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LDI 2007 Review, Page 20 

Vol. 8.11 

www.plsn.com 

DEC 2007 

PROJECTION, LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

Parnelli Awards Gala Huge Success 

ORLANDO, FL — The 2007 Parnelli Awards gala honored the best and brightest of the live event industry 

Friday, Nov. 16, at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fla. The hundreds in attendance constituted a Who’s Who of players 

in the live event industry, and they all rose to their feet in honor of Lifetime Achievement award winner Gerry 

Stickells and Audio Innovator award winner Bob Heil. Even the stars paid their respect, with members of Velvet 

Revolver, Queen and Jimi Hendrix’s band offering their kudos via video. All the Parnelli winners — as voted on by 

readers of PLSN and FOH — were celebrated in the awards ceremony that honors the best of our business. 

Patrick Woodroffe won the Parnelli for Lighting Designer of the Year. Upstaging won the award for Lighting 

Company of the Year, while the Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year award went to Theatrical Lighting 

Systems. Nocturne won the honor of Video Rental Company of the Year, and Kevin Daniels received the Parnelli for 

Video Director of the Year. Seth Jackson won the Parnelli for Set Designer of the Year. 

For more coverage and a complete list of award winners, please see page 28. 

Martin Professional Announces Third Quarter Earnings 

ÅRHUS, DENMARK — Martin Professional A/ 

S’s positive 2007 growth continued in the year’s 

third quarter. Martin increased revenue by 14.3% 

from $48.4 million in the third quarter of 2006 to 

$55.4 million in the third quarter of 2007. For the 

period Jan.1 to Sept. 30, 2007, Martin increased 

revenue by 24.3% to $168.6 million compared 

with $135.6 million for the same period last 

year. 

The substantial increase in revenue is broadly 

based across all of Martin’s market segments. 

While the entertainment industry as a whole 

has experienced general strong demand, Martin 

has increased its market share through investments 

in technology and new products. Sales 

of Martin’s LED products, for example, continue 

to show growth and now account for 15% of 

monthly revenue. Launched continued on page 8 

Philips to Acquire 

Genlyte 

By Richard Cadena 

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS 

— Philips has done it again. In a move 

that seemed like déjà vu, the company 

managed to surprise the industry 

with an acquisition of a major lighting 

company. Philips Holding USA Inc., a 

fully owned subsidiary of Royal Philips 

Electronics in the Netherlands, and 

the Genlyte Group have entered into 

a merger agreement in which Philips 

will acquire Genlyte in an all-cash 

transaction for approximately US$2.7 

billion or US$95.50 per share. 

The last time Philips caught us 

all by surprise was last June on the 

very day that InfoComm opened. By 

the time the ribbon-cutting ceremonies 

were over, the news had already 

spread that Philips had acquired Color 

Kinetics, thereby commandeering 

the attention continued on page 7 

Strike Over, Shows 

on Broadway Resume 

By Jacob Coakley 

NEW YORK — Late Wednesday, 

Nov. 28, IATSE Local One, which represents 

Broadway stagehands, and 

the League of American Theaters, 

whose members own the majority 

of Broadway theatres, came to an 

agreement for a new contract governing 

stagehand labor on Broadway. 

Both sides declared the contract 

a success, with important gains for 

both the stagehands and producers. 

The contract has not been released 

yet and still needs to be ratified by 

the Union membership before it 

can be officially adopted, but all signs 

point to that happening. All shows 

were scheduled to be up and running 

for curtain on the evening of Thursday, 

Nov. 29. 

continued on page 6 

40 

42 

Genesis 

Turns It on Again 

Genesis 2007 Turn It On Again tour 

If you know the lighting industry, 

you know Genesis as much for the 

band’s production values as for its 

music. In the early 1980s, the group 

was instrumental in the development 

of the first commercially available automated 

lighting system, the Vari*Lite 

VL1, by providing the funds and the 

impetus for its delivery. For that reason, 

Lighting Designer Patrick Woodroffe 

cites the band’s “history of putting on 

big, spectacular light shows” as one of 

the main reasons he enthusiastically 

approached the design for the latest 

tour, Turn It on Again. He and concept 

Stage Designer Mark Fisher knew that 

they were dealing with “people who 

were knowledgeable, experienced and 

prepared to support a big venture,” according 

to Woodroffe. But they also 

knew it would come with challenges. 

Turn to page 38 for more. 

PLSN Installations 

The Salt Lake Tabernacle’s twoyear 

renovation was a balancing 

act for designers. 

Fenton Williams 

This LD’s been a mainstay of the 

Dave Matthews Band for 15 years. 

60 LD-At-Large 

Who’s your buddy in the biz? 

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

www.PLSN.com 

2007 SEPTEMBER PLSN

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


WHAT’S HO T 

WHAT’S HO T 

www.plsn.com 

P R O J E C T I O N , L I G H T S & S TA G I N G N E W S 

Inside Theatre 

Transylvania meets Broadway in Mel Brook’s new musical Young 

Frankenstein. 

Wide Angle 

It’s all about fun on country duo Brooks & Dunn’s latest tour. 

18 

18 32 

C O N T E N T S 

Features 

Features 

16 Inside Theatre 

20 LDI Review 

This year’s LDI was a doozy — 

20 in PLSN more Interview 

ways than one. 

28 Parnelli Wrap-up 

The 7th Annual Parnelli Awards 

honored the best in our industry. 

24 Production Profile 

33 Product Gallery 

26 Vital Stats 

We follow up on the latest 

followspots. 

36 PLSN Interview 

28 PLSN Interview 

Meet Axis deBruyn, the corporate 

gigs LD and more. 

38 31 Production Gallery Profile 

Genesis turns it on again with its 

2007 reunion tour. 

40 34 Installations And the Tony Goes to. . . 

The Salt Lake Tabernacle renovation 

mixed modernization and 

preservation. 

36 Product Spotlight 

42 Fenton Williams 

This LD found a home with the 

Dave Matthews Band. 

36 Road Test 

44 Vital Stats 

From the Spice Girls to Broadway’s 

hit musical Wicked, Show 

Distribution’s Robert “Bob” Belanger 

is a jack-of-all-gigs. 

41 InfoComm Coverage 

46 Road Test 

We check out Clay Paky’s Alpha 

Profile 1200. 

51 Road Test 

Putting the Martin Maxedia media 

server through its paces. 

December December 2007 

Columns 

Columns 

4 Editor’s Note 

4 Editor’s Note 

Why is ACN MIA? 

44 Video Digerati 

52 Video World 

Go back in time (code) and learn 

about those mysterious digits. 

46 The Biz 

54 The Biz 

Fuerzabruta at the Daryl Roth 

47 Focus on Fundamentals 

Theater in New York is pushing the 

limits of special effects. 

55 Feeding the Machines 

48 Feeding the Machines 

Lighting advice columnist Dear 

Bradley answers some burning 

questions. 

48 Technopolis 

56 Focus on Fundamentals 

The five lighting metrics hold the 

key to all you need to know about 

52 

the 

LD-At-Large 

discipline. 

57 Technopolis 

The power of UPS — and we’re not 

Departments 

talking about shipping. 

605 LD-At-Large News 

10 An International in-depth look News at a relationship 

unique to the live event industry 

12 

— 

On 

the 

the 

gig 

Move 

buddy. 

14 Showtime 

Departments: 

37 Projection Connection 

38 5 News Projection Connection News 

12 International News 

13 On the Move 

14 New Products 

16 Showtime 


48 Projection Connection News 


New Products 

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


TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION 

EDITOR’S NOTE 

P R O J E C T I O N L I G H T S & S TA G I N G N E W S 

By RichardCadena 

Is ACN MIA? 

The Publication of Record for the Lighting, 

Staging and Projection Industries 

Publisher 

Terry Lowe 

tlowe@plsn.com 

Editor 

Richard Cadena 

rcadena@plsn.com 


I 

don’t know if it will get you money 

for nothing or chicks for free, 

but I want my ACN, and so should 

you. ACN is the latest control protocol 

developed by the ESTA Control 

Protocols Working Group and was 

published late last year. It stands 

for… never mind what it stands 

for. It could stand for Another Cool 

Name or Artificial Canadian Nickels 

— it doesn’t matter. What does matter 

is what it will do and where it will 

eventually take this industry. 

John Huntington recently wrote 

an article about the possibilities and 

potential of ACN. It is very insightful, 

but I believe that we have little idea 

of the real possibilities it presents. 

When the Internet became widespread 

in the 1980s, we knew that 

it was a powerful tool and that it 

might be a great way to disseminate 

information. But we had absolutely 

no idea that it could be used to sell 

all your used stuff (eBay), share your 

photos (Flicker), book travel (Priceline), 

view satellite images from all 

over the world (MapQuest) and buy 

Viagra (so I’m told). 

When you look down ACN Avenue, 

you can see some really great 

scenery. Remote fixture addressing, 

unlimited channel count and plugand-play 

functionality are but a few 

of the landmarks. But it’s much more 

challenging — and maybe impossible 

— to see around the next corner 

or over the top of the hill. 

But we have to get to the top of 

the hill before we can see over it. Was 

it just me, or did anyone else notice 

almost a complete lack of ACN implementation 

at LDI? If it weren’t for ETC, 

ACN might be MIA. ETC’s Eos console 

seems to be the only traffic cruising 

down the lonely highway of ACN. 

The same goes for RDM. If not for 

PR Lighting and Robe, RDM might be 

too remote for any device to manage. 

PR Lighting and Robe both demonstrated 

their RDM capabilities at the 

Control Protocols Interoperability 

Booth at LDI. Where were the other 

automated lighting manufacturers? 

Maybe the roadmap to ACN with 

all its three-letter acronyms is just 

too confusing. How many of us really 

know our PDUs from our UDPs? But 

as end-users, we shouldn’t have to. 

We should be able to take advantage 

of the protocol without having to 

understand how it works. It’s the job 

of the manufacturers to figure out 

how to do it. 

ACN has the ability to provide all 

the information about a device to 

any ACN-enabled console. Every automated 

lighting fixture should, at 

the very minimum, be able to send 

a complete fixture profile of itself to 

any device that asks for it via ACN. If 

you connect an automated luminaire 

to an ACN-enabled console, you 

shouldn’t have to build a fixture profile 

for it or ask the console manufacturer 

to do so. If you then connect 

that console to a computer running a 

lighting CAD program, you shouldn’t 

have to go hunting for a symbol for 

it in the library — it should come 

from the fixture itself. It should be 

incumbent on the manufacturer who 

developed and built the luminaire 

to provide all the information, data, 

menuing and symbols for its own fixtures. 

Once we clear that hurdle, not 

only will it save time and aggravation 

for the designers and programmers, 

it will also help us to round the corner 

so we can see the next signpost. 

Ask your favorite manufacturers 

to start encoding their fixtures with 

the information that you need for 

your projects and use ACN to send it 

to the console or computer. Support 

the first ones who do by specifying 

their fixtures on your jobs and buying 

their gear for your rental stock. 

Vote for ACN with your purchasing 

power, and it’s a guaranty that we 

will all be the winners. 

For years now, Robe has put an 

8P8C connec tor, better k nown as 

an RJ-45, on its automated lights 

and put “ready for ACN” in its literature. 

Now we’re all ready for 

ACN. Are the manufac turers ready 

to deliver it? 

Editorial Director 

Bill Evans 

bevans@plsn.com 

Managing Editor 

Geri Jeter 

gjeter@plsn.com 

Associate Editor 

Breanne George 

bg@plsn.com 

Contributing Writers 

Vickie Claiborne, Phil Gilbert, Rob Ludwig, 

Kevin M. Mitchell, Bryan Reesman, Brad 

Schiller, Nook Schoenfeld, Paul J. Duryee 

Photographer 

Steve Jennings 

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 

Projection, Lights & Staging News (ISSN: 

1537-0046) Volume 08, Number 11 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 

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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 &

Pete Malvizzi 

Dies After 

Long Illness 

HUNTSVILLE, AL — Pete Malvizzi, 

Theatrical Lighting Systems Inc. (TLS 

Inc.) employee and lighting crew chief 

for Women of Faith, died Nov. 4 after 

several weeks of illness. Malvizzi worked 

with the company on the For Him and 

Point of Grace tours. 

Pete was an “all around talent,” able 

to rig, tech, program and do set carp duties. 

Pete will be missed greatly by those 

who knew him and all those whose lives 

he touched. The excerpt below is from a 

letter the company received from Scott 

Moore officially informing the company 

of Malvizzi’s passing. 

“…Pete never did anything half 

way. If he was going to do something, 

he would do it to the full extent. He 

was diligent and detailed in everything 

he did. He loved everything about live 

production in general and lighting in 

particular.” 


NEWS 

Clay Paky Fixtures Hit The Road with Matisyahu Tour 

REDMOND, WA –– Clay Paky’s 

Alpha Spot HPE 1200 fixtures gave 

a headliner look to Matisyahu’s 

recent road trip. Recently, Omaha 

alt-rockers 311 announced a 42- 

date U.S. tour, tapping Matisyahu 

to open most dates. The team began 

touring in St. Louis on June 28. 

From there, the tour logged performances 

in the Southwestern, Midwestern 

and Northeastern regions 

of the U.S. The tour wrapped up on 

the West Coast in cities such as San 

Diego, Santa Barbara and Salt Lake 

City. 

“A lighting package is generally 

the last thing a support band 

is allowed to bring,” notes Lighting 

Director and Operator Marc 

Janowitz. “But for Matisyahu, it 

was an edict. Still, the support 

slot posed some interesting challenges: 

We were trying to bring 

headline-level production to a 

stage that belonged to somebody 

else. And there was very little time 

to set up; we had to get lighting on 

fast and off fast.” 

Janowitz retained some of 

311’s overhead rig, but supplemented 

it with a “pretty sizeable 

package” consisting of 10 strobes 

on the floor and eight Clay Paky 

Alpha Spot HPE 1200s on four 

rolling side towers, 

which illuminated the 

band on the floor and 

on risers upstage. 

“We needed a 

fixture that could cut 

through diminishing 

daylight — often the 

challenge of playing 

outdoor venues in 

summer,” he notes. “I 

also needed something 

diverse.” 

The Alpha Spot HPE 1200’s 

luminosity is guaranteed by the 

combination of a top-performance 

optical unit and a 1200W discharge 

Matisyahu on stage 

lamp. The unit’s new effects section, 

color-mixing CMY, linear zoom 

10–40 degrees, and quiet operation 

delivers maximum results. The 

Clay Paky fixtures were provided by 

Scharff Weisberg for the tour. 

Draft Guidance 

Document for 

Followspot 

Positions Available 

NEW YORK — BSR E1.28, guidance on 

planning followspot positions in places 

of public assembly, is available for public 

review on the ESTA Web site through 

Jan. 14, 2008. The document offers advice 

on planning practical permanent followspot 

positions in theatres and arenas. 

Sometimes positions for followspots 

are less useful than they might be or are 

useless because they are placed so that 

obstructions keep the light from reaching 

performers, the passage to the followspot 

position is so tight that large 

equipment can’t be moved into position, 

or there is too little power to operate a 

followspot suitable for the throw. The 

draft E1.28 document is intended to help 

people avoid these problems. 

The document and its supporting 

public review materials are available at 

http://www.esta.org/tsp/documents/ 

public_review_docs.php. In addition to 

being asked to review the document to 

see if it offers adequate advice, reviewers 

are asked to look for protected intellectual 

property in the draft. ESTA does 

not warrant that its standards contain 

no protected intellectual property, but it 

also does not intend to adopt any standard 

that requires the use of protected 

intellectual property, unless that property 

is necessary for technical reasons 

and can be licensed and used by anyone 

without prejudice or preference for a 

reasonable fee. 

Any protected intellectual property 

in the document should be pointed out 

in the comments. 

Correction: 

In the November issue feature Premios 

Juventud 2007, we neglected to 

credit Zenith Lighting of Orlando Fla., 

as the lighting supplier. We regret the 

omission. 



2007 December PLSN

NEWS 


Trans-Siberian Orchestra Jumpstarts Holiday Season 

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s two identical tours are comprised of 

13 truckloads of production each. 

UNCASVILLE, CT — This year’s Trans- 

Siberian Orchestra tour has two identical 

shows on the East and West Coasts, each 

carrying 13 truckloads of production. 

Included in the total equipment 

package for both tours are 

four Wholehog 3 consoles and 

30 High End Systems SHOWGUN 

automated luminaires supplied 

by Q1 of Canada. 

Production/Lighting Designer 

Bryan Hartley is also touring 

for his eighth year as the LD on 

the East Coast leg. Lighting Director 

Dan Cassar, now in his fifth 

year, handles the West Coast run. 

Both tours started Nov. 1. 

The Wholehog 3 console is controlling 

a lot of lights and LED products, and 

also triggering the laser show. High End 

Systems’ Brad Schiller helped out during 

rehearsals, setting up the Wholehog software 

that sends MIDI commands to the 

laser controller to fire off those cues in 

the show. 

“I’ve been using Wholehog 3 software 

for over a year now, and it’s all good,” Hartley 

says. “The ease of operation all makes 

sense. It’s got the speed that I need to do 

whatever I need to do, and it runs beautifully. 

All the software issues are worked out 

now. Also, I use the copy-and-paste function 

a lot. On this tour, it’s really helpful 

because I have to duplicate the two shows 

onto two touring consoles so it saves me a 

lot of time.” 

The rig also features 10 moving pods, 

with a SHOWGUN positioned in the middle 

of each pod as its centerpiece. Another four 

SHOWGUNs hang on audience trusses over 

the Front of House area. The SHOWGUN’s 

main purpose is for key lighting. 

“I love its color mixing, strobing, lighter 

weight, LED ring, brightness and solid beam — 

plus it plugs in just like a normal moving light,” 

Hartley says. “We have so many LED products 

on this show, so the SHOWGUN with its recognizable 

LED ring fits right in and looks great. 

This is a heavy metal show, so rather than 

do the multicolored Christmas thing, I’m using 

all solid colors. I love the solid beam of 

SHOWGUN. I use the strobe, too, and I flash 

the LEDs red and blue.” 


Strike Over, Shows on Broadway Resume 

continued from Cover 

Coming in to negotiations, the producers 

were seeking to make massive changes 

to the contract terms that govern how many 

stagehands need to be hired during the loadin 

process, which the producers have repeatedly 

termed “lengthy,” and govern work rules 

during the run of the show, in which the 

producers have accused the union of “featherbedding.” 

By some estimates, the producers 

were looking for a 38% cut in jobs and 

wages. Furthermore, although the producers 

seemed shocked that the Union would strike, 

they had been quietly building up a $20 million 

defense fund by directing to the fund a 

few cents from each ticket sold. 

It takes a long time to build up $20 million 

a few pennies at a time. The producers 

requested cuts, combined with their combative 

attitude toward negotiations (accusing 

the union of “featherbedding” means 

corruption at worst, and laziness at best), and 

a public misinformation campaign (at least 

one paper disparagingly — and erroneously 

— reported that the average stagehand salary 

was $150,000, due to info from producers) 

led the Union to believe it was under attack, 

and the only way to protect its members was 

to strike. So, on Nov. 10, it did, for the first 

time in its 121-year history. 

In a statement released on Nov. 11, 

James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local 

One, apologized for the disruption of the 

theatre schedule, but stated, “Broadway is a 

billion dollar a year industry and has never 

been more profitable than now. Cuts in our 

jobs and wages will never result in a cut in 

ticket prices to benefit the public, but only in 

an increase in the profits for producers. Unlike 

the producers, we are not fighting for 

our second or third homes; we are fighting to 

keep the one that we have. We ask for your 

understanding in our efforts to defend ourselves 

and protect our families.” 

To cut to the heart of the dispute, it helps 

to take a closer look at what divided the 

Union and the League as negotiations broke 

down: the load-in period and work rules during 

the run of a show. 

The League has called the load-in period 

“lengthy” and wishes to reduce the number 

of stagehands called. While it’s hard to get 

exact numbers on approximately how long a 

load-in and tech period goes (specific numbers 

change on a show-to-show basis, and I 

couldn’t get a response from the League or 

the Union — and it doesn’t seem as if anyone 

else tracks it), talking with stagehands 

and designers who have worked on Broadway, 

you would be hard-pressed to find a 

load-in period that lasted longer than four 

weeks. I spoke to some people involved with 

a current prominent Broadway show, and 

they estimated that the load-in and tech for 

that show lasted approximately six weeks. 

That’s six weeks to load a 20-ton lift into 

a theatre that’s over 100 years old, build the 

set on it, figure out how to fly the actors in 

and out, program all the automation and 

cues for the moving set pieces, lights, sound, 

etc., and then rehearse with live actors to 

make sure it all works — in six weeks. The 

load-in itself was approximately four weeks. 

That show had been playing on Broadway 

for one year when the strike hit — 52 weeks. 

Which means the load-in period is already 

less than 8% of the time the show has spent 

making money. As it continues to run, that 

number will only get smaller. So exactly how 

is that “lengthy”? 

Granted, this was a hit and had an openend 

run. The load-in for limited-run shows is 

a greater percentage of time, and the Union 

demonstrates its flexibility in working with 

these shows in its dealings with Dr. Seuss’ 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Musical! 

among others. For these shows, the Union 

makes contract changes to allow more performances 

so the producers could recoup. 

But what if the show’s a flop, like say, High 

Fidelity, which only played for one week? Why 

should the Broadway stagehands take measures 

to reduce the producers’ risk, if the producers 

are not willing to share the rewards of 

that risk? In trying to change the work rules, 

producers tried to cut the Union in two ways: 

by reducing the pay on the in, and by reducing 

the pay (in the long run) when a show is 

successful. The Union fought so that members 

weren’t put at financial or health risk ensuring 

that the proper (i..e., safe) number of 

crew was on hand at all times. 

Everyone benefits when a show is successful. 

But the producers attempted to convince 

the Union to accept a deal that would put an 

undue assumption of risk on the stagehands 

(both in terms of safety due to lack of a proper 

crew and less money to support themselves) 

without a willingness to share any of the rewards 

(cutting pay for stagehands) when 

a show was successful. Furthermore, they 

planned this for years in full knowledge of 

what the Union wuld sacrifice. 

Now that it’s over, we can be happy that 

both sides feel an equitable contract has 

been reached, but during negotiations, both 

sides have claimed it wasn’t about the money, 

it was about respect and fairness — but when 

you look at what the producers were trying to 

do with the money, it’s easy to see why the 

Union didn’t feel much respect. 

 

PLSN December 2007 

www.PLSN.com


NEWS 

Tropicana Hotel Heats up with Elation 

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — They’re mixing 

more than drinks these days at 32 Degrees, a 

stylish European-style lounge in The Quarter 

shopping-entertainment complex at the 

Tropicana Hotel & Casino. Since undergoing 

a renovation in Summer 2007, the popular 

club can mix and change the colors of its 

lighting at the touch of a button to modify 

its atmosphere with new color-mixing LEDs 

from Elation Professional. 

To stay ahead of the competition, 32 Degrees 

co-owner Barry Gutin commissioned 

Scott Kemly of Powerhouse Sound (Cherry Hill, 

N.J.) to give the lounge a lighting makeover. 

Having done the original installation, Kemly 

knew how to update the room with minimal 

structural modification and expense. 

Previously, there had been a huge sphere 

in the center of the ceiling lit by purple neon. 

Surrounding the sphere were dangling strands 

of glass beads, interlaced with a fiber optic 

lighting system. Around the sphere, in the ceiling 

itself, were recessed lights that were used 

during the daytime for down lighting. 

Kemly removed the sphere, neon and 

recessed lights, replacing them with Elation’s 

Alkalite Riva 80 color-mixing LEDs. 

Three Riva 80 systems, consisting of eight 

recessed LED pods each, were installed in 

the ceiling holes where the recessed lighting 

had been. Each of the 24 pods features 

80 red, green and blue LEDs, providing full 

100% additive color mixing. 

The original glass bead strands remain 

Philips to Acquire Genlyte 

continued from cover 

of most of the attendees despite the fact that CK wasn’t even at the show. They managed 

to upstage all of the exhibitors without even buying a booth. 

This time they narrowly missed upstaging LDI, but they certainly have the spotlight 

now. 

“This offer creates outstanding value for our stockholders and enables our management 

and talented associates to continue our successful strategy,” said Larry K. Powers, 

chairman, president and CEO of Genlyte. 

More to the point, it represents outstanding value of the Euro against the U.S. dollar, 

and it reflects the shifting economic tide influenced by high oil prices and the subprime 

debacle. The offer also represents more than a 50% premium over the closing share prices 

from the day before the announcement. Still, with the U.S. dollar trading at $1.49 per 

Euro, it’s almost a break even for the Netherlands-based company. 

“This reflects the strength of Genlyte’s brands, strong customer relationships and 

many years of successful growth in sales and earnings,” said Powers. “We are especially 

pleased that we have the opportunity to build upon these assets as we join an entity 

that understands the lighting fixtures and controls industry and can bring us extensive 

creative solutions and financial resources to further grow our business.” 

It’s hard to argue that Philips doesn’t understand the lighting fixtures and controls 

industry. Their influence is felt far and wide in the entertainment lighting industry, and 

their products are to be found in most every automated luminaire being manufactured 

today. But one has to wonder how they will get away with competing against their own 

customers. Philips Lighting is in the business of selling “globes.” Their customers include 

Martin, High End Systems, Robe, PR Lighting, Elation, Clay Paky, Coemar and just about 

every other automated lighting manufacturer, including Vari-Lite, which is owned by 

Genlyte, which is soon to be owned by Philips. The same can be said of their acquisition 

of Color Kinetics. 

The acquisition of Color Kinetics has not adversely affected sales of Philips Lumileds 

LEDs – they delivered their 100 millionth unit this year – and it may never be an issue 

with LEDs or automated lights. But it’s interesting to consider how an automated lighting 

manufacturer will react to a Philips rep peering inside of their manufacturing operation 

knowing that he gets his paycheck from the same source as their competition. 

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008. It might make you wonder if 

Philips has any more surprises up their sleeve. 

Tropicana Hotel & Casino’s 32 Degrees nightclub modifies 

lighting — and atmosphere — at the touch of a button. 

and now reflect the rich colors of the LEDs. 

The Riva units fit into the existing ceiling 

holes, requiring no costly construction 

work. “We didn’t have to cut or reconstruct 

anything,” Kemly said. “We ripped out the 

old cans and put the Rivas in.” 

In addition to the Rivas, Kemly added 

eight Elation Design Spot 250 hybrid washspot 

moving head fixtures, which provide 

motion and gobo patterns. Among the reasons 

this 250-watt fixture was chosen were 

its compact size and “the Design Spot’s internal 

colors, which are rich, vibrant colors 

that go well with the LEDs,” Kemly says. 

Elation’s Alkalite PZ-720A color-changing 

LED flat panel was installed on a platform in 

the center of the room, where a dancer performs. 

The panel fits into the existing platform 

without complicated construction work. 

