Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 - PLSN.com

PROJECTION 

CONNECTION 

Starts on page 45 

Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 

Vol. 9.2 

March 

2008 

Super Bowl Halftime Show as Intense as Ever 

Photo Courtesy of PrG 

Crew and volunteers had only a few minutes to assemble and power up the guitar-shaped stage used by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

GLENDALE, AZ — As the last seconds of the first half of Super Bowl XLII came to an end and the two teams prepared 

to head to the locker room for halftime, another team consisting of hundreds of crew and volunteers prepared 

to race against the clock themselves. They had less than seven minutes to assemble the stage for the halftime show, 

featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There was no margin for error, and no time for technical problems. 

Of the 60 carts rushed onto the field, 35 contained lighting equipment. Production Resource Group (PRG) supplied 

600 Color Kinetic ColorBlast TR units, 250 Element Lab Versa Tubes, 20 Martin Atomic Strobes with scrollers and 

10 Vari*Lite VL5 Arc fixtures to light the show. TMB also supplied 18 Falcon 7K xenon lights on the field and helped 

debut Alpha One Technology’s Falcon 6000s at the Feb. 3 event with 14 of the new fixtures on the upstage truss. 

The design team included Jim Lenahan, lighting designer for Tom Petty, two other lighting designers, Bob Dickinson 

and Bob Barnhart, and the event’s production designer, Bruce Rodgers. Programmer Mark Butts used PRG’s 

Virtuoso lighting control console and Mbox Extreme media server to control the ever-expanding array of gear used 

to light the halftime performance. 

“This event is truly the most intense 20 minutes in show business,” Butts said. “Every year it gets more ambitious. 

The main challenge is the lack of time. We get precious few opportunities to see the full production on-camera 

before the actual show.” 

continued on page 6 

Founded by a 

12-Year Old, Bandit 

Lites Marks 40 Years 

KNOXVILLE, TN — Not many new 

businesses survive the first year. Fewer 

still last 40 years, or emerge as leaders 

in an industry. But Michael T. Strickland, 

CEO and founder of 40-year-old 

Bandit Lites, can claim an additional 

distinction. He started his company at 

age 12. 

Bandit Lites’ story began in 1968, 

when a touring band stopped in 

Kingsport, Tenn., Strickland’s hometown. 

“After a Beach Boys concert I 

approached the promoter and asked 

him if he would like to use lighting for 

his next concert,” Strickland said. The 

promoter asked Strickland to name 

his price, and Strickland quoted $25 

— not much, perhaps, but a pretty 

heady sum compared to the typical 

12-year-old’s weekly allowance in 

1968. Needless to say, he got the gig. 

“The next month we took all the 

lights from the continued on page 8 

Veterans Administration 

to Reimburse ETCP 

Application Fees 

WASHINGTON, DC — Under new 

arrangements with the Veterans Administration, 

it is now possible for 

veterans to receive reimbursement 

for ETCP application fees, according 

to ESTA, a key supporter of the certification 

initiative. 

All three ETCP exams have been approved 

under the G.I. Bill. Veterans may 

seek reimbursement for up to one year 

after sitting for the exam and can receive 

up to $2000, but not more than the actual 

cost of the test. The benefits are 

paid whether or not a passing score is 

achieved, continued on page 14 

28 

51 

54 

Lighting Grinch 

Ice Sculptures 

Who Made Whoville? And what was 

its source? Sculptors from China, and 

frozen water, of course. 

Carving a landscape of warm-hearted 

storybook characters from a material 

as clunky, brittle and changeable as ice 

is a huge challenge. Lighting the same 

landscape, without melting anything, 

can be challenging as well. 

For the last eight years, scenic designers 

Michael Hotopp and Bill Hoffman 

have worked to create frozen fantasylands 

for Gaylord Hotels — most 

recently, a winter wonderland called 

Ice! How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Occupying 

about 15,000 square feet of refrigerated 

space, the holiday attractions 

showcase 2 million lbs. of ice carved by 

Chinese artisans over a 35-day period. 

The frozen extravaganza runs for about 

45 days in all. For the full story, turn to 

page 22. 

Installations 

BYU-Idaho’s aging Hart Building 

undergoes a dramatic lighting 

system upgrade. 

