 

shaking gobos, macros, 

additional multi-function 

lens, audio synch 

540° variable speed pan / 

250° variable speed tilt 

100-240V 20.4” × 28” × 39.8” 140 lbs 

100, 120, 

208,230,250V 

selectable 

100-240V electronic 

auto-ranging 

208,230,250V 

selectable 

90-245v 

(protection to 400) 

120, 208, 220, 

240, 380, 400V 

configurable 

24.25” × 21” × 24.37” 92.6 lbs $14,632.00 

19.7” × 20.2” × 23.5” 75.5 lbs 

26.7” × 21” × 25” 93.7 lbs $14,632.00 

18.72” × 21.45” × 

30.81” 

99.45 lbs 

(45 kg) 

103.87 lbs 

(47 kg) 

US$ 

27,539.00 

US$ 

15,309.00 

44.5” × 23” × 27.5” 122 lbs $35,500 

— 57” × 34.5” × 37” 262 lbs $59,500 

four-blade shutter 

mechanism 200-264 VAC 18” × 20” × 31.57” 91 lbs 

Upgrade to the VL6C luminaire including improved 

cooling, upgraded wiring, and improved ignitor to reduce 

hot restrike to 1 minute. 

PAR 56 illumination with features of an automated 

luminaire. 

Combines the qualities of traditional automated light w/ 

large format fixture; 48,000 lumens; “hi-def” optics, wide 

range of color; swift movent w/ servo motors. 

3 DMX protocol modes, Ethernet ready for ACN, pan/ 

tilt lock, modular construction, blue/white LCD graphic 

display, 3 programmable memories to 99 steps 

5 DMX protocol modes, support RDM, Ethernet ready for 

ACN, pan/tilt lock, modular construction, blue/white LCD 

graphic display, 3 programmable memories to 99 steps 

3 DMX protocol modes, Ethernet ready for ACN, pan/ 

tilt lock, modular construction, blue/white LCD graphic 

display, 3 programmable memories to 99 steps 

Two customizable image and video clip libraries, library 

updating via WiFi, 1024x768 resolution obtained with 0.7” 

XGA DLP® chip, 80 GB hard disk, digital graphic effects, 

digital iris, digital beam shaper, optical and digital zoom, 

graphics engine. 

Modular fixture accepts 3 of 7 available modules to make 

it profile, wash, or digital by changing modular optics. 

Wireless DMX, Ethernet interface (ART-NET protocol), hot 

re-strike, lamp adjustable from 900W to 1400W. 

Series 3 Syncrolites come standard with OmniColor color 

mixing system incl. DichroFilm RGBCYMOV heat/shrink/ 

wrinkle resistant color filters, VFL Lenses, FP Gobos 

and FX Engines. All fixtures are available with sounddeadening 

“Q” package or full weatherproof package. UL/ 

ETL/CE Listed. 

available in “Q” model for silent operation 

5-pin DMX 

* 4-position FX wheel 

plus open. 

* VARI-BRITEtm internal 

zoomable beam spreader 

90-264 VAC 18” × 14.5” × 33” 97 lbs 

Contact 

Vari-Lite 

dealer for 

pricing 

Available in standard model. Standard model has aperture 

wheel in place of FX patter wheel. 

2008 OctOber PLSN 

79

ROAD TEST 


Elation LED 36 Tri-Brick 

By NookSchoenfeld 

Unlike conventional RGB LED fixtures, 

you don’t see the ugly red, green and 

blue LEDs individually, only the one color 

obtained by mixing them. 

I 

was recently asked to take a look at a new 

Elation lighting fixture, the LED 36 Tri-Brick. 

I thought to myself, “Great, yet another 

LED fixture in the shape of a brick.” But then 

I turned it on and all I could say was, “Wow.” 

Elation has once again stepped up and taken 

the LED fixture to a new level. 

The Tri-Brick gets its name from two 

different sources; its size and shape, and 

its unique brand of tri-color LEDs that 

mix colors together in what looks like one 

single, big LED source. The fixture has four 

light cells that can be operated together or 

independently depending on how many 

channels of DMX512 you prefer to use. In 

other words, you can turn each of these 

cells a different color or chase the colors 

independently if you wanted to. Or you can 

just bring up one nice color wash. There is 

an option to use a separate dimming channel 

for each cell as well, allowing for cool 

dimmer chases in each fixture. 

The beauty of these sources is that 

each of the tri-color LED is actually made 

of three different colored LEDs — one 

red, one green, and one blue — that mix 

together as they illuminate. 

LEDs Mix the RGB RT 

Each of the four cells in the Tri-Brick has 

three 3-watt tri-color surface-mount diode 

(SMD) LEDs — a total of 12 LEDs — and a 

reflector in it. The beauty of these sources 

is that each of the tri-color LEDs is actually 

made of three different colored LEDs — 

one red, one green, and one blue — that 

mix together as they illuminate. Unlike conventional 

RGB LED fixtures, you don’t see 

the ugly red, green and blue LEDs individually, 

only the one color obtained by mixing 

them. I don’t have any idea how they do 

this, but this fixture can mix an incredibly 

white beam without the pinkish hue normally 

associated to RGB LED lights. I was 

also able to get a really pleasant CTO color 

out of this fixture. 

The color mixing and dimming capabilities 

are totally seamless. Gone is the noticeable 

dimmer curve usually associated with 

LED products. The light output is totally 

flicker free as well, making it an acceptable 

fixture for TV and film use. The strobe ability 

is fast with up to 18 flashes per second. 

I did not measure the actual light output, 

but I can honestly say that you can be 

temporarily blinded if the light is pointed 

straight at you, even from a distance of 50 

feet. The photometric data that Elation references 

indicates that it emits 350 lux (32.5 

footcandles) at a distance of three meters 

(9.8 feet) in white light. The beam angle is 

38.5° and the beam diameter at that throw 

is 2.1 meters (6.9 feet). 

Five Years of Use 

RT 

The lamp life of the tri-color LEDs is 

rated at 50,000 hours. That’s well over 

five years of continuous use. 

The built-in electronic power supply 

can run on any voltage from 90 volts to 

240 volts using a standard IEC connector 

for power. The fixture draws 65 watts 

and pulls a little over half an amp at 120 

volts, so you could easily put 29 of these 

on a single 20-amp circuit. Each fixture 

has an on/off switch. 

The Tri-Brick can be operated from a 

DMX512 controller with 3-pin or 5-pin XLR 

connectors both on the inputs and outputs. 

Or it can run in any of eight built-in 

programs as a stand-alone unit. There is an 

LCD display with four buttons and an electronic 

menu to choose personality settings 

and address the fixture. You can also run 

multiple units in a master/slave configuration 

and there is an option to use it with a 

music trigger. 

An Indoor Fixture 

RT 

The shape of the fixture is indeed bricklike, 

measuring approximately 16 inches by 

nine inches by three inches. It carries an IP 

rating of 20, so it can only be used indoors. 

It comes with a yoke that accepts any clamp 

and the yoke can double as a floor stand. 

The yoke can also be removed and multiple 

units can be rigged together to form a 

linear batten. This baby can fit inside a 12” 

box truss, which is great for pre-rigging and 

trouping in the truss. A safety cable is included. 

The housing is sturdy and there are no 

fans in the fixture; it’s convection cooled. 

And, get this — the entire fixture weighs 

less than 10 pounds. It comes standard 

with what they call a 25° lens but it has a 

38.5° beam angle and a 47° field angle (new 

math?). Optional narrow and wide lenses 

are also available. ETTL and cETL approval 

is pending, and the manufacturer’s suggested 

retail price is $999.95. 

I can easily recommend using this bad 

boy as a cyc light or a key light fixture. The 

applications are as endless as the amount 

of colors you can get out of it. 

What it is: A four-cell tri-color LED color mixing 

luminaire 

Who it’s for: Anyone who needs an LED color 

wash with no RGB shadows 

Pros: Lightweight, inexpensive, built-in power 

supply and superior color mixing 

Cons: Not for outdoor use 

Retail: $999.95 

Tips 

Tricks 

Timecoding is fun — when it works 

Timecoding shows can be fun, but good, in-depth knowledge of how your 

lighting console interacts with these signals, and experience in troubleshooting, are 

must-haves when working with it. Console operators must be prepared to operate 

the cues manually in case something goes wrong. Troubleshooting the problem 

can take hours, and the problem usually isn’t as simple as an unplugged cable or a 

turned-off option. 

—Brad Schiller, from “Feeding the Machines,” PLSN, Aug. 2008 


Video, Lighting Support 

Kasabian at Creamsfields 

Taking Projection to the 

Streets in Birmingham 

A blend of video and lighting provided anything but a homogenized look at the festival. 

Emmy Engineering Plaque Goes to Media Server 

LOS ANGELES — The Academy of Television 

Arts & Sciences awarded Coolux Media Systems 

the Emmy Engineering Plaque for the engineering 

that went into the Pandoras Box real-time 

compositing Media Server. Jan Huewel, president 

of Coolux Media Systems GmbH, received 

the award during the 2008 Primetime Emmy Engineering 

Awards ceremony. 

“Pandoras Box is a turnkey solution that perfectly 

unites state-of-the-art rendering technology 

with intuitive media control, and it is a tremendous 

honor for Coolux to be recognized by 

the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the 

engineering involved in developing this unique 

DARESBURY, U.K. — Named after one of 

Charles Manson’s brainwashed accomplices, 

Kasabian rose to the top headlining spot on the 

second day of this year’s two-day Creamsfields 

festival, supported by visuals from the band’s LD, 

Jonny Gaskell, and also by XL Video and HSL. 

For Kasabian, the band’s brief asked for a departure 

from the rock ‘n’ roll norm, with “psychedelic” 

and “mind-bending” looks. Gaskell created 

a multi-layered mix of video, digital and conventional 

lighting and LED sources to meet that goal, 

topped off with laser effects. 

The lighting gear, Stealth panels and 

144 VersaTubes were hung from three truss 

sections in the roof. Two vertical drops of 

Stealth on the downstage edge measured 

eight meters high by two meters wide. Four 

diagonally rigged Stealth surfaces measuring 

six to 10 feet wide were attached to the 

mid and rear truss. 


and very powerful 

solution,” said Steve 

Gilbard, president of 

Coolux International. 

Coolux credited 

Eli McKinney of Media 

Magik drawing the attention 

of the Academy 

to Pandoras Box 

through his design 

work. In May 2005, 

Pandoras Box was 

introduced by Mecontinued 

on page 82 

Jan Huewel, above, received the 

award for Coolux. 