The Elation Show Designer 2CF DMX console 

controls the entire lighting ensemble, including 

the club’s original fiber optic strands. 



www.PLSN.com 2007 December PLSN

NEWS 


Alvin Ailey Dance in Vogue on World Tour 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater replaced its former console 

with an ETC Eos before embarking on a world tour. 

NEW YORK — When the Alvin Ailey American 

Dance Theater was preparing for its latest 

world tour, Lighting Director Al Crawford used 

the ETC Eos to replace the dance company’s 

older Obsession II console, also from ETC. 

Alvin Ailey Dance was among the first 

to use an Eos, which recently won a PLASA 

Award for Innovation, completing a triple 

crown of honors. 4Wall Entertainment Lighting 

supplied the Eos system to Ailey and was 

one of the first rental companies in the world 

to purchase the consoles. 

Eos is designed to handle complex lighting 

rigs, and the Alvin Ailey rig is no exception 

with 180 various ETC Source Four spotlights 

and 80 Source Four PARs. 

“We chose the Eos because we’d been with 

Obsession for 15 years and have over 200 ballets 

in our repertoire,” says Crawford. “Changing 

desks posed a significant challenge because of 

the inherent and continual translation process, 

so we needed a desk that could understand 

the data. In our production, we use conventional 

fixtures, moving lights and scrollers and 

needed to transfer the massive amount of repertory 

information seamlessly.” 

Crawford says that as important as the 

control system was, the excellent relationship 

he has with ETC was just as critical: “The Eos 

product team listens carefully to end users. 

For example, there was one time when we 

had an issue with the software — not a fault 

— but we needed it to operate differently. 

We contacted ETC and received a software 

update within 24 hours. They completely 

supported us during the Eos tour around 

the world. That is unprecedented in my book 

— they truly stepped up to the plate. I cannot 

forget the ETC folks, including Anne Valentino, 

Dennis Varian, Luke Delwiche and Victor 

Seastone. What a team!” 

“I must also acknowledge the entire Ailey 

lighting staff for its dedication to this process of 

moving to the Eos system. Stuart Nelson, associate 

lighting director for AAADT, led the translation 

and integration process, and I’m so appreciative 

for his hard work and tireless hours. 

Thanks also to Michael Cannon and Al Ridella at 

4Wall Entertainment Lighting for their dedication 

to investing in new technology.” 

Just finishing up in the U.K., the company’s 

current tour now continues into France and China. 

The New York season at New York City Center 

runs Nov. 28 through Dec. 31 of this year. 

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 

grew from a performance in March 1958 at 

the 92nd Street Young Men’s Hebrew Association 

in New York. Since its inception, 

AAADT has performed for an estimated 21 

million people in 71 countries o n six continents, 

including two historic residencies 

in South Africa. The company has earned 

a reputation as one of the most acclaimed 

international ambassadors of American culture, 

promoting the uniqueness of the African-American 

cultural experience and the 

preservation and enrichment of American 

modern dance. 

Martin Professional Announces Third Quarter Earnings 

continued from cover 

only earlier this year, Martin’s LED product 

line is forecast to generate revenue just shy 

of $20 million in 2007. 

Profit before tax increased from $1.4 

million in the third quarter of 2006 to $6.0 

million in the third quarter of 2007 with an 

EBIT margin of 12.7%. For the period Jan. 

1 to Sept. 30, 2007, profit before tax increased 

to $13.4 million compared to $0.5 

million for the same period last year. 

Several signature projects executed in 

the year’s first three quarters positively affected 

profit. Among them was delivery of 

more than 1,200 outdoor luminaires to the 

Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. There were 

also large deliveries associated with several 

big events, including Copa America in 

Caracas, the Pan American Games in Rio de 

Janeiro, Singapore National Day Parade, the 

Special Olympics World Summer Games in 

Shanghai, as well as preparations for the 

2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. 

With the introduction of several new 

products in Q4, the company’s positive 

numbers are expected to continue 

through the end of the year. Martin’s revenue 

expectation for 2007 remains unchanged 

at approximately $230 million, 

while profit before tax is expected to increase 

even further to approximately $16 

million compared to the previous forecast 

of $13 million. 




NEWS 

ANCHORAGE, AK — Alaska Center for 

the Performing Arts, located in Anchorage, 

opened its doors to the public in 1988. Until 

July 4, 2007, it had the same stage lighting 

controls original to the 20-year-old building. 

With FDA’s help, that has now changed. 

The Center, designed by Hardy Holzman 

Pfeiffer Associates, has presented everything 

from Broadway shows to lecture series, weddings 

and banquets to ballet and jazz. This 

world-class facility with its four performance 

spaces — the 2,000-seat Evangeline Atwood 

Concert Hall, the 700-seat Discovery Theatre, 

the 340-seat Sydney Laurence Theatre and 

the Elvera Voth Hall — plus a performance 

and rehearsal space, as well as adjoining lobbies 

and support areas, comprises 176,000 

square feet and 

takes up just 

over one city 

block. 

One of Anchorage’s 

most 

unique gathering 

places, the 

Alaska Center is 

where people 

come to celebrate 

the performing 

ar ts 

and other important 

social occasions. Each year, the Center 

hosts over 600 performances and events and 

draws over 240,000 patrons. 


Alaska Center for the Performing Arts Upgrades Lighting System 

F D A w a s 

h i r e d t o u p - 

g r a d e t h e 

Alaska Center’s 

obsolete stage 

l i g hting cont 

r o l s w i t h a 

state-of-the-art 

control s ystem 

to handle 

the needs of 

today’s sophisticated 

Broadway 

touring 

shows and local productions. “A key goal 

was to keep programming time during 

costly rehearsals to a minimum,” said 

The Alaska Center’s new state-of-the-art lighting control system is designed for 

all types of events, from touring Broadway shows to weddings. 

FDA Associate Richard Hoyes, who specified 

the system. 

To accomplish this goal, FDA specified 

three of ETC’s new Eos lighting control consoles, 

designed to handle complex lighting 

rigs with its easy-to-use operating system. 

The system includes a fiber-optic backbone 

between major components, along with an 

extensive Ethernet network throughout each 

theatre. This new Ethernet network allows any 

DMX device to be easily added to the system 

and be controlled from the lighting control 

console and gives leased events the flexibility 

to bring their own lighting control console and 

DMX devices. A wireless hand-held remote 

unit allows the stage lighting crew to work 

untethered throughout the facility. 

Kanye West on 

Saturday Night Live 

NEW YORK — A number of recent Kanye 

West events required the lighting design of 

Starlight Visual’s Jonathan Goldstein and the 

services and inventory offered by Scharff 

Weisberg. The two collaborated on projects, 

including two high-profile parties, the artist’s 

appearance on Saturday Night Live and a number 

of North American concerts. Highlighting 

the equipment package was the powerful, yet 

compact, LittleBig 3.5. 

Goldstein first turned to Scharff Weisberg 

to outfit West’s album release party at New 

World Stages in New York, which played host 

to music industry moguls, record label executives 

and the press. “Kanye wants things 

to look good,” remarks Goldstein, who was 

excited about using the LittleBig 3.5 units for 

the event. 

Scharff Weisberg orchestrated and supplied 

equipment for the entire job. 

K anye West per forming at one of his many public 

appearances. 

“When Kanye saw the LittleBigs, something 

clicked for him,” Goldstein says. “He 

walked in and said, ‘What are those?’ He loved 

them.” The party also sported a Hippotizer, a 

Barco 10 foot by 9 foot iLite wall and a compliment 

of color blazes and VL 2500s. The lighting 

system was orchestrated from a grandMA 

lighting console. 

For West’s appearance on Saturday Night 

Live, Goldstein requested that Scharff Weisberg 

bring in LittleBig 3.5s again. According to 

Goldstein, it was very atypical for an outsider 

to bring lights into SNL, but Kanye was “very 

adamant about having them,” he says. “He’s a 

very visual person; and the way the light works 

with the camera lens is very cool. Scharff Weisberg 

has been a huge help in supplying the 

fixtures, hardware and software needed for 

these Kanye events.” 

Goldstein adds, “The LittleBigs really 

looked great on TV. I had wanted them to 

blow the camera out. A lot of TV shows 

won’t let me do that — SNL let us do it, let 

us keep the lights at full percentage.” 



INTERNATIONAL NEWS 


Alice Cooper Rips Through Classic Rock 

COPENHAGEN — Veteran shock rocker 

Alice Cooper is once again having his theatrical 

stage show lit by Bandit Lites. Currently 

in the U.K. and Europe, Lighting Director 

Chad “Chopper” Lewis is working alongside 

Ewan Cameron and Paul Holst from Bandit 

UK and Bandit Inc. in the U.S. 

This is Lewis’ second tour with Cooper 

and his first visit to the U.K. “The continuity 

between Mike Golden at Bandit Lites Inc. 

and Lester Cobrin at Bandit Lites U.K. makes 

touring Europe exceptionally smooth and 

ensures that the high production values 

and ‘Bandit Standard’ that we expect are 

maintained. I have been really impressed 

with the U.K. operation.” 

Artistic Director Norm Schwab and 

Lighting Designer Rob Roth designed the 

original production. From there, Roth and 

Lewis developed and programmed the 

light show. They wanted to create a classic 

monochrome black-and-white feel for the 

lighting — the high contrast, jerky, slightly 

grainy gray impressions of early television 

pictures. 

Colorwise, this meant a lot of open 

white, pastel white tints and pale colors — 

slightly unorthodox for what is essentially 

a heavy rock show. The first half of the set 

sees Cooper rip through some of his classic 

rock catalogue, while the theatrical pranks 

come in the second half. 

The lighting rig is based on five straight 

trusses, two of which are made from minibeam 

and deal primarily with Kabuki-drop 

drapes — one far upstage, and one midstage 

— the latter holding a cloth used for 

a shadow gag at the top of the show. 

The lighting rig includes numerous PAR 

cans and ACLs. Some of the bars are angled 

at 45 degrees to the truss to give the roof 

space some architectural shaping. The 

three lighting trusses are all prerigged. They 

contain 20 bars of 6 PARs in total: six each 

on the back and mid trusses, and eight on 

the front. There are 11 bars of ACLs in total, 

including two on the floor supplied 

by Bandit to second-onthe-bill 

Motorhead. There are 

also two vertical truss sections 

right downstage rigged with 

PARs. 

The moving lights are relatively 

minimal: 10 Martin Professional 

MAC 2K Profiles on the 

back and mid trusses, four MAC 

2K Performances on the front 

truss and four MAC 2K Washes 

on the floor. 

Strobes feature heavily at 

various points, and there are 20 

Atomics divided between the mid truss, the 

shadow-drape truss and the floor, along with 

four 8-lite Molefay units on the front truss for 

audience blinding. The shadow effects are 

achieved using a single 2K Fresnel upstage. 

Lewis operates the show on a full-size 

grandMA, using an MA Lite console, which 

is his desk of choice for its accessibility and 

Alice Cooper’s theatrical stage show 

ease of use. All dimming is Avolites, and distro 

is via Bandit’s custom PD units. 

Bandit is also supplying two DF50 and 

three F100 smoke machines and four Lycian 

2K follow spots for the tour, plus eleven 

one-ton motors, three quarter-ton motors 

(to sub-hang the Motorhead backdrop and 

bring it in and out quickly and easily) and 

all necessary rigging. 

Justin Timberlake Justifies Lasers for Future Sex/Love Sounds Tour 

MELBOURNE. AUSTRALIA — Almost one 

year into the Future Sex/Love Sounds tour, 

Justin Timberlake’s performance is becoming 

recognized as one of 2007’s most entertaining 

and successful tours. 

The tour’s success has gained media recognition, 

including a recent HBO documentary, 

which was filmed during Timberlake’s 

back-to-back showings at Madison Square 

Garden in New York City. 

In preparation for this 

HBO shoot, Timberlake 

approached Head Laser 

Technician Chris Blair 

of Laser Design Productions, 

requesting a 

heavier laser look for 

the televised broadcast. 

Laser Design Productions 

furthered its 

effects list with two additional, 

3-watt DPSS 

Yag lasers to the design. 

This brought the effects 

list to a total of four 

4-watt DPSS full-color air-cooled white light 

diode lasers, two 12-watt red DPSS lasers, 

two 3-watt micro DPSS KTP NdYag Lasers, 

six fiber-optic fed remote scanners, eight 

laser projectors and 14 different sources. 

Over 60 bounce mirrors are positioned 

in the round stage and trussing, and the 

Justin Timberlake rocks his body during the Australian leg of his Future Sex/Love Sounds Tour. 

laser show is programmed and controlled 

with Pangolin software. 

Following the HBO shoot, Timberlake requested 

that the additional laser effects stay on 

board for the remainder of the tour. The additional 

lasers added an extended look to the club 

feel design created by Doug Adams, designer 

and president of Laser Design Productions. 

Adams initially created the laser design 

for three of Justin Timberlake’s hit 

songs from the Future Sex/Love Sounds 

album, including “Rock Your Body,” “Love 

Stoned,” and “Sexy Back.” 

Recently, Adams collaborated with 

Timberlake at the MT V 2007 Video Music 

Awards held at the Palms Casino Resort 

in Las Vegas. Alongside Timberlake for 

the closing act was music producer Timberland 

and vocalist Nelly Furtado. Adams 

designed an array of machida, beam 

and scanning effects to a remix of songs, 

including “Love Stoned” and “Give It to 

Me.” The laser effects for that particular 

performance include six three-watt DPSS 

Yag Lasers. 

After two circuits around North 

America and one through Europe, the 

tour headed off to Australia and New 

Zealand during October and November; 

The tour is scheduled for a performance 

in Abu Dhabi in early December. 



12 

PLSN December 2007 


PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

360 Systems, a 

developer of digital 

video products for the 

broadcast and Pro AV 

markets, announced 

that Jon Powell has 

joined the company as 

Midwest regional sales 

manager, Broadcast Jon Powell 

and Pro AV Products. 

In this role, Powell will provide sales channel 

management, new business development 

and customer support for the Midwest/Central 

United States, covering 14 states from 

Minnesota to western Pennsylvania, and 

south to the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Powell was 

recruited for his expertise in working with 

major video server opportunities at both the 

manufacturer and the reseller levels. 

LA ProPoint announces that it has made 

three new hires to complement its accomplished 

team of project managers, fabricators, 

riggers and technicians. 

Susan Pucelli takes on the role of senior 

project manager of LA ProPoint with specific 

responsibility for the company’s newly established 

structural steel fabrication division as 

well as larger scale entertainment projects. A 

mechanical engineer by training, Pucelli has 

more than 10 years of project management 

and project engineering experience. 

Robert Fisher will serve as a project 

manager with responsibility for estimating, 

sales and, to complement Susan Pucelli’s 

role, overseeing work on structural steel 

commissions. Fisher is an experienced welder 

and has worked in the entertainment trades 

since 1990. 

A set designer for theatre, television and 

theme parks since 1994, Theresa Shook is 

LA ProPoint’s newest designer. Her varied 

background includes completing the final 

drawings for the Finding Nemo attraction at 

Disneyland and the Tower of Terror attraction 

at Disney’s California Adventure. In her new 

role, Shook will be one of the first people to 

tackle the projects that Pucelli and Fisher will 

manage from start to finish as well as some of 

LA ProPoint’s Theme Park work. 

PRG, a supplier of entertainment technology, 

has hired Tom Celner as its controls and 

networking product manager. In the newly 

created position, Celner will serve as PRG’s national 

resource for two proprietary products, 

the Virtuoso® lighting control console and the 

Series 400 Power and Data Distribution System. 

Celner will work with PRG’s Research and 

Development and Marketing teams and will 

be based in Chicago. 

Celner comes to PRG after working as a 

freelance programmer and designer. Prior to 

that, he spent 16 years at Vari*Lite/VLPS, which 

became part of PRG in 2004. At Vari*Lite/VLPS, 

Celner was closely involved in the development 

of Virtuoso and its subsequent upgrades. 

He is a graduate of the Goodman School of 

Drama at DePaul University where he earned 

a BFA degree in lighting design. 

ON THE MOVE 

Craig Smith, president, 

U.S. division of 

AVW-TELAV Audio Visual 

Solutions, has announced 

the appointment 

of David Ross to 

general manager of the 

Chicago branch. Ross 

comes to AVW-TELAV David Ross 

from Exhibitgroup/Giltspur 

where, as corporate vice president of 

sales, he successfully led efforts at restructuring 

the company, which resulted in quantifiable, 

large-scale growth in sales and percent 

increase in long-term business contracts. He 

brings over 20 years of sales and leadership 

experience to this new position. 

Kinetic Lighting Inc. announces it has 

hired Sarah Granger as production coordinator 

and Mike Mallinson as a member of its 

sales force. Granger comes to Kinetic with prior 

production experience and is responsible 

for logistics coordination and backend support 

for the company’s growing production 

department. 

Mallinson, formerly Kinetic’s production 

assistant, has assumed the role of outside 

sales representative. Mallinson’s new role entails 

business development among Kinetic’s 

production, rental and sales departments. He 

specializes in projects that require equipment 

and on-site labor. 

Bulbtronics Inc. has announced the 

appointment of John M. Dahdouh as vice 

president of the newly created subsidiary designed 

to service the Latin American specialty 

lighting market. Headquartered in Miami, Fla., 

the new subsidiary will service the entertainment, 

industrial, medical and scientific markets 

of Florida and Latin America. 

Before joining Bulbtronics, Dahdouh was 

the general manager and director of new 

business development with Barbizon Lighting 

Company in Florida for 10 years. 

LIVE! Technologies 

has appointed Tim Jarmain 

as video operations 

manager. Before joining 

LIVE!, Jarmain served as 

assistant director of the 

Baylor University video 

department, directing 

and producing all video 

content for the women’s 

athletic events. Jarmain also worked for seven 

years at Ohio State University as director of 

live broadcast. 

After many months of meticulous planning, 

LSC Lighting Systems (Aust) Pty. 

Ltd. has moved into its new larger purpose 

built factory. The new contact information 

is: Building 3, 66-74 Micro Circuit, 

Dandenong South, VIC. 3175, Australia. 

LMG Inc., a national 

provider of 

video, audio and 

lighting support 

with offices in Orlando, 

Phoenix and 

Las Vegas, has hired 

Scott Sherrer as a 

sales engineer for 

Tim Jarmain 

Scott Sherrer 

the firm’s system integration division. 

Sherrer’s duties will include developing 

new business, maintaining client communication 

and advising clients on the 

optimal equipment to meet design and 

budget needs. 

Sherrer previously worked for LMG 

as an installation technician from 2000– 

2003 and has freelanced for the firm for 

the last several years. 


2007 December PLSN 13 


NEW PRODUCTS 

A.C. Lighting Chroma-Q Color Punch 

The new Chroma-Q Color Punch from A.C. 

Lighting provides 1,230 lumens in a compact LED 

luminaire. The unit is IP rated, and convection 

cooling allows silent operation. The machined 

aluminum and high-impact plastic housing contains 

a built-in power supply, and it can operate 

in standalone mode or with DMX512. 


A.C. Lighting • 518.494.9988 • www.aclighting.com 

American DJ LED Bar 

American DJ’s new LED 

Bar has four heads, each 

containing 61 5 mm LEDs 

(21 red, 19 green, 21 blue). 

The DMX-controllable fixture 

has a 30-degree beam 

angle, and the emitters are 

rated at 50,000 hours. Features 

include color strobe 

effects, electronic dimming, 

three standalone modes 

(sound active, auto or static 

color) and built-in preset programs. An optional foot controller can be used to control 

color selection, color fades and blackout. The unit includes a built-in power supply and 

measures 19.75 inches by 3.5 inches by 5.25 inches. It weighs seven pounds and can be 

floor or truss mounted. 

American DJ • 800.322.6337 • www.americandj.com 

Chauvet Arena Hazer 


Chauvet’s new Arena Hazer is a water-based 

haze machine that features continuous output up 

to 20,000 cfm, an integral fan and an auxiliary external 

squirrel cage blower with adjustable speed and 

direction. The system is housed in its own wheeled 

road case with access to the control panel and fluid 

reservoir. Also included is DMX512 control capability 

for output adjustment, fan speed and blower 

speed, a wired remote control and a 1.4-quart onboard 

fluid container. 

Chauvet • 800.762.1084 • www.chauvetlighting.com 

D.T.S. Delta LED Color Changers 

A.C. Lighting, the exclusive North American distributor 

for D.T.S., is now stocking the new Delta RGB Full Color range 

of LED color changers. RGB Full Color features 40 full-color 

(not separate RGB) LEDs, which can independently generate 

16 million colors. The range produces 370 lux at five; choices 

include motorized or manual movement moving head, fixed 

installation and embedded ceiling installation models. Other 

features include IP65 protection, spot, medium-flood and 

wide-flood interchangeable optical units, RGB, CMY and HSV 

color-mixing modes, light sensor, standalone or DMX512 control, 

and stand-alone operation with up to 32 units. 

A.C. Lighting Inc. • 416.255.9494 • www.aclighting.com/ 

northamerica 

14 PLSN December 2007 


Elation Impression LED Intelligent Moving Head 

Elation Professional has introduced the Impression, a 

DMX512-controllable LED moving head. Powered by 90 Luxeon 

K2 LEDs, it can pan 660 degrees in two seconds and tilt 

300 degrees in one second. It is available with RGB or allwhite 

LEDs. The RGB version contains 30 red, 30 green and 

30 blue LEDs and features color correction from 7,200K to 

3,200K. The all-white version contains 60 cold white LEDs 

and 30 amber LEDs. It comes standard with a black housing; 

silver or white is available by special order. The unit weighs 

16 pounds and measures 14.5 inches by 14 inches by 5.75 

inches. 

Elation Professional • 866.245.6726 • www.elationlighting.com


Field Template SoftSymbols Version 3 

Field Template’s Version 3 of SoftSymbols 

is a significant overhaul and expansion 

to the VectorWorks®-based symbol library. 

In addition to another 800 symbols, 

it ships with DataConvert Macros, allowing 

the entire software package to be converted 

from imperial scale to metric scale and 

back. New additions in Version 3 include 

the entire Rosco, GAM, Diversitronics, 

Reich & Vogel, CCT and Robe product lines, 

as well as the latest from Coemar, Martin, 

Selador, Selecon and the City Theatrical libraries. 

Also included are the archive product 

lines from Strand and Berkey Colortran. 

All the data in the symbols is exported to a SoftData© PDF reference document. 

Field Template • 310.832.4700 • www.fieldtemplate.com 

FocusTrack Version 1.300 

FocusTrack, the production 

lighting documentation software, 

is now available in version 

1.300. New features include the 

ability to detect preset- and 

postset-only positions when 

importing a showfile (positions 

used to set up movement of 

lights as they are fading in or fading 

out) and “FocusFinder” functionality 

(when new positions 

are created, detects whether 

identical or similar preset focus 

positions have been created 

for that light). RigTrack, the rig 

management module, can now 

generate weight and power 

totals, show subsets of a rig (conventional or moving lights, tungsten or arc sources) and import 

rig data from VectorWorks Spotlight, Lightwright and other sources. 

FocusTrack • +44.797.331.9793 • www.focustrack.co.uk 

MA Lighting grandMA Pico 

MA Lighting introduces the grandMA Pico, a console 

designed and optimized for use in theatres. Similar to 

the larger consoles of the grandMA range, a numberpad, 

a Go-plus, a Go-minus and a Pause key are all 

present. Features include one color touch screen 

display, five manual faders, five physical playback 

buttons on 128 pages, 1,024 DMX512 

channels and free visualization software. 

Additionally, it is possible to connect one 

remote and up to four grandMA video 

stations. The console uses the same syntax, 

windows and menus as the larger consoles. Its 

compact footprint makes it ideal for smaller theatres. 

ACT Lighting • 818.707.0884 • www.actlighting.com 

Wybron PS 450i Power Supply 

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

Wybron’s new PS 450i power supply is 

RDM compatible and is modeled after the 

company’s PS series power supply products. 

The permanent power supply is compatible 

with Wybron’s Nexera and Forerunner, as 

well as all of the company’s InfoTrace System 

products, including the Coloram IT, CXI 

IT, Eclipse IT and Eclipse II IT. It is designed 

to mount to a wall or Unistrut and has multiple 

conduit knockouts. All connections 

are on terminal blocks with separate blocks 

for main power and low-voltage/data. The 

450i differs from other PS series power supplies 

by using three discreet 150W, 24V 

outputs. It is UL listed. 

Wybron, Inc. • 800.624.0146 • www.wybron.com 

STAGING • LIGHTING • SOUND 

Order online TODAY at www.plsnbookshelf.com 


2007 December PLSN 15

SHOWTIME 

ST 

Tremper Homecoming 2007 

Venue: 

Tremper High School 

Kenosha, WI 

Crew 

Producer/Production Manager: Travis Wetzel 

Lighting/Video Company: Trav-A-Ling Tunes 

Lighting Designers: Travis Wetzel, Travis Martin 

Lighting Director/Automated Lighting 

Operator: Travis Martin 

Lighting Techs: Travis Wetzel, Travis Martin, 

Sean V. 