Video Digerati 

A closer look at how video equip- 

ment — and the human eye — 

process RGB color information. 

PLSN Interview 

What, exactly, does a theatre 

consultant do? Bill Conner lets us 

know. 

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



www.plsn.com MARCH December 2008 

WHAT’S HOT 

WHAT’S HOT HOT 

PROJECTION, LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

Production Profile 

Working with lots of lights on a big stage is easy. Cramming an 

ambitious show into a small space is not, according to Jack Kelly, 

LD for Rabbit in the Moon. 

Wide Angle 

Ozzy Osbourne, the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, doesn’t shrink 

from the light. Just don’t try to bring any bubble machines anywhere 

near him on tour. 

24 

18 

18 52 

CONTENTS 

Features 

22 Inside Theatre 

One of the challenges of Ice! How the 

Grinch Stole Christmas is to light — 

and not melt — 2 million pounds of 

sculpted whimsy. 

28 Installations 

At BYU-Idaho, a lighting upgrade in 

a former gym gives a professional 

touch to student-run productions. 

30 Pump Up the Glam 

So you want to get your visual groove 

on, in a nightclub setting? An insider 

provides some tips. 

34 Product Spotlight 

When it comes to rigging, “statically 

indeterminate structure” is a lot more 

dangerous than it sounds. 

36 Lighting Up the Score 

Video Games Live pits an orchestra 

and lighting crew against random 

gamers from the audience. 

38 Mega Truss 

The Tacoma Dome is home to one of 

the world’s largest super grids. 

40 Road Test 

Can a Technobeam by another name 

be every bit as strong? 

41 Buyer’s Guide 

LED and conventional striplights, 

borderlights, cyc lights and multicircuit 

lights. 

44 Vital Stats 

Nick Freed, Noel Duncan and Gary 

Mass of Inner Circle Distribution. 

54 PLSN Interview 

We talk with Bill Conner of Bill Conner 

Associates, LLC about a theatre 

consultant’s role. 

Columns 

4 Editor’s Note 

Don’t worry, be friendly. 

51 Video Digerati 

How video cameras and the human 

eye process RGB color signals. 

56 Feeding the Machines 

Don’t just have a backup plan for 

your automated lighting system. 

Know how to implement it. 

58 The Biz 

The WGA strike’s huge — and lasting 

— impact. 

59 Technopolis 

Theatrical hoist brakes, strategic 

redundancy and the dangers of 

complacency. 

60 Focus on Fundamentals 

Understanding electrical load 

calculations. 

64 LD-At-Large 

A few lighting guys sit around and 

talk about their vocation. 

Departments 

5 News 

6 Letters to the Editor 

15 On the Move 

16 International News 

18 New Products 

20 Showtime 

45 Projection Connection 

46 Projection Connection News 

50 Projection Connection New 

Products 


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

TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION 

EDITOR’S NOTE 

PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS 

The Road to Happiness: 

Techs versus Reps 

That giant fluttering sound you heard 

last month was the sound of 600 million 

American eyelids opening at once. Such 

was the reaction to Mike Wallace’s report on 

60 Minutes highlighting a study from Leicester 

University in Leicester, England about 

happiness. The study reported that Denmark 

was the happiest country in the world. In fact, 

it has ranked first in Eurobarometer surveys 

for the last 30 years. 

What makes them so happy? 

If you’ve been following the latest earnings 

reports from Schouw & Company, the 

main shareholder of Martin Professional, you 

might think it’s because of the money the 

Danes — at least those who own Martin stock 

— are making. They’re showing more profit 

than Willie Nelson’s dope dealer. But according 

to Mike Wallace and Harvard professor Tal 

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

Ben-Shahar, the key to happiness has little to 

do with money. 

“The number one predictor of well-being 

is close friendships and close relationships in 

general; that’s a much better predictor of wellbeing 

than affluence is,” Ben-Shahar says. But 

close friendships don’t tell the whole story. 

There are several other important factors, according 

to Dr. B-S, that influence our happiness. 

Each of them is listed below. Let’s see how 

we as an industry might rank in each area. 

According to Mike Wallace and Harvard 

professor Tal Ben-Shahar, the key to 

happiness has little to do with money. 

Simplify! 