BIRMINGHAM, U.K. — Night Light, a phenomenon sweeping 

Europe, combines lighting projections with street performances 

to draw people back into city centers for the evening. E/T/C London 

created and produced an animated show on the façade of the 

landmark Council House for Birmingham’s two recent Night Light 

events. 

Jim Kelly, head of international & local events for Birmingham 

City Council, contacted E/T/C London’s Ross Ashton to storyboard 

the show. The Council House is part of the city’s museum and art 

gallery complex, and it houses a collection of pre-Raphaelite works, 

plus modern and ancient art from Japan, Africa and South America. 

Ashton was given access to their archive of artworks, using 

more than 200 images to create the 10-minute show, working with 

Paul Chatfield over a 48-hour period to meet the show deadlines. 

Karen Monid was commissioned to produce the accompanying 

soundtrack. 


82 

88 

Inside... 

Tour Visuals, To Go 

Video imagery for the Chemical Brothers flew 

along with the tour on two laptops. 

Hot Dogs, Beer…Opera? 

In San Francisco, a live opera simulcast draws 

23,000 and hits high notes out of the park. 



81

NEWS 


LED Displays Animate Brooks & Dunn Tour 

A trio of LED video displays from Daktronics 

and Media Visions have been giving Brooks 

& Dunn’s most recent tour a visual boost. The 

displays are comprised of 75 PST-12HD modular 

LED panels. They play a central role in the 

visuals for the band’s 2008 Cowboy Town Tour. 

Media Visions worked with set designer 

Mike Swinford and lighting designer 

Larry Boster to help the band set the 

stage for the release of the next Brooks & 

Dunn album, which had been set for early 

October. 

“We wanted to deal with a high-end 

American display manufacturer for this tour,” 

said Wade “Ten-A-C” Slatton of Media Visions. 

“I had already worked with Daktronics on a 

previous project and was confident that they 

could provide what we needed.” 

Daktronics worked with Media Visions 

on the three rectangular screens. The main 

screen measures 7.8 meters high and 3.6 meters 

wide. The two auxiliary screens measure 

7.2 meters high and 3.6 meters wide. 


XL Video supplied all video gear for the 

Creamsfields event, including six Stealth video 

screens, 10 mini-cams and a Catalyst media 

server for control. The HSL-supplied gear 

included 12 i-Pix BB7 LED wash light fixtures 

and custom rigging. HSL had supplied gear to 

Kasabian and Gaskell for previous shows. 

The two companies worked with Gaskell 

and his business partner Nick Gray to create 

visuals blending the show’s video and lighting 

looks. Gaskell also designed the lighting 

at festivals with Prodigy and 

Groove Armada, and first used 

i-Pix’s BB7s with Prodigy. 

XL customized the Stealth 

panels with frames that allowed 

them to be hung straight or diagonally. 

VersaTubes framed the 

sides of each screen and the set 

featured four additional 10-meter-long 

runs of VersaTubes. 

Gaskell’s company, Renegade 

Lighting, commissioned media 

specialists onedotzero to produce 

the screen playback content, 

which included black and 

white graphics energized with 

wildly colored video accents. 

Mini-cams captured images manipulated 

by the Catalyst media server and displayed on 

the screens. The Catalyst was timecoded and 

triggered by a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 

2 console supplied by XL and run by Richard 

Stembridge. XL’s project managers were Phil 

Mercer and Jo Beirne. 

The lighting rig included 16 High End 

Showguns, chosen in part for the distinctive 

They appear on stage behind the band, 

and are fed with live video feeds, crowd 

shots, video clips and graphics produced by 

Brooks & Dunn’s video director, Dan Hanson. 

Onstage lighting, fog machines and effects 

including confetti cannons also add to the 

visual impact. 

“A great tour needs great lighting, sound, 

video, and most importantly a good crew,” 

said Michael Cruce, president of Media Visions 

Inc. “We were looking for a high-quality 

product that could take this tour to the next 

level. Daktronics answered the call.” 

With more than 40 tour dates scheduled 

in the United States and Canada, Media Visions 

wanted a lightweight display that the 

tour’s road crew could easily set up, tear 

down and transport offstage with a minimum 

amount of extra equipment involved. Daktronics 

worked closely with the company to 

fulfill that vision. 

“In my experience with similar products, 

they are slow to set up and the cases are extremely 

clumsy,” said Slatton. 

“The Daktronics PST- 

12HD eliminated the need 

for space-consuming cases 

and the display’s panel 

carts fit perfectly into the 

truck, making setup and 

tear down easier on everyone 

involved.” 

Working closely with 

Media Visions’ main LED 

technician, Byron Fuller, 

Daktronics engineers 

manufactured a set of compact carts to 

transport the display’s components on 

and off stage. 

“Daktronics made us a part of this 

product’s development,” said Cruce. “We 

worked with them on some of the final upgrades 

as well as the cart design and we 

are receiving positive responses from everyone. 

This touring product has proven 

itself to be road ready.” 

look of the ring of LEDs around the nose of the 

fixture. Gaskell used these to blast the stage 

with beams, aerial effects and “presence,” with 

half on the floor and half in the air. 

Gaskell also used 10 Robe ColorWash 

1200E ATs and eight Robe ColorSpot 1200E 

ATs for more conventional moving light duties, 

including some key lighting, with four of 

the ColorWash units positioned downstage 

on the floor to cross-wash the band’s two 

singers from a low level. 

The 12 petal-shaped BB7s were positioned 

on floor-based pipes, with their unusual 

shapes serving as a counterpoint to the 

LED rings on the Showguns. The instruments 

created PAR-can style washes for the band. 

HSL also supplied eight i-Pix BB16s, four 

of which were rigged in the air and four more 

on the floor. Gaskell used those floor-mounted 

units to silhouette the band and treat the 

fans to a healthy dose of retinal assault. 

The rig also included 40 2-lite Mole Feys, 

which framed the screens and were otherwise 

scattered across all the trusses and upstage 

at low level. There were also 12 Source fours, 

eight on the front truss and four on the mid 

Pixel mapping and a modular design 

gave Media Visions technicians an expanded 

range of design possibilities, some of which 

may find their way into future tours. “There 

is always the potential to get bigger and add 

more shows to your lineup,” said Cruce. “Daktronics 

gave us the versatility to match the 

product and add more panels at any point 

down the road. They are a company that is 

truly worth their weight in gold.” 

Video, Lighting Support Kasabian at Creamsfields 

XL Video customized the Stealth panels with frames so they could be hung at 

an angle. 

The three Daktronics screens on the Cowboy Town tour each measure more than seven 

meters high. 

truss. The rig also included 26 Atomic strobes 

from Martin Professional. 

For lighting control, HSL supplied a Flying 

Pig Systems Wholehog 2 and a Wing operated 

by Gaskell. “Nothing was too much for 

HSL, specially in fabricating all the barrels 

and fixings needed to attach the Atomics and 

the 2-lites to the sides of the Stealth screens,” 

Gaskell said. “Their gear was also in immaculate 

condition.” 

HSL’s Eugene Benavidez served as lighting 

crew chief, working alongside technicians 

Matt Bright, Jake Jevons and James Cooksey. 

“It’s always a great pleasure working with Jonny,” 

said HSL’s project manager Mike Oates. 

“His designs are different and challenging, 

with fantastic end-results — and that’s what 

we enjoy the most.” 

Gaskell also called the XL crew “brilliant. 

As with HSL, everyone was incredibly helpful 

in finding solutions to a complex design 

in which positioning and juxtaposing video 

and lighting sources was key.” Lasers were 

supplied by ER Productions and operated by 

Ryan Hagan. 

Organic Looks for Chemical Brothers, To Go 

ISLE OF WIGHT, U.K. — The 

Chemical Brothers’ We Are 

The Night tour, which incorporates 

high-energy visuals 

created by Adam Smith and 

stored and played back via a 

Catalyst digital media server, 

needed to be able to travel. 

The band and tour show programmer 

Matthew Button 

faced a hectic four-month 

schedule. In Australia, for example, 

there were 10 shows 

in as many days. 

For visuals storage and 

playback, Button and lighting tech Toby 

Dennis invested in MacBook Pro laptops 

outfitted with 32Gb Mtron 2.5 inch solid 

state hard drives and the latest version of 

Catalyst. The tour visuals were originally 

programmed on a Catalyst running on a 

Mac G5 desktop and then transferred to 

the laptops. 

“It had to be something we could 

take on the plane with no fuss,” said Button. 

“You can get consoles and media 

The intensity of the stored visuals could be tweaked in real time to keep pace with the flow of 

the music. 

servers anywhere along the way, but the 

video was 80 percent of the visual show 

and absolutely critical to us.” 

Along with freedom from excess baggage 

charges, this set up had the added 

bonus of ensuring the show was secure 

and with them at all times. The other big 

plus was that it reduced the SR footprint 

by a third in terms of the space required. 

The Mac Book Pros (the second was 

used as a backup) were running four 

layers of video footage and 

proved reliable through the 

tour. Button and Dennis initially 

experimented to find 

the correct codec (AIC) and 

the best resolution for the 

playback to run at to look 

its best on their mid-stage 

Stealth screen. 

The grandMA lighting 

console, which was operated 

by artistic director Ricardo 

Lorenzini, triggered the Catalyst 

and also controlled the 

lasers. 

The video and grandMA desk page 

changes were triggered by timecode 

with all video intensity and lighting/laser 

changes done ‘live,’ allowing the visuals 

to be tweaked so all the operators could 

move and groove with the organic flow 

of rhythm, music and ambience. 

Projected Image Digital offers the Mac 

Book Pro package for running Catalyst as 

part of its range of Catalyst solutions for 

theatre, concerts, TV and events. 

Emmy Engineering Plaque 

Goes to Media Server 


dia Magik on “Hit Me Baby, One More 

Time,” and used the following year for 

American Idol, seen by as many as 30 

million viewers each week. Pandoras 

Box has also been used for most of 

America’s major award shows, including 

the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, 

the BET Awards and over 50 prime 

time U.S. television shows. 

The Engineering Plaque is presented 

for those achievements that exhibit 

a high level of engineering and are important 

to the progress of the industry. 

The Pandoras Box media server has a 

4K workspace in dual channels of 2K 

HD/SD outputs for on-air and pre- and 

post-production. It’s designed to minimize 

technical limitations with a 3-D 

compositing and rendering system that 

allows users to arrange video and images 

freely, change the color, form and 

position of images and synchronize 3-D 

sound or animate 3-D objects. 