Set Design: Travis Wetzel, Scott Puro 

Set Construction: Travis Wetzel, Scott Puro, 

Travis Martin 

Rigger: Scott Puro, Travis Martin 

Video Director: Matt Kuehn 

Gear 

8 American DJ PocketScans 

1 DJ screen 

1 ETC Smartpack dimmer 

6 ETC Source Four PARs 

1 Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC 

1 JEM ZR 24/7 hazer 

1 Numark VM03 

1 Numark AVM01 

1 6 PAR 64s 

1 Sanyo PLC-XP51 4,000 Lumen projector 

1 Sony HDR-HC5 DV camcorder 

6 12x12 Tomcat truss 

2 Vari*Lite VL2500 spots 

4 Vari*Lite VL500s 

2 16” mirror balls 

Making History — University of 

Pennsylvania Capitol Campaign 

ST 

Venue: 

Three Large Tents @ Postal Property 

Philadelphia, PA 

Crew 

Producers: Karen Homer/Fred Stein 

Lighting/Video Company: Advanced Staging 

Productions 

Production Manager: Ryan McLaughlin 

Lighting Designer: Jason Showers 

Assistant Lighting Designer: Robert Morbeck 

Lighting Directors: Jason Showers/Robert 

Morbeck 

Automated Lighting Operator: David Schultz 

Master Electrician: Stacy Shoff, Jerreme Aldrich 

Crew Chief: Stacy Shoff 

Lighting Techs: Stacy Shoff, Mark Mazzone, 

Jason Snow, Jerreme Aldrich 

Set Design/Construction: Advanced Staging 

Productions 

Rigger: Robert Morbeck, IATSE Local 8 

Staging Company: Proof Productions 

Staging Carpenter: Steve McEntee 

Pyrotechnics: Denis O’Regan 

Video Director: William Noecker 

Gear 

1 Barco Image Pro HD 

2 Barco Screen Pro II HD switchers 

1 Barco 16 x 16 analog router 

1 Barco 16 x 16 SDI router 

1 Barco 8 x 8 DVI router 

2 Canon 33x lens 

1 Christie Lites MLD main distro 

2 Christie Lites MPD Cam-C5 distros 

64 City Theatrical B-size template holder 

6 City Theatrical CB 12-way PSUs 

102 4’ CL Type B 16” truss 

66 CM chain hoists 

36 Color Kinetics CB12 LED luminaires 

8 CS 800 8-way motor distro (truss mount) 

16 DFD 1-to-5 DMX isolated splitters 

1 DFD DMX A/B switch 

1 Encore control console 

6 ETC Sensor 48 racks 

160 ETC Source Four ellipsoidals 19d/26d/ 

36d/50d 

24 ETC Source Four PAR Bars MFL/WFL 

12 ETC Source Four PARs on bases 

5 Extron GLI 2000s 

3 Extron RGBHV ADA 1 x 6 



2 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II console 

1 Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC w/playback/ 

programming wings 

2 Fuji 55x camera lens 

1 Fuji 12x camera lens 

2 Grass Valley turbos 

1 Jands Vista T2/E2B control console w/wing 

1 Jands Vista T2 backup console 

1 Leprecon VX2400 24 rack 

1 Magni Scope AVN510 

1 Master Cue V5 system 

5 MDG atmosphere haze generators 

2 Panasonic 13” CRT monitors 

2 Panasonic 50” plasmas 

8 Panasonic PT-D7700U-K DLP projectors 

2 Panasonic PT-D10000W DLP projectors 

24 PAR 46 MFLs on bases 

2 Quad 8” Panasonic monitor racks 

1 Sony Beta deck rack 

1 Sony DFS 500 video switcher 

4 Sony DSR 1500s 

2 Sony DSR 1800s 

4 Sony D50 cameras 

1 Sony D35 camera 

4 Spider pods 

Stage Tech Decks, 20’ turntable 

1 TMB ProPower 24 x 208v PD 

2 Vari*Lite S300 mod racks 

4 Vari*Lite S300 APS6 chassis 

20 Vari*Lite S300 smart repeaters 

12 Vari*Lite S300 smart repeater plus units 

2 Vari*Lite DMX power packs 

84 Vari*Lite VL5 wash fixtures w/NSPs 

42 Vari*Lite VL6C+ fixtures w/custom color 

and gobos 

4 Vari*Lite VL3000 spots w/custom gobos 

12 Vari*Lite VL2000 spots w/custom color 

and gobos 

8 Vari*Lite VL2000 wash fixtures 

8 Vari*Lite VL1000TS fixtures 

5 video processors 

6 9 x 16 rear projection screens 

2 15 x 26.5 front projection screens 

2 High-Def DVD players 




Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell III Tour 

ST 

Crew 

Lighting Company: Creative Stage Lighting 

Lighting Designer: Bill Sheldon 

Lighting Director: Wayne Bukovinsky 

Lighting Techs: Eric Potter 

Gear 

12 ACL 4xPAR 64, silver 

1 Avolites Diamond 4 console 

BVX-1 72x3K dimmer rack 

BVX-4 72X3K dimmer rack 

4 City Theatrical 64 power supply PDS 

375 TRs 

16 CM 1/2-ton hoist 

8 CM 1-ton hoist 

13 Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 TRs 

1 CSL prerigged truss 4-way corner, silver 

6 CSL PAR 64 

DMX Snake-300’, 10x5-Pin, 3x3-Pin, 

3xAC, 2xCat5 

DMX Relay, 6-channel, 30A total 

6 DMX isolated splitter 

10 ETC Source Four 750w 26º w/iris 

42 High End Systems studio beams 

10 James Thomas 91” Prerigged truss, silver 

15 James Thomas 91” ML truss, silver 

10 James Thomas 12” GP truss 96,” silver 

18 James Thomas 12” truss 120,” silver 

8 James Thomas 20.5” GP truss 120,” silver 

5 James Thomas 20.5” GP truss 96,” silver 

2 James Thomas GP truss 60,” silver 

12 James Thomas 4-Lite molefays 

25 Martin MAC 2000 Profile II Es 

4 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes 

3 Reel EFX DF-50 hazer 

10 6-lamp PAR 64 bar 

ST 

Beehive, The 60’s Musical 

Crew 

Producer: Prather Entertainment Group 

Lighting Company: Clearwing Productions 

(Phoenix) 

Production Manager: Matt Jameson 

Lighting Designer/Director: Russell A. 

Thompson 

Automated Lighting Operator/Tech: David 

Brooks 

Set Designer: Evan Adamson 

Set Construction: Prather Productions Inc. 

Staging Company: PEG 

Staging Carpenter: James (Cubbie) 

McCorory 

Gear 

6 Altman 3-cell sky cycs 

1 ETC Emphasis lighting console 

2 ETC 48x2.4K sensor touring racks 

3 ETC Source Four 19 degrees 

22 ETC Source Four PAR 700 MCMs 

36 ETC Source Four 26 degrees 

12 High End Studio Spot 575s 

2 SGM Giotto Spot 250s 

6 Thomas 3-cell cyc 

5 Thomas 3-cell ground row cyc 

18 Wybron Forerunner color scrollers 

Walters Art Museum Annual 

Fundraiser Gala 

ST 

Venue: 

60 x 150 Clearspan tent, 

Mt. Vernon neighborhood 

Baltimore, MD 

Crew 

Lighting Company: Event Tech 

Lighting Designer: Dan Hoffman 

Master Electrician: Briana Binkerd-Dale 

Gear 

25 Chauvet Colorado 3 LED fixture 

28 Chauvet Colorado 1B LED PAR fixture 

12 Chauvet LED Rain 56 PAR fixtures 

1 CM 1-ton chain 

1 Doug Fleenor Designs 123EE iso-splitter 

6 ETC Source Four 19˚ fixtures 

1 Jands Hog 1000 console 

1 Leprecon 24-way 2.4k VX touring 

dimmer rack 

1 Reel EFX DF50 hazer 

130’ 12”x12” GP truss 

6 motors 

ST 

PLSN wants your gig shots! Go to www.plsn.com/showtime to submit your Showtime pics or e-mail bg@plsn.com. 

ST 


www.PLSN.com 2007 December PLSN 17

INSIDE THEATRE 


Young Frankenstein 

Transylvania Meets Broadway 

All Photos by Paul Kolnik 

Megan Mullally, Andrea Martin, Christopher Fitzgerald 

By JoyceStorey 

Look out Dorothy! Kansas is out 

— Transylvania is decidedly in! The 

team that created the megaex 

travaganza The Producers is at it again, 

this time with the musical version of the 

1974 Mel Brooks Academy Award-nominated 

hit film comedy Young Frankenstein. 

When New York brain surgeon and 

professor Frederick Frankenstein inherits 

a castle in Transylvania from his grandfather, 

deranged genius Victor Von Frankenstein, 

he goes to Transylvania and 

carries on with his grandfather’s mad experiments 

in reanimating the dead. In the 

process, he falls in love with his sexy lab 

assistant, Inga. 

Hoping for another slam-dunk success 

like The Producers, which took home a record 

12 Tonys in 2001, Brooks has put the “dream 

team” back together. Led by Tony-winning 

Director/Choreographer Susan Stroman, it 

includes his Tony-winning designers: Lighting 

Designer Peter Kaczorowski, Set Designer 

Robin Wagner and Costume Designer 

William Ivey Long, in addition to Jonathan 

Deans as sound designer and Marc Brickman 

designing special effects. 

If you’re thinking of catching the show, 

you’d better have deep pockets. Young 

Frankenstein’s top ticket prices are $450 

and $375 for “premier” seats, with $120 

seats available in the same area. With all 

the hype and anticipation, it’s a privilege 

to get an inside look behind the scenes. 

Kaczorowksi took time out of his hectic 

schedule to “shed some light” on the phenomenon 

that is Young Frankenstein. 

His first question about the design was, 

“Are we doing black-and-white?” According 

to Kaczorowski, “It was pretty clear that 

we shouldn’t. Black-and-white would have 

been a trap. We’re a different animal from 

the movie, though I think there’s a spirit in 

the show that’s very much like the movie. 

Some of the lighting is wry and hopefully 

funny. There’s scale…a kind of daft majesty, 

and it has the seriousness that a lot 

of those movies like to think they have, yet 

there’s also that nod to self-aware parody. 

At the Hilton, all tongues are firmly planted 

in cheeks.” 

Though featuring some spectacular 

projections, Young Frankenstein does 

not have a formal projection designer. 

Projection was not in the original concept, 

but grew organically during the 

design process, and the responsibility 

fell to Kaczorowski. 

In one instance, 

Stroman requested 

that the walls shake 

during Frederick’s 

n i g h t m a r e s e - 

quence. Kaczorowski 

took a picture of 

the lit Grand Hall 

set, then projected 

it back onto the 

image itself, using 

the shake effect in 

a Green Hippo Hippotizer 

media server 

to create the illusion. 

During a lightning crash, Frederick’s 

grandfather melts out of a portrait, leaving 

a negative space, and appears “in the 

flesh.” The moving portrait shadow was 

painted on an RP screen with two concentric 

light boxes for positive and negative 

images. Parallel lines of bright strip were 

created one after another and controlled 

on eight channels over a span of about 

three feet, so grandfather could disappear 

from the head down. 

Stroman also wanted the image of a 

dead body in silhouette swinging on the 

gallows. “Originally, we were going to back 

project the shape of an actual person, or 

Shuler Hensley, Sutton Fosterr, Roger Bart, Christopher Fitzgerald and Andrea Martiñ 

“Front projecting 

a shadow meant 

animation. That was 

t h e b e g i n n i n g o f 

needing a projector.” 

— Lighting Designer 

Peter Kaczorowski 

perhaps a dummy, onto a translucency, 

creating a true silhouette,” Kaczorowski 

recalls. “But this image had to cover a set 

change upstage of it, so it had to be frontprojected. 

Front projecting a shadow 

meant animation. That was the beginning 

of needing a projector. We have a Hippo 

run by an MA Lighting grandMA, and the 

images come out of two 12K projectors 

working completely in line and producing 

the same image, one on top of the other, in 

case one goes down. It’s a little brighter 

than we were experiencing in Seattle 

[where the show originated], where 

we only had one 

projector.” 

J o s h Fr a n k e l 

was brought in to 

create the video sequences, 

and Kaczorowski 

received 

technical support 

from Scharff Weisberg. 

Kaczorowski 

enjoyed his dual 

design capacity for 

this show. “It was 

just an extension 

of my department,” 

he says. “It was a little more efficient that 

way. I knew what the sequences were and 

booked time at Scharff for figuring them 

out. Josh created the work and gave it to 

us on a file. We encoded it onto the Hippo, 

played it back and manipulated it with 

lenses, focus, brightness and color.” 

One of the highlights of the production 

is the hayride scene. It uses a fullscreen 

video of trees-in-passing to create 

the illusion of movement, as the stationary 

wagon appears to travel toward the 

Frankenstein castle. Initially, the scene 

was planned with three elaborate unfolding 

backdrops, but space and budgetary 

Christopher Fitzgerald 

restrictions necessitated a simpler solution. 

Recalls Kaczorowski, “It was left to 

me to create a roadway and the motion of 

the trees passing. So I talked to Josh about 

making a movie loop that we could project 

onto the backdrop to create the motion of 

the journey. We discussed using a forest 

path and a vanishing point, silhouettes of 

passing trees as they headed “away” from 

the audience, and of having the castle materialize 

in the distance as they neared it.” 

The video is projected on a dark blue 

background. “It’s definitely a less vivid image 

on a dark surface,” says Kaczorowski. 

“The hanging man works so well because 

it’s on a creamy distressed silk, showing 

off more detail than the dark surface, but 

all of the things we were doing on the 

dark surface, including the fireworks later 

on in the show, were about revealing 

space via light and shadow. The moving 

trees were basically negatives. The light 

that was left showing the positives was a 

little less bright than I might have liked, 

but by contrast to the black trees, it actually 

worked pretty well.” 

Kaczorowski says that once he had 

the projection concept worked out, the 

scene was fairly easy to light. “The projected 

movie told the story of where 

we were going,” he says, “and because 

the actors stayed in one place, I could 

be quite specific on them and not have 

anything ruin the sharpness of the image 

behind them. Also, the fog on the 

floor was a perfect surface on which to 

project supporting motion.” 

To create a sense of passing trees, 

Moving Light Programmer Josh Weitzman, 

who has programmed every Kaczorowski 

musical, put a tree pattern in one of the 

wheels, running a gray-toned template 

underneath it, which was constantly 

turned. “It amplified the sense of motion,” 



says Kaczorowski, “and the constantly 

changing fog made it something that you 

could never really land on, so it was more 

random and natural. It was really kind of 

ideal. Then the whole image wipes away 

with a slow black iris (another nod to the 

movie) that ends up encircling the moon 

itself. There’s still a moon in the sky for 

the exterior of the castle, but the other 

environment we were in gets completely 

wiped away. It’s a nice transition.” 

For the show, Kaczorowski runs some 

120 automated lighting units with an ETC 

Eos console. “Other people already have 

them, but I think this is the first big show 

on Broadway for the Eos,” he remarks. “The 

ETC people were committed to responding 

to Josh [Weitzman]. They were constantly 

giving us new builds and working 

on the software; they also sent people 

out to Seattle to watch Josh program. 

He told them things that he didn’t like 

about the displays, what could be better 

and where there were bugs. It was 

great. They were very solicitous and really 

wanted it to work. I like the board. 

It’s rather Obsession-like and speaks 

like the Obsession. It’s intuitive, and it’s 

a syntax a lot of people already know.” 

An Obsession runs the conventional 

rig with almost 500 fixtures, including 

strobes. The grandMA runs the two projectors 

and the Hippo and also does 

laboratory effects chases. “The effects 

package on that board is much easier 

to manipulate,” Kaczorowski says. “With 

all of the LED [Color Kinetics] i-Cove 

channels to be dealt with, I didn’t want 

it on my board, and it couldn’t really be 

on the Eos.” 

A critical pyrotechnical aspect of 

this set was a machine hidden in the 

skylight. Kaczorowski describes it as 

“the ugliest machine you’ve ever seen. 

We called it the alien.” A large generator 

with a protruding antenna releases 

an enormous electrical charge on cue 

and strikes a metal ground bar on the 

back side of the skylight. Marc Brickman 

found a California special effects 

company for the installation. “They set 

the whole thing up and taught our guys 

how to tune it up because it has to be 

constantly monitored and metered. It 

was a little shocking to hear how noisy 

it was, but the effect was impressive, 

and it sounded like something that 

might be happening in a laboratory.” 

The strobe sequence in “Puttin’ on 

the Ritz” is another highlight. Stroman 

choreographed the three sections of 

the number on an open stage where 

the strobe lights catch people while in 

the air, but the effect avoids having the 

audience see the characters land. Kaczorowski 

used “fantastic photo strobes, 

not theatrical strobes. This show needed 

some serious strobes,” he says. “They’re 

a Speedotron product and they’re very, 

very bright.” 

Much of the show revolves around 

Robin Wagner’s elaborate laboratory 

scenery, with its large machines that 

light up and the crackling bolts of lightning. 

Kaczorowski acknowledges the 

collaborative effort of Dave Rosenfeld 

from Hudson Scenic, Marc Brickman 

(lighting designer for Bruce Springsteen, 

Pink Floyd, et al.), John Viesta (associate 

LD) and his lighting staff in creating 

the spectacle for these scenes. 

“I was blessed with a fantastic staff 

of people who were totally committed 

to Young Frankenstein,” Kaczorowski 

says, “including John Viesta, Joel Silver 

(assistant LD), Keri Thibodeau in New 

York and Chris Reay in Seattle (projections 

and effects). Also, Josh Weitzman was instrumental; 

it’s impossible to imagine the 

show without his contribution. Rich Mortell 

is my production electrician; he puts 

things up and they work. Head electrician 

is Brian Dawson, contract spot operator 

is Whitey Ford and Tommy Galinski is our 

moving light tech.” 

“As complex as this show is,” Kaczorowski 

concludes, “there’s actually a lot 

of simplicity to it. It’s certainly more 

gear than I’ve ever had on a show. I 

had more things to take care of, look 

after, organize and be ready for than 

on any other show, but somehow, what 

ended up onstage is sort of logical and 

right. It’s not convoluted and difficult. 

It’s kind of fluid.” 

Shuler Hensley and Fred Applegate 


FEATURE 


LDI 2007 


Was LDI 2007 the biggest one ever? It’s hard to say. Even after three days of cruising 

the show floor, I never saw the end. It’s hard to say if it had any more square footage 

or more exhibitors than previous years, but it felt like a big show. 

Physical size of the show floor notwithstanding, there were many big things about 

LDI this year. With the absence of Martin and High End Systems, several other companies 

stepped up with big displays. The American DJ group of companies, including Elation and 

Global Truss, were at the front of the hall, along with Rosco and ACT Lighting; Robe and 

Chauvet were at the back. In between were ETC, MDG, Tomcat and Barco, all with sizeable 

stands. 

Chauvet made a big statement with its “Thinking Green” all-LED booth and walked away 

with an award for the “Best Big Booth.” The stand was filled with LED products, including the 

new Colorado 3, Colorado 6 and Colorado 1. Meanwhile, Robe made a statement of 

its own by showing up with a 2,800 square-foot booth, the biggest on the exhibition floor. 

Among Robe’s new products were the Media Hub 5000 DT, Media Server Qube Control, 

DMX Control 248, ColorSpot 2500E AT, ColorSpot 1200E AT and the ArcSource Outdoor 36 

LED fixture. 

Though there was plenty of space in the Barco booth, the company chose to quietly 

show its soon-to-be released (June 2008) DML 1200 digital light in a meeting room 

outside of the exhibit hall. Still, it made a big impression on many people. The four UHP 

300-watt lamps in the fixture register big on the illuminance meter, and the XSVGA+ DLP 

engine produced a beautiful image. 

Other noteworthy new products on the show floor included: the d3 from UVA, a 

3-D visual playback system that can be used to visualize and control playback of creative 

LED video and lighting products; the Elation Impression LED moving yoke fixture with 

enough punch to compete with conventional fixtures; the Horao 3-D LED display on the 

Creative Technology stand, though it didn’t generate as much buzz as it did at PLASA two 

months prior; and the ETC Eos, or more specifically, the ACN functionality that’s being 

implemented in it. 

And speaking of ACN, the Control Protocols Interoperability Pavilion on the show 

floor gave us much to think about. Examples of ACN capabilities and the details of the 

OpenACN project were on display, while some RDM-enabled products from 14 different 

manufacturers, including a PR Lighting XL-1200 Spot fixture and a Robe ColorSpot 700E 

AT, demonstrated the RDM “Discovery” process. Wybron gave away free RDM responder 

source code with royalty-free licensing in an effort to boost the adoption of the standard. 

There were more than a dozen takers; however, there should have been hundreds. Wybron 

CEO Larry Turner says that the company is still getting inquiries about the source code. 

Perhaps the industry just needed to get over the LDI/Thanksgiving holiday before 

cranking up the RDM and ACN machines. That would be a beautiful thing. 

“Thinking Green,” Chauvet’s all-LED stand. New 

products included the Colorado 3, Colorado 6 and 

Colorado 1.” 

Wireless Solution Sweden AB awarded the 

W-DMX Visionary Awards to early adopters of 

W-DMX and presented them with a custom-made 

W-DMX GoldBox to commemorate the 10,000th 

unit in production. New products at the show 

included the W-DMX BlackBox S-2 dual universe 

transmitter, the BlackBox S-1 Micro Transmitter 

and the BlackBox R-512 Micro Lite Receiver. 

In the TMB “Village,” Alpha One of Germany 

showed its complete range of Falcon fixtures, including 

the new Falcon 6,000 Xenon. TMB is the 

North American distributor for Alpha One. 

Thematics brought out four new products at 

the show, including the Lightbox Operating System 

soft console and three new illuminators. The LBOS 

works with WYSIWYG, ESP Vision, Capture and offline 

editors, using a USB-to-DMX connection. 

ESP Vision version 2.3 adds transparent LED 

curtains, among other upgrades. 

VectorWorks was busy demonstrating their 

new version 12.5.3 software. 




FEATURE 


The Hippotizer V3 media server at the TMB 

booth. Some of the features include on-board 

timeline control, user-friendly media file import 

and HippoNet with networking and control of multiple 

machines. 

XL Video was recently appointed the exclusive 

worldwide distributor of UnitedVisualArtists d3, a 

3-D visual playback system that can be used to visualize 

and control playback of creative LED video 

and lighting products. You can map content to a 

wide variety of playback devices — even with different 

pixel density and type. 

ACT Lighting showed the new MA Lighting grand- 

MA Pico designed for theatre use. The console uses 

the same syntax, windows and menus as the larger 

consoles. Also at the ACT Lighting booth was the new 

Zero 88 line of Jester and Jester ML consoles. The Jester 

ML can control up to 30 moving lights with effects 

engines, palettes or preset focuses and fixture library 

LDI 2007 

Ocean Optics, the manufacturer of the 

SeaChanger line of dichroic color changers, introduced 

the SeaChanger Studio Dichroics SD Series 

with more saturated colors. 

With a new office in Las Vegas, Kissbox brought 

its line of networking tools to Orlando. The company’s 

new I/O8 Cardcage can hold up to eight input/output 

cards that can receive data, translate it to Ethernet UDP/ 

IP or TCP/IP, send it to the network and translate it back. 

It can send DMX over Ethernet with ArtNet firmware. 

The new Daktronics ProTour PT-4 modular LED 

video display features 4 mm pitch, fanless operation 

(great for theatre applications) and “black package” 

surface-mount LEDs for greater contrast ratio. 

The Barco DML-1200 digital luminaire can 

operate in video mode using a DMD with SXGA+ 

resolution or in lighting mode with 20K lumens. 

The version without a media server on board is 

scheduled for June 2008 delivery, and the version 

with the onboard Green Hippo media server will 

come later. 

Adrian Segeren, president of Le Maitre in Canada, 

with the new G3000 fog machine. It features 

a stainless steel housing, a 2,000-watt heating element, 

and it will soon be RDM enabled. 

The Enigma Matrix LED Screens from Mega Lite. 

Also on the stand was the Chamsys Magic Q console. 



Apollo celebrated 15 years in business by exhibiting 

its Right Arm moving yoke and MXR two-string 

color mixing scroller. Also at the stand was the new 

Gel Miser, an infrared filter and fan that helps to 

extend gel life. 

ETC revealed its new Ion console on the heels of 

the release of Eos at the last LDI. Ion features a 19- 

inch-wide footprint with 1,000-, 1,500-, or 2,000-channel/output 

configurations, integral LCD for softkeys 

and nonintensity parameter control. George Dukas 

(right) demonstrates for onlookers. 

The Tiny-Fogger 2007 made its debut at the Look 

Solutions stand. The palm-sized, battery-operated fog 

machine features a sealed enclosure, momentary fog 

switch and a Sleep-Mode. The new version operates 

on a Lithium battery that is half the size of the previous 

lead-acid battery. 

Leviton displayed its new Piccolo 

line of consoles including the 12/24, 

24/96, 36/144 and the 48/192. The consoles 

will begin shipping in the first 

quarter of 2008. 

Eric Bernstein, the newest member 

of the Strong International sales team, 

discusses the finer points of the Technobeam, 

the newest addition to the 

Strong International line of products. 

Also at the Strong booth was the line of 

Canto followspots. 



FEATURE 


The Baxx-Truss made its debut at the Tomcat 

stand. The self-stacking, folding truss was designed 

by Rob Baxter for quick deployment at the Staples 

Center during the NBA basketball games. Five 8- 

foot sections are hinged together, and the fixtures, 

dimming and cable are all prerigged and ready to 

fly in 10–15 minutes using two stagehands. 

PRG had at least two major product developments 

at its stand: the Virtuoso DX console and the 

MBox Extreme 2 media server. The Virtuoso DX has 

been upgraded to handle up to 54 parameters, 

multiple cue stacks and a wave-based effects engine. 

The MBox Extreme 2 now has two outputs, 

among other advances. 

Rufus Warren demonstrates the new features 

of LD Assistant 2008, including IES photometric 

file support, a new rendering engine, new atmospheric 

and lens effects, photorealistic projection 

of stock or custom gobos and improved animation 

tools. 

LDI 2007 

Leprecon’s new Architectural Interface AI-512 

allows the company’s Litescape dimmers to interface 

with DMX512 devices. Features include an 

astronomical time clock, IP addressing and Ethernet 

panel interfacing. Other new products on the 

Leprecon booth included the newly redesigned 

ULD-360-DMX-HP six-channel dimmer with direct 

Socopex connection. 

Rosco’s new Enhanced High-Definition (EHD) 

glass gobos render extremely fine detail. Also new 

at the Rosco stand was the Delta Hazer. 

The D-Color from Studio Due turned heads. 

The moving LED fixture features 28 3-watt RGBA 

LEDs. 

Techni-Lux, the U.S. distributor for SGM, exhibited 

a range of its products, including the new 

Genio and Genio Mobile LED luminaires. 

Applied Electronics had a plethora of new 

products on display, including the Light Moving 

Truss, Collapsible Meat Rack and a new 48/96 Dimmer 

Rack with flush-mount breakers and insulated 

jack connectors. 

Main Light Industries unveiled its new Soft- 

Motion drapery product. This picture just doesn’t 

do it justice, so a visit to www.mainlight.com is 

worth the time and effort. In short, Soft-Motion is 

a Soft-Scrim on a DMX-controlled, Austrian-type 

drop, so the Scrim is not only animated with video, 

but with motorized pick points, it is also animated 

in real life. 



LightConverse is popular in Eastern Europe, 

but it’s new to North America. The PC-based lighting 

control and real-time 3-D visualizer uses a 3-D 

gaming engine to render up to 16 DMX512 universes 

in real time with an ArtNet interface. 

Lex Products won Product of the Year in the expendables 

category for its new Lex-Loc Edison connector. 

The connector uses color-coded cam levers 

and spring pressure instead of screw terminals to 

make terminating power cords quick and easy. Also 

at the Lex booth was the new 160-400A adjustable 

three-phase disconnect. It features a pagoda outdoor 

enclosure and a dipswitch selection for loading 

from 160 amps to 400 amps. 

A number of new products were featured at the 

Doug Fleenor Designs booth, including the Marconi 

series of wireless products with W-DMX technology. 

The three models are the Marconi LV low-voltage 

power supply for the LED300, the Marconi SP DMX 

Splitter with three isolated outputs and the Marconi 

TX Transmitter. All these products have a range of 

about 100 yards with the standard antennae and 

about .25 miles with the directional antennae. Other 

new DFD products include the PS10A2 Preset Station 

with new software that provides a preset mode, 

DMX in/out, HTP operation and preset locks. 