Dr. B-S says, “More is not always better.” And 

who knows that better than a roadie? On the 

road you can carry everything you and 17 other 

guys can fit under the bus or in your bunk. That 

typically amounts to a carry-on, a backpack, 

and if you’re lucky, a Halliburton case. If you’re 

in sales, however, that big house, nice car, and 

By RichardCadena 

fast boat doesn’t qualify under “simplify.” Score: 

Techs: B+; Account Reps: C- 

The Mind-Body Connection 

“Thirty minutes three times a week” of 

vigorous exercise, Dr. B-S says, will keep your 

mind sharp and your body happy. Loading 

in a show, you might get thirty minutes of 

vigorous exercise in about five minutes. But 

for those of us behind the desk and on the 

phone, we need to make an extra effort to 

get to the gym. That goes for roadies on their 

days off, too, and techs on shop days. Score: 

Techs: A-; Account Reps: C- 

Permission to be Human 

Dr. B-S says that those of us who aren’t 

afraid of showing our emotions are higher 

up on the happiness scale. Unfortunately, 

there’s no crying in baseball or in the entertainment 

production industry. Score: 

Techs: D-; Account Reps: C- 

Appreciation for What We Have 

To be happy we should express gratitude 

whenever possible, so says Dr. B-S. We seldom 

see an interview in PLSN where the subject 

doesn’t thank just about every bus-mate 

and tour-mate in the tour book. And you’d 

be hard pressed to find a roadie or account 

rep who doesn’t fully appreciate good sushi 

and great beer. The industry, it seems, shines 

in the gratitude department. Score: Techs: A; 

Account Reps: A 

Happiness is a State of Mind 

Under normal circumstances, the doctor 

says, our happiness is a reflection of our state 

of mind. In other words, a positive mental attitude 

(PMA) is more important to your happiness 

than is money. Few people with a bad 

attitude last long in this industry. The natural 

selection results in some pretty good PMA 

and much less PMS than your average gig. 

Score: Techs: B+; Account Reps: B- 

Meaning and Pleasure 

Dr. B-S says that happiness comes with “the 

experience of both meaning and pleasure.” Few 

things in life are more meaningful and pleasurable 

than sending throngs of people home 

with a smile on their faces. Even account reps 

experience it vicariously through their connection 

with rest of the industry. Score: Techs: A+; 

Account Reps: B+ 

Americans in general score very low in 

the happiness scale. In fact, we scored 23 rd , 

behind Canada and Costa Rica, according to 

Wallace. But as an industry, my guess is that 

we’re a solid B or a B-. 

If your job doesn’t bring meaning to your 

life, then perhaps you’re in the wrong business. 

But if you want to bring more meaning 

to your job, then consider taking it up a 

notch by becoming an ETCP Certified Rigger 

or Entertainment Electrician. And if you want 

to add meaning to your job and have a really 

pleasurable time doing it, join us in Costa Rica 

for the PLSN University Training Seminar in 

the Tropics June 7-9. It’s less expensive than 

you think and it’s going to be a lot of fun. 

Check it out at http://plsn.webex.com. 

If we can’t beat the Costa Ricans at being 

happy, we might as well join them. 

The Publication of Record for the Lighting, 

Staging and Projection Industries 

Publisher 

Terry Lowe 

tlowe@plsn.com 

Editor 

Richard Cadena 

rcadena@plsn.com 

Managing Editor 

Frank Hammel 

fhammel@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 

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Projection, Lights & Staging News (ISSN: 

1537-0046) Volume 09, Number 2 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: 

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ESTA 

ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES &

Live Technologies 

Shifts Majority 

Ownership 

COLUMBUS, OH — Live Technologies announced 

that A&S Investment Group, LLC has 

obtained majority ownership of the company, 

which specializes in audio, lighting, video, and 

creative services for live events and custom 

installations. A&S is a Columbus, OH-based 

equity investment firm with a background in 

the foodservice industry. 

Live Technologies traces its roots back to 

1974 when Dave Mead formed Sound Advocate, 

providing audio services in the Central 

Ohio area. In 1979, Rusty Ranney formed a 

lighting company, Lighting Masters. Lighting 

Masters partnered with Sound Advocate for 

national touring accounts. 