NEWS 

WASHINGTON, DC — You don’t have to be 

retired to become a member of the American 

Association of Retired Persons, or AARP, but you 

do need to be at least 50 years old. This year, 

if AARP were a person, it would be eligible for 

membership itself. To help the organization celebrate 

50 years — and to make sure the crowd of 

10,000 AARP members gathered at the National 

Mall near the Lincoln Memorial Sept. 4 wouldn’t 

have to strain their eyes — AARP’s AV staging 

company, Alford Media Services, arranged to 

have two high-definition mobile video screens 

supplied by Keller, Tex.-based GoVision LP. 

“An event this big, held outdoors in the 

daylight, demands the most advanced LED 

screens available,” said Chris Curtis, CEO of 

GoVision, of the event, called The American 

Journey, featuring, among others, Leeza Gibbons, 

Buzz Aldrin, Sally Field, Patti Austin and 

Richard Petty. “Our mobile units are ideally 

suited for these conditions, and will ensure 

that everyone will have a great view of the 

speakers and other on-stage activities.” 

“GoVision’s flexible LED screen configurations 

and their extensive experience working 

on important events all over the U.S. make 

them a perfect partner to assist us in providing 

state of the art technical support to this 

Taking Projection to the Streets in Birmingham 


Monid also programmed the projection 

show using E/T/C OnlyCue control system. 

The rhythm of the music complemented 

the movement of the images projected 

across the building. 

The projections measured 80 meters 

wide by 20 meters tall and were created using 

seven PIGI 6kW machines fitted with 

double rotating scrollers. Trees, street fixtures 

and other obstacles posed a challenge, so the 

seven PIGIs were arranged on three towers. 

The center tower housed one machine 

and was constructed in the middle of a fountain. 

This was empty during the load-in period 

and fully operational during the show, 

so a footbridge needed to be built for E/T/C 

crewmembers Michael Barry and Adam Masters. 

The other six machines were rigged on 

two towers left and right of the building. 

All the necessary perspective corrections 

were completed in Photoshop and 

transferred to the PIGI scroll artwork. 

The looped show ran from 8 p.m. until 

midnight each night. It attracted a crowd, 

and was extended for an extra hour for 

their viewing pleasure. 


Jumbo Video Screens Help AARP Celebrate 50 Years 

high-profile national celebration of AARP’s 

50th anniversary,” said Paul Kowzan of Alford 

Media Services. 

GoVision screens are featured at hundreds 

of events across North America where 

crowds can benefit from an enlarged view of 

what’s happening without binoculars. These 

events include major sporting events, including 

NASCAR and thoroughbred races to golf 

tournaments and football games. Concert 

tours, air and auto shows, promotional tours, 

large church events and other celebrations 

use GoVision to enhance the on-site experience 

of their audience. 

Mobile video screens supplied by GoVision appeared near the 

Lincoln Memorial and displayed images in bright sunshine. 

An Eye on the Olympics, from Warsaw 

Aram Multimedia, a Polish company specializing in multimedia and LED technology, rented 20 square meters of LED floor panels 

to a Warsaw-based TV station covering the Olympics for viewers in Poland. The rental company delivered a total of 80 panels, each 

measuring 50cm by 50cm and 8.4cm thick. The floor panels use polycarbonate injection molding to equip 256 SMD RGB LED pixels in 

each of the panels. The panels also feature a two layer tempered and specially treated glass and a quick connect module system for 

easier installation. 





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tools for the integration of customized interfaces and client specific needs. 

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FOR-A’s new HVS-300HS 

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increased functionality and the entire unit measures 3U. The new switcher series will be 

available early next year. 

FOR-A • 714.894.3311 • www.for-a.com 

High end Systems StudioPix 

StudioPix, from High End Systems, is a hybrid wideangle 

moving LED wash light with programmable 

graphic imaging, the second product in High End Systems’ 

new line of Pixelation Luminaires. It’s smaller than 

its predecessor, ShowPix, and it features a circular array 

of 61 homogenous 3-watt LEDs on a 13.5-inch diameter 

head with an output of 11,500 “RGB lumens.” The 

pixels project color, images, and effects. It is equipped 

with 411 stock content animations and patterns. Users 

can also upload custom content through the new HES 

Echo application, a software program offering content 

visualization, management and RDM management 

features. 

High End Systems • 512.836.2242 • www.highend.com 

Stage research PowerPointManager 

and Video101Manager 

Stage Research’s new Power- 

PointManager and Video101Manager 

provide content delivery by 

triggering slides or video with 

SFX, or as stand-alone elements. 

PowerPointManager enables users 

to control Microsoft’s slideshow 

program with the touch of a 

button. Pressing GO can load and 

navigate through a PowerPoint presentation. 

Video101Manager allows 

techs/operators to play video from 

Stage Research SFX software in order 

to juxtapose projected motion 

over live action in a timely manner. It was requested by many smaller theatres wanting to 

incorporate video without having a high-end video system. Video101Manager is available 

to any SFX user at no additional charge. 

Stage Research • 888.267.0859 • www.stageresearch.com 

tV One LM-1750 17-inch HDtV color Monitor 

TV One’s new LM-1750 is a sixinput, 

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TV One • 800.721.4044 • www.tvone.com 



VIDEO WORLD 

By PaulBerliner 

Kiss Your Sweet Analog 

Goodbye 

Starting Feb. 17, 2009, 

all full-power TV 

stations will need to 

switch over to 

ones and zeros. 

February 17, 2009 February 18, 2009 

major companies are now lobbying the FCC and 

Congress — the likes of Google, Hewlett Packard, 

Motorola, Dell and others. The white spaces 

potentially represent the territory in which they 

can market a host of new wireless gadgets, but 

the net result can be stated in one word — interference. 

The decision not only affects us in 

A/V, but it affects theatres, integrators, retailers, 

houses of worship and many others. 

If the FCC’s proposal goes forth without a 

coherent standard to prevent interference, one 

could foresee a return the use of (gasp) XLR 

cables, for our most complex setups. Get the 

picture? 

A Call to Action 

VW 

To our advantage, the major wireless microphone 

manufacturers are on top of this issue. 

Shure and Sennheiser, to name just two, are currently 

engaged in high level dialogs with the FCC, 

and we as A/V professionals are encouraged to 

get involved. Each company has a comprehensive 

series of Web pages available, with a wealth 

of background information on the subject. 

Visit Shure at www.shure.com/ProAudio/ 

PressRoom/WhiteSpaces 

Visit Sennheiser at www.sennheiserusa. 

com/whitespaces/ 

If we all study up on the issue of white 

spaces issue and communicate our opinions 

directly to our representatives in Congress, we 

can make a difference. 

Granny Glitch may solve her problem with 

a trip to Best Buy. The preservation of the white 

spaces and the prevention of unwanted interference 

may take a bit more tenacity. 

Paul Berliner is president of Berliner Productions 

in Davis, Calif. He can be reached at 

pberliner@plsn.com. 

On Feb. 17, 2009, at the stroke of midnight, 

an amazing era comes to a close, 

and another one begins. It’s called the 

DTV (digital television) transition, and as mandated 

by our good friends at the Federal Communications 

Commission (FCC), every chief 

engineer at almost every television station in 

the U.S. is going to throw the big “off” switch 

on their trusty old analog transmitters. From 

that point forward, all terrestrial video transmission 

at “full power” TV stations will be blasting 

out ones and zeros, as the sun sets on analog 

broadcasting. (Psst— Hey buddy, wanna buy a 

50,000-watt analog transmitter?) 

The Feds, in their wisdom, have made exceptions 

for low power and community television 

stations (LPTV), Class “A” stations, plus “translator” 

and “booster” stations — all of which can 

continue in their ancient analog ways long after 

2/17/09. (A low power television station has a 

very small broadcast footprint, so it will not interfere 

with the big guys.) 

Hitting the Airwaves 

VW 

All of the “full power” U.S. television stations 

are (as we speak) spending millions of dollars 

fine tuning their digital workflows, setting up 

their digital transmitters and putting the final 

touches on a series of public service announcements 

(PSAs) that are intended to smooth out 

the DTV transition with their viewers. These 

PSAs are already hitting the airwaves (as I’m 

sure you’ve seen), and several call-letter stations 

in major markets have already briefly tested the 

transition with their audience, with very promising 

results. 

The PSAs are going to increase exponentially 

right through football season, alerting 

viewers that government coupons are available 

towards the purchase of a digital-to-analog 

converter box (also known as a set-top box). 

For those consumers who still use analog antennas 

or rabbit ears (and there are lots of you 

out there), you’re gonna need to buy a set-top 

box, subscribe to a cable provider, or buy a new 

television set with a built-in digital tuner. 

Pass the Popcorn 

VW 

Here’s the gist of what will happen on 2/17, 

and how it might affect you. If you’re already 

receiving digital TV over the airwaves on your 

gleaming new 50-inch HDTV screen, pass the 

popcorn — you’re okay, and you won’t notice a 

thing. If you’re a cable subscriber, with (or without) 

a set-top box, you’re also okay. The cable 

companies are handling the conversion for you 

at their facilities, and you won’t have to toss your 

analog set out the door, or buy any new gizmo. 

Ah, but if you’re Granny Glitch, living in Resume 

Speed, Indiana, and you’re still watching 

Mayberry RFD on your trusty Philco with rabbit 

ears on top of the set (underneath a doily), and 

you haven’t paid any attention to six months of 

PSAs, you’re in for a major surprise on the morning 

of February 18. Nada, zip, and a screen full 

of snow — and the phones are gonna ring at 

television stations across the nation, I guarandamn-tee 

it. 

It might even rival Y2K for media hype and 

frenzy. Stay tuned. This is your last official notice 

from PLSN. 

On a More Serious Note 

VW 

Actually, there’s a very serious audio ramification 

to the DTV transition that affects our 

industry in a major way — so major, in fact, that 

it bears mention in a publication devoted to 

lighting, and not just audio. I’ll try to tone down 

the tech-speak, and concentrate on the issue at 

hand. 

Wireless microphones and wireless intercoms 

now operate in the UHF television spectrum, 

up in the range between 470 MHz and 

806 MHz. This is the band in which television 

channels 14 through 69 currently reside. But 

as of 2/17/09, everything changes. The FCC 

(in their wisdom) has auctioned off (or “re-allocated”) 

the spectrum above 698 MHz to public 

safety functions, large corporations and “new” 

services, and this in turn will greatly compress 

the space in which wireless mics can operate. 