Physical size 

of the 

show floor 

notwithstanding, 

there were 

many big things 

about LDI this 

year. 




FEATURE 


Mark Miller (left) and Simon Beck of Swisson 

with the new Sinewave Dimmer Rack, which is expected 

to start shipping by the end of the year. 

Many new products were displayed at the 

Elation booth, including the Impression moving 

yoke LED fixture. It did make an impression as an 

LED fixture that could compete with conventional 

color wash fixtures. With a 10-degree field, the 90 

Luxeon K2 RGB LEDs packed quite a punch. Also 

on the stand were the newly redesigned Spot and 

Wash 1400 fixtures with wireless DMX. 

AC Lighting shows the new Jands Vista S1 console. 

The new Vista product fills in the line between 

the M1 and the S3 models. It can operate on a Mac 

or a PC using the same show file. Also on the AC 

Lighting stand were the new Color Split RGBA LED 

color wash fixture with split cells for more uniform 

color wash, or for dual colors, and the DTS line of 

fixtures, including the Delta 5 and Delta R fixtures. 

LDI 2007 

Wybron new products included the PS-600 

scroller power supply, with built-in NetIT Gateway, 

and the Transition CMY fiber optic illuminator, 

with built-in twinkle effect. The company also 

made available, free of charge, its RDM responder 

source code for other manufacturers to incorporate 

into their products so that they could be RDM 

enabled. 

The new Dry Fogger Mammoth II with remote 

status telemetry outputs enormous amounts of 

fog. The machine uses Harting connectors to combine 

pneumatics, DMX and RDM in one cable and 

reports status information to the control system. 

New products at the Selador booth included 

the X7 Luster, featuring 2.5-watt LEDs, the X7 

Storm in both two-watt and three-watt LED version, 

and the X7 Desire with a unique LED array 

that reduces striation. 

The SandNet stand showing a variety of 

SandBoxes for data distribution in a variety of 

protocols. 

Jesco’s new line of LED-based architectural 

products. 

Zoe Paine of Rose Brand demonstrates the 

effectiveness of Screen Goo, the brush-on projection 

surface. Rose Brand also introduced FR 

Spandex star shapes in red, white, blue, fivepoint 

stars, Gemini, Corona, Vega, Polaris, Sirius 

and Nova stars. 




FEATURE 

Seventh Annual Parnelli Awards 

By JacobCoakley 

Toasting the Best of the Live Event Industry 

The Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fla., was the site of the 2007 Parnelli Awards, but inside the ceremony ballroom it looked like Hawaii. Large portions of the crowd arrived decked 

out in their finest Hawaiian shirts, a sartorial tribute to the fashion sense of this year’s Lifetime Achievement winner, Gerry Stickells. The hundreds in attendance constituted a 

Who’s Who of players in the live event industry, and whether they were wearing flower prints or not, they all rose to their feet in honor of Lifetime Achievement award-winner 

Gerry Stickells and Audio Innovator award-winner Bob Heil. 

In addition to honoring Stickells, PLSN publisher Terry Lowe, editor Richard Cadena and industry notables, including Bruce Rodgers, Vickie Claiborne, Michael Ahern and others gave 

out awards for Lighting Designer of the Year, Tour Manager of the Year, Production Manager of the Year and many others. Additionally, veteran tour manager and chairman of the Parnelli 

board Patrick Stansfield presented Joe Aldridge of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), with a check in continued support of a Parnelli scholarship at UNLV for students studying 

entertainment design and engineering. 

But the evening’s highlight was the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement award given to a visibly moved Stickells. In his introduction, Stickells’ long-time friend and fellow Parnelli 

Lifetime Achievement winner Brian Croft retold the story of one of his first dealings with Stickells: 

“It was a one-off gig in London for Queen to coincide with Elizabeth — the “other” Queen’s — Jubilee in 1977. It was planned at short notice, and I was called to see Gerry to bid on a 

very complex lighting structure. The price was agreed to in a single meeting. As I was leaving he said, ‘You’ll be needing some front money,’ and pulled out a checkbook. The band obviously 

trusted him implicitly — there was no referring to accountants. A single signatory for a sizable sum of money. I walked out of the door thinking, ‘Now THAT’S what I call a Tour Manager!’ ” 

The audience let Stickells know that Croft wasn’t alone in his appreciation, and even the stars paid their respects, with members of Velvet Revolver, Queen and Jimi Hendrix’s band 

offering their kudos via video. (Unfortunately, Mitch Mitchell’s video did not make it across the pond in time. To see it and the full presentation video, go to www.plsn.com) 

It was also a night to honor the pioneers of our industry and to shine the spotlight on the people who work outside the light, yet contribute much to the industry’s success and to its 

future. Thanks to the help of everyone in attendance, the readers who voted and everyone in the industry, we can continue to celebrate those who makes the show happen. 

And the Awards Went to . . . 

Lifetime Achievement Award: Gerry Stickells 

Audio Innovator Award: Bob Heil 

Lighting Designer of the Year 2007: Patrick Woodroffe 

Set/Scenic Designer of the Year 2007: Seth Jackson, with Elizabeth O’Keefe 

Lighting Company of the Year 2007: Upstaging 

Staging Company of the Year 2007: Mountain Productions 

Set Construction Company of the Year 2007: Tait Towers 

Video Rental Company of the Year 2007: Nocturne 

Rigging Company of the Year 2007: Atlanta Rigging 

Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year 2007: Theatrical Lighting Systems 

Pyro Company of the Year 2007: Strictly FX 

FOH Mixer of the Year 2007: Tom Young 

Video Director of the Year 2007: Kevin Daniels 

Monitor Mixer of the Year 2007: Stuart Delk 

Sound Company of the Year 2007: Sound Image 

Hometown Hero Sound Company of the Year 2007: Carlson Audio 

Production Manager of the Year 2007: Chris Adamson 

Tour Manager of the Year 2007: Fitzjoy Hellin 

Coach Company of the Year 2007: Four Seasons Leasing 

Trucking Company of the Year 2007: Road Show 

Freight Forwarding Company of the Year 2007: Rock-It Cargo 

The 2007 Parnellis were made possible by Timeless Communications and its sponsors. Charter Sponsors: All Access Staging and Production, Apollo Design, Brown United and Martin 

Professional. Gold Sponsors: Nocturne Productions, Pixel Range, Precise Corporate Staging & Dedicated Staging, Rock-It-Cargo, Sound Image and Syncrolite. Silver Sponsors: Littlelite and 

TMB. Production Sponsors: Aerial Rigging, ASI Productions, All Staging Unlimited, Paradise Sound & Lights, Production Resource Group and Technilux. 

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU 

We would like to take this opportunity to recognize the generous sponsors 

who made the Seventh Annual Parnelli Awards such a special event. We couldn’t have done it without you! 

GOLD SPONSORS 

HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION 

SILVER SPONSORS 

PRODUCTION 

SPONSORS 

All Staging 

Unlimited 

Ariel Rigging 




All Photography by Kelly Milliman 

Production Manager Benny Collins (left) talking to another production 

manager, Mark Hogue. 

Michael Tait accepting the award for Set Construction Company of the Year. 

Seth Jackson accepting his award for Set/Scenic Designer of the Year. He 

shared his award with Elizabeth O’Keefe, who has worked behind the 

scenes with him for a long time. 

Jim Evans of Mountain Productions, accepting the award 

for Staging Company of the Year. 

David Middelton of Atlanta Rigging Systems, making his 

thanks for the Rigging Company of the Year award. 

Nathaniel “Trini” James of Four Seasons Coach Leasing 

salutes the crowd with their award for Coach Company 

of the Year. 




FEATURE 

P RP RO OJ EJ CE TC ITO I ON N L ILG I GH HT S T S & & S TA S TAG GI NI NG G NNE WE S S 

Roadshow and David Kiely won the award for Trucking Company of the Year. 

John Campion (left) receives a bear hug from Keith Kevan (only his arms 

are visible), while David Bernstein of Rock-It Cargo accepts the award for 

Freight Forwarding Company of the Year. 

Paul Becher of Nocturne shows off his Video Rental Company of the Year 

Award. 

Joe Calzone of Calzone Cases was among the record crowd. 


Terry Lowe persuaded Keith Kevan to come on stage to 

give a tribute for Gerry Stickells. Terry would have similar 

difficulties persuading Keith to get off the stage. 


Joe Aldridge of UNLV spoke of the help the Parnelli 

Scholarship offered to technical theatre students studying 

in Las Vegas. 




WIDE ANGLE 


Brooks & Dunn 

PLSN Talks to B&D Lighting Designer/ Director Larry Boster 

Photos & Text by SteveJennings 

“Bandit Lites is the lighting company and 

have been the entire time I’ve been on 

board with Brooks & Dunn. As a matter of 

fact, Mike Golden and Michael Strickland 

handed me this account. Thanks guys!” 

“The video content was produced by Marcia 

Kapuspin and Marcus Lyall. Both are 

very creative and artistic. Media Visions 

Entertainment was the video company. 

They have been with the Brooks & Dunn 

family for just about as many years as I 

have.” 

“It’s always a challenge to top the concept of a previous year’s tour. Kix Brooks, 

Ronnie Dunn and Clarence Spalding, their manager, are very much involved in the 

conceptual design process. We always strive for something new and fresh.” 

“As far as the lighting design aspect, 

Brooks & Dunn have let me develop and 

light the show without any input from 

their end. Selecting the type of lighting 

fixtures to enhance their performance 

has never come into question. The end 

result is always satisfying and rewarding 

to all.” 

“I have been using the Jands Vista lighting 

console this year, which was new to me. 

Programming with a timeline was very 

new to me. It’s the first console I’ve used 

that’s never crashed during programming 

or within a show; it’s very stable.” 

“All my designing is done in AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max. I’ve been using Auto- 

CAD and 3D Studio for years. I draw the design in AutoCAD in three-dimensional 

space, look at it from every angle trying to see if there are any potential problems 

and that helps when I go into rehearsals; I’m not rehanging everything. Once I have 

this part of the drawing finished, it’s taken into 3D Studio Max and skinned, rendered 

and clipped. The finished clip is a short movie that will allow me to show a 

client, in detail, the workings of a production design. 

CREW 

Lighting Company: Bandit Lites/Michael 

Strickland, Mike Golden 

Lighting Designer/Director: Larry Boster 

Lighting Crew Chief: Mike Frogge 

Lighting Techs: Chaz Martin, Andy 

Knighton, Marcus Wade, Griff Griffith 

Set Design: Update Design/Mike Swinford 

Video Company: Media Visions 

Entertainment/Mike Cruce 

Video Account Manager: Wade “Ten-A-C” 

Slatton 

Video Content Producers: Marcia 

Kapuspin, Marcus Lyall 

Video Director: Dan Hanson 

Video Techs: Tony Wallace, Mike Buswell, 

Brandon Lewis, Presley “Magic” Slater, 

Darren Spann, Russ Spann, Robert Judge 

Tour Manager: Scott Edwards 

Production Manager: Randy “Baja” Fletcher 

Production Assistance: J. W. Dunn 

Stage Manager: Steve Gudis 

Tour Rigger: Mike McDonald 

Set Carpenters: Edwin Skinner, Johnny 

Seay, John Ristoff 

GEAR 

40 CM 1-ton motors 

12 CM 2-ton motors 

1 Fisher navigator control system 

1 Jands Vista T2 lighting console 

60 Martin MAC 2000 profiles 

12 Martin MAC 600 Wash fixtures 

10 2-light MoleFay units 

5 8-light MoleFay units 

33 PAR 64 1000 watts 

20 Showrig moving winch yo-yos 

6 Showrig moving tractors w/moving 

winch yo-yos 

700’ Showrig custom-built truss 

5 Vari*Lite VL3000s 




PRODUCT GALLERY 

Followspots 


Lamp, dimmer, iris, focus and zoom: What 

else is there to say about followspots? 

According to Nick Mobsby, plenty. 

Mobsby’s new book, The Followspot 

Guide, is packed with almost 450 pages 

dedicated to followspot technology past 

and present. It starts with the history of the 

instrument and ends with a glossary and a 

manufacturer’s index. In between is a nicely 

illustrated text revealing how followspots 

work and addressing a number of issues 

important to manufacturers and end users 

alike. Subjects like comfort factor, beam 

quality, ability to remain in position, ability 

to operate iris and dimmer simultaneously, 

size of control levers, color-changing 

systems, dimmer quality, cooling, difficult 

to change and/or service lamp, problems 

experienced with stand, no sight provided 

and left-hand operation are among the 

more compelling topics. Three manufacturers 

— Robert Juliat, Strong and Selecon 

— are profiled in the book, and about 200 

pages are dedicated to specifications for 

legacy products and current products. 

Looking at the historical products 

listed in the book, it’s easy to see how far 

the technology has advanced. No longer 

do we have to “hand feed” the electrodes 

of a lamp to keep it burning, and “Russian 

iron” is no longer considered a feature of a 

luminaire. It’s a bit more challenging to see 

how the technology is advancing today, 

when we’re watching the pot boil. Still, today’s 

followspots are far more efficient and 

easy to use than their predecessors. Some 

of them are precision instruments with 

beautiful optics, finely tuned mechanics 

and advanced features like DMX control of 

dimming and color changing. 

Though followspot technology 

doesn’t advance as rapidly as automated 

lighting or control systems, manufacturers 

typically introduce new products with 

new features on a regular basis. Mobsby’s 

book is great for learning about followspots 

in general, and it is highly recommended. 

But for the latest in followspot 

offerings, be sure to follow our Product 

Gallery, particularly this month’s feature 

on followspots. 

The Followspot Guide is available at the 

PLSN Bookshelf (www.plsnbookshelf.com). 

Omni Sistem Lancer 2500 

PR Lighting HMI1200 Orland 

Phoebus UA Titan ST 

TimesSquare 601S 





PRODUCT GALLERY 

P R O 

Manufacturer 

Altman Lighting 

www.altmanlighting. 

com 

Model 

Throw 

Distance 

Illuminance 

with 6’ Diameter 

Spot 

Lamp Type/ 

Wattage 

Rated Lamp Life 

Hot 

Restrike 

Operating 

Voltage 

Zoom Range 

Luminator 50’ 150 fc FLE (360W) 75 hr. yes 110 - 240V 7.7 to 9.3 degrees no 

1000Q 60’ 165 fc FEL (1000W) 300 hr. yes 110 - 240V 10 to 14 degrees no 

Comet 75’ 142 fc FLE (360W) 75 hr. yes 110 - 240V 7.2 to 12.2 degrees no 

Satellite-1 100’ 240 fc 575HMI 75 hr. no 120 - 240V 7.3 to 20 degrees no 

Gobo 

Slot? 

No. of Colors/Color 

Changer Type 

boomerang- 6 

frame plus douser 

boomerang- 6 

frame 

boomerang- 6 


boomerang- 6 


Iris? Fully 

Closing? 

yes- not fully 

closing 


closing 


closing 


closing 

Voyager 200’ 212 fc 400HTI 250 hr. no 120 - 240V 4 to 9.5 degrees no 

boomerang- 6 



closing 

American DJ 

www.americandj.com 

Chauvet 

www.chauvetlighting. 


Clay Paky 

www.claypaky.it 

Elation Professional 

www.elationlighting. 


Lycian Stage Lighting 

www.lycian.com 

Phoebus Mfg. 

www.phoebus.com 

PR Lighting 

www.pr-lighting.com 

Programmi Sistemi & 

Luce srl 

www.omnisistem.com 

Robert Juliat 

www.robertjuliat 

america.com 

FS-1000 

n/a 

n/a 

575W halogen 

300 hrs. 

n/a 

120V n/a n/a white + options 

FS-2500 DMX 30’ - 60’ ELC 24V 250W 50 hrs. 110V n/a no 7 + white n/a 

Followspot 400G 75’ n/a ENX 82V 360W 75 hrs. n/a 110V or 230V 10 to 34 degrees 1 7 + white yes 

Shadow QS-LT 

1200 

Shadow QS-ST 

1200 16’ - 82’ 

Shadow Basic 

30’ - 200’ 800 fc 

721 fc 

523 fc 

HMI 1,200W or 

HMI 575 

750 hrs. no 

200 - 240V, 

50/60 Hz 

n/a 1 

7 + 2 (CTO, CTB) 

+ white 

FS-H575 50’ 

n/a 

GLC/GLA 300 hrs. / 1,500 hrs. yes 

120 or 240V n/a no 

6 + open 

FS-MSR575 150’ MSD575/2 750 hrs. no CMY+ blackout 

1293 

M2 2.5K Short 

Throw 

100’ 

- 400’ 

short 

throw 

2,339 fc 3,000W xenon 1,200 hrs. yes 

80 - 100 fc 

HMI 2,500 W 

double ended 

1290 n/a 1,300 fc 2,000 W xenon 2,000 hrs. yes 

Ultra Quartz II 25’-100’ 182 fc at 50’ ENX or FLE 360W approx 100 hrs. yes 

I-marc 200 50’ - 150’ 260 fc at 75’ SMR-200 200W approx 2,000 hrs. 

Ultra Arc II 25’ - 200’ 350 fc at 50’ HTI 400 400W aprox 250 hrs. 

I-marc 850 50’ - 250’ 837 fc at 80’ SMH-850 850W approx 1,000 hrs. 

PR-1211 Orland 

Followspot 

W1163L – Lancer 

1200 Followspot 

W1196L – Lancer 

2500 Followspot 

Cyrano 1015 

Victor 1159 

Super Korrigan 

1149 

100’ 

- 150’ 

100’ 

- 150’ 

131’ 

- 230’ 

150’ 

- 400’ 

100’ 

- 225’ 

Buxie 1124 50’ - 100’ 

1022 fc at 

16.4’ 

HMI-1,200 W/GS 

or MSI 1,200W 

discharge lamp 

167 fc 1,200W HMI/MSR 800 hrs. 

181 fc at 

32.8’ 

437 fc @ 

132’ w/8’ dia. 

spot 

1,000 fc at 

50’ 

205-240V, 50 

or 60 Hz 

500 hrs. yes 208-240V 5.7 - 11.8 yes 

w/i 

seconds 

1,000 hrs. no 

no 

100-120V & 

208-240V, 50 

or 60 Hz 

115V, 220V 

avail 

220V or 120V 

w/xformer 

220/110V 

iris does not 

fully close 

yes - not fully 

closing 


closing 

- yes 6 color boomerang nichrome 

6 color boomerang 

plus 4 dichroic 

rings 

nichrome 

- yes 6 color boomerang nichrome 

3:1 zoom range 

2:1 zoom range 

no 

6 color manual 

boomerang 

6-color auto/cancel 

boom 

no no 7 dichroic colors 

7 to 13 degrees 

w/standard iris 

(diam. 1.58”) 

2,500W HMI 550 hrs. 220V 1.5 to 17 degrees 

2,500W HMI 500 hrs. 

208V or Universal 

3 to 8 degrees 

Electronic 

PSU 

1,800W MSR 750 hrs. 7 to 14.5 degrees 

yes 

120/208V or 

Universal Electronic 

7 to 14.5 degrees 

PSU 

75’ - 200’ 750 fc at 50” 1,200W HMI 1,000 hrs. 

140 fc @ 50’ 

w/10’ dia. 

spot 

575W MSD 

2,000 hrs. 

Universal Electronic 

PSU 

10.5 to 22.5 

degrees 

yes 

yes, B 

size on 

slide 

changer 

yes, A 

size 

7 colors + blackout 

5 colors + blackout 

6 removable color 

frames (boomerang) 

plus dichroic 

6 removable color 

frames (boomerang 

or push-pull) 

6 removeable color 

frames (push-pull) 

101mm iris 

with black 

incoloy leaves 

yes-not fully 

closing 

yes - not fully 

closing 

no 

no 

fully 

closing iris 

Strong Entertainment 

Lighting 

www.strong-lighting. 


Gladiator IV/100 550’ 4,428 fc xenon 4,500W 1,000 hrs. 

208 - 240V 

Super Trouper II/50 360’ 2,653 fc xenon 2,000W 2,400 hrs. 

yes 

single phase 3:01 

Super Trouper 

LT/70 

350’ 1,229 fc xenon 2,000W 2,400 hrs. 2:01 

2:01 

yes, 

optional 

no 

boomerang gel or 

dichroic 

6-boomerang 

no 

Times Square Lighting 

www.tslight.com 

Radiance 150’ 1,720 fc 850W EmArc 1,000 hrs. 220/110V 2.3:1 yes 

410FS 100’ 210 fc FLE 360W 75 hrs. 


2 - 12 degrees 

QF1000S 125’ 490 fc FEL 1,000W 300 hrs. 

no 120V 

no 


601S 75’ 310 fc DYS 600W 500 hrs. 4 - 10 degrees 4 color boomerang 

yes 



J E C T I O N L I G H T S & S TA G I N G N E W S 

Frost? 

Stand 

Included? 

Weight Dimensions DMX Control? Optional Accessories Retail Price Comments 

uses gels yes 60 lbs 23 3 /8” x 8” x 9½” no no $1,040/$1,075 120V/20 8- 240V 

uses gels yes 116 lbs 38” x 12” x 17½” no no $1,365/$1,415 120V/208 - 240V 

uses gels yes 94 lbs 

34½” x 12” x 

15 3 /4” 

no no $1,395/$1,530 120V/208 - 240V 


42 3 /4” x 12½” x 

15½” 

no 

Head road case/ballast road 

case/casters for road case 

$5,950/$6,200 120V/208 - 240V 


no 

sold 

separately 

49 3 /4” x 12¼” x 

15 5 /8” 

24 lbs 9” x 9” x 21” no 

no 

Head road case/ballast road 

case/casters for road case 

Tripod, manual color 

adaptor FS-6C (6 colors 

- SRP $79.95) 

no optional 18 lbs 22.5” x 12.5” x 9.5” yes tripod stand $319.95 

$6,950/$7,150 120V/208 - 240V 

$399.95 Entry-level followspot 

n/a no 20.6 lbs 22.5” x 11.5” x 6.38” 

2 channels:dimmer/color 

CH-W28 tripod stand 

w/casters R 

$270.99 Comes with four free gobos,digital display, manual focus, fan cooled 

no 

no 

107 lbs 13oz 67.5” x 17.1” x 13” h 

83 lbs 10oz 

46.3” x 17.1” x 13”h 

107 lbs 13oz 

color wheel + iris 

+ dimmer + color 

temperature 

Wide-angle lens, side 

mounting kit, M-size gobo 

holder, medium stand 

no 

sold 

34 lbs 10” x 10” x 24” 

$699.95 

separately 

no 

FS STAND 

no 54 lbs 10” x 12” x 24” $1,499.95 

- 

no yes 262 lbs plus ballast 73” L x 20½” W no Dipstick, gel kit $15,250 

yes, variable yes 274 lbs 41¼” L x 20” W no - $8,754 

Modular design allows conversion to medium & long throw and 

1,200W & 2,500W lamphouses. Also available with electronic ballast. 

no yes 262 lbs plus ballast 73” L x 20½” W no Gel kit $12,402 - 

3-point cast 

aluminum 

(included) 

45 lbs (fixture), 20 lbs 

(stand) 

18.5” x 20” head 

$1,375 Ships UPS 

no 

3-point 

aluminum 

75 lbs w/stand 10.5” x 16” head Blacklight lamp $2,695 Flicker-free daylight 

no 

22” x 22.2” head $5,497 1,000 hr HTI lamp avail. soon; available in long throw 

4-point 

collapseable 

128 lbs w/stand 19.5” x 22.2” head $5,489 Built-in elec. flicker-free ballast 

yes yes 95 lbs 35.5” x 13” x 9” 

DMX-512; 4 channels 

& master/ 

slave 

n/a $3,700 

Can be controlled from light desk; rainbow effect controller; DMX in 

rear of unit. 

no 

yes 

77 lbs 

101.2 lbs 

41.3” x 17.7” x 

18.9” 

47.2” x 23.6” x 

17.7” 

no 

custom road case 

$4,498 

$5,899 

variable 

frosted 

glass on flip 

lever 

143.5 lbs 65.5” x 12” x 20” 

optional DMX 

controlled lamp, 

shutter and frost 

Tournesol rotating gobo 

system, chopper, dust cover, 

electronic ballast, DMX 

control 

$20,995 

Quartz condenser optical system, 100% closing dimmer, correction & 

dichoric filters on flip levers, “projection quality” gobo image 

frosted gel 

on flip lever 

yes 

71 lbs 48.5” x 7.5” x 18” optional 

Push-pull color changer 

option, chopper, adjustable 

yoke, correction on flip lever 

$14,265 

$9,995 

Double condenser optical system, 100% closing dimmer, and internal 

filter holder are included. 

internal filter 

holder 

41 lbs 

36.5” x 13” x 

10.5” 

no $4,495 

no 

yes, optional 

no 

yes 

sold 

separately 

fixture: 310 lbs, ballast: 

74 lbs 


50 lbs 


50 lbs 

fixture: 96 lbs, tripod stand: 

16 lbs 

81” x 24 3 /4” x 14” 

Low boy stand, UV filter 

$16,995 Can be lamped at 2,500W, 3,000W or 4,000W 

58” x 16” x 19” POA 

none 

77½” x 15” x 

Low boy stand, 1,600W, UV 

18½” 

filter 

$12,495 Available in short and medium throw versions 

54” x 16” x 13¼” Welded stand $7,995 

38 lbs 16¼” H x 25” L 

4-color boomerang $917 

no 

yes 

45 lbs 16¼” H x 31½” W 

no 

no $1,321 

UPS shippable 

30 lbs 7½” W x 21¼” L 4-color boomerang $583 



INTERVIEW 

Sarah deBruyn 

Heather Ring 

Axis deBruyn 

Paul Mitchell “Hair Camp” 

By Rob Ludwig 

To say that Axis deBruyn’s career path has 

been frenetic is like saying Bill Gates has 

a little money. Today, deBruyn owns his 

own company at the age of 36, and he has a 

gratifying career as a freelancer. We caught up 

with him to talk about how he got started in 

the industry, how he got through the dot-com 

bust, and how he found his niche in Las Vegas. 

PLSN: You’re from the Bay Area; is that 

where you got started in the industry? 

Axis deBruyn: Yeah. Basically, I got 

started in junior high school. [Laughs] I was 

the only student who knew how to run a 

Teac reel-to-reel tape recorder. That’s how 

they did their musicals — they had them 

on tape — and the kids sang along to the 

tape. Since my father was an AV enthusiast 

— he worked for Radio Shack — I actually 

knew how to cut and splice tape. Eventually, 

it ended up being where I would have 

a spotlight in one hand while I’d be pushing 

play on the Teac machine as well. 

In high school, no one knew anything. I 

became the de facto technician. I was probably 

the only kid in high school who actually 

had keys to the building, so I could get into 

the building by myself on the weekends. Basically, 

the head facility person told me that 

if I broke anything, I would be the one fixing 

it anyway. 

Because you were the only person who 

fixed gear? 