Mead and Ranney formalized the partnership 

in 1988, and Live Technologies was 

born. The company grew to become an industry 

leader in event production services, 

and started offering permanent audio/visual 

installation services in the mid-1990s. Video 

equipment rentals and digital media production 

were later added to the company’s list of 

services. 

Rusty Ranney will remain a principal 

shareholder and will continue to operate 

the company under the new title of president/CEO. 

Dave Mead is selling the majority 

of his stake but will retain an active role as 

business development associate. Other longtime 

shareholders Shawn Loevenguth, Steve 

Quinn, and Mark Merchant will also play active 

roles in the restructured company, and 

have taken the opportunity to increase their 

stakes in the restructured firm. 

As part of the company restructuring, 

Live Technologies will change from a C-corporation 

to an LLC and will therefore drop the 

“Inc.” from the corporate name (formerly Live 

Technologies, Inc.). 

“We work in an industry that provides a 

great deal of choices for our clients, and as 

such, will require continued dedication to 

providing the highest-level quality of creativity 

and execution,” said Ranney. “Those abilities 

and the commitment to customer service 

has brought us to where we are today, and 

to climb to the next level we will have those 

laurels to give us credibility, but we do not expect 

to rest on them.” 

Currently the Systems Integration Division 

completes approximately 100 custom 

installations annually, while the Rental & 

Production Division executes over 900 live 

events per year. Named one of America’s 

Fastest Growing Companies by Inc. 5000 last 

year, and six-time winner of the Consumers’ 

Choice Award, Live Technologies employs 80 

full-time associates and recorded $9.2 million 

in revenue in 2007. 


COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — Wybron, 

Inc. said it has reeled Kenyon Whitright 

back from semi-retirement. Whitright, 

the company’s chairman, has returned 

as president, and will once more be 

overseeing all day-to-day aspects of the 

company. 

“It has been a rough time for me, all 

the fishing was really starting to grate 

on my nerves,” said Whitright. “I’m excited 

to get back to the serenity of my 

office.” 

Wybron’s product development 

schedule continues with some new 

ideas provided by Whitright. “I don’t 

know if we’ll get to everything this 

year. I’ve had almost too much time 

to think up new products and 

can’t wait to see it all come together,” 

he said. 

Speaking of his decision to 

return, Keny added, “I’ve built 

this business out of a garage 

to what it is today. Along the 

way I’ve been joined by an extraordinary 

group of people. 

It is their commitment to me, 

and my commitment to them, 

that allows us to make the 

best gear out there. I’m so 

proud of how much we actually 

engineer and make in this 

building and am energized to 

be back. 

NEWS 

Whitright Resumes Role as President of Wybron 

Keny Whitright 

Early Birds Get $75 

Off NATEAC Fee 

NEW YORK — Organizers of the North 

American Theater Engineering and Architecture 

Conference (NATEAC) are giving 

early birds a bonus this spring: a $75 discount 

off the $750 NATEAC conference registration 

fee. The discount will be given to 

all those who register before April 1. 

The Conference is set for July 20 & 21 at 

Pace University in New York City. Sessions 

will explore topics ranging from current 

rigging technology to the makeup of stage 

floors and a discussion of where the proscenium 

will be by the year 2020. 

To register, go to www.nateac.org. 


NEWS 


Tiny Foggers Honored for Technological Achievement 

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — The Academy 

of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced 

winners of its annual Scientific 

and Technical Academy Awards, presented 

at The Beverly Wilshire on Feb. 9. 

Unlike other Academy Awards, achievements 

receiving Scientific and Technical 

Awards need not have been developed and 

introduced during 2007. Instead, they must 

demonstrate a proven record of contributing 

significant value to the process of making 

motion pictures. 

One such award was presented to Jörg 

Pöhler and Rüdiger Kleinke of Ottec Technology 

GmbH for the design and development 

of the battery-operated series of fog 

machines known as “Tiny Foggers.” 

The Academy lauded the operating 

characteristics of these compact, remotecontrollable 

units, saying they help create 

a range of safe special effects that would be 

totally impractical with larger, more conventional 

fog units. 

Spider-Man 3, I Now Pronounce You Chuck 

and Larry, The Producers and The Pink Panther 

starring Steve Martin are among the feature 

films that have used the units, which are 

small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. 