The issue gets even more complex. The FCC 

(in their wisdom) is toying with the idea of allowing 

both fixed and portable unlicensed devices 

(such as PDAs, cell phones, wireless home 

networking devices, etc.) to use the “white 

spaces” which will become available after the 

DTV transition. These “white spaces” are the 

unused frequencies in between the television 

stations, and the very locations where our wireless 

microphones now operate. 

If permission is granted for these unlicensed 

devices to operate within the white spaces, 

the potential exists for a dramatic increase in 

“new” interference. Now, if you’ve been to a 

trade show lately, thank goodness RF isn’t visible 

— because the air above the booths would 

be opaque. After the DTV transition, it will be 

worse. Enough said. 

XLR Returns 

VW 

Not only is the FCC getting into the act of 

messing with the frequencies in which we cover 

our trade shows, concerts and conventions, but 




87

INTERVIEW 


Video Director Frank Zamacona brings the 

San Francisco Opera to the Home of the Giants 

The San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Giants baseball team have 

teamed up to bring free opera performances to crowds of 23,000 in AT&T Park. 

By GeriJeter 

Today, when most people think about 

opera (if they think about it at all), they 

envision an elegant night out with fancy 

clothes, jewels and a stuffy be-on-your-bestbehavior 

attitude. That’s how it is in the movies, 

and even sometimes in real life. 

But that’s a far cry from opera’s beginnings, 

when these events were the rock concerts of 

the day. No politely sitting in their seats for 

18th-century opera patrons — they wandered 

about the hall during performances, talking 

with friends and drinking and eating. And 

due to recent technical improvements in live 

simulcasts, opera companies throughout the 

world are bringing the art form back to its 

roots. While the opera house audience enjoys 

a fashionable, staid evening, other opera fans 

enjoy the same performance in civic plazas, art 

center courtyards and sports stadiums, often 

for free. Since 2006, San Francisco Opera has 

used these free events to bring world-class 

opera into the community. The first event 

was a simulcast of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly 

in May 2006, which drew 8,000 people to San 

Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza across the street 

from the opera house. In September 2007, San 

Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Giants 

baseball team partnered to bring Saint-Saëns’ 

Samson and Delilah to a crowd of 15,000 at 

AT&T Park, followed by the June 2008 simulcast 

of Donizetti’s popular Lucia di Lammermoor, 

which drew 23,000. 

Like the opera audiences of old, fans 

strolled between the stands and the field, 

munching on hot dogs, garlic fries and nachos, 

and kept the beer concessions busy on the 

unseasonably warm evening. The sounds and 

smells of popping corn, along with other ballpark 

noise, only added to the festive mood. 

The production was transmitted live from 

the War Memorial Opera House in 1920x1080 

high definition (HD) via fiber and satellite to 

AT&T Park’s 103-foot-wide Mitsubishi Electric 

Diamond Vision scoreboard. The multi-camera 

shoot was directed from the fifth floor of the 

opera house using the company’s new Koret- 

Taube Media Suite. The suite uses Sony cameras 

and Cambotics robotics, operated by robotic 

camera operators using remote-control 

technology. It is the first permanent HD broadcast-standard 

facility installed in an American 

opera house. 

This technology also made it possible for 

San Francisco Opera and The Bigger Picture, 

a subsidiary of Access Integrated Technologies 

Inc. (AccessIT) to launch this past spring a 

digital cinema series of six operas at 121 movie 

theatres across the U.S. The performances are 

recorded live at the opera house in San Francisco, 

and each includes a 10-minute intermission 

and English subtitles. 

Video Director Frank Zamacona coordinates 

it all. Having worked in television as a 

director/producer for the past 20 years, Zamacona 

has produced and directed over 100 

entertainment specials and series distributed 

by PBS, The Discovery Channel, ABC and in 

syndication. His many awards and honors include 

several Emmys, a Clio, a Broadcast Media 

Award and two Cine Golden Eagle Awards. On 

the day he spoke with PLSN, Zamacona and 

his team were setting up for a live simulcast 

of Lucia di Lammermoor, which would attract 

a crowd of 23,000 to the park. 

PLSN: Did you have any background in 

video or film lighting that might have 

helped you prepare for this project? 

Frank Zamacona: As a kid, I played drums 

in a band. The sense of timing I developed 

while drumming is crucial to my work today. 

The raw timing from this affects everything 

else I have done, including my stints as stage 

manager and AD for sitcoms, ballet and opera. 

I love music and love entertainment. When 

I went to San Francisco State, I majored in film 

and TV production — and I loved it. After college, 

I taught television production at Reardon 

High School in San Francisco, where the entire 

school was wired for TV. We used the broadcast 

technology for stage plays, using TV cameras 

and monitors, and we covered sports and 

Zamacona and crew pay close attention to the effect the lighting has on shades of color. Each opera is approached differently. 

other public school events. 

From this, I produced a show for KQED, the 

local PBS station, called Comedy Tonight. The 

program showcased new comedy talent — 

many well-known comics, including Whoopi 

Goldberg, Ellen DeGeneres and Will Durst, had 

their television debuts on this show. 

In the early 1990s, I began directing for 

ABC, including shows featuring Tina Turner, K. 

D. Lang and RuPaul. I also did a Dave Matthews 

concert for Link TV and am very proud of being 

on the producing team for two platinumselling 

Grateful Dead DVDs. 

Growing up, I never knew anything about 

opera, though. Then the San Francisco Opera 

called; I saw Madame Butterfly, and I was 

hooked. 

There’s a lot of discussion about how HD 

is changing the production realm. Has it 

altered your approach to lighting at all? 

All the alterations in sets, costumes, wigs 

and makeup came about as fine details were 

exposed in the HD process — chips and tears 

in props, sets and costumes are all revealed so 

there was a need for extra vigilance in repairs 

and maintenance. For this, we collaborated 

very closely with the various backstage departments. 

Every department is affected because 

the HD is so revealing. 

Do you have to use different sources or 

techniques to soften the subject? 

We don’t do anything special with the video 

technology to “soften” the images; we do it 

all through the lighting. 

Many times colors come out very differently 

on video than in real life. Did you have to 

alter your color palette at all? 

The LD in The Rake’s Progress had used 

sodium stage lights. Because they lean so 

strongly toward the yellow, we had to shade 

the color toward the red to accommodate the 

video projection. Now, in the design phase, we 

ask LDs to avoid the sodium lights. It’s a collaborative 

process. 

K. W. Jeter 

Video Director 

Frank Zamacona 

OperaVision 

OperaVision allows audience members 

seated in balcony seats an improved view 

of the stage through close-up and midrange 

ensemble shots in high-definition 

video on two 5-foot 6-inch by 9-foot 

6-inch retractable screens hung from the 

ceiling. OperaVision is also available on 

high-definition monitors in lounge areas 

in the lower lobby and box-level lounges 

of the Opera House. 

Koret-Taube Media 

Suite 

GEAR 

9 Fujinon HD lenses 

3 HA25X11.5 Berd lightweight ENG- 

Style telephoto HD lenses with 

servo zoom and focus 

4 HS18X5 Berd standard focal length, 

HD ½-inch SCCAM HD ENG/EFP 

with Digi Power servo 

and 2X extender 

1 HA25X16.5 Berd lightweight super 

telephoto HD ENG-Style lens with 

servo zoom and focus 

1 HA42X13.5 Berd super telephoto 

ENG-Style lens (Lenses are mounted 

on Sony HDC 1500L and Sony HDC 

X-310 cameras.) 

At AT&T Park 

GEAR 

Scoreboard: Mitsubishi Electric 

Diamond Vision AVL-OD10 

Pixel-Pitch: 20mm physical pixel-pitch 

(10mm virtual) 

Dimensions: 103’ wide x 31’6” high 

Aspect Ratio: 32x9 for main viewing 

area with a 4’ high strip below 

(Note: Although the Diamond 

Vision Screen measures 32x9, the 

opera uses only the 29x9 template; 

the Giants mostly use the 29x9 

format also.) 

Dots/Lighting Units: 3,010,560 dots 

spread across 2,940 distinct 

lighting units 

Weight: 56,420 pounds 

Peak Power Consumption: 271 kW 

Standard Configuration: 720p 

HD image with 832x1480 dot 

resolution above line score 

(128 dots high) flanked by AT&T 

branding. 

K. W. Jeter 



INTERVIEW 


Courtesy of san franCisCo opera 

Fans stroll between the stands and the field, munching on hot dogs, garlic fries and 

nachos. They also keep the beer concessions busy. 

Also, color correction sometimes has to 

be done for the distributed videos. I sit with 

the color correction technician, and we work 

toward getting a rich saturation, 

like that in movies. For 

example, we went for a warm 

tone for Madame Butterfly’s 

“Humming Chorus” dream 

sequence — we blew out the 

whites and de-saturated the 

color. 

The bottom line is that 

each opera is approached 

differently, depending on the 

music and textures of the set 

and lighting. 

You have said that you had to make only 

small modifications to the lighting to accommodate 

the video — mostly bringing 

up the lighting levels in some instances. 

Since video cameras today are much more 

sensitive, why did you feel the need to 

increase the illuminance? What did you see 

in the playback that helped you make that 

decision? 

I had to ask for more base light on the 

shadows to define the characters. Plus, I needed 

to create a background. There is very little in 

Lucia — the design was too dark. 

Lucia is always in white, like a giant light 

bulb; other characters, like Raimondo, are in 

dark costumes. I needed more definition to 

keep these other characters from looking like 

floating heads. 

For other operas, certain set pieces cause 

problems. In La Rondine, the large white piano 

was very hot, so we brought that down to balance 

out the scene. Keep in mind that there 

still has to be a certain amount of footcandles 

to see what’s going on. 

Additionally, these shows are seen live as 

well. So the lighting has to be a hybrid of live 

and video lighting. 

Did you bring in a video lighting director to 

work with the company lighting director? 

We don’t have an actual video LD, although 

we’ve had some LDs who have done some 

television. Most LDs who light for the stage do 

not have HD or film lighting experience so, at 

San Francisco Opera, we rely on our shader to 

work with the in-house LD. 

Have you had a chance to view the final 

results on the Diamond Vision LED screen? 

Yes, we have. What we found was that the 

Giants organization likes the contrast ratio on 

the green side. For the opera, we warmed it 

up going toward the red color spectrum and 

brought up the contrast from 80 percent to 

100 percent. This helped bring out the colors 

on the set and for the singers’ skin tones. 

Now that you have some simulcasts under 

your belt, what have you learned from the 

experience? 

Every opera is different. The Samson and 

Delilah was like one of those lush 1950s Cinemascope 

biblical epics. The Lucia is more minimalist 

and harder to show on the wide screen. Basically, 

I had to learn to not be afraid of the large screen. 