Simultaneously, I was the head of the 

theatre, the audiovisual technician for the 

school, the DJ at all the dances, and every 

time a teacher had a problem with a VCR, I got 

pulled out of class. 

It was funny because the school district 

didn’t have that many theatres, so I was actually 

paid to do shows at my high school. Like 

when they had the SATs, I was paid to open 

the theatre on Saturday and turn the lights 

on. So early on I thought, “This kind of works.” 

Is that when you realized that there was a 

niche there? 

Yeah. 

Did you start working immediately after 

high school? 

No, I went to college briefly. I went to Cal 

State Hayward, on the hill. Every summer they 

had an audition for their summer stock theatre, 

which is three shows, and of course, they 

needed technicians, too. So they had a High 

School Tech Olympics as part of their admissions 

process. I went up there representing 

my school for that; I won, and they basically 

enrolled me in the school right away. So, two 

days after graduating high school at age 17, I 

was stage-managing a show in college. 

You literally started college immediately 

after high school? 

Yeah. I had two-and-a-half years of college, 

but my grades were terrible because I 

was undisciplined. I was doing seven shows 

at the same time, plus outside events, and I 

was getting paid. I was always working while 

my fellow acting students weren’t. At that 

point, Governor Gray Davis basically doubled 

the tuition at Cal State, and I couldn’t afford 

to go anymore. So I got hired by the Berkeley 

Repertory Theatre as their assistant technical 

director, right out of college at 20. 

How long were you there? 

I was there for one season. I was a bit 

young for them to hire, and I don’t think they 

realized it at the time. All the stage hands that 

I was, by default, in charge of were in their 30s 

and 40s and weren’t too thrilled to listen to a 

20-year-old kid telling them what to do. I also 

didn’t have any hydraulic expertise, and that’s 

really what they needed because they started 

doing a lot of automated effects. 

What did you do next? 

I kind of got into the freelancing world 

and worked for several companies — Musson 

Theatrical being one of the main ones. They 

do a lot of theatre installs — probably more 

theatre installs than anybody in California. So 

anytime a district got a new high school or 

elementary school, I would go out and help 

install the main drape, the electrics and make 

sure all the instruments were focused. I was 

primarily a technician in the shop, pulling 

lighting orders. Eventually, it would be, “Hey 

this client needs an LD for their church show. 

You’ve got a budget of five grand, so pull 

what you need and go take care of it.” 

Did you have control over the shows you 

were doing? 

Pretty much; it was just on the cusp of 

moving lights, and they had just gotten (High 

End Systems) Intellabeams. I was the only 

shop kid who knew how to use them because 

the old-timers were still programming on 

(ETC) Expressions. 

For how long did you do that? 

Well, I worked for several other companies 

as well. Recession hit the area in ’91 and ’92, 

and they had some lay-offs. So I did freelance 

work for some concert companies and primarily 

worked the B-circuit — state fairs and such. 

That could be a great experience. 

For a 24-year-old kid, it was great. You get 

thrown the keys to the truck, and (you’re told) to 

come back in a month and bring back the cash. 

What’s the oddest thing that happened to 

you while you were doing that? 

I did the last Selena tour before she died, 

and it was her, Gloria Trevi and Enrique Iglesias. 

It was a U.S. Western leg from Oregon 

down to San Diego, and San Diego was the 

last part of the tour. The Mexican promoter 

handed me — in front of the crewmember, 

who were sketchy at best — $30,000 in 

cash, in mostly ones and fives. So I had this 

paper bag with $30,000 in cash, and I was 

like, “Great. I’m not making it back out to the 

truck.” [Laughs] 

You must have learned a lot doing that. 

When you have no other resources, you 

learn to do it yourself. 

I agree. When did you switch over to doing 

industrials? 

A start-up company called New Dimensions 

out of San Francisco hired me. They 

were doing mostly Chinese music acts because 

they were a Chinese-owned company. 

But they also did movies because they were 

partners with this company, Phoebus Lighting 

in San Francisco, who at the time didn’t 

own any moving lights. They were primarily 

an all-Martin house — they had the Roboscan 

1220s and PALs — and they hired me right 

away to do the movie Striptease in Florida 

for about three months. It was tough, let me 

tell you, surrounded by strippers all day and 

lighting a naked Demi Moore. [Laughs] 

From there, I went to a huge rock show 

in Hong Kong. That was a 400-unit moving 

light show, primarily all Martin, with no conventionals 

whatsoever. That show ran for 28 

straight days, literally, because they didn’t 

tour in China at that time. The roads were bad, 

and the flights weren’t much better. I ended 

up doing a few of these shows in China. 

They also started to get corporate work 

because they were right down the street 

from the Moscone Center. They saw an 

opportunity to start doing trade shows, 

and it quickly became 80% of our work. I 

became their trade show specialist, and 

then production manager; I did that for a 

year-and-a-half or so. I then went back to 

Musson and did trade shows for them for 

about another year-and-a-half, and basically, 

that’s all I did for them. That was part of 

the boom in ’98 and ’99, when trade shows 

got huge. Most of our clients were all dotcoms 

— Intel, 3Com, Cisco — and they all 

had huge booths and a massive presence 

on the show floor. 

From there, an AV company that was 

providing the same kind of booths, decided 

that rather than giving the margins 

away, they would do it themselves. They 

hired me to run their lighting division and 

gave me a budget of about a half million 

dollars to buy gear. I bought the gear and 

did that for two years, until the dot-com 

bust. It almost killed the company, and 

they went from 101 employees down to 24 

almost overnight. The height of my work 

with that company was at Comdex in 2001 

where I designed 22 booths. 




Axis deBruyn 

Axis deBruyn 

“It was tough, let me 

tell you, surrounded 

by strippers all day 

and lighting a naked 

Demi Moore.” 

Keller Williams Convention 2005 

— Axis deBruyn 

CYBEX Booth at IHRSA 2007 

How do you design 22 booths and make 

them all look different? 

The bigger booths would have more of 

a (branding) scene with a marketing company 

involved. Plus, most of them would 

keep the same rig from year to year. The 

smaller ones were mostly graphic and 

product lighting. 

How long did it take you to get ready for 

that show? 

That show was almost a month of prep 

to get everything prepped and partitioned 

in the shop. We’d load trailers and store 

them in the lot. Also, we had to subrent a 

lot of gear, and I’d go and make sure that 

those systems were prepped as well. 

Up to this point, it seems that your career 

has been about overcoming adversity 

and forging your own path. When did 

you decide to start your own company? 

Basically, I was laid off a month before 

9/11. Because I’d been to Vegas so many 

times, I had a lot of contacts there. In the 

Bay Area, the dot-com bust was huge, and 

it put a lot companies out of business. So 

there was no work there, and that’s when I 

began freelancing in Vegas. 

My wife, Sarah O’Connell-deBruyn, is 

a theatre director. San Francisco has the 

artistic scene she wanted, and Vegas does 

not. Eventually, she came around to thinking 

there wasn’t a choice. So we moved to 

Vegas. She took over a small theatre company 

and grew that into a bigger opportunity. 

Now, she’s a professor at a college, 

and I light all her shows there. 

Do you think you have found your niche 

in Vegas? 

Now, I have a really balanced career, 

and I really like it. I just got off a couple 

of tours — I did Pearl Jam with LD Kille 

Knoble this summer in Europe, where I was 

the systems engineer and festival operator, 

and then I was just a programmer on 

several legs of Elton John’s U.S. tour for LD 

Kevin “Stick” Bye, including (Elton’s) 60th 

birthday show at Madison Square Garden. 

With the industrial shows I do all the time 

here in the convention center and various 

ballrooms, I have balance; I do rock ‘n’ 

roll, I do corporate, I do trade shows and, 

through my wife, I do legit theatre. I do all 

four branches of lighting at the same time. 

Sounds like a lighting dream. 

[Laughs] When I can sleep! 




PRODUCTION PROFILE 


Pulling the Threads Together 

to Turn It on Again 

Photos & Text by SteveJennings 

If you know the lighting industry, you know Genesis as much for the band’s production 

values as for its music. In the early 1980s, the group was instrumental in the development 

of the first commercially available automated lighting system, the Vari*Lite VL1, by providing 

the funds and the impetus for its delivery. For that reason, Lighting Designer Patrick 

Woodroffe cites the band’s “history of putting on big, spectacular light shows” as one of the 

main reasons he enthusiastically approached the design for the latest tour, Turn It on Again. 

He and Stage Designer Mark Fisher knew that they were dealing with “people who were 

knowledgeable, experienced and prepared to support a big venture…with both money and 

commitment,” according to Woodroffe. But they also knew it would come with challenges. 

“No project of this scale is ever really the same,” Woodroffe commented. “It involves different 

people, different expectations and different degrees of participation from the artists. 

Genesis has a history of…being very involved with the process.” Both Woodroffe and Fisher 

relished the idea of attacking a large-scale project. 

Woodroffe’s initial idea was to use large moving lights on masts arranged in a crescent 

behind the stage. But there was a caveat issued by the band. “The band made it clear that 

they wanted a design that was ‘not rock ‘n’ roll’ in appearance,” says Fisher. “What they meant 

by this was that they wanted something that was not dominated by loads of scrappy old 

trusses and a crudely hung rectangular video screen.” 

Fisher drew up several sketches using various organic shapes and forms until he struck 

upon the image of a spiky conch shell. “The spines of the shell became Patrick’s lighting 

masts, and the more rounded forms of the shell became the video screens and other surfaces 

behind the band,” he says. “Over a period of weeks, this form evolved into the final 

design.” 

The idea worked well because the designers were given the latitude to create a monstrous 

set that didn’t need to double as acting areas for the band. “This was never meant to 

be a stage that was a playground for the performers, as so many other of these large-scale 

tours tend to be,” says Woodroffe. “I think that this probably gave Mark Fisher much more 

freedom in that he was able to work with all the elements of lighting, sound and video simply 

in terms of a pleasing composition, rather than having to leave large expanses of empty 

stage. All his energies could go into creating the spectacle around this very focused and 

intimate playing area.” 

Fisher says that his designs always start with freehand drawings in a sketchbook, and 

this project was no exception. Once the drawings are refined, and he has a good idea of the 

concept, he moves into CAD to build a 3-D model. It starts out simple, and then it gets more 

detailed. 

“I’ve been working with 3-D AutoCAD since 1989 when working out designs, so I’m 

very relaxed with CAD,” Fisher says. Back at command central in the headquarters of Stufish, 

Fisher’s design studio, colleagues Adrian Mudd and Ric Lipson operate a rendering 

farm with 60 “high-end” computers where they render animations. “We use this as the 

basis for the animated visualizations that we use to get sign-off from the band,” Fisher 

says. “At some stage, I hand my model on to be worked up into the final production 

model. On this project, my model was picked up and developed, first by Ray Winkler, 

then by Jeremy Lloyd. Jeremy picked up my CAD model, which set out the controlling 

dimensions for most of the design, but which left a lot of the design and all of the details 

to be resolved. He worked directly with the band and with the scenery vendors to 

develop the final design model.” 

As the project progressed, Lloyd developed a close relationship with the band, and Fisher 

“kept out of the way.” Lloyd then worked directly with the band, to create the stage design 

for the indoor show.” 

Woodroffe also strived for a natural approach to the design. “I try to make it as organic a 

process as I can, but based on quite a practical and disciplined way of working,” he says. “We 

had an idea of what we wanted in terms of a generic shopping list — large wash lights and 

bright profiles for the tall towers, smaller wash lights over the stage, even smaller fixtures 

along the runways, large searchlights to cut through the screen and so on. Then the spec 

sort of wrote itself, depending on what was available at the time.” 

Woodroffe recognizes the advantages that technology can afford a designer. “This is a 

golden time for lighting designers with so many choices of bright, reliable, automated fixtures 

with interesting features,” he says. “Some of the moving lights we had never worked 

with before — the Little Big Lights, the Robe Profiles, the Coemar Washes, for example. But 

they all worked great.” 

Dave Hill, who codesigned the show with Woodroffe, also programmed the show. 

Woodroffe and Hill have developed a shorthand method of communication based on 

“many years and many projects.” Woodroffe praises Hill’s work as having “an enormous 

amount of skill and detail, (that was) absolutely in tune and in time with the music.” 

With a projection surface that includes over nine million pixels, video obviously plays 

a huge part in this production. But it was carefully crafted, both in the design and in the 

programming aspects, to blend in with the lighting and set. “The video was designed to 

be the focus at times and at others to provide simpler more amorphous backgrounds,” 

Woodroffe comments. “Dave Hill carefully matched colors and textures so that the overall 

impression was one of a series of seamless light paintings. The (video) programming 

of the show was done by Sam Pattison and his team from One Dot Zero.” 

Associate Lighting Designer Adam Bassett “pulled together all the threads,” according 

to Woodroffe, and organized the “complicated production” in the early part of the 

project. He then acted as a sort of theatrical assistant for Hill and Woodroffe in the rehearsal 

process. Woodroffe also credited Dave Ridgeway and his crew from Neg Earth 

with taking care of the details of the rigging and setting up and taking down the complex 

lighting system night after night on two continents “with little fuss.” 

For the construction of the unique set, Fisher relied on “the usual suspects” — Brilliant 

Stages, Tomcat, StageCo, XL-Video and Frederic Opsomer at Barco/Innovative Designs. 

“We’ve worked with them all on many projects in the past,” Fisher says. “Our LED video experiments 

with Frederic Opsomer go back to (the U2 tour) Popmart in 1997.” 

Though Jeremy Lloyd ended up handling the project for Stufish, Fisher says that 

he enjoyed it, and he “had a great time working with the band.” “We enjoyed a very 

professional relationship with all the members of the Genesis production team, and a 

creative relationship with the lighting and video teams,” he says, “all of which made the 

project a happy and successful experience.” 

Woodroffe was well pleased with the results, and he is highly complimentary of the 

team. “The whole production was one of the most organized, but fluid, that I’ve ever 

worked on. Steve Jones and Howard Hopkins were the production managers for the 

tour and led the whole thing with razor sharp efficiency, but also with huge style and 

good humor. They also managed to pull off back-to-back shows with a production as 

big as any I’ve seen.” 

“The spines of the shell became Patrick’s lighting masts.” — Mark Fisher 



“This is a golden time for lighting designers with so many choices of bright, reliable 

automated fixtures with interesting features.” — Patrick Woodroffe 

CREW 

Lighting Designer: Patrick Woodroffe 

Codesigner/Programmer/Director: 

Dave Hill 

Associate Lighting Designer: Adam 

Bassett 

Stage Design: Mark Fisher 

Design Development: Ray Winkler 

Design Development/Technical 

Design: Jeremy Lloyd 

Animation & 3-D Visuals: Adrian Mudd 

and Rick Lipson 

Studio Project Manager: Lucy 

Davenport 

Production Managers: Steve Jones and 

Howard Hopkins 

Lighting Supplier: Neg Earth (UK) 

Universal Team: 

Crew Chief: Jonathan Sellers 

Data System Architect: Andy Porter 

FOH Mixer: Luke Radin 

Head Electrician: Jim Mills 

Big Lites: Simon Lake 

Head Tech: Victor Livingstone 

Rigging: Ganna Lupini 

Advance A Team: 

Crew Chief: Brian Wares 

Head Electrician: Matt Burden 

Technicians: Katie Flanders, Meic 

Heggett 

Spotlights: Bob Batty 

Rigging: Hayden Corps 

Advance B Team: 

Crew Chief: Paul Kell 

Head Electrician: Bill Frostman 

Technicians: Steve Shipman, 

Roan Lo-A-Njoe 

Spotlights: Ben Howell 

Rigging: Gavin Boucher 

GEAR 

87 Coemar Infinity Wash fixtures 

6 CS6 

2 High End Systems F100 fog machines 

24 High End Systems Studio Beams 

6 80K Hungaoflashes 

7 i-Pix Satellites 

2 MA Lighting grandMA consoles 

26 Martin Atomic 3K Strobes 

37 Robe ColorSpot 2500 AT 

8 Strong 2K Super Troupers 

36 Vari*Lite VL5 

14 Vari*Lite VL6 

17 Zap Technologies Big Lites 



INSTALLATIONS 

Salt Lake Tabernacle 

By DavidJohnFarinella 

Certainly any kind of installation work 

demands a high attention to detail, and 

everyone from architect to designer to 

installer to end user needs to be on the same 

page. The team that worked on the two-year 

renovation of the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple 

Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, took that pressure, 

doubled it and then doubled it again. 

After all, these pros were working on a 

building that was originally opened in 1867 and 

has been at the center of The Church of Jesus 

Christ of Latter-day Saints for 140 years, as well 

as the venue for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s 

weekly broadcast. Yet, this was not just any kind 

of renovation. “It was more than an install,” reports 

Lorin Morse, lighting designer and operator 

in the LDS Church Audio/Visual Department. 

“It was a gut-it and start over.” 

Robert Breitenbeker, who serves as the 

manager of event support for all the venues on 

the Temple Square campus, concurs. “This is the 

first time the building has actually been closed 

and renovated any substantial amount,” he says. 

“So, this was our opportunity to completely 

redo all of the infrastructure — lighting, sound 

and A/V systems — to bring it into the current 

century.” 

At the same time, the directive from church 

President Gordon B. Hinckley was to make sure 

that the essential structure was not altered. 

“The preservation people didn’t want anything 

to be changed, so we had to find an in-between 

medium,” Breitenbeker says. “We were ready to 

rip the ceiling down, put in catwalks, speaker 

positions and all of that stuff, but because of 

the very unique structure of the dome and 

its acoustic properties, we weren’t allowed to 

touch that. So we had to find other solutions. 

Having the building closed for a period of time 

[enabled us to] find solutions that fit all of the 

requirements, both on the preservation side 

and on the technological side.” 

Before this opportunity, Breitenbeker admits 

with a laugh, almost every piece of lighting, 

projection and audio gear was bolted on. “It 

was always that we got a request, and we had to 

figure out a way to scab it on to the structure.” 

Where to Put the Lights 

In addition to improving the technology 

in the building, Breitenbeker says one of 

the goals was to make sure that the iconic 

image of the Tabernacle’s pipe organ remained 

pristine. “It’s sort of the trademark 

look of the Tabernacle Choir, so we tried to 

get all the technology out of the picture,” 

he says. 

The first step in accomplishing this was 

moving all of the lighting positions, which 

were hanging from trusses in front of the organ, 

to the back of the room. “The lighting 

trusses used to be down in your face,” Morse 

says, “but now they are way back in the east 

end of the building, up as tight against the 

ceiling as they can get. So, when you walk 

in the room, the first things you see aren’t 

the trusses hanging in your face. It’s a lot 

cleaner look.” 

Before the work was done, Morse recalls, 

there were seven trusses in the space. 

“I don’t know if you could even call them 

trusses,” he says. “They were old electrical 

control distribution strips that had a unistrut 

channel on the top and bottom, with 

spring nuts so stuff could be bolted on. Everything 

traveled up and down live, so you 

could have things on that you didn’t have 

to go unplug and plug to focus things, but 

you still had to yo-yo focus.” 

“With the new system,” he explains, “the 

trusses have an I-beam on the back chord 

on the bottom. We have a couple of focus 

baskets (I call them birdcages) that you 

hook on to those I-beams, and you trolley 

back and forth to do your focusing. For the 

most part, that works really well, but you 

still have a little bit of fine adjustment to 

do when you’re doing throws that are 70 or 

100 feet long.” 

Other than a handful of ETC Source 

Four fixtures that were recycled, the team 

installed all new fixtures for live performances 

in front of in-house audiences or 

for broadcast performances. The list of fixtures 

includes eight Vari*Lite VL3000Qs, 48 

High End Systems Color Commands, 120 

Ocean Optics SeaChangers, 18 ETC Source 

Four PARs, 145 ETC Source Four 5° and 10° 

fixtures, eight Wybron Nexeras, four ARRI 

5kW Fresnels and a whopping 468 feet of 

Selador X7 LEDs used as cyc lights. 

The cyc lights, Breitenbeker points out, 

are some of the more important new lighting 

pieces. “Because of the historic nature 

of the building, and because we’ve had 

some incidents in the past where fires have 

been caused by people throwing coats or 

other flammable materials on top of the 

cyc lights,” Breitenbeker says, “the decision 

was made that all of the cyc lighting is now 

LED. So, there is no heat issue, and consequently, 

there is no fire issue now. Yes, that 

40 PLSN DECEMBER 2007 


Church balances modernization 

with historical integrity 

was a very pricey solution to the problem, 

but because of the nature of the building, 

it was decided that it was well worth the 

expense.” 

The Nexeras were put on articulating 

arms on the balcony to provide lighting from 

the balcony rail when needed, but are tucked 

away when not required. “That allows us to 

have the nice clean balcony look or, within 

about two minutes, you can have all of the 

lights deployed and ready to go for an orchestra 

concert,” Morse reports. 

Who Controls the Lights? 

One of the more interesting lighting features 

in the Tabernacle is that the organist, who 

plays in the venue just about every day, has the 

ability to control the lighting system. “There 

aren’t many 19th-century organ consoles running 

a lighting system,” Morse reports with a 

laugh. “The organ has five [keyboards], and underneath 

the keys are a series of thumb pistons. 

We went into the electronics in the organ and 

put in an A/B switch on the organ console where 

you push the A/B switch, and the function of 

eight of those thumb pistons becomes lighting 

control. They send a signal to Unison that fires 

a macro in Unison. We will fire it straight to the 

(ETC Eos) lighting console at some point, but it’s 

not ready yet. They haven’t gotten the software 

ready yet.” 

Morse points out that the team continued 

with Eos because the ETC software is already 

embedded into the Tabernacle’s system, and 

they value the company’s customer service. 

“We’re familiar with their syntax for the most 

part,” he adds. “We have since changed to EOS, 

as has the Conference Center across the street. 

The biggest reason that we couldn’t go with 

Emphasis or something like that was the channel 

count. With all of the 130 SeaChangers, all 

having four channels apiece that are all individual, 

plus 468 feet of LED where every two feet is 

addressable seven times at seven different addresses 

per two feet — the channel count kind 

of goes through the roof in a hurry with all the 

multiparameter and multicolored fixtures and 

things.” 

Beyond the daily organ recitals, Morse reports 

that the lighting work he does on the 

weekly 30-minute radio and television program, 

Music and the Spoken Word, is similar to 

what he did before the renovation. “We have 

A view of the choir and organ after the seismic upgrade and renovation 

SeaChangers on all of the choir wash lights,” he 

reports. “They are Source Four PARs, and all of 

the rostrum/orchestra lights are SeaChangers 

and Color Commands. We vary the colors to the 

music, or we leave it the same, depending on 

the conductor. We have a lot more functionality 

with color and that kind of thing, but as far as 

turning things on and off or on-air light changes, 

all of that has pretty much stayed the same.” 

All of the lighting points and included electrics 

have been tucked away as much as possible 

to ensure that President Hinckley’s request 

be honored. “So, they are out of the picture essentially, 

and we maintained the historical integrity 

of the building,” says Morse. 

Disappearing Projection Gear 

The architectural and design teams went 

beyond lighting to honor that request, including 

the use of interesting projection features. 

Well, they almost honored the entire request, 

but in order to get the video projection system 

to work, a pair of Christie Digital Roadster 

HD12K high-def DLP projectors was installed 

in the attic space of the domed ceiling. The two 

projectors are double-stacked via a crossfire 

pattern, and any issues from that arrangement 

were cleaned up using Christie Digital Twist image-warping 

and blending modules. 

The pair of Vutec Retracta-Vu Pro screens 

are tucked neatly into custom built boxes that 

have been placed behind the last row of choir 

seats. The projectors are run by an Extron 

control system. 

Interior of the Tabernacle after the seismic upgrade and renovation


Exterior preparations for the upgrade 

“It was more than an 

install. It was a gut-it 

and start over.” 

— Lorin Morse 

The system is used for both presentation 

graphics as well as video display with a 16:9 

aspect ratio. There are three permanent camera 

positions in the Tabernacle (left, right and 

center), and there is a custom-designed camera 

track in the left and right balconies that is part 

of the balcony handrail, so that the camera does 

not intrude into the egress aisle for the balcony. 

Three Sony HDC1500L cameras are positioned 

at the permanent positions, while two Sony 

HDC900s are stationed in the balcony. 

The three permanent positions are controlled 

from a video control room in the Conference 

Center, which is about 1,300 feet from 

the Tabernacle. (Lighting control, though, is 

handled inside the building within a former 

crying room via an Eos system. Morse points 

out that there are actually three systems, one 

in use, one in a rack and a spare in the back 

of the room for emergencies in that control 

room.) Cameramen run the balcony cameras. 

“Here again, because of the historic nature 

of the room, [the three permanent positions] 

all disappear when they are not in use,” Breitenbeker 

says. “What would be the left and 

right camera positions are actually mounted 

on pylons so that there’s a patch in the floor. 

They simply pop up at the end of one of the 

existing pews, do their job and when the 

broadcast is over, we can sync those back 

flush into the floor, and they go away.” 

Since the Tabernacle reopened, it’s been a 

busy place, just like before the renovation. In 

fact, there are over 500 annual events in this 

historic venue and Morse, Breitenbeker and 

the rest of the lighting and projection team 

are putting the new system through its paces. 

So far, so good. 

Museum of Church History and Art Curator Richard Oman (L) with 

Restoration Architect Roger Jackson. 

The FOH control position was designed to blend with the seating. 

Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info All Photos Courtesy of The Church of 

Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 


2007 DECEMBER PLSN 41

FEATURE 



All photos by Katie Friesema 


By VickieClaiborne 

A complete visual experience from the wings to the top row of the lawn 

For fifteen years, Lighting Designer Fenton 

Williams has been working with the 

same band. In the early days, the audience 

was smaller than the entourage that currently 

travels with this group. Now, Williams 

enjoys a steady gig with a popular band; so 

popular in fact, that he almost has to fight his 

way to the console to start the shows. 

The band, of course, is the Dave Matthews 

Band, and Williams lights them with 

the help of his partners at Filament Productions. 

Williams recently came off the road 

and graciously agreed to talk about what 

it takes to create a production involving so 

many visual elements. 

PLSN: Tell us about your latest design for 

the Dave Matthews Band. What inspired 

you, and how is this rig different from 

previous tours? 

Fenton Williams: First, I should mention 

that I really design with a team consisting 

of several people: partners of mine from 

Filament Productions, Aaron Stinebrink, Jeff 

Crane and Mike Lane; and the team over at 

Tribe Design with Bruce Rodgers, Mai Sakai 

and Sean Dougall. The overall goal of this 

year’s set was to completely wrap the band 

in video and create a teepee-like effect. Another 

issue that we wanted to tackle was to 

make a complete visual experience for everyone 

from the wings to the top row of the 

lawn. The majority of our sheds have their 

own unique challenges. It’s important that 

we design a versatile set that can be modified 

on a daily basis. 