I did discover that in the smaller 16x9 screen 

— like those in most theatres with digital projectors 

and for our digital cinema series — you can 

see the Opera House stage deck, which is cut 

off in the 29x9 template of the Diamond Vision 

Scoreboard. Also, in 29x9, the moon (a major “set 

piece” in Lucia) is cut off. It was difficult to get a 

sufficient amount of the moon in the shot and 

still show the rest of the stage. 

I had to shoot a lot up-angle with cameras 

in the pit. And the staging was adjusted to be 

slightly off-center. I also go in tight to the artist 

and terrain. To try and lose the deck, I use a camera 

that is positioned above the orchestra level, 

just below the boxes. 

Also, because it is only used for the ballpark 

scoreboard, the 29x9 template is a one-time-only 

deal. When we shoot for our cinema releases, we 

shoot for a 16x9 ratio, as that is the standard in 

most movie theatres that have digital projectors. 

Did anything surprise you during the process 

that you weren’t expecting? 

I didn’t count on the fact that, unlike television 

actors, opera singers do not strictly adhere 

to the blocking. Every night they move a bit differently. 

Sometimes, entire groups will be on 

one side one night and the next night on the 

other side. 

But this is opera, so it’s all about the music. 

We pretty much let them do what they want. 

Like hockey players, opera singers go all out. 

Whatever it takes for them to get the note out 

— that’s what they do. 

Do you have a “wish list” for future projects? 

At some point, I would love to do Don 

Giovanni in black and white, but it would 

have to be its own show — one that doesn’t 

need to take a live audience into consideration. 

It would look great. I would soften it 

a bit and move it toward sepia, then blow 

out the whites and make the look softer and 

more dream-like. 

In the future, we are looking forward to doing 

the productions in 3-D. The technology is 

just about there to do the job we want. 



THE BIZ 

Beijing’s Fiery Footprints 

The Beijing Summer 2008 Olympics may 

have been destined to be controversial, 

and it didn’t take long for the Games to 

spark public debate. One of the earliest flashpoints 

centered on what took place — and 

didn’t — during the opening seconds of the 

opening ceremony. Leading up to the dramatic, 

drummed countdown at 8:08 p.m. on Aug. 8, 

2008, viewers at home and on giant screens inside 

the National Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest, 

watched as 29 giant footprints outlined in fireworks 

proceeded gloriously above the city from 

Tiananmen Square to the 29 th Olympiad. 

What viewers did not realize was that what 

they were watching was in fact a 55-secondlong 

computer graphics program, over a year 

in the making by Chinese SFX house Crystal 

Stone, which went so far as to digitally mimic 

both the mechanical vibration of the helicopter 

supposedly filming the event and the halo 

effect created by the city’s infamous pollution 

haze, and then inserted into the coverage digitally 

at exactly the right moments. 

Faked in Real Time 

BIZ 

Ostensibly, the reason for the digital enhancement 

was to keep the helicopter at a safe 

distance from the real pyrotechnics, which were 

designed by Cai Guo-Qiang, who teamed up 

with pyro expert Phil Grucci to create the footsteps 

and smiley faces exploding over Beijing. To 

do that, the event had to purposely but benignly 

deceive viewers, which they did marvelously. 

The head of the special effects team for the ceremony 

told reporters how pleased he was that 

viewers thought it was all captured live. 

It was hardly a pyrotechnical sham on the 

scale of Milli Vanilli — there were subtle clues 

given on camera by Bob Costas and Matt Lauer 

(not that anyone was listening), enough to 

give NBC plausible deniability when the blogs 

brought it to everyone’s attention to the ruse 

within hours. But what this intersection of live 

pyro and digital effects brings to the fore is 

the progressive convergence of real-time and 

processed effects. 

Pyro as “Another Layer” 

BIZ 

David Grill, taking a moment away 

from lighting up the Republican National 

Convention in Minneapolis last August, 

says he observed a heightened convergence 

effect last year when he worked on 

the Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro. “I look 

at pyro as another layer,” he says, noting 

that he has integrated pyro shells to create 

ambiences for lighting effects. “The smoke 

allows the shafts of light to be seen, not 

just the target of the light. And properly 

coordinated shell explosions are a way to 

turn the page in a lighting design, to indicate 

to an audience that the show is about 

to go to another place, another level, and 

re-direct their attention.” 

That kind of integration requires a high 

degree of coordination, something that pyro 

designers can now use to keep fireworks on the 

beat. “The creative director can look at the music 

and has the technology, through MIDI or SMPTE 

time code, to coordinate all of the visual elements 

— lighting, projection and pyro — with 

the code. So the interaction between all of these 

systems designers is on the increase lately.” 

Tweaking Programmed Effects 

BIZ 

What the Chinese broadcasters brought to 

the opening ceremony was all that plus a new 

layer — digital video FX — laid over an already 

complex pyro/lighting/projection proposition. 

But this wasn’t postproduction, where technicians 

and designers have the luxury (albeit a 

slight one) of being able to take another pass at 

a scene. This was more like FX on the fly, tweaking 

preprogrammed effects to accommodate 

the minor meteorological changes that wind 

and humidity would have on the actual pyro. 

The overall effect was one of having been pleasantly 

hoodwinked, the same as you might feel 

coming out of well-done carnival spook house. 

The Chinese, who invented black powder, 

showed how multiple layers of an event — in 

this case, pyro, lighting, projection, prerecorded 

and live music and real-time digital video 

FX — could converge through skillful coordination. 

“And that’s the way it has to be when 

you’re going to use that level of brightness in 

an event,” says Grill. “Without coordination and 

an understanding of what each type of illumination 

can achieve, you risk having pyro blow 

the video or the lighting out of the water. In 

order to get the nuances in, I think pyro has to 

be looked at as an extension of lighting.” 

“It has been done before, but Beijing was 

where it’s been done the best, so far.” 

— Eric Tucker, pyrotechnical designer 

Media Servers Aplenty 

BIZ 

With 2,343 DMX-controlled fixtures in use, 

the opening ceremony had plenty of luminous 

firepower. For the video system, High End Systems 

provided 120 Axon media servers that 

were controlled by six Wholehog 3 consoles using 

37 universes of DMX. All the Axons were networked 

and used the network media synchronization 

in High End’s current v1.4.0 software. The 

ring around the inside of the top of the stadium 

was lit by 86 Christie Roadster S+20K projectors 

outfitted with High End Systems Orbital Heads, 

and an additional 63 Christie CP2000-ZX Cinema 

projectors were used without mirrors. It was 

the largest media server show ever attempted 

and also the world record for the largest HD 

video projection at 492 meters long by 14 meters 

high. (Credit where it’s due: Dennis Gardner 

did programming and Scott Chmielewski did 

system design. The video system was under the 

creative direction of Andree Verleger.) 

Pyro Precision, with Balance 

BIZ 

Pyrotechnical designer Eric Tucker, who 

worked on the Pan Am Games with Grill, says 

a lot of progress has been made in the last decade 

in terms of coordinating lighting, pyro, 

projection and digital enhancements. Aerial 

events can achieve synchronization as tight 

as 10 frames — a third of a second in video 

— and a fraction of a frame with rooftop 

displays, making integration with broadcast 

and projection that much more feasible, and 

spectacular. Some pyro devices can even be 

fitted with microprocessors. But, he emphasizes, 

making all of these creative crafts converge 

successfully is less about what they can 

do and more about making sure that everyone 

involved understands the limitations of 

everyone else’s technologies. 

“It has been done before, but Beijing was 

where it’s been done the best, so far,” he says, 

in terms of integrating all of those specialties. 

“Lighting designers know they can’t backlight 

pyro, and you have to be careful to not overstep 

the boundaries with smoke, color and 

luminosity and so on. There are hundreds of 

things each creative craftsperson has to know 

and keep in mind about the other crafts. And 

they all have to hold back a bit when working 

all together. That’s why Beijing was so spectacular 

— everything was done in proportion 

to the other media. When it’s done right, it 

can be amazing.” 




91

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT 


Tyler Truss HUD Truss 


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. 

HUD Truss is like other pre-rigged truss 

in many ways; it’s fabricated using 6061-T6 

aluminum alloy, it has 2-inch chords, the familiar 

cross members, it goes together using 

spigots and it rides on casters. But in other 

ways it’s very different. 

Truck Value Pack 

PS 

For starters, it is squattier than typical 

trussing, meaning it can fit in tight spaces. 

At 14 inches high and 24 inches wide, it just 

about perfectly houses most any automated 

lighting base, leaving the yoke and head free 

to pan and tilt. The lower profile of the truss 

allows it to better fit into hotel ballrooms 

and venues with a low ceiling. The width was 

chosen to allow the truss to fit four across in 

a standard truck, instead of three across as 

with 30-inch-wide truss. In traveling configuration, 

these trusses can be stacked two 

or three trusses high in the truck, depending 

on how much weight is rigged in them and 

how big the fixtures are that are rigged in 

the truss. The wheels are on removable legs 

that form a dolly for transport and they can 

be adjusted in height to accommodate the 

lighting. The casters are also high enough to 

be able to clear ramps without bottoming 

out. And instead of riding aluminum on aluminum, 

HUD Truss uses ultra high molecular 

weight plastic (UHMW) locaters to keep the 

trusses stacked and locked in place. UHMW 

is a type of plastic that has very high impact 

strength, is corrosion resistant, self-lubricating 

and resists abrasion. Daric Bassan, who 

has been using the truss on the Neil Diamond 

tour, reports that they have been able 

to forklift them from the ends of the truss, 

saving time on the in. 

The truss has a top center chord running 

the length of the truss that allows automated 

or conventional fixtures to be loaded so that 

it keeps its center of gravity in the center of 

the truss. Another important distinction is 

the lighter weight of the truss. A 10 foot section 

weighs 200 pounds with the removable 

rolling legs in place and 142 pounds without 

the legs. The combination of the lower 

weight and maximum truck pack helps to 

make the most of your fuel dollars. 

When it comes time to assemble the rig, 

the sections can be wheeled in straight off the 

truck, pieced together with spigots, “wired 

and fired,” and flown to height. The wheel 

dollies can either be removed altogether, or 

they can be rigged on top of the truss to form 

hand rails or just stored out of the way. 

There is also a hinge accessory that allows 

two or more sections of truss to be hinged to 

form any angle. They can be loaded in the 

truck without having to remove the hinges 

because they can fold back 180° without increasing 

the width of two sections of truss. 

The truss is available in five-foot, eight-foot 

and 10-foot lengths, or they can be ordered 

in custom lengths. 

Walking with Very Big Events 

PS 

HUD Truss was conceived by John Huddleston 

with input from a number of working 

industry professionals. It was designed and 

fabricated by Tyler Truss and it is now working 

on a number of tours and events, including 

Radiohead, Neil Diamond, Walking with 

Dinosaurs, AC/DC, Cheetah Girls and several 

corporate events. 

Tyler Truss Systems, Inc. is now offering 

the patent-pending truss and accessories 

for sale. The accessories include 

two patent-pending items: the Tyler 

Mount — a mechanical shock and electrical 

isolation mount to protect the lights 

as they ride in the truss — and a custom 

cable management tray. And according to 

Tyler Truss President Mark Dodd, there are 

more products in development. 

HUD Truss is gaining a reputation for 

saving truck space, fuel and time and for 

easing the arduous task of loading large 

lighting systems in and out of truck and 

venues. In today’s economic environment, 

every dollar and every gallon of 

fuel saved is highly valued, and this truss 

is a good value proposition for the industry. 

A computer-generated image for the Counting Crows set shows HUD truss in virtual action. The inset shows the wheels folded upward, 

providing hand rails for safety. 

HUD truss, shown in triple-stacked, double-stacked and rolling configurations. 


FEEDING THE MACHINES 


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93 

PLSN JULY 2008

FEEDING THE MACHINES 


By BradSchiller 

A 

good automated lighting programmer 

will always prepare for the tasks at hand 

long before the trucks are loaded. Most 

lighting companies will prepare the fixtures, 

cables, truss and more prior to the first loadin. 

In the same manner, an automated lighting 

programmer should prepare the show file and 

console configuration before arriving on site. 

There are many important procedures and 

provisions that you should follow when you 

are beginning a new project. 

Specify the Console 

FTM 

Pre-Pre Production 

Most designers will hire a programmer 

based on their skill level and allow the programmer 

to specify the exact lighting console 

to be used. The designer will trust the programmer’s 

choice and rely on the programmer 

to ensure that all portions of the system are 

working properly. Before choosing which console 

you’ll be working with on a specific production, 

first make sure you know how to use 

it! This may seem like a “Duh!” statement, but I 

often hear of programmers who try to learn a 

console while working on a show. 

Next, it is important to specify not only 

the brand of console you wish to use, but also 

the specific model and the accessories you’ll 

be working with, since most consoles come 

in various models, versions and sizes. Accessories 

can include monitors, keyboard and/ 

or mouse, UPS, backup consoles, wings, networking 

equipment and more. Once you are 

on site, it will be harder to gather these items, 

so it is important to request them early in the 

lighting system preparation process. 

Prepare the Show File 

FTM 

Once the LD provides a plot, you can usually 

begin to organize the show file for your console. 

This can be accomplished in a lighting shop using 

an actual console or anywhere else by using an 

offline version of the software for your console. 

Most consoles provide software that allows you 

to access all of the console functions from any 

standard computer. Either way, you will need a 

console or emulator to prepare the show file. 

When preparing a show file, some programmers 

utilize a “start show” that contains 

their common preferences, views, palettes/ 

presets, and other important tools. By loading 

a file like this, you can be assured that all your 

shows share a universal setup with which you 

are familiar. Other programmers prefer to start 

fresh for each show and set up the console according 

the needs of each production. 

The next step is to add the type and number 

of fixtures you need for your show. You 

may need to find out from the LD or crew chief 

which special fixture modes or options will be 

used to ensure you have the right fixture libraries 

in place. At this point you will also want to 

configure views (pre-saved layouts of console 

windows), define the system architecture such 

as network nodes or MIDI inputs and arrange 

system settings to your programming preferences. 

Most consoles have a preference-setting 

window where you can modify options to suit 

your specific programming requirements. 

Numbers Abound 

FTM 

Show file preparation can often require lots 

of number crunching and communication with 

others. Depending upon the size of the show, 

different people often determine the patching 

and/or user numbering. The DMX512 patch 

is important to the programmer because it 

must be entered into the console correctly to 

match the fixtures in the rig. For this reason, 

the programmer will often create the patch and 

provide the information to the lighting crew. 

However, many shows require complex data 

distribution and organization. In these cases 

the lighting crew chief or lighting designer will 

usually determine the patch and provide the information 

to the programmer. Either way, it is 

essential that the patch in the console matches 

the actual data distribution and DMX512 start 

addresses of the fixtures. 

In addition to DMX512 patch information, 

the lighting programmer must number the 

fixtures for use on the console. Typically the 

DMX512 start addresses are not used for console 

data entry. Instead, custom user-defined 

numbers are used. This process provides the LD 

and programmer with a system to communicate 

information about the fixtures. For example, the 

LD can call out “Fixtures 1 through 10 at full in 

red,” and the programmer can simply enter this 

information into the console. Most LDs allow the 

programmer to determine the user numbering 

because the programmer must use these numbers 

the most. However, in some instances the 

LD will provide the user numbering. There are as 

many different methods of numbering as there 

are knockoff lighting fixtures coming out of China. 

Even so, there are a few common schemes in 

practice. Sequences that start with one (11-12, 

101-112, for example) or by fixture type (200s are 

wash, 300s are spot, for example) are two of the 

more common numbering practices. 

Basic Outline 

FTM 

When you are preparing a show file for an 

upcoming production, it is helpful to create a 

basic outline of the show elements that will be 

required. For instance, if you are working on a 

concert tour, you can easily create pages and 

name them for songs. You might even start a 

blank cuelist for each song as well. This way 

when you arrive on site, you are ready to begin 

building cues and do not have to waste the LD’s 

time as you enter in the song names. If you are 

working in theatre or on a corporate event you 

can easily find other elements of the show that 

require segmentation within your show file. 

Furthermore, you can also create position 

and color palettes/presets. When I’m preparing 

a show, I will create many positions palettes 

with my fixtures at 50/50, but name them all 

differently according to how I plan to use them. 

Then when I arrive on site I can easily update 

the palettes and remember what positions I 

had pre-planned to make. The same can be 

done with color mixing, color scrollers, gobos, 

lens focus and any other parameter. 

Show Me the Money 

FTM 

Preparing a show file can take time, and 

time is money. Some programmers will charge 

clients for prep-time. Others will just include 

this as part of their job. Either way, it is work 

that you could do on site, while the meter is 

running, or on an airplane or at home. Preparing 

the show file helps you as well as the client. 

I often find that preparing a show file gets me 

more mentally involved with the show before I 

arrive on site. It frees me to work more creatively 

when the live programming process begins. 

Wrap It Up 

FTM 

When you finish preparing your show file, it 

is essential to test it. I recently spoke with a friend 

who spent a few days preparing a show file, with 

some actual pre-programming as well. He went 

to load the show into a console only to find the 

copy he had was corrupt. After a bit of a panic he 

created another copy from his computer. A quick 

test proved this copy would work. Had he gone to 

the gig with the bad version, he would have lost 

all his prep work. So remember to always make 

backups and confirm that they are valid before 

heading to the gig. Spend some time to create 

a starting point with a show file and ensure that 

your data is correct. Then with a well-prepared 

show file you will be ready to program the best 

show of your life and sure to impress your LD and 

other lighting crew members. 

Brad Schiller can be reached at brads@plsn.com. 





TECHNOPOLIS 

That giant sound you heard coming 

from Europe last month was the falling 

expectation that the world would 

come to an end when they started the Large 

Hardon Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. It 

turns out that fears of the collider destroying 

the world through the production of microscopic 

black holes never materialized. What 

did materialize was an anticlimactic flip of 

the switch that started the collider — not 

that you would have noticed had the press 

not been there. In the long term, what is 

learned from these particle collisions could 

change the way we view the world. In the 

short term… yawn… stretch… yawn. 

RDM — Really? 

By PhilGilbert 

TECH 

Another event in Europe took place 

with much less fanfare but with much 

more potential for moving the needle on 

the give-a-damn-ometer. It was the official 

launch of the first batch of fixtures with true 

RDM implementation. At least four companies 

— Robe, Martin, PR Lighting and High 

End — launched new products at PLASA 

with bi-directional communication using 

the two-year-old standard. Up until now, 

a lot of devices claimed to be “RDM-ready” 

— meaning they had the hardware — but 

with no actual implementation — meaning 

they had no software using the features. 

That has now changed. 

What, exactly, does that mean to you, 

the coolest lighting guy on the planet? It 

means that any function you can perform 

from the menu display on a device can 

now be performed remotely. For example, 

the Robe RDM software allows you to remotely 

retrieve information about a fixture, 

including: 

The Revolution Starts Now 

• RDM protocol software version 

• Manufacturer label, device model, description, 

and device label (a name you 

give the fixture such as DigitalSpot 3000) 

• Product category and software version 

• DMX512 footprint (how many channels 

the device uses), start address, and mode 

• Lamp hours, lamp strikes, lamp state (on 

or off), and lamp mode 

• Device hours 

• Display invert and intensity level 

• Pan and/or tilt invert 

• Subdevices count – the number of controlled 

devices connected to the device 

(probably for RDM hubs and splitters) 

• Sensor count 

You can also change the settings remotely, 

at least the ones that are settable. In this 

case, the DreamBox allows you to change the 

DMX512 start address, device label, mode, display 

settings, and it lets you turn the lamp on 

and off and reset the fixture. It also lets you decide 

whether you want the fixture to ID itself on 

command so you can figure out on which fixture 

you’re changing the DMX512 address. 

I Must be Dreaming 

TECH 

For the time being, “remotely” probably 

means from another device like a laptop. In 

Robe’s case, they have a small externally connected 

device called the DreamBox that has to 

be interconnected between the console and the 

first RDM fixture. It has a USB port that connects 

to a laptop and the laptop has to be loaded with 

the DreamBox software. All of the commands 

are executed through the computer. Someday 

that job will be taken over by the console. 

Kudos to the fixture manufacturers for implementing 

RDM in the fixtures. Now it’s time 

for the console manufacturers to implement 

RDM in consoles so we can free the FOH from its 

dependence on yet another external box and 

another laptop. Just how long it takes for this 

to happen depends on you. No, no one expects 

you to write the software code for the console, 

but the manufacturers will not devote the resources 

to writing the code into the console unless 

they perceive that there’s a benefit to doing 

so. The benefit has to be that you, the end user, 

will spec and use their products because of this 

feature. You have to be proactive and demand 

it from the manufacturers or Slippery Rock will 

win the BCS championship before we’ll see 

RDM in lighting consoles. 