I think to answer the question regarding 

what it was that inspired us, I would have 

to say each other. I think that as a team, we 

continually push each other to really try new 

things. We are constantly passing the design 

back and forth and manipulating it to our own 

likes and current industry trends. Then we 

continually upgrade it with new technology. 

Video plays a huge part of your design. 

How long was your preproduction? 

Three weeks. 

How did the custom content get developed? 

We have some custom footage, and 

we also will manipulate stock footage 

into things that will work for our show. 

Which console are you using? Are you 

manually operating the show or is the 

show synched to timecode? 

We — Aaron Stinebrink, the programmer 

and me — are using (MA Lighting) 

grandMAs to run the show. It is run manually; 

we have never used any timecode. It is 

just the nature of the show that we have to 

be able to run things on the fly. It is never 

the same set list, and we typically get the 

set list about a half hour before the show. 

How long have you been with DMB? 

I have been with them for around fifteen 

years. I started out as the tour manager and 

began to experiment with the lights during 

the shows. 

Is the group involved in the design 

process at all? 

The band is typically not so entrenched 

in the design. They know that the team 

we have together does everything possible 

to make sure the design represents 

them well. They also have a certain comfort 

level with me, as I know the music 

extremely well and can effectively highlight 

each member throughout the night. 

How many people are on the lighting and 

video crews? 

Six video and seven lighting. 

How long did the last tour run? 

Aug. 1 through Oct. 2 — mainly amphitheatres. 

The two largest shows on the tour 

were Piedmont Park in Atlanta (55,000+) and 

Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech (45,000+). 

Are you the LD and the video director 

too? I know you work with a team, but 

who comes up with the concepts for the 

video content? 

Mike Lane is the video director. I will 

choose the b-roll, what I feel works with 

each song during rehearsals. Of course I 

get the input of all my partners at Filament 

who are in rehearsals with me. They will 

let me know if they think it works or not. 

How do you pass the design back and 

forth among your team? Do you use lighting 

design software? And does the initial 

design include video elements or only 

sets and lighting? 

We use VectorWorks, and we have used 

WYSIWYG in the past, although we did not 

use it for this tour. We pass it back in forth 

by uploading it to a server; each individual 

downloads it and makes revisions. After all 

revisions, Mai and Sean at Tribe will redraw 

the finals. The initial design does include video 

fairly quickly. We start with a lighting design 

and other elements are added quickly. 

Video Gear 

Abekas DVE 

2 Barco Encore systems for multiscreen 

image manipulation w/custom 

Fresco software 

14 Barco 32’ strands of MiSpheres run on 

Barco D320 processor 

3 Barco MiTrix 10’ x 24’ screens using 

Barco D320 processing and a Barco 

fiber tx/rx system 

2 Element Labs 12’ x 32’ Helix G75 

(clear) using Element Labs 

proprietary processing 

4 Extron Cat5e hi res tx/rx system 

4 High End Systems Catalyst servers 

5 Sony D50 Digital Broadcast chains 

2 w/Canon 70 x 1 long lenses 

1 handheld w/.5mm wide angle 

1 standard studio config 

1 Fujinon P/T/Z robotic camera control 

8 Sony DSR-45 DVCAM record decks 



What are some of your favorite moments 

in the show and why? 

I would say there are three. The first note 

is always very exciting. You can really feel the 

energy of the crowd and appreciate the opportunity 

each night to be an influential part 

of such a large production. Being with these 

guys so long, I remember when our current 

traveling road crew (70+) was larger than the 

first year or so of shows. It’s a lot longer walk 

to the board these days, because I have to 

fight through all the excited fans ready to get 

the night started. 

When we go into phase two of the show 

and turn the video walls on — that’s equally 

exciting. Depending upon the set list, the 

point where the video comes in changes on 

a nightly basis. So it is exciting to see how it is 

going to work with different songs. When we 

use all b-roll video for a song called “Eh Hee,” 

it’s special (because) I had an opportunity to 

direct, and my company, Filament, produced 

the music video for this song. 

The band is “completely wrapped in video.” 

For more information about William’s other 

projects including “Dave & Tim: Live at Radio 

City” for which he directed the lighting 

and video and designed the set, visit 

www.filamentprod.com. 

The band is “completely wrapped in 

video 

Lighting Gear 

2 High End Systems Catalyst media servers 

4 High End Systems Cyberlight Turbos 

14 High End Systems Studio Beams 

15 High End Systems Studio Command 

700s 

15 High End Systems Studio Command 

1200s 

2 MA Lighting grandMA Lighting Consoles 

1 MA Lighting grandMA Light Console 

2 MA Lighting grandMA NSPs 

21 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes 

4 Martin MAC 2000 Wash 

2 MDG 5000 Foggers 

9 PixelRange PixelLine 110ec 

37 PixelRange Pixel PAR 90Ls 

4 Studio Due CS-4s 

40 Vari-Lite 3000 Spots 

18 Vari-Lite 3500 Wash fixtures 

16 9-lights with Wybron ColorRam II 

scrollers 


VITAL STATS 


S H O W 

D I S T R I B U T I O N ’ S 

Robert “Bob” Belanger 

Robert “Bob” Belanger 

By KevinM.Mitchell 

Who: Robert “Bob” Belanger, vice president 

sales & rental, Show Distribution Group Inc. 

What: Sales and rentals of the ChainMaster 

variable- and fixed-speed hoists, as well as 

Prolyte roof, truss and stage systems. 

Where: Leon-Harmel, Quebec, Canada 

When: Founded in 1999. 

Starting at the top: “First gig was with the Red 

Hot Chili Peppers. We supplied the variablespeed 

motors to move their truss system.” 

I knew I wanted to do this when… “I saw 

Madonna kissing Britney Spears.” 

Current clients include… Spice Girls, 

Wicked, The Police, Rush, Five Point Productions, 

Q1 Production, PRG, Tait Towers, Desert 

Specialty Rigging, In-House-Production, 

Nokia Theatre/LA Live in Los Angeles, LAX night 

club at the Luxor in Las Vegas and many others. 

Career high point: “The Nokia Theatre/ 

LA Live in Los Angeles show. We supplied 

18 variable-speed Jumbo lifts at a capacity 

of 6,000-kg (13,200 pounds), each with 

everything mounted on variable-speed 

trolleys of a 12-ton capacity. We moved 

six giant catwalks.” 

Career Low Point: “Can’t remember — 

don’t want to remember!” 

Most cool thing about my job: “To be 

part of all these state-of-the-art projects 

and many of these kick ass tours.” 

Least cool thing about my job: “Has anyone 

seen my lawyer?” 

Coolest “toy” that you’ve recently seen/ 

used and were impressed with: “Darn, 

you guys are getting personal!” 

On the home front: “Girlfriend and 

life partner Nathalie Lacroix, my sons 

David and Michael, and my daughter 

Leanne. Nathalie also has two 

children: son Ubert and daughter 

Camille. It’s a full house — so please close 

the door!” 

What’s in my CD player/on my iPod right 

now: Zac Efron’s Ladies’ Choice. 

If I could be someone famous for a day, it 

would be… Elvis. 

My greatest fear is… planes. 

If I could go back in time and tell my 

younger self one thing, it would be: “Get 

your ass on a tour bus!” 

If I were a cartoon character, I’d be: “The Coyote. 

I have a few new ideas for the Road Runner.” 

Previous lives: “I worked 10 years in the 

wood tooling industry, have done event 

productions with bands and have been a 

band manager. I’m a jack-of-all-trades, but 

master of none.” 

On vacation, please find me… “Anywhere in 

the world discovering all the points of interest 

and the different cultures.” 

Words to live by: “Whatever you do, always 

cover your butt!!!” 

www.EPDweb.com 

The 

Event Production Directory 

is now available online! 

The Industry’s #1 Directory 

Is Now the Industry’s 

#1 Searchable Databasee 

24/7 access to 1,000s of companies 

Sections on 

•Lighting • Sound • Staging • Video Projection • Set Design & Construction 

•Manufacturers / Distributors / Theatrical Retailers • Lasers • Cases 

• Pyrotechnics • Generators • Coaches • Freight Forwarders • Trucking 

• Radio Communications •Backline 

Search by State – City and even the gear each company has!


ROAD TEST 


CLAY PAKY Alpha Profile 1200 

By PhilGilbert 

With the introduction of the Alpha 

line several years ago, Clay Paky 

began an earnest push to reinvigorate 

its fixture offerings. Combined 

with an overhauled U.S.-based sales and 

support team, it has resulted in renewed 

brand awareness in North America and 

around the world. 

The newest addition to the Alpha 

line, the Alpha Profile 1200 moving yoke 

fixture is a direct answer to the framing 

shutter systems incorporated into the 

massively popular VL3500 Spot and MAC 

2000 Performance fixtures. 

Read on to see how the Alpha Profile 

1200 stacks up. 

tem. The other gobo wheel provides six 

indexable, rotatable gobos plus open. An 

additional effects wheel provides a rotating 

animation effect and a rotating prism, 

as well as two frost filters. 

The framing system makes use of 

four shutters, each of which are controlled 

via two parameters. The entire 

system can be rotated (as a whole) up 

to 90 degrees. Especially convenient is 

the patented framing shutter system 

that Clay Paky calls a “total curtain” effect. 

Unlike other similar fixtures, each 

shutter can extend completely through 

the optical train, greatly increasing the 

framing possibilities of the unit. 

This is one of the quietest fixtures, for its size, 

that I have ever encountered. 

Physical Profile 

rt 

The exterior of the fixture is virtually 

identical to the other 1200-watt 

spots in the line. It’s 17.72 inches wide 

and 29.13 inches tall, with the head 

pointing straight up; the base is 19 

inches by 18.1 inches and it weighs almost 

85 pounds. Some of the shared 

features include: 

• 3-pin and 5-pin parallel data connection 

• Battery-powered menu system 

for addressing and other changes 

without mains power 

• Switch-selectable 110V/208V 

operation 

• Quarter-turn fastener access to 

frequently opened areas 

Its exterior is almost indistinguishable 

from its brothers and sisters, but the important 

parts of the Alpha Profile 1200 are 

on the inside. 

Features 

rt 

The fixture provides smooth dimming 

via a combination of electronic 

and mechanical dimming. Strobe effects 

are provided by a separate flag, allowing 

dimming and strobing concurrently. 

The color system includes CMY color 

mixing, linear CTO and a six-position (plus 

open) color wheel. The cyan, magenta 

and yellow color flags are slightly oversaturated 

at the ends to allow for supersaturated 

colors. 

The effects system consists of three 

wheels. A static gobo wheel includes eight 

fixed gobos plus open, which are individually 

interchangeable. The entire wheel 

can also be quickly and easily removed 

due to a unique magnetic mounting sys- 

Other standard features include a 10- 

to 30-degree zoom, electronic focusing, 

iris and 16-bit pan and tilt. 

What’s All the Noise About? 

rt 

In person, there are several striking 

things about this fixture. Not to be 

missed are the audible noise (or lack 

thereof ), dimming, color mixing, easy 

maintenance and (especially) the framing 

shutters. 

While it’s easy to overlook the noise 

produced by a single fixture (and all of 

its fans), the decibel output of a fixture 

can be critical in some applications. 

This seems especially true for any fixture 

with framing shutters, as it will inherently 

be used in many specialty applications 

(theatre, dance, etc.) where 

shuttered fixtures are de rigueur. As 

part of Clay Paky’s SV (Silent Version) 

line, the Alpha Profile 1200 has been 

designed from the ground up to be silent. 

This is one of the quietest fixtures, 

for its size, that I have ever encountered. 

Even parameter changes that are 

inherently noisy (strobe, gobo bumps, 

etc.) are almost imperceptible from a 

few feet away. 

Clay Paky has definitely been listening to some 

lighting techs as this line has evolved. 

Clay Paky obviously spent a lot of time 

tweaking the dimming curve, as the fixture 

seamlessly shifts from mechanical (flag) 

dimming to electronic (ballast) dimming 

part way through its intensity range. It 

handles long- and short-intensity changes 

with grace. You can also select a standard 

dimming curve or a second dimming curve 

that mimics a conventional dimming curve. 

As mentioned previously, each color 

flag is slightly over-tinted at the saturate 

end of its range. This feature is shared 

throughout the line and allows incredibly 

rich colors to be created. 

Clay Paky has definitely been listening to 

some lighting techs as this line has evolved. 

Each new fixture seems to be a little bit easier 

to maintain and repair than the last, and the 

Alpha Profile 1200 is no exception. As an example, 

one of the main modules comes out 

of the fixture with a fan assembly attached 

so that the module will stand up straight on 

a work surface, resting on the fan assembly. 

Other things like modular effects systems, 

captive screws and circuit boards that are 

shared with other fixtures make this fixture a 

shop or touring technician’s dream. 

Last, and possibly most important, is 

a spectacular framing shutter system that 

could take the industry by storm. The shutter 

movement and control is excellent, and 

the almost infinite amount of control is marvelous. 

The only real problem with the system 

is that the shutters are just far enough 

from the gobos to prevent the same great 

shuttering of patterns and textures (i.e. a 

sharply focused gobo cannot be shaped 

very effectively with the framing shutters). 

But this is a common issue in any framing 

projector because it can’t focus on the gobos 

and framing shutters simultaneously. 

The Final Word 

rt 

Clay Paky seems to have nailed it 

with its latest effort. While focusing 

on a next-generation framing system, 

the engineers in Italy have quietly improved 

on almost every feature considered 

“standard” in this size platform. 

Top-notch dimming, positioning, color 

mixing and output, combined with a 

revolutionary framing shutter system, 

make this fixture well worth watching 

for. 

Phil Gilbert is a freelance lighting designer 

and programmer. You can contact him at 

pgilbert@ plsn.com. 

What it is: Clay Paky Alpha Profile 

1200 — a 1200-watt moving head spot 

luminaire with framing shutters. 

Who it’s for: Any event needing 

extremely versatile framing shutters and 

top-of-the-line everything-else. 

Pros: Incredible framing shutters; 

beautiful dimming; gorgeous color 

mixing. 

Cons: Some combinations of gobos and 

framing shutters aren’t effective. 

Retail Price: $17,300. 



Fire Tour Blazes with Video 

Fashion Show Uses Eyeliner 

to Create Holograms 

Arcade Fire in concert 

LONDON — XL Video is supplying robotic cameras and Christie FOH projectors for Richard Stembridge’s 

innovative video design on Arcade Fire’s current European tour. XL’s project managers Jo Beirne and Phil 

Mercer have been involved with supplying the band’s video needs throughout 2007, and the latest leg of 

their hugely successful Neon Bible tour is the largest yet in terms of production. 

“Working with Richard is always interesting and brings visually stunning results as the show is constantly 

evolving and growing” says Beirne. 

Lighting Designer Paul Normandale, who was looking for a specific style and approach to facilitate what 

he anticipated would become a video-driven show, brought Stembridge into the equation. Normandale is 

known for his offbeat designs and imaginative daring. He wanted someone with a fresh and nonstandard approach 

to video to match the band’s richly textured music and intense performance. continued on page 59 

Digital Lighting Training Goes Worldwide 

DALLAS — Worldwide automated lighting manufacturer 

High End Systems Inc. and Dutch dealer Improve recently 

held a successful Digital Lighting University in Delft, 

Holland. The two-day program hosted 40 prominent lighting 

and video designers and technicians in an intimate, 

hands-on curriculum teaching the intricacies of products 

such as DL.1 and DL.2, along with the Axon media server 

and other digital products. 

Keynote speakers included Richard Bleasdale, Mike 

Redmer, Scott Chmielewski, Antoinette Wijffels and Fons 

Hogenes, who covered everything from case studies to 

the basics of art and design. Breakout sessions included 

workshops on configuration, content creation and programming, 

with “students” actually running the range of 

Hog consoles and creating unique content. Live entertainment 

was brought in to accompany the content showing 

on the variety of projection surfaces in the venue. 

HES German dealer Arcus first launched Digital Lighting 

University as a way to familiarize end users with digital 

lighting. The program was considered such a success that 

Antoinette Wijffels, managing director of Improve, decided 

to organize the program in Holland. 

“Digital lighting is still in its infancy,” says HES’s Bill 

Morris. “These products are not the kind of thing a new 

user can just see at a trade show and immediately understand 

how to use. 

continued on page 48 

A mock-up of the Target Model-less fashion show 

NEW YORK — Target removed the model from the fashion 

show with its Target Model-less Fashion Show, transforming 

Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into the site of the 

world’s first virtual fashion show. High-definition holograms 

allowed Target clothes to strut down a virtual runway — 

models not included. 

Powered by hologram innovator Musion Systems Limited, 

the presentation employed an illusionary technique that uses 

Eyeliner foil to give two-dimensional images the illusion of 

depth. The Eyeliner foil rolls — 13- and 26-feet high — are carefully 

prepared during manufacture and rolling so as to retain 

maximum transparency and strength when subjected to extreme 

tension. The resulting surface is optically clear and blemish 

free, a projection surface better than that of a huge plate 

glass mirror, allowing the true reproduction of high-definition 

video and some amazing special effects: objects can rotate in 

midair, people can beam down from space and real actors can 

perform next to volumetric cartoon characters. 

48 

51 

52 

Inside… 

E/T/C London keeps its 

eyes on Malta. 

Road Test 

Vickie Claiborne takes the Maxedia media server 

out for a spin. 

Video World 

A brief history of time code — and why it’s on 

your lighting console. 


NEWS 

LONDON — Projected Image Digital (PID), 

working closely with architectural lighting 

design practice Indigo Light Planning, has 

specified and installed a spectacular Element 

Labs VersaPIXEL ceiling effect for the house 

gymnasium of a leading investment bank in 

London’s Canary Wharf area. 

PID supplied 1500 25 mm square Versa 

Pixels, a VersaDrive C1 driver and a Pharos 

LPC1 architectural lighting controller for the 


Malta Uses Large-Scale Projection to Explore Its Past 

LONDON — Large format projection specialists 

E/T/C London returned to Malta to 

project onto the dramatic Fort St. Angelo in 

Valetta Harbour for the opening ceremony 

of the HotelPlan conference. Working for the 

Malta Tourist Authority and the Malta Fairs 

& Convention Centre (MFCC), the event was 

staged for 250 invited guests. 

E/T/C London has worked in Malta several 

times, designing and coordinating large 

format projection shows, including the Welcome 

Malta celebrations in 2004, when 10 

new member states joined the EU. 

For this latest project, E/T/C UK’s Ross Ashton 

was commissioned by Maltese production 

company Sign-It to create a special 15-minute 

narrative illustrating the history of Malta from 

its discovery 6,000 years ago to the present. 

Ashton researched, wrote and produced the 

storyboard and originated all the artwork. 

Karen Monid edited the soundtrack. 

E/T/C projected 500 meters across Valletta 

Harbour onto the Fort from the projector 

Fort St. Angelo in Valetta Harbour, Malta 

position located at the Old Customs House. 

They used eight 6kW PIGI projectors with 

double rotating scrollers, all overlaid to optimize 

the image brightness, complete with 

special Barco 125 cm lenses. The image was 

divided into two halves, with four machines 

covering each half, soft-edged together 



using E/T/C’s proprietary OnlyCue software, 

which was also used to program and run the 

shows. The OnlyCue programmers were Karen 

Monid and Erlwin de Gans, with support 

from Chris Richardson and Ewan Guichard. 

Sign-It was also heavily involved with the 

Welcome Malta show. The projections onto the 

project, which was coordinated 

for them by Sam 

Douglas. 

PID also designed 

and manufactured custom 

steel mounting 

brackets for the VersaPixel’s, 

which are installed in 

the room’s ceiling panels, 

and created 17 special 

clips of digital content, 

working to a brief from 

Indigo’s Paul Nulty and 

the gym staff. 

Nulty’s brief from 

project managers Logitek was to transform 

the former car parking space in the building’s 

basement into a vibrant, funky, inspirational 

relaxation and workout area for staff. He, PID 

and a team from Bennett’s Interior Design all 

collaborated to help achieve this. 

Indigo has designed both pixilated video 

screens and gymnasium lighting schemes 

before, but this is the first time that Nulty has 

fully integrated a large digital lighting effect 

into one of his designs in this way. 

“It was a right-time-right-place situation,” 

Nulty explains. “We were looking for a strong 

concept to produce some real dynamics in 

the space. From there, we seized the opportunity 

of creating a modern digital lighting 

feature using VersaPixel.” 

Nulty also wanted to ensure that the gym 

area was completely different in feel to the 

rest of the building. The shape of the front 

end of the gym (a stepped space that has 

been scooped out from the former car parking 

decks) immediately lent itself to being 

fitted with some sort of visual feature, says 

Nulty, and most of the workout machines are 

lined up to face this. 

We plan to expand this program to more cities 

worldwide so that those who want to learn 

more about the technology get the chance in a 

hands-on environment led by early adopters.” 

Michel Buchner, content design and creative 

technology expert from The Live House 

in the Netherlands, attended the program. “It 

was very inspirational,” he says of the experience. 

“If you want to excel in this industry, you 

have to know the best of both the lighting 

Fort proved such a great hit that Sign-It’s MD 

Ruben Caruana wants to repeat the spectacle 

as and when the opportunities arise 

for more people to enjoy. “Projection makes 

such a bold, dramatic statement and is 

hugely entertaining” he states, adding that a 

projection show is an ideal focus for a corporate 

event that also involves entertainment 

elements for its guests. 

The projection show was part of a full evening 

of activities planned for the delegates 

and included fireworks over the harbor. 

Once again, the shows were a huge 

success. Ashton comments “It was a 

great privilege to be asked back to Malta 

again — and also to produce a show from 

scratch, undertaking all elements of the 

process in-house.” 

It was actually the sixth time that E/T/C 

London has worked in Malta, following the 

1999 launch of the Malta Freeport Container 

Dock and the Malta Millennium celebrations 

in 2000 as well as Welcome Europe. 

Investors Get Fit with Pixel-Packing Ceiling 

Investment bankers get buffed while pixels soothe weary muscles. 

PID produced drawings and visualizations 

as the content creation process was 

developed, in addition to a full-scale, on-site 

mock-up in front of the client avnd all the 

design teams. The installation process was 

coordinated for PID by Lead Engineer Rob 

Smith and Sam Douglas. 

The 1,500 VersaPixels are controlled from a 

VersaDrive C1 controller. The C1 is connected 

to 11 PSUBB units, connected and addressed 

via a 6-pin Element Labs data cable leading 

back to a number of Pharos PHUB32s, each of 

which connects to up to 32 VersaPixels. 

The video content is stored on the Versa- 

DRIVE C1, which is then triggered by the Pharos 

architectural control unit, and then timeline 

programmed to fit the gym’s opening hours. 

PID’s Digital Services Manager Nev Bull developed 

the content using After Effects. The design 

team saw an initial preview, fed back comments 

and then a final list was agreed upon. 

PID’s David March says, “Developing the 

concept with Paul and the design teams and 

being involved in the entire process, right 

from mock-up to completion, has been very 

rewarding for us.” 

Digital Lighting Training Goes Worldwide 

continued from page 47 

and video worlds, creatively and technically. 

When you can combine and connect these 

disciplines, you’re a step ahead of the people 

who think it will stay as it is.” 

Improve is active in a variety of fields, including 

live entertainment and special events. 

The company provides innovative design and 

consulting and also supplies high-quality 

brands known for their ability to add unique 

elements to show design.

Berg Passes Video Transparency Test 

Andrea Berg 

Double Up Tour 

Gets Double Use 

from Luminaires 


ÅRHUS, DENMARK — Marco 

Göpel, lighting designer, operator 

and occasional show coordinator 

for Andrea Berg, one of Germany’s 

most successful solo acts and one 

of the biggest-selling German 

pop divas, has integrated Martin 

MAC luminaires and LC Series LED 

panels into her show. 

More than 8,000 people gathered 

at the Chemnitz Arena in 

Chemnitz, Germany, for what 

Göpel describes as “a test for integrating 

effect video screens for 

future shows.” 

“The show is concentrated on 

one person, which means there 

is no background band or any others on 

stage,” Göpel states. “This is decisive for 

the lighting concept, as the lighting compensates 

for the missing background.” 

Marco accomplishes this with a 

beat-oriented show mixed with static 

views. He chose the Martin LC panels 

based on their transparency and their 

40 mm pixel pitch, which allows for a 

good impression for the viewer at a 

short distance. 

“The transparency allows me to use 

the LC panels in the current show without 

big changes in the programming and 

main setup. They also give me the possibility 

to create some 3-D impressions 

and play with the depth of the stage.” 

NEWS 

The transparency of the LC panels 

also means that the MAC moving heads 

located behind the panels are still visible 

for the beam portion of the show. 

“My personal impression of the LC 

panels is very good, and the feedback 

from Andrea Berg herself and guests is 

very positive as well,” Göpel remarks. 

Graphical content for the LC panels 

comes from a Martin Maxedia media 

server and is comprised of a mix of custom 

content and graphics supplied with 

the Maxedia system. Company Semmler 

Veranstaltungstechnik supplied 12 LC Series 

2140 panels, 12 MAC 600 washlights, 

12 MAC 500 profile spots, four MAC 2000 

Profiles and a Maxedia Pro for the show. 

R. Kelly in concert 

AUSTIN, TX — R. Kelly’s Double Up U.S. 

tour kicked off Nov. 14 with 25 High End 

Systems SHOWGUNS and 18 DL.2s doing 

double duty in the show. 

Performance Environment Designer 

Patrick Dierson of Artfag chose the HES 

products, supplied by lighting contractor 

Upstaging, because of their ability to perform 

in a variety of ways to fit his needs. 

“The reliability of the DL.2s has really 

been great on this run,” says Dierson. “They 

play a major role in the production in doing 

the double duty of performing formal 

collage projections, as well as intense aerial 

beam work. We’ve created an array of aerial 

projection clips specifically for that duty, 

and it always gets a great reaction from the 

audience.” 

Dierson, who was the first specifier of 

SHOWGUN on the Live Earth broadcast from 

New York this year says, “There were a few 

reasons why I chose the SHOWGUNS for this 

tour, not the least of which was because Kells 

had seen them at a party a while back and 

thought that they looked really interesting. 

I love the fact that you can be sitting in the 

cheapest seat in the house and still have a 

beam shoot straight by your head. The photonic 

output of this instrument is amazing. I 

was also very interested in having a unit that 

could do double duty in being a wash and 

hard-edged fixture. I also knew that we’d be 

using the SHOWGUN LED ring specifically 

throughout the show. In particular, there’s 

a segment where Robert ‘conducts’ the 

lighting as if he were conducting a symphony. 

The SHOWGUNS’ various abilities 

are used extensively throughout that part 

of the show.” 

“All-in-all,” he says, “my experience with 

the DL.2s and the new SHOWGUN software 

upgrade with the Gobo Animation feature 

has been nothing short of spectacular on 

this production.” 