To be fair, there are some console manufacturers, 

I’m told, who are working feverishly 

to implement RDM in their products…er, make 

that one manufacturer that I know of, and that’s 

Compulite. I’m sure there are others…uh, make 

that pretty sure… 

But Wait…There’s More 

TECH 

Implementing RDM in consoles is just the 

first step in the centralized management of devices 

over a network. Sure, it’s nice to be able 

to remotely address a fixture from the console 

or a laptop, but there’s so much more that can 

be done. Take, for example, when you start a 

new lighting design project. The first thing that 

happens after you decide which devices and 

instruments you will use is to go on a hunt. You 

hunt for information about each device in the 

system; its DMX512 protocol, photometric data, 

its physical characteristics like the size, weight, 

etc. You also need to find or create a CAD symbol 

or block to use when you create a plot or 

a model. As of right now, it’s incumbent upon 

the designer or programmer to gather all of this 

information, and it usually translates into hours 

and hours of pre-pre-production. 

But here’s the thing; the manufacturers already 

have all of this information. They aren’t always 

forthcoming with it, but they created the 

device and they couldn’t do so without having 

drawings and information about it. So why isn’t 

it incumbent upon the manufacturers to supply 

all of this information? In fact, all of this information 

should be loaded into the memory of the 

device and it should also be available on the 

manufacturer’s Web site. We should be able to 

download all of this information in a standardized 

format so that third party programs like 

WYSIWYG, LD Assistant, Vectorworks and Capture 

can access and make use of it. 

Since RDM essentially rides on top of 

DMX512, it’s still transferring data at the 

250K baud — not exactly Michael Phelps-like 

speed. Transferring larger files like video content 

and 3D CAD blocks requires much higher 

speeds. But the technology to do this is available 

today. ACN can do it; it’s available, complete, 

and ready to go. But it doesn’t matter 

how this is accomplished as long as it is done 

(although using a proprietary protocol would 

be a giant step backwards). You don’t have to 

know anything about RDM or ACN to understand 

the implications involved. So go, right 

now, and ask the manufacturers to make it so. 

Talk to anyone remotely involved in console 

product development and make it clear that 

you think this is a high priority. 

No, the world won’t come to an end if 

this doesn’t happen. But just think about 

how it could change the industry when it 

does happen. It just might be the start of 

a revolution. 

Phil Gilbert is a freelance programmer living 

in New York City. He can be reached at 

pgilbert@plsn.com. 

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Day one: 

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95

FOCUS ON FUNDAMENTALS 


I 

“To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory… a 

mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. 

Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid 

images and provocative ideas.” 

— Ivars Peterson, Mathematical Association of America 

I 

don’t really math. If I did, I wouldn’t 

have spent so much time in my youth 

trying to learn to play “Hideaway” notefor-note 

on the guitar like Freddy King. Nor 

would I have spent countless hours watching 

Gilligan try to get off the island on television. 

I don’t math any more than I 

grammar or diagramming sentences, but I 

do love to write, so I do my best to understand 

them in order to perfect the craft. 

By the same token, I love to design 

lighting systems, so I do my best to understand 

certain mathematical relationships 

so that I can perfect the craft. My biggest 

fear is that one day I’ll walk on site at a project 

where I designed the lighting and find 

that there’s not enough illuminance, the 

angle of projection is too high, or the field 

width of the luminaires isn’t wide enough 

to cover the stage uniformly. These are real 

world scenarios where a good grasp of 

Math (and other silly notions) 

just a few mathematical relationships can 

help prevent lighting catastrophes. I have 

recurring nightmares about those things, 

second only to my “stuck out in public 

nude” nightmares and my “missed a final 

exam” nightmares. 

So I math to the extent that I have a 

real desire to figure out the world around 

me, to figure out what makes it tick, and 

how to dismantle it in case the ticking is 

that of a time bomb. And I’ve found that you 

don’t have to be Albert Einstein or Gottfried 

Leibniz to figure out enough to be proficient 

in the design of lighting systems. Actually, 

there are only a handful of things to know 

about math that will help you perfect the 

craft of lighting. If you’re like me and your 

brain can only hold so much, make sure it’s 

holding these five things: 

5. Units of measure unlock hours of pleasure 

— The units of measure can give you 

strong hints about how to figure out math 

problems. For example, if you’re trying to 

figure out how much energy a light uses, 

then the units of measure tell you to multiply 

the number of watts by the numbers 

of hours the light was on. And if the time is 

given in minutes instead of hours, then look 

to the units of measure to convert from one 

to the other. There are sixty minutes in one 

hour, so if you divide the number of minutes 

by sixty, you’ll come away with hours. 

Why? The units of measure are: minutes divided 

by minutes per hour = hours. 

4. Even it up — If you have an equation 

with the value you’re looking for but it’s 

on the wrong side, you can manipulate it 

to make it yield that value which you are 

looking for. Just make sure that whatever 

you do to one side of an equation, do the 

same to the other side; then you haven’t 

changed the relationship. For example, if 

you know that 

V = I x R (Ohm’s law!) 

but you want to figure out I or R instead of 

V, then you can divide both sides by I or R 

to change the equation: 

V 

R 

= I x R = I or V 

R 

I 

= I x R =R 

I 

3. If it ain’t right, it’s wrong — A 

right triangle is one in which there is a 

90° angle. Right triangles are user friendly 

because we know a lot about the relationships 

between the lengths of the sides 

and the three angles in a right triangle. 

If we can identify a right triangle and we 

know the length of two sides, two angles 

(one of which is 90°), or one side and one 

angle, then we can find out the length of 

all three sides and all three angles. The 

good thing is that any triangle can be 

turned into two right triangles (if it isn’t 

already a right triangle) by drawing a 

perpendicular line from the apex of one 

angle to the opposite side. 


2. Pythagoras had a theorem — Some dude 

who lived long before Christ recognized that 

there was a fixed relationship between the 

lengths of the sides of a right triangle. That relationship, 

called the Pythagorean Theorem, 

simply says that the square of one side – the 

side opposite the right angle – is the same as 

the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In 

equation form it looks like this: 

a 2 = b 2 + c 2 

So if you know the length of any two sides 

in a right triangle, you can figure out the length 

of the third. 

1. Sines of the times — Learning a little trigonometry 

will take you a long way. It’s not as difficult 

as figuring out how to play “Hideaway” like 

Freddy King. It’s simply plugging in two values 

of a right triangle to figure out the unknown 

third value. It looks like this: 

Sinθ = opposite side ÷ hypotenuse 

where θ is the angle and the hypotenuse is the 

side opposite the right angle. Don’t let the terms 

“trig” or “hypotenuse” frighten you. They’re actually 

very simple concepts. 

Stephen Hawking was once told by his 

publisher that his book sales would halve for 

every math equation he put in. From my experience 

leading seminars, I know that many of 

us in the industry math about as much as 

the lighting crew s those obnoxious sound 

checks. But as a product of the Texas public 

school system, I’m here to tell you — if I can 

figure this stuff out, certainly you can. 

If you find math difficult to stomach, then 

do what my daughter does when she has to 

take her vitamins — hold your nose and just 

do it. It’ll build strong bones and muscles in the 

weakest of math minds. 

Richard Cadena ‘s your e-mail. Send it to 

rcadena@plsn.com. 




ADVERTISER’S INDEX 

COMPANY PG# PH URL 

4 Wall Entertainment 26, 91 702.263.3858 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-181 

AC Lighting 37 416.255.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-101 

Advanced Entertainment Services 91 702.364.1847 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-266 

All Access Staging & Production 84 310.784.2464 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-102 

Apollo Design 8 800.288.4626 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-104 

Applied Electronics 19, 81 800.883.0008 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-105 

Atlanta Rigging Systems 48 404.355.4370 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-107 

Avolites 54 44 (0)20 8965 8522 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-224 

B&R Scenery 17 805.388.8555 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-281 

Bandit Lites 77 615.641.9000 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-282 

Barbizon 96 866.502.2724 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-108 

Bulbtronics 84 800.227.2852 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-110 

CAT Entertainment Services 48 866.769.3761 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-195 

Chauvet Lighting 7, 55 800.762.1084 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-111 

Checkers Industrial Prod. 32 800.438.9336 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-112 

City Theatrical Inc. 87 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-114 

Clay Paky 14, 15 609.812.1564 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-115 

Clearwing 22 414.258.6333 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-283 

CM Hoists 29 800.888.0985 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-116 

Coemar C3 39 0376.77521 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-295 

Cooling & Power Rentals/ CPR 4, 96 888.871.5503 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-216 

Creative Stage Lighting Co., Inc. 28 518.251.3302 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-118 

Daktronics 49 800.843.5843 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-217 

Doug Fleenor Design 86 888.436.9512 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-119 

East Coast Lighting 39 404.872.0553 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-225 

Eilon Engineering 16 866.669.6122 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-258 

Elation/ American DJ C4 866.245.6726 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-121 

Element Labs 23 408-988-9400 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-285 

Epic Production Technologies 73 204.453.5922 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-291 

ESTA 30 212.244.1505 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-123 

ETC 59 608.831.4116 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-122 

ETCP 57 212.244.1505 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-123 

GE Specialty Lighting 9 800.435.2677 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-167 

Gemini Stage Lighting 71 214.341.1822 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-125 

G-Lite 63 951.302.7728 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-234 

High End Systems 11 512.836.2242 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-126 

In-House Production 20 702.631.4748 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-193 

COMPANY PG# PH URL 

Omni-Sistems 67 253.395.9500 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-253 

Orion Software 28 877.755.2012 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-171 

Osram Sylvania 41 888.677.2627 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-139 

Penn-Elcom 94 973.378.8700 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-172 

Philips Lighting 69 800.555.0050 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-187 

Pixel Range 64 865.588.7660 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-297 

PR Lighting/ Pearl River 51 253.395.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-138 

Precise Corporate Staging 45 480.759.9700 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-207 

PRG 13, 53, 61 845.567.5700 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-275 

ProductionStore.com 10 267.228.8158 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-289 

Prolyte 47 310.594.8515 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-290 

Pyrotek 65 905.479.9991 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-196 

Quik Stage 57 763.783.7373 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-292 

R&M Materials Handling 24 800.955.9967 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-140 

Robe Lighting s.r.o. 5 954.615.9100 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-141 

Roc-Off Productions 87 877.978.2437 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-142 

Sanyo Fisher 83 888.337.1215 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-197 

Scharff Weisberg 39 212.582.3860 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-174 

Selecon 26 410.638.0385 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-239 