NEW PRODUCTS 


Daktronics ProTour® PT-4 

For-A HVS-1500HS Hanabi 1.5 M/E Switcher 

Daktronics Inc. has released 

the new ProTour® PT-4, modular 

LED video system featuring four 

millimeter line spacing, 22-bit 

image processing and fanless 

design for quiet operation. The 

module incorporates cast magnesium 

into the front mask and 

rear housing for durability. Each 

PT-4 panel houses four PT-4 

modules that can be removed 

and operated individually or 

in combination. Three-in-one 

“black package” surface mount 

LED display technology provides 

2,000 nits of calibrated brightness and increased contrast. The system uses a bidirectional 

signal for active monitoring and diagnostics to aid in troubleshooting and configuration. 

The V-Tour® controller is used for setup and operational control. 

Daktronics • 800.843.5843 • www.daktronics.com. 

Gepco RGB250S 

Miniature 25-Gage Solid Component Video Cable 

Gepco International’s new series of miniature HDTV component video cables features 

subminiature 25-gage solid coaxial elements, 3 GHz bandwidth, low-loss gas-injected dielectric, 

and solid copper conductors for lower attenuation and simplified connector termination. 

The flexible and low-friction outer jacket is easy to strip and install. To facilitate 

installation in almost any environment, the RGB250S series is UL Riser-rated Type CMR. 

Gepco International Inc. is headquartered in Des Plaines, Ill., with branch locations in 

Burbank, Calif., and Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. 

Gepco International Inc. • 800.966.0069 • www.gepco.com 

The HVS-1500HS Hanabi 1.5 M/E 

Switcher from For-A supports all major 

HD formats with three types of control 

panels: 24-button, 16-button and rack 

mountable 12-button versions. Within 

its 4RU main chassis, it’s possible to add 

memory cards and optional storage. An 

optional frame memory provides three 

seconds in each of its two channels to 

record HD, or 19 seconds in each of 

two channels to record SD video. With 

memory expansion, these recording 

times can be doubled. The unit offers 

DVE capable of real 3-D DVE effects, including 

polygonal-based effects where 

video is wrapped around 3-D shapes. It 

operates as a dual channel in SD mode 

or as a single channel in HD mode. 

For-A • +44.020.8391.7979 • www.for-a.com 

Sanyo PLC-XL50 LCD Projector 

Sanyo Presentation Techn 

o l o g i e s h a s i n t r o d u c e d 

“the world’s shortest throw 

distance” LCD projector, the 

PLC-XL50. It offers horizontal 

or vertical placement with a 

fixed ultra-short focus lens 

and proprietary optical engine 

for the projection of images 

up to 80 inches from a 

distance of about three inches. 

Features include 2000 ANSI 

lumens, 1024 x 768 resolution, 

4:3 aspect ratio and built-in 

two-watt mono speaker. Additional 

features include Top 

and Bottom Keystone Correction 

for proper alignment of the projector, a Color Board Mode, which allows adjustment 

of the hue when projecting an image on a colored (nonwhite) surface so that it 

appears to be projected on a white surface. 

Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. • 888.495.3452 • www.sanyoLCD.com 

Sharp 

XR-30Projectors 

Sharp expanded its Notevision® 

series of DLP® projectors with the 

new XR-30X and XR-30S featuring 

Texas Instruments® DLP® technology 

and TrueVision (DDP2000) image 

processing. The XR-30X has native 

XGA (1024 x 768) resolution with 

2200:1 contrast ratio, and the XR-30S 

has native SVGA (800 x 600) resolution 

with 2000:1 contrast ratio. Both 

output 2300 ANSI Lumens. A 3x speed 

four-segment color wheel with an enhanced 

white color segment optimizes 

white level and brightness. 

Sharp Electronics Corporation • 

866.484.7825 • www.SharpLCD.com 




ROAD TEST 

Martin Maxedia 

Maxedia cue page 

By VickieClaiborne 

[Few people are as qualified to write 

a product review about media servers as 

Vickie Claiborne. She has been a freelance 

programmer for a long time, and she has 

worked on many high-profile productions. 

In the interest of full disclosure, we 

should mention that she does conduct 

training seminars on the Maxedia for 

Martin. – ed.] 

The Martin Maxedia is a powerful 

DMX512-controllable media server 

capable of handling a wide variety of 

digital media, including still images, video 

clips, 3D graphics, text, audio and more. The 

flexibility of the Maxedia’s digital video signal 

means that it will output to most types 

of display devices, including LED walls and 

digital projectors. 

Hardware 

rt 

There are three versions of the 

Maxedia: the Maxedia Pro, the Maxedia 

Compact and the new Maxedia Broadcast. 

The Maxedia Pro is a complete 

touring package that includes a road 

case, pullout keyboard with trackpad, 

Maxedia I/O (Input/Output) module 

and the Maxedia Pro PC. The Compact 

version is a standalone version that is 

geared toward permanent installations 

like clubs and retail environments. The 

Maxedia Broadcast offers advanced extra 

power for HD content. All of these 

systems are PC-based systems running 

Windows XPe. 

The Maxedia Pro system comes outfitted 

with a Pentium D 945 processor 

running at 3.4 GHz on an Intel D975XBK 

main board. It has two gigabytes of 

RAM and two Maxtor DiamondMax 10 

200GB SATA hard drives: one for the 

system and one swappable drive for 

media (gives approximately 10 hours of 

high-quality video). The video card is a 

PCIe X1950XTX Sapphire, and there is 

an internal video capture card. A read/ 

write DVD is included, and the system 

is prewired and rack-mounted in a 19- 

inch custom 9U rack flightcase with 

lockable castors. 

The I/O module is accessible from the 

front of the rack and includes: DMX512 

in and out, EtherDMX (ArtNet) in and 

out, Ethernet remote, two USB ports 

and one IEEE 1394 Firewire for storage 

media/hardware/network/video; CVBS 

in, buffered CVBS in and buffered SDI in 

(optional); VGA, RGB, two DVI outputs, 

Composite, S-video and a backlit LCD 

display with menu buttons. 

Software 

rt 

The Maxedia User interface is based 

on an embedded Windows XPe OS. The 

video output resolution options include 

800 x 600, 1024 x 786 and 1920 x 1080, 

depending on the attached output device. 

It supports media content in AVI 

and MOV formats with DV codec in SD 

and HD quality, WMV and still image 

formats, including JPEG, BMP and Flash 

media. A Media Manager is built into 

the application to help import custom 

media. Another nice feature of the Media 

Manager is that you can export all 

of your media when saving your show 

should you want to use the same show 

on another system. Also built into the 

Maxedia is the MaxNet network system 

that enables easy networking of multiple 

media servers as well as networking 

with the Maxxyz control system. Networking 

Maxedia servers also allows for 

easy synchronization of media content, 

cues and timecode. 

Programming 

rt 

The Pro Version and the Broadcast 

Versions have 20 independent 3D engine 

layers and the Compact version has 

six. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) 

is one of the strong points of the software. 

In addition to being optimized for 

easy programming with a touchscreen, 

it uses real-world, 

intuitive images, 

dynamic text labels 

and thumbnails. 

It displays the information clearly 

without the need for multiple menus. In 

fact, the Maxedia user interface was designed 

to reflect the Maxxyz user interface, 

so programming on the Maxedia 

looks and feels similar to the Maxxyz, 

reducing the learning curve between 

the two products. All the screen layouts 

are customizable, with up to 16 saved 

configurations possible at a time. 

Software effects include: blending, 

moves, transitions and wipes; smoke, 

plasma, particles, ribbons and landscape; 

shader and shader media; live 

video cue recording with no limits on 

effects; keystoning and framing; masking; 

CMY and RGB pixel mapping (up to 

32 universes including any automated 

fixture with CMY parameters and ArtNet 

import and refresh. Other features include: 

DMX viewer for DMX-in value reports; 

keymapping (cues and transitions 

assignable to keyboard keys for instant 

triggering); fixture patching identical to 

Maxxyz, (the patches can be imported 

directly from the Maxxyz); and integrated 

test pattern generator. 

Playback 

rt 

Cues recorded in the Maxedia show 

can be easily played back via the builtin 

A/B mixer, and transitions and wipes 

can be applied easily from the same 

screen. Crossfade times are also easily 

edited from the A/B Mixer screen, making 

cue playback from the Maxedia directly 

user friendly. 

Maxedia ships with five DVDs of 

stock content; new DVDs are issued periodically. 

The Maxedia Pro and Broadcast 

versions support HD playback; the 

Compact version does not. An additional 

application, the Content Navigator, 

ships with every system. It allows 

you to preview your video clips on any 

computer, which can be helpful when 

a Maxedia system isn’t accessible for 

browsing content or you are offsite. 

Example of a maxedia library graphic 

Summary 

rt 

Cues are programmed easily via 

the Graphical User Interface (GUI) using 

a touchscreen, and playback is user 

friendly with A/B control, complete with 

transitions and screen wipes. The GUI is 

easy to navigate and intuitive. 

DMX512 can be used to control global 

layers or trigger cues directly from 

a lighting console. DMX512 does not 

control each individual channel of the 

Maxedia. This helps keep the number of 

DMX control channels to a minimum on 

a lighting console. Plus, building cues 

can be done quickly and easily via the 

GUI. It isn’t necessary to spend time doing 

it from a lighting console. 

What it is: Media server with stand-alone 

programming or DMX512 control. 

Who it’s for: Maxedia Pro is designed for 

the touring market. The Compact version 

is a more economical and practical choice 

for permanent installations such as retail 

environments and clubs, and the Maxedia 

Broadcast is for more advanced HD applications 

including TV shows, concert touring 

shows and theatrical applications, and industrial 

events. 

Pros: Ease of programming, Maxxyz console 

connectivity, networking capability. 

Cons: Content must be preformatted 

correctly — no built-in formatting 

application. 

Retail Price: Maxedia Broadcast $41,995; 

Maxedia Pro $29,995; Maxedia Compact 

$11,495. 



VIDEO WORLD 


A Brief History of Time (code) 

By PaulBerliner 

I 

know you’ve seen the numbers, those little 

incrementing digits that appear on the 

video screen now and then — sometimes 

by accident, sometimes on purpose. You’ve 

also run across them on many types of professional 

gear, including editing systems, videotape 

recorders, media servers, audio boards 

and even lighting consoles. 

The numbers are called timecode, or more 

formally, SMPTE timecode, named for the national 

organization that developed and standardized 

the system in the late ‘60s — the Society 

of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. 

A timecode number is arranged into four 

groups of two digits each, separated by colons 

or semicolons (and yes, the punctuation does 

have significance). From left to right, the groups 

stand for hours, seconds, minutes and frames. 

To simulate a real-time clock, the Hours 

column counts up from 00 to 23, the Minutes 

column counts up to 59, the Seconds column 

counts up to 59 and the Frames column (in 

NTSC video) counts up to 29. And, if you left 

your timecode generator continuously running, 

at 23:59:59:29, the whole thing rolls over 

— back to 00:00:00:00 and clocks up again. 

Figure 1: Timecode is made up of four groups of two digits 

separated by colons or semicolons. 

Well Paul, that’s just peachy, but what do 

those numbers actually do — and why are they 

hanging around my user interface? 

Cue Dots 

pc 

By way of history, when I started editing 

professionally in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I cut programs 

using Ampex AVR-2 videotape recorders. 

These remarkable beasts weighed in at 

around 600 pounds each and used huge twoinch 

tape reels. The high-band images were 

beautiful, but the editing was fairly inaccurate 

because the machines relied on control 

track pulses for synchronization. (Essentially, 

control track pulses are electronic sprocket 

holes, for want of a better analogy.) 

Editing was very linear (and rather labor intensive). 

To make just a single edit, you placed 

an electronic “cue dot” on the record machine at 

the point where you wanted to cut. This dot was 

recorded on an audio track, and it instructed the 

VTR to start a clean “insert” edit. Next, you found 

the desired “in-point” on the playback machine, 

and you reset both tape counters to zero. Then, 

you manually rolled each machine back five seconds 

and started a multimachine gang roll. The 

VTRs would roll up to the edit point together, 

lock horizontally and vertically, and if the stars 

were aligned perfectly in the heavens, you just 

might get the desired edit. If not, back to square 

one, hoping that the tape counters didn’t drift. 

If you wanted to trim the edit by a frame or two, 

serious skill was required. 

Precision Guaranteed 

pc 

And then a miracle occurred at our production 

house. Along came timecode, an electronic 

digital signal that was recorded on the 

audio track of the VTR. Using a timecode generator, 

this signal was recorded along the entire 

length of the tape, and it essentially locked 

each frame of video to a single unique eightdigit 

timecode number. You could search to 

that number, cue to that number and, most 

importantly, synchronize to that number. Suddenly, 

editing was frame accurate. 

For example, if your “keeper” take started 

at 01:21:18:01 on playback reel 1, it was 

always that exact number. Even if the tape 

counter drifted, even if the reel was put away 

and brought back, that visual in-point was 

locked to that timecode. Using a computerized 

editing system, you could now control 

the VTRs remotely, preview over and over 

again to your heart’s content and trim frames 

with complete precision. 

Figure 2 — Yours truly, at the controls of an AVR-2, circa 1978. 

NDF and DF 

pc 

But all was not well in timecode land. In 

NTSC video, the color television frame rate is 

29.97 frames per second — not quite 30 fps. 

Because of this small discrepancy, editors 

soon discovered that if you cut a show to exactly 

an hour in timecode length (01:00:00:00), 

and compared this length against a real-time 

clock, the timecode program length was 108 

frames (3.6 seconds) longer than an actual 

hour. The sponsors were not pleased. 

To reconcile the difference, a special variation 

of SMPTE timecode was developed, called 

drop frame. The original version, now called 

non-drop frame (or NDF), is characterized by 

the colons between digits. Drop frame (or DF) is 

characterized by semicolons between digits. 

In the drop-frame scheme, to run the 

timecode in sync with a real-time clock, two 

frames are dropped every minute, except for 

the tens-of-minute changes. For example, in 

NDF, 01:02:59:29 advances to 01:03:00:00. But 

in DF, 01;02;59;29 advances to 01;03;00;02. 

The two missing frames don’t affect the video 

at all because the timecode still runs sequentially. 

However, the net result is that after an 

hour of DF timecode, an exact hour of realtime 

has elapsed. 

About That User Interface pc 

Today, DF is the timecode standard in 

NTSC, and you’ll find that it’s the default setting 

on most professional gear that works with 

video clips. This includes editing systems, media 

servers, cameras and much more. For example, 

in addition to audio and video tracks, 

a timecode track is also recorded each time 

you press the Record button on a DV camera. 

Besides “free run” mode, the camera’s internal 

timecode generator can be set to the time of 

day, or it can be preset to assist with multireel 

edit sessions (e.g., Reel 1 timecode starts at 

01:00, Reel 2 starts at 02:00, etc.). 

But why would there be a timecode interface 

on my lighting console? The answer is 

connectivity. If you look at the specs for any 

top-flight console, a SMPTE timecode interface 

guarantees a high degree of control and 

synchronization with external gear — and 

that’s the name of the game with pro equipment. 

By adding SMPTE timecode to a console’s 

array of DMX512, MIDI, Ethernet and 

serial control interfaces, the LD can say yes 

when called upon to control a video device 

with timecode precision. 

Paul Berliner is president of Berliner Productions 

in Davis, Calif. — a company providing video 

production and marcom services to the broadcast 

and entertainment industries. He can be 

reached at pberliner@plsn.com. 



Your Future in the Live Event Production Industry 

find the job you really want. 

Presented by Richard Cadena 

• Is it a challenge just to keep up with your job? • Do you want to advance in your career? 

• Do you need help keeping pace with technology? 

There is cause for concern: We're living in exponential times. 

Technology, products and methodology are rapidly changing. Keep up or risk being left behind. 

It is no simple task staying current with the changes. The fact is, if you want to move ahead in our industry, you have to keep pace with technology. 

Quite frankly, your future will depend on how you meet these challenges. Ask yourself, “Are you prepared to take action to 

secure your place in the entertainment technology industry of the future?” 

Are you ready to jump-start your career? 

If so, make the right move today and enroll in PLSN Editor Richard Cadena’s webinar: 

Your Future in the Live Event Production Industry: 

How to unlock your earning potential and find the job you really want. 

This webinar is rich with ideas on how to prepare for your future today. Find out how to keep pace with new technology, products, positions and 

paradigms in production. Prepare yourself to recognize opportunities and make the most of them while increasing your earning power. 

Are you ready to take control of your future? 

Enroll today and find out what your future has in store for you. 

In this hour 

you will 

learn: 

• The technologies that will influence your future in the industry 

• How the live event production industry will look in the future 

• How to recognize opportunities 

• How to best prepare for the future in the industry 

• What factors are most influencing our industry 

• How the population explosion is affecting your career 

• How to move up in the industry 

Richard 

Cadena 

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s most highly trusted voices. 

About Your Presenter — Richard Cadena 

Richard Cadena, editor of PLSN 

magazine, is a well-respected thought leader and consultant and an ETCP-recognized trainer. He is the author of: Focus 

on Lighting Technology, Automated Lighting: The Art and Science of Moving Light and Lighting for Modern Houses of Worship. As a lighting designer, he 

has completed designs for dozens of projects, toured as a lighting director and consulted on a variety of lighting, scenic and projection installations and 

performances. As editor of PLSN, Richard is a portal for industry news and information. This position allows him the perfect platform to present this oneof-a-kind 

seminar. His unique style and irreverent sense of humor make his webinars amusing, as well as highly informative and educational. 

Your Future in the Live Event Production Industry 

is an interactive webinar where you will have the opportunity to ask 

questions in real time. All questions will be addressed, time permitting. 

When you sign up for this PLSN University webinar, you will be given a password. This password entitles you to a 

single phone-line connection. However, you are welcome to invite your colleagues to gather around your computer to 

listen to this webinar with you for FREE! 

Mastering the Media Server 

Presented by Vickie Claiborne — freelance programmer, trainer, and Video Digerati PLSN columnist 

Date: November 14, December 14, 

January 14 and February 14 

Time: 1:00p.m. Eastern time 

(10:00a.m. West Coast time) 

Cost: $99 per one hour session or 

$199 for all four 

Visit www.plsn.com/university for course synopsis. 

Other great learning opportunities coming to PLSN University soon! 

• Lighting Design for the Rock Concert Tour with 

Nook Schoenfeld 

• Motor School with Don Dimitroff 

• Lighting Design with David Taylor 

• Lighting Design with Steve Shelley 

• VectorWorks Spotlight with Steve Shelley 

• Assembling an A/V Worship Team with David 

Rauch 

When 

you sign-up 

for the webinar: 

1 

2 

You will receive a confirmation e-mail. 

This e-mail will provide you with a web address and a 

password where you sign in before the webinar begins. 

3 

4 

You will be given a call-in phone number to receive the 

audio portion of the webinar. 

What happens if I miss the seminar. Don’t worry, we will record 

the seminar, and you can take it at a time convenient to you. 

If you have additional questions, please e-mail university@plsn.com • Contact customer service at 702.932.5585.

THE BIZ 


A Really Big Shew 

By DanDaley 

Ed Sullivan’s famous catch phrase 

takes on a new level of import as 

the theatrical performance industry 

reaches for ever-more-complex productions. 

Just loading in the paraphernalia 

for the new show Fuerzabruta at the Daryl 

Roth Theater in New York in October, it 

looked as though it would require the 

services of more than a couple of tractor 

trailers proceeded by cars announcing, 

“Wide load coming through.” It took a 

45-man crew 15 hours to bring in a 20-foot 

flying curtain and an oversized treadmill, in 

addition to a 45-foot, clear-bottom swimming 

pool that, secured to the ceiling, 

would hover above the audience. 

Fuerzabruta — the word means 

brute force in Spanish, the language 

of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the 

show was conceived and first performed 

— is in the vanguard of a number 

of shows whose special effects 

and machinery push the boundaries 

of even the ever-expanding Las Vegas 

theatres, where production waiting 

lists are longer than that for a new 

Trump condo, and which attract shows 

that de-emphasize the narrative qualities 

in favor of the spectacle. (Special 

effect shows with effective story lines 

usually head for Broadway, which has 

been known to fit a crashing helicopter 

into the script on occasion.) 

These theatrical extravaganzas are 

defining themselves with technology 

as they move forward. They are not the 

narrative fantasies of Broadway and conventional 

theatre, nor are they the more 

technologically bombastic progeny of 

other content or titles — this is not High 

School Musical on Ice. Slava’s Snow Show, 

which continues to tour, relies upon 

technology to replace narrative to an extent, 

immersing the audience viscerally 

as opposed to engaging it intellectually 

or emotionally. Other shows, including 

Stomp and Speigeltent, also use technology 

as a significant part of the attraction, 

as did De la Guarda, the Argentine predecessor 

of Fuerzabruta, but Fuerzabruta 

takes the notion to another level. 

Fuerzabruta’s technology is as 

complex as a Swedish existentialist 

whodunit, and well beyond the artsycrafty 

cuteness of troupes like Mumenschantz, 

which can be credited with 

popularizing the genre 25 years ago, 

I f w e s t a r t t h e s h o w w i t h t h e 

helicopter crash, wher e do we go 

from there for the next 90 minutes? 

or even Blue Man Group and Cirque du 

Soleil, both of which turned the notion 

into a franchise. 

As the show’s press release puts, 

it, “Fuerzabruta breaks free from the 

confines of spoken language and theatrical 

convention, [and] both performers 

and audience are immersed 

in an environment that floods the 

senses, evoking pure visceral emotion 

in a place where individual imagination 

soars.” Put more prosaically by 

Steve Garcia, the associate general 

manager of the Daryl Roth Theater, 

“This is a show that you’re not going 

to get on your iPod.” 

No irony is necessary — the apparent 

pursuit of the overwhelming and 

immersive industrial theatrical experience 

may well be a reaction to an 

entertainment industry that has become 

engrossed with migrating the 

entertainment experience from large 

scale to small. It could also be the 

theatre’s reaction to the fact that the 

music industry is refocusing itself on 

live performances as recorded music 

revenues disappear. Will theatre come 

to rely more and more upon technology 

to attract and retain its audience? 

Will the helicopter in Miss Saigon become 

less an effect than a surrogate 

for narrative in the future? 

One thing that this trend does 

augur is for the all-encompassing 

theatrical experience to take place 

in smaller venues. This, says Garcia, 

serves the purpose of making the 

show “intimately” immersive, as in 

the case of Fuerzabruta, by letting 

the audience actually touch the sides 

of the Mylar fishbowl as it’s lowered 

into the house. “ This wouldn’t work 

in a typical Broadway house with a 

balcony,” he says. 

Probably not, agrees Bradley 

Thompson, “Fuerzabruta’s technical 

supervisor and a member of a small, 

but growing, cohort of technology 

translators for the visions of increasingly 

imaginative theatrical performance 

art directors. But technology 

is being relied upon more and more 

to attract what he believes is a developing 

demographic of theatergoers 

who want more than Disney and 

warmed-over ( Tim) Rice. “ There is a 

definite group of people out there 

that wants to see flying 40-foot swimming 

pools, and there are people out 

there that can dream them up. The 

technology exists to satisfy both of 

them,” Thompson says. 

But will technology for its own 

sake overtake artistic vision at some 

point? Will something be done simply 

because it can be done? If we 

start the show with the helicopter 

crash, where do we go from there for 

the next 90 minutes? 

Thompson agrees that is a danger. 

“It’s teetering into the realm of modern 

dance-meets-high-tech or performance 

art-meets-high-tech,” he says. “But look, 

the technology does keep getting more 

complex and interesting. There’s always 

new gadgets, new moving lights. In 

some ways, I can’t see the theatre not 

using what technology offers it.” 

Contact Dan at ddaley@plsn.com 

Tips 

Tricks 

The Clear Reality of HD 

The day when HD is everywhere is rapidly approaching. 

We would all do well to get a reality check. Have you 

given any thought to your content development as it applies 

to HD? Will you be able to use your existing content 

when your production upgrades its existing equipment? Are you thinking ahead 

and getting all new content created at the higher resolutions suitable for HD? Or 

are you putting it off into the fuzzy distant future, telling yourself that you’ll do it 

when you have to? If you aren’t taking steps right now to prepare yourself for that 

changeover, you may not be able to make the changes when you need to. Don’t wait 

until you’re on site to repair the problems when you’re faced with the challenge of 

displaying your content on HD equipment. Do yourself a favor. Think about it now, 

and you won’t be kicking yourself when the time comes. 

— Vickie Claiborne from Video Digerati, PLSN November 2007. 




By BradSchiller 

Dear Bradley… 

FEEDING THE MACHINES 

Dear Bradley is a world-famous 

lighting advice columnist who has 

graced the pages of publications 

such as the Broadway Programming Times 

and Automated Lighting Syndicate. PLSN 

is pleased to bring this tantalizing sample 

of Dear Bradley’s works. 

Dear Bradley: 

I am 18 years old and looking to start 

a career in automated lighting programming. 

I read PLSN each month, have read 

some books and log onto the Light Network 

daily. I have mastered all the major consoles 

by using the offline editors, and I am 

ready to program all the big shows. How do 

I get to program for the Olympics next year 

in China? 

— Ready to Rock 

Ready to Rock: 

I am glad to see that you are enthusiastic 

about your career choice. However, I 

suggest that you take your time and gain 

lots of experience before expecting to 

work on large productions. You can learn 

many programming principles and procedures 

by working on local productions in 

ballrooms, churches and outdoor stages. 

Take your time to perfect your skills, meet 

some people and prove your worth. 

Use your determination to show the 

world that you desire great things and 

are willing to work for them. You should 

contact local lighting shops and ask to be 

placed on their crews. After you work as a 

lighting crewmember for some time, then 

you will be allowed to show your stuff on 

the console. Remember, programming 

and operating a show is much like driving 

a racecar. You must first prove to the other 

team members that you understand how 

the car and track work before they will let 

you take it for a spin. 

Dear Bradley: 

How do I trigger nonlighting devices 

such as lasers and animatronics from my 

lighting console? These items do not respond 

to DMX, and I am at a loss as to how 

to get control of them. I tried to write a library 

for my console, but it did not say how 

to control a moving truss. 

— Need More Control 

Need More Control: 

There are several methods you can 

use for triggering nonlighting devices. 

The most common is through Musical 

Instrument Device Interface (MIDI). By 

using MIDI Show Control (MSC) or MIDI 

Notes, you can send specific commands 

to other devices such as laser controllers 

and audio equipment. Most automated 

lighting consoles are capable of sending 

out MIDI; however, you should check the 

documentation for your console. Another 

idea would be to use a DMX relay to turn 

on/off various devices with a DMX signal. 

These can be acquired from several industry 

manufacturers and are simple to operate, 

as they behave like any other fixture 

on your console. 

Dear Bradley: 

What is the best way for me to apply the 

skills of automated lighting programming 

to my personal life? I am confused as to how 

button pushing and flashing of lights can 

be useful. I know that I can offer backstage 

passes to girls, but I want them to better understand 

my job. 