Sick In Vegas 85 818.886.1884 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-293 

Stage Crew 64 702.682.9514 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-318 

Stage Tops USA/ World Show International 16 818.765.7527 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-261 

StageLightingUSA.com (ebulb.com) 17 1.888.505.2111 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-294 

Staging Dimensions 35 866.591.3471 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-145 

Strong Entertainment 32 800.262.5016 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-142 

Swisson 10 805.443.7834 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-242 

Syncrolite 2, 3 214.350.7696 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-176 

Techni-Lux C2 407.857.8770 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-147 

Times Square Stage Lighting 33 845.947.3034 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-264 

TMB 33 818.899.8818 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-120 

TMS 69 402.592.5522 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-177 

Tyler Truss Systems 21 765.221.5050 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-148 

Upstaging 18 815.899.9888 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-158 

USHIO 90 800.838.7446 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-280 

UV/FX 75 310.821.2657 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-244 

VXCO 20 41 (0)32 621 88 80 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-247 

Xtreme Structures & Fabrication 30 903.438.1100 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-159 

J&S AudioVisual 76 972.241.5444 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-286 

Jack Rubin & Sons 22 310.635.5407 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-226 

James Thomas Engineering 76 865.692.3060 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-194 

Johnson Systems 12 403.287.8003 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-268 

Leprecon/ CAE 34 810.231.9373 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-130 

Leviton 25 800.736.6682 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-230 

Light Source, The 6 803.547.4765 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-305 

Lightronics 1 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-132 

Littlite 86 810.231.9373 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-232 

Local One IATSE 94 800.745.0045 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-233 

Look Solutions 32 800.426.4189 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-133 

Martin Professional C1, 31 954.858.1800 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-135 

Mega Lite 33 210.684.2600 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-202 

Milos Structural Systems 43 800.411.0065 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-186 

Musiqe Xpress 54 787.787.2306 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-235 

Navigator Systems 71 615.547.1895 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-287 

Nemetschek North America 80 410.290.5114 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-288 

Nocturne 89 815.756.9600 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-255 

Ocean Optics 27 727.545.0741 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-137 

MARKET PLACE 

4 Wall Entertainment 98 702.263.3858 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-181 

Arena Drapery Rental 99 404.713.3742 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-221 

City Theatrical Inc. 99 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-114 

DK Capital 98 517.347.7844 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-151 

Lido Computer Systems 99 323.702.0024 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-317 

Light Parts 99 512.727.2885 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-278 

Light Source Inc. 99 248.685.0102 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-180 

Lightronics 98 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-132 

New York Case/Hybrid Case 99 800.346.4638 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-298 

On The Mark Creative 99 818.294.1000 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-277 

Production Toolbox 98 954.463.4820 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-269 

ProductionStore.com 99 267.228.8158 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-289 

RC4 Wireless Dimming/ Theatre Wireless 98 866.258.4577 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-153 

Roadshow 98 800.861.3111 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-154 

Special FX Lighting 98 435.635.0239 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-161 

Theatrical Lighting Systems, Inc./ TLS 98 866.254.7803 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-157 

Upstaging, Inc. 99 815.899.9888 http://plsn.hotims.com/18522-158 

2008 OCTOBER PLSN 97

To Advertise in Marketplace, Contact: Maria • 702.932.5585 • mk@plsn.com 

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www.PLSN.com 2008 OCTOBER PLSN 99

LD-AT-LARGE 


Going Green 

By NookSchoenfeld 

Nowadays everyone is concerned 

with power consumption for two 

logical reasons. One, we want to 

save ourselves some cash, either at the 

pumps or in our house with heating oil, 

and, two, we want to save our planet by 

lowering our fossil fuel consumption 

and emitting less toxic waste into our 

atmosphere. 

I firmly believe that the time has come 

to start getting rid of incandescent light 

bulbs, not just in our households, but also 

in our stage work. We are facing obstacles 

in doing this, but really, is it something 

our industry cannot overcome? I don’t 

think so. It seems we are well on our way. 

100 Years and Still Fragile LD@L 

These days you can pay a lot of money 

for special household bulbs with long life, 

even years of constant use. They are more 

expensive than normal bulbs, so many 

people don’t use them. While using long 

lasting bulbs will save us money, they still 

use up our natural resources. The new 

compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology 

is helpful. They use way less energy, 

are just as bright as a conventional bulb, 

and they can plug into any standard light 

socket. But of course, they break easily 

too. Why is this? After 100 years you would 

think that somebody could invent a light 

bulb that doesn’t break when a lamp is accidentally 

tipped over. 

Let’s Eliminate Dust 

LD@L 

Getting rid of dead fluorescent 

bulbs used to be a hassle. Now you can 

take them to Home Depot and they 

will safely discard them for you. We’ve 

all heard of the dangers the mercury in 

these bulbs cause when they break. But 

can anyone tell me what these dangers 

actually are? Is it if we breathe the dust 

we’ll get cancer? Or do the toxins in 

these bulbs cause more gaping holes in our 

ozone layer? Actually I don’t need to know 

COMING NEXT 

MONTH... 

LDI Show Report 

Gadgets, widgets, and 

tech bits galore are in 

store for you in the post- 

LDI Show Report. 

Flying Low 

Stone Temple Pilots’ LD 

Alastair Bramall-Watson 

uses a low-profile video 

backdrop to sihouette 

the high-energy band. 

Parnelli Awards Wrap 

The best of the best in 

the industry grace the 

pages of PLSN. 

They have no optics, and they’re made of 

steel, not fancy aluminum or plastic. But 

they sell for $200. I’m thinking of what I can 

do with some pods full of these lights. 

the answer. I just want to get rid of them all 

and replace them with something else that 

lasts 100,000 hours and doesn’t break when 

it’s tipped over — the LED. 

Architectural lighting has grasped this 

concept in a big way. The video world and 

the influx of pixel mapping various LED instruments 

have taken a big step in stage 

and convention lighting. So what’s the 

holdup for us stage lighting folks here? Two 

words: lumens and light beams. 

The Race toward Brightness 

LD@L 

Since the 1200-watt lamp was introduced 

about eight years ago, manufacturers 

have been racing to keep up with each other 

and figure out how to make their beams visible 

in front of video surfaces. Every fixture 

seems to be getting bigger physically and 

much brighter at the same time. And what 

do we have? Fixtures that eat up tons of energy, 

and can’t fit in any automated truss. I 

love the technology and new effects that 

come with them, but hate this whole concept 

of bigger and brighter. I am downright 

sick of all these “better” fixtures. 

This month I have a tour going out with 

many of the usual touring fixtures. The lighting 

vendor called me all excited to let me 

know that they will be sending out the new 

Martin XB washes instead of the standard 

MAC 2000 Wash fixtures I spec’d. The only 

problem is…I don’t want them. They are too 

bright. I want to see the beams from the Robe 

2500 hard edge lights I spec’d. To do this I will 

have to run these “Extra Bright” MACs at lower 

than 100 percent intensity. I realize I am in the 

minority on this issue, but every time I read 

a sales blurb that says all of us designers are 

demanding brighter lights I cringe. When all 

we had were Vari*Lite VL1s and Morpheus Panaspots, 

nobody complained about brightness. 

It’s all relative, isn’t it? 

A Different Direction 

LD@L 

I have to admit that I spent a few years 

wondering why High End Systems stopped 

competing in this silly race. They were smart 

enough to start heading in another direction. 

Even now when I’m wondering what 

use I could possibly have for this new fixture 

of theirs, “the Showpix,” I realize it’s just the 

tip of the iceberg and in time I will not only 

grasp this concept, I will embrace it. 

Every manufacturer is building something 

with an LED light source. But where are 

the moving heads? Of all the companies out 

there, Elation has jumped to the head of the 

line. They have come up with the Impression. 

This light is huge in concept but small in size. 

It can pan and tilt faster than everything else 

I’ve used. Its 16-bit color system gives you 

more colors than all the other dichroic 

color mixing systems out there. And the 

sucker weighs all of 16 pounds. My grandmother 

could hang them one-handed. 

Efficient, but Still Pricey 

LD@L 

More importantly, they have the 

same lumen output as a 575-watt discharge 

lamp like the Studio Color. And 

the light source will last 100,000 hours 

before it fades. Plus, it won’t break when 

it’s kicked over. Okay, they have a list 

price of $8,500, which is indeed high. But 

you do not need to constantly open and 

clean the lens or buy new bulbs when 

they go brown. And the electricity bill is 

a fraction of what it would be to use a 

competitive fixture like the MAC 600. 

My friend went to see a Radiohead 

concert last month. He said it was the 

first show he’s been to where there were 

no light beams. And it still looked cool. 

They are using 100 percent LED lighting 

fixtures and video elements to light 

their touring show. I heard that they 

hired a company to do a carbon audit, 

and they were able to cut back on power 

requirements from about 700 amps 

per phase on previous tours and draw 

only about 135 amps per phase with 

the LEDs. I even heard that some of the 

fixtures are running on battery power 

to reduce emissions, with the hopes of 

someday using solar or wind power. Kudos 

guys, for being innovative enough 

to do this, even to the extent of requiring 

all flashlights be LED. 

Optics and Lenses 

LD@L 

I’m no physics guru, but if I had to 

guess how to make these LED fixtures 

brighter, I would concentrate on optics 

and lenses. I say this because in the early 

1990s, Light and Sound Design created a 

moving light called the Icon. This fixture 

was using the same bulb that many other 

competing manufacturers used, yet it was 

way brighter than any other hard edge fixture 

on the market. This company dumped 

a ton of time and cash into R&D’ing the optics. 

So to me, it just seems logical that superior 

optics can add lumens. 

Hit or Miss Pricing 

LD@L 

The price difference in LED products is 

unreal. It’s hit or miss on many products. 

I spent $1,000 on some LEDs that a band 

wanted to place inside their kick drums. The 

effect didn’t work and money was wasted. 

But then I spent a hundred bucks lining a 

marching bass drum with some LED tape 

running from a battery in the musician’s 

pocket, and it worked great. I’m looking 

at a site now from a company called Jam 

Star. They have an RGB version of a PAR, like 

many others out there. It has no optics, just 

a clear lens to protect about 80 LEDs. It’s 

made of steel, no fancy aluminum or plastic, 

but they sell for $200 (less than many 

light bulbs). I’m thinking of what I can do 

with some pods full of these lights. 

Would I rather buy 42 of these or one 

Impression? Hmmm…not sure. 

Nook Schoenfeld is a freelance lighting designer. 

He can be reached at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.

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