— Need a Date 

Need a Date: 

While it is true that working in the entertainment 

industry provides many perks, 

you will also find that many other skills 

can be passed on to your personal life. For 

example, you might learn an enhanced appreciation 

for music that can help you be 

a better dancer. Additionally, by exercising 

your fingers regularly on a lighting console, 

you will find that your added dexterity and 

strength can be useful when providing 

massages or loving touches. 

Dear Bradley: 

My crew has done a great job setting 

up the rig. Now they have asked me to 

check the fixtures to ensure everything is 

OK. I am confused as to how to do this because 

on my last gig, I turned all the lights 

on at full and reported all was fine. Then, 

when programming started, we found 

lots of problems, and the LD was very 

mad. He would not even share his coffee 

with me until I saw that all the problems 

were fixed. Please teach me how to better 

check a rig. 

— Perplexed Prepper 

Perplexed Prepper: 

A common mistake is to check the status 

of a rig by simply turning on all the 

lights. While this does indicate if everything 

turns on, it does not focus on specific 

problems. A better option is to check 

each fixture individually to ensure that 

each one has the proper address. 

A good method is to use the console’s 

highlight function. With this, you can select 

all the fixtures and then press the 

console’s Next key to look at one fixture 

at a time. If you are also turning the encoder 

for tilt as you do this, then you can 

usually verify that each fixture works on 

the address as expected. Furthermore, 

you should check all the fixtures to ensure 

all functions, colors, gobos, etc., are correct, 

matching and working. Many newer 

fixtures also include manual pan/tilt locks 

that the crews often forget to disengage. 

Be sure to confirm that all fixtures can pan 

and tilt. Once you know every function of 

every fixture works individually according 

to the plot, then the rig is ready and so 

too will be your coffee. 

Dear Bradley: 

I have just entered the field of lighting. 

I am very excited to be a part of this amazing 

industry, but at the same time, I feel 

very frustrated. I have been working and 

helping out with many shows, and I do not 

seem to get the help I need. It seems like 

all the people I have been asking for guidance 

have been steering me in the wrong 

direction. I have all these ideas in my mind, 

and I am working very hard to bring them 

out. I go home at night, and all I do is think 

about lighting. I want to try to trust my 

own intuition and myself and create looks 

that no one has ever thought about. How 

can I gain more inspiration, respect and 

experience? 

— Dazed and Confused 

Dazed and Confused: 

Our industry is full of talented 

people who wish to share their experience 

and knowledge. I suggest that you 

reach out to others who may not be in 

your immediate circle. Send your questions 

by e-mail to well-known designers 

and programmers. Contact other lighting 

companies to see if they can provide 

you with work. Take some classes 

through manufacturers, tradeshows and 

on-line. Use your drive and determination 

to gain the knowledge and respect 

you deserve. 

Dear Bradley: 

I like to gain inspiration from watching 

productions on T V and DVD. Can 

you provide me some insight as to what 

to watch? 

— Eager to Learn 

Eager to Learn: 

Any live TV productions, and now 

most game shows, are filled with automated 

lights. Be sure to record the production 

and read the credits to learn the 

names of the designer and programmer. 

Then you can try to contact the people 

involved with shows you like so you can 

learn more about the production. 

As for DVDs, there are many great 

concert DVDs. One all-time lighting favorite 

is Pink Floyd Pulse. This concert 

from 1994 really showcases what can 

be accomplished with automated lighting. 

What make this concert even more 

spectacular is that no effects engines 

existed at the time of the production, 

and many other console functions had 

not yet been invented. 

Dear Bradley: 

Every year in December, I see videos 

of an amazing house that is covered with 

Christmas lights, and I am inspired to do 

more with my own house. Since I am a 

lighting professional, I am unsure of what 

is acceptable in my neighborhood. I would 

love to have a rig of 12 moving lights and 

blow everyone away, but I am worried it 

might be too much. What do you do at 

your house? 

— Wizard of Winter 

Wizard of Winter: 

Holiday lighting of your house can be 

fun, just do not make a video and leak it 

to the Internet. We have enough of that 

already! 

You can pose your questions and problems 

to Dear Bradley at bschiller@plsn.com. 



FOCUS ON FUNDAMENTALS 


The Five Lighting Metrics 

“As the circle of light increases, so does the circumference of 

darkness around it.” — Albert Einstein 


I 

was fortunate enough to start in the 

lighting business when my own personal 

circumference of darkness was oh so 

small. I didn’t even know enough to know 

how little I knew. I was in the lighting business 

a long time before I stumbled across 

the secret to understanding the relationship 

between the five lighting metrics. It’s 

called ED-100.1. 

“ED-100.1 Light & Color” is the first 

section in the Fundamental Level of the 

Illuminating Engineering Society of North 

America Lighting Education (www.iesna. 

org). The entire course is excellent, but if 

you do nothing else, read and understand 

pages 1-12 to 1-16 — the part that explains 

the five lighting metrics. You’ll learn 

in just a few minutes what it took me years 

to find out: The five lighting metrics hold 

the key to understanding all you need to 

know about lighting. 

What are the five lighting metrics? 

They’re the fundamental ways that light 

can be measured and quantified. They tell 

us how much light a source produces in 


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total, how much light is falling on a surface 

area, how intense the light is in a certain 

direction, how much light is bouncing off 

of a surface and how much light is reflected 

and transmitted through a surface. In 

lighting terms, these are known as luminous 

flux, illuminance, luminous intensity, 

luminance and luminous exitance. Before 

you turn the page, give me five or ten minutes 

to illustrate these seemingly complex, 

yet rather simple concepts. 

Luminous flux is simply the rate of flow 

of light. The yardstick that we use to measure 

it is called a lumen. If it helps you visualize 

the concept, you can think of light 

as a flow of particles. Then the light flux, 

or luminous rate of flow would be the total 

number of particles emanating from a 

source at any one time. It’s a bit more complicated 

that our simplified visualization of 

“particles” of light, but we’ll leave that in 

the circumference of darkness for the time 

being. 

Now imagine that those tiny little particles 

of light are projected against a wall. 

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Jan. 26, 2008 

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The Inverse Square Law 

If they all hit the wall within a very small 

area, then that area would be lit up very 

brightly. If, on the other hand, they spread 

out across a very large wall, then it wouldn’t 

be as bright. How many light “particles” fall 

in one area determines the brightness in 

that area. That’s called the illuminance, 

and we measure it in footcandles or lux, 

depending on which side of the Atlantic 

Ocean we reside. In numerical terms: The 

illuminance is equal to the luminous flux 

divided by the area. 

The force with which our imaginary 

particles of light are leaving the source is 

the luminous intensity. It’s much like the 

water pressure in a hydraulic system or the 

voltage in an electrical system, except in 

lighting terms, the intensity can vary according 

to the direction we’re looking at. If 

we think of a typical household light bulb, 

the base blocks the light in that direction, 

so the luminous intensity is zero. That’s an 

example of its directional dependency. Luminous 

flux is measured in candelas, and 

one candela is defined as a source that 

produces one lumen at a one-square-foot 

spherical surface one foot away from the 

source. 

Let’s keep our imaginations fired up 

for this one. Suppose now that the stream 

of particles emanating from our lamp 

source is as sharp as a laser beam. In fact, 

let’s imagine that they are traveling in a 

perfectly parallel beam, neither converging 

or diverging. That means we could 

measure the illuminance one meter from 

the source or 384 million meters from the 

source on the surface of the moon, and 

it would read the same (except for the 

light that bounces off of the particles in 

the earth’s atmosphere and in space). But 

in real life, the lights we use typically diverge, 

and the light spreads out as it travels. 

How much it spreads out, of course, 

depends on the distance it travels and the 

angle of divergence. 

Suppose we have a source with a luminous 

intensity of 100 candelas. At one 

foot away from the source, if all the light 

falls on a one-foot-square surface, then it 

is producing 100 lumens, by definition, at 

that surface. Therefore, the illuminance is 

100 footcandles (illuminance = luminous 

flux ÷ area). 

If we double the throw distance, then 

the area will increase by a factor of four. 

Why? Because the area of a circle is pi (π or 

3.14) times the square of the radius. If we 

double the throw distance, then the radius 

doubles; consequently, by squaring it, the 

area becomes four times as large. 

Looking at our relationship between illuminance 

and area, we can see that the 

illuminance falls off exponentially in relation 

to the area and the throw distance. If 

we put all of this together, we can get to 

this relationship: 

illuminance = luminous intensity ÷ (distance) 2 

That little line is what’s known as the 

inverse square law, and it says that the illuminance 

drops off exponentially with 

The five lighting metrics hold the key to 

understanding all you need to know about lighting. 

the square of the throw distance, but it’s 

directly proportional to the intensity. It’s 

an important relationship that will explain 

lots of lighting phenomena. 

There’s one more little observation 

that ties all of this together. The area of a 

sphere is four times pi times the square of 

the radius of the sphere (4 x π x r 2 ). So if a 

sphere has a radius of one foot, then the 

area is four times pi, or 12.6 square feet. 

Then a 100 candela source at the center 

of that one-foot sphere would produce 

100 footcandles at the sphere. Since we 

know that the illuminance is equal to the 

luminous flux divided by the area, we also 

know that the luminous flux is the illuminance 

times the area. So we can calculate 

that the luminous flux from that 100 candela 

source is 100 times 12.6, or 1,260 lumens. 

So if 100 candelas is 1,260 lumens, 

then one candela is 12.6 lumens. Therefore, 

when we’re given the luminous intensity, 

we can convert it to luminous flux and 

vice versa. 

Now that we better understand these 

lighting metrics, we can turn our attention 

to the light “particles” that we have been 

imagining. It turns out that light behaves 

as both a particle and a wave. If that’s difficult 

to understand, then you can better 

appreciate Einstein’s comment about the 

circumference of darkness. In other words, 

the more you know, the more you understand 

that there is even more to know and 

understand. 

Whether this article increases your circle of 

light or leaves you in the dark, e-mail the author 

and let him know. rcadena@plsn.com. 

56 

PLSN DECEMBER 2007 



TECHNOPOLIS 

The Power of UPS 

(No, we’re not talking about shipping.) 

By PhilGilbert 

Scenario A: It’s 3:00 a.m. You’re in the 

middle of an all-night programming 

session, and your console seems to 

be freaking out every few minutes. You, in 

turn, are freaking out too. 

Scenario B: It’s ten in the morning. 

You’re thirty minutes into a corporate 

event, and you suddenly lose control 

of your rig. Someone eventually 

notices that the DMX optical isolator at 

dimmer beach is dead. You feel like you 

might lose control of your bowels. 

Scenario C: It’s 8:00 p.m. The 

headline act of your outdoor festival 

has just launched into its first song. 

The lighting system seems to dim 

momentarily, and then your board 

suddenly reboots. You feel like your heart 

has rebooted as well. 

Any one of these problems probably 

could have been prevented with a 

piece of equipment called a UPS (or 

Uninterruptible Power Supply). The 

primary intent of a UPS is to provide 

constant — or uninterrupted — power 

to an electrically powered device. It’s 

basically a battery pack for your sensitive 

electronics. 

At its simplest, a UPS is a big battery. 

You plug your equipment into the battery, 

and you plug the battery into the wall. If 

there is a loss of power at the outlet, the 

battery stops charging, but you still have 

the battery to power your equipment 

until it becomes drained. 

Just like a flashlight, the bigger the 

battery, the longer you can run your 

equipment. 

Of course — as is so often the case — 

a UPS isn’t quite so simple, and there is a 

lot more important information to know. 

Online vs. Offline 

Tech 

While there are several different types 

of UPS units available today, the two 

largest categories are the online and off-line 

varieties. Although each type may have its 

own benefits, this is definitely a product 

where you “get what you pay for.” 

In standard operation, an off-line (or 

standby) UPS supplies power directly 

to your electronics while, at the same 

time, charging its battery. While your 

equipment gets power directly from the 

wall, an AC-to-DC converter charges the 

battery. When a power failure is detected, 

the unit quickly switches to battery 

power, providing power via a DC-to-AC 

inverter. This switch to battery power 

typically happens in 4 to 25 milliseconds. 

An off-line UPS provides protection 

from short-term power outages and lowvoltage 

scenarios such as brownouts or, 

in the extreme case, a complete blackout. 

They also offer about the same high-voltage 

protection as the surge suppressors in 

everyday power strips, which is most likely 

a metal-oxide varistor that acts as a shunt 

should any high voltage, such as a lightning 

strike, happen to find its way to the power 

circuit. 

An on-line UPS is significantly different 

in that it constantly powers the load from 

its internal battery. Sometimes referred 

to as dual conversion online systems, this 

type of unit is generally more costly than 

an off-line model of similar size, but offers 

major advantages over the prior. Most 

obvious is that no switch has to be made 

when a voltage drop or power outage is 

detected. Since your equipment is already 

being fed from a combination of batteries 

and capacitors, your protected equipment 

never knows the difference if wall power is 

lost. 

The dual-conversion process simply 

indicates that the power from the wall is 

being converted from AC to DC and back 

again before it ever reaches your precious 

electronics. This adds significant protection 

from power problems like voltage spikes 

and irregular frequency changes. 

While all this information is a great step 

toward understanding which UPS to buy 

for your needs, there are a few extra pieces 

to the puzzle. Most electrical equipment in 

the United States is designed to be run off 

a power grid that supplies 110 to120 volts 

of alternating current. The polarity of the 

voltage alternates 120 times per second in 

a 60 Hz system in the form of a nice, smooth 

sine wave. 

Unfortunately, many DC-to-AC power 

inverters only switch polarity between 

positive and negative and actually output 

a square wave instead of a sine wave. While 

a lot of electrical equipment will still run 

off this type of output, it is possible that 

it could cause damage to some electronic 

equipment if it’s operated from a square 

wave output for extended periods. Be sure 

to look for a UPS that has a true sine wave 

output. Your equipment will thank you. 

In Summary 

Tech 

UPS systems should never be difficult 

to justify. In an industry where a typical 

lighting control area often can have 

more than $100,000 worth of equipment 

plugged in, spending less than 1% of that 

on protecting your investment seems like 

an easy decision. That said, a UPS has to be 

treated like any other piece of equipment 

in your shop or office. Batteries don’t last 

forever, and regular maintenance and 

testing of your UPS systems must be a 

priority. 

Phil Gilbert is a freelance lighting designer 

and programmer. You can contact him at 

pgilbert@ plsn.com. 





MARKETPLACE 

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



For Marketplace/Classifieds rates call Greg 

at 818.216.5336 or email gregg@plsn.com 











ADVERTISER’S INDEX 

COMPANY PG# PH URL 

4 Wall Entertainment 50 702.263.3858 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-181 

A.C. Lighting 15, 25 416.255.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-101 

A.C.T Lighting Inc. 19 818.707.0884 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-100 

All Access Staging & Production 54 310.784.2464 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-102 

Applied Electronics 47 800.883.0008 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-105 

Atlanta Rigging Systems 48 404.355.4370 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-107 

Branam Enterprises 2 661.295.3300 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-109 

Bulbtronics 33 800.227.2852 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-110 

Chauvet Lighting 5, 43 800.762.1084 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-111 

Checkers Industrial Prod. 14 800.438.9336 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-112 

City Theatrical Inc. 57 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-114 

CM Rigging Products 23 800.888.0985 htp://plsn.hotims.com/12804-116 

Coemar/ Inner Circle Distribution C3 954.578.8881 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-304 

Color Kinetics 11 888.385.5742 htp://plsn.hotims.com/12804-215 

Compulite/Inner Circle Distribution 27 954.578.8881 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-304 

Creative Stage Lighting Co., Inc. 8 518.251.3302 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-118 

Doug Fleenor Design 14 888.436.9512 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-119 

Elation/American DJ C4 866.245.6726 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-121 

Four Seasons Coaching 30 615.444.0280 htp://plsn.hotims.com/12804-254 

Full Sail 33 800.226.7625 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-124 

Gemini Stage Lighting & Equipment Co. 8 214.341.1822 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-125 

High End Systems 21 512.836.2242 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-126 

Leprecon/ CAE 16 810.231.9373 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-130 

Lex Products Corp 12 800.643.4460 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-169 

Light Source, The 4 803.547.4765 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-305 

Lightronics 1 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-132 

Martin Professional C1, 49 954.858.1800 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-135 

MDG Fog Generators Limited 13 800.663.3020 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-136 

Mega Lite 56 210.684.2600 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-202 

Mega-Stage 41 (01)450.359.4000 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-218 

Milos Structural Systems 10 800.411.0065 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-186 

Mountain Productions 6 570.826.5566 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-302 

Nocturne 45 815.756.9600 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-255 

COMPANY PG# PH URL 

Penn-Elcom 7 973.378.8700 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-172 

PR Lighting/ Pearl River 31 253.395.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-138 

Prolyte Products 9 31-0-594-851-515 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-303 

Roadshow Services 15 800.861.3111 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-154 

Robe Lighting s.r.o. 3 954.615.9100 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-141 

Rock-It Cargo 30 215.947.5400 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-256 

Roc-Off Productions 15 877.978.2437 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-142 

Sew What 55 866.444.2062 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-144 

Staging Dimensions 17 866.591.3471 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-145 

Strictly FX Lighting 29 435.635.0239 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-161 

Techni-Lux C2 407.857.8770 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-147 

Tyler Truss Systems 12 317.485.5465 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-148 

Upstaging Inc. 57 815.899.9888 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-158 

UV/FX Scenic Productions 37 310.821.2657 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-244 

VXCO Lighting 7 41 (0)32 621 88 80 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-247 

Wybron 52 800.624.0146 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-150 

Xtreme Structures & Fabrication 39 903.473.1100 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-159 

MARKET PLACE 

4Wall Entertainment 58 702.263.3858 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-181 

Arena Drapery Rental 58 404.713.3742 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-221 

City Theatrical Inc. 58 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-114 

DK Capital 58 517.347.7844 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-151 

ELS Entertainment Lighting Services 58 800.357.5444 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-152 

Fog Supply/ Trinity Chemical Corp 58 512.250.2301 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-222 

Light Source Inc. 58 248.685.0102 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-180 

Lightronics 58 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-132 

New York Case/Hybrid Case 58 800.346.4638 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-298 

RC4 Wireless Dimming/ Theatre Wireless 58 866.258.4577 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-153 

Special FX Lighting 58 435.635.0239 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-161 

Theatrical Lighting Systems, Inc./ TLS 58 866.254.7803 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-157 

Upstaging 58 815.899.9888 http://plsn.hotims.com/12804-158 

Employment 

Fire Tour Blazes with Video 

continued from page 47 

The two Christie 20K machines supplied by XL Video are 

positioned at FOH and doubled up to produce one large image. 

They project onto a 20%-filled heavy burgundy colored 

curtain. Most of the content going onto this is highly contrasted 

black-and-white footage, which produces a series of 

subtle and slightly mysterious effects. 

Stembridge’s design specifically avoids large white expanses 

of video screen onstage, “I find them really unforgiving 

and somewhat dictatorial,” he says, “and basically I 

wanted to get right away from that conventional ‘boxy’ video 

look.” 

Normandale came up with the idea of small elements of 

video dotted around the stage, and then Stembridge decided 

that these should be round in shape. 

At mid-stage is a 16-foot diameter circular white projection 

screen that is revealed and concealed by a burgundy 

drape at the appropriate moments and also receives front 

projection. This continues the circular screen theme as featured 

in five onstage “pods” — self-standing projection 

chambers specially developed as the band’s summer festival 

specials. 

These look deliberately like a product from early 20thcentury 

humorous illustrator Heath-Robinson. Each contains 

a BenQ 3.5K projector and a circular front made from Rosco 

screen. They pop up in jaunty lollipop style across the stage 

and have caught many eyes, including Dave Pollock writing 

in The Independent, who describes their effect as “like a silent 

film shot through a pinhole camera.” 

There are also two white banners revealed on the backcloth 

that are projected onto it for the duration they are visible 

— which is dependent on the order of the set list. 

The six robotic cameras supplied by XL are Sony BRC300s, 

and they are fixed at strategic points across the stage from 

where they can track various band members. Damion Gamlin 

and Steve Falconer, sitting at the side of the stage, operate 

them. In addition to these, Stembridge has 20 lipstick cameras 

scattered all over the place, plus 4 wireless cams attached 

to mics, megaphones and other odd places — giving a total 

of 30 camera feeds for him to mash up and route to the pods, 

the screen or the burgundy drape. 

The camera mix, which Stembridge operates live each 

night, is an art-house style fusion of energy, movement and 

essence given off by the 10 musicians, and the eye-catching 

unorthodox visuals helped to inspire the rave reviews 

received by the show. 

Stembridge routes everything, including both cameras 

and playback video content, via a 32-way Kramer Matrix 

and into three Catalyst digital media servers. He’s using serial 

control from the Catalysts to control a lot of the camera 

switching, all of which is triggered from his Hog PC lighting 

desk. 



LD-AT-LARGE 


By NookSchoenfeld 

Who’s Your Buddy? 

I 

have a feeling that we in the 

entertainment biz actually 

like our jobs. The reason is 

that we are always working with 

different people on various jobs 

until that project ends; then 

we start another project with a 

whole bunch of different folks. 

Along the way, we meet a lot 

of buddies — people who we 

meet with on occasion, but with 

whom we don’t stay in constant 

contact. 

Instead of seeing the same 

faces at the office each day, we 

are forced to broaden our horizons 

by gigging with new people, 

or what I call yearly friends, 

every month of the year. By this, 

I mean those friends who hire 

me every year around the same 

time to design and program 

something for them. I may not 

talk to them for nine months at 

a stretch, but when the event 

starts coming closer, you get a 

call from these old buds. 

After being in this biz long 

enough, you can almost establish 

a yearly routine of gigs 

— if, that is, you are a nice person 

and play well with others. 

Every year at Thanksgiving, I do 

a medical show at a convention 

center where I spend two weeks 

working with the same great 

folks from Catalyst Exhibits. It’s 

always a good gig when I get to play with 

Gino and his crew. And they ask me back 

every year because I do my job without 

confrontation. It’s a pretty simple concept: 

Do what the client wants, make it 

look pretty and solve the problems on 

site, all the while maintaining a smile. 

Every January, I have one rock artist 

who starts up his yearly tour. My buddy 

Shakes Gryzbowski runs his production. 

COMING NEXT 

MONTH... 

• On the road with 

Gypsy 

• Using video in 

houses of worship 

• Product Gallery 

looks at automated 

lighting consoles 

Andy Au 

It’s your buddies who you work with 

through the years who keep you busy. 

Whenever I see Shakes, I know I’m gonna 

have a good time. Every fall, we start passing 

ideas back and forth until we have a 

set and lighting design for this artist. We sit 

down over a few beers and catch up. Then 

we get together for a week of rehearsals 

and have fun. Then I don’t talk to him for 

months. But that’s okay. He’s my buddy. 

You see, it’s your buddies who you 

work with through the years who keep 

you busy. And they are your buddies because 

you play well with them. If you are 

a difficult designer, they may think twice 

before they ask you back next year. They 

may meet another designer who’s a genuinely 

nice person and decide that they 

will give him a try this year. And all you 

are left with is your attitude, which incidentally, 

does not pay your mortgage. 

I totally understand getting upset 

when your design is not coming to fruition 

in a timely, cost-effective manner. 

It happens to most designers as soon as 

we walk into some convention centers. 

What I design on paper cannot always be 

constructed as easily as I thought. But I’m 

on site, prepared for quick modifications 

and snap decisions, and I have a smile 

for everyone. The no-worries attitude is 

reassuring to everyone and seems to be 

catching. 


I have a new buddy this year. He’s a 

production manager, he’s a tour manager, 

he’s an accountant. He’s David Norman, 

and he has a way of handling huge productions 

with a smile on his face. I just met 

him this year, but he’s the kind of guy you 

want on your side — a no-nonsense, ironfist-followed-by-a-grin-of-satisfaction 

kind 

of guy. Last week, I designed a tour for one 

of his clients. At the end of the first show, 

he spotted me backstage and gave me the 

finger wave — you know, the one your 

mom used to give you before she backhanded 

you for hitting your little brother? 

So I walked over thinking I’m about to get 

a good talking to before the band and 

management kick my ass. 

He said one thing; “The drummer was 

dark in a few places.” I waited for the next 

After being in this biz long enough you can 

almost establish a yearly routine of gigs. 

line, but there wasn’t one. Instead, he 

paused, then stuck out his hand and said 

that everyone was thrilled with the set 

and lights, and everyone just wanted to 

thank me for a good job. He had me so 

wound up for a minute, then laid that on 

me. Now that he had a good wind up with 

me, I knew we were buddies. And we shall 

gig together again one day. 

I like checking into hotels and looking 

at the rooming list of technicians at 

an event. Chances are there is someone 

on that list I have not seen in 

a while. Or just walking into 

the hotel bar on the first night 

and seeing the same faces you 

haven’t seen in a year is cool. 

There’s a set company in the 

Chicago area called Production 

Plus. My buddy Bruce runs it. I 

like working gigs where Bruce 

provides the scenery and video 

elements because his company 

has some of the most fun guys 

to work with. They constantly 

joke and talk smack, but they 

get their job done in a wellexecuted 

manner. I don’t think 

I can remember the names of 

any of his guys because I don’t 

see them often enough, but I 

remember all of their faces. And 

I love hanging with them at the 

hotel bar. I know I’m going to 

see these buddies every year 

at the NRA convention or some 

other party. 

There are a lot of people in 

this business who I don’t ever 

gig with. But they help me in so 

many ways that they are indispensable. 

Through many conversations 

over the years, these 

people have bailed me out. Many 

of these folks work for lighting 

and console manufacturers. 

A lot of them I’ve never met in 

person — they have become my 

buddies over the phone. 

One of my favorite guys in this biz is 

Ofer Brum. I have never met him. Well, 

he does reside in Israel, and I don’t make 

it there too often. Ofer is a fixture library 

specialist who does a lot of work with 

visualizer programs. I use Martin Show 

Designer for a lot of my previz work, and 

he can build their fixture symbols. 

I often need something that I cannot 

find. This week, I needed a CAD 

symbol for a Fag pod. Last week, I 

needed some custom scrollers on a 5k 

Fresnel, and today I asked him for a fiber 

optic curtain. Not only does Ofer 

get back to me within a few hours, 

he usually builds what I need by the 

end of the workday. I know he’s working 

late to help me, and I owe this guy 

about 10 steak dinners and a case of 

wine. But I know he’s happy to just 

help out his American buddy. 

The same goes for all those people 

who work in the lighting, video and scenic 

rental houses. I know a lot of these 

people behind the scenes, and I have 

seen them go the extra mile to get 

something built right for me. Maybe 

that’s because we have a mutual respect 

for what we each do in this biz. I like to 

take a moment to rap it down with these 

folks when I can, not because I want 

something extra from them, but because 

they’re my buddies. 

Nook Schoenfeld is a freelance lighting designer. 

You can e-mail him at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.

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