“We congratulate Ottec on this great 

honor and we are proud to be a part of the 

great success of these machines,” said Kirsten 

Eicher of Look Solutions, which is the exclusive 

distributor of the fog machines. 

The first Tiny-Fogger entered the market 

in 1998, the first machines small enough to 

be concealed in costumes and small props. 

This was followed by the Tiny-Compact, an 

all-in-one version, which came on the market 

in 2000, followed by the more powerful 

Power-Tiny in 2003. 

In 2007, Look Solutions presented new 

versions, Tiny F07 and Tiny C07, with a more 

robust vaporizer and other refinements. 

Other film industry technological innovations 

in the top 10 this year included advances 

in makeup, camera dollies, film emulsion 

and software that enhances the appearance 

of fluids and gaseous effects on screen. 

Super Bowl Halftime Show as Intense as Ever 

continued from cover 

Butts credited the Virtuoso console’s 

V6.0 software for his ability to make “extensive 

use of multiple cue stacks, wave-based 

effects, and bump/flash features. We used 

the Mbox pixel map software for the Color- 

Blasts under the stage, all 600 of them,” he 

added. “Utilizing a pixel map, rather than 

running the units directly from the console, 

saved a lot of time both in troubleshooting 

and in programming.” 

Lighting director Matt Firestone operated 

a second Virtuoso system, which controlled 

several hundred automated fixtures and effects, 

including Mac 2000 Washes, VL3500 

Washes and VL5 Arcs. Some of these fixtures 

were mounted on trusses suspended 120 feet 

over the end zones and some were mounted 

on the balcony rails in front of the top seating 

sections. There were also VL5 Arcs on two 

70-foot vertical trusses that were hung to the 

left and right behind the band. 

Everyone involved in the production, it 

seemed, felt the pressure of the event’s enormous 

time constraints. “This show was a challenge,” 

said Dave Hyslop, project manager for 

XL Touring Video, which supplied the video 

screens used for the show. Even though XLTV 

could begin its move-in preparations Jan. 23, 

well in advance of the game, Hyslop needed 

to have the screens “deployed and ready with 

content in four minutes.” 

XLTV provided nine of Main Light Industries’ 

Soft-LED Scrim curtains, each of which 

was hung from Main Light’s Soft-Motion 

systems, with Robb Wagner/Simulated Inc. 

providing the animation content. Giovanni 

Ciranni of Main Light engineered the system, 

working closely with Hyslop to deploy the 

screens within the allotted time. 

Because no one had the power to stop 

the clock, careful planning was essential. “To 

make the lighting system work, nearly 150 

From left, Jörg Pöhler, Kirsten Eicher, Rüdiger Kleinke and 

Nathan Kahn of Ottec Technology and Look Solutions. 

separate connections needed to be made, 

including trailing four 150-foot sets of 4/0 

feeder,” said PRG’s Tony Ward, vice president, 

television and special events. “We isolated 

each cart for Tom Petty’s stage and, in most 

cases, fit it with a single Series 400 cable, 

which meant that most carts required only 

one cable [for power and data] connecting to 

the S400 rack,” Ward said. 

After the performance, all the connections 

were quickly undone and the carts were 

swiftly removed from the field. Within 48 

hours PRG had removed all of its gear from 

the stadium, filling nine 53-foot trucks. 


USITT Welcoming 

Input for NEC 

Code Revisions 

SYRACUSE, NY — Are there parts 

of the National Electrical Code that do 

not make sense to you? Would some 

changes to the language or addition 

of new material help you in your job? 

Is your inspector simply confused by 

awkward and unfamiliar requirements? 

You can do something about it. 

The USITT’s Engineering Commission 

has announced that it’s time once 

more to start the tri-annual revision 

process leading to the creation of the 

2011 edition of the National Electrical 

Code, which can help with the above 

situations. The NEC revision process 

begins with proposals to revise the 

Code submitted by the general public. 

The proposals for the 2011 edition will 

be due on Nov. 7, 2008. 

As in the past, the USITT Engineering 

Commission will serve to coordinate 

proposals for NEC Code revisions. 

By reviewing everyone’s proposals, the 

commission hopes to strengthen them 

and present a collective position to 

the Code panels. The commission also 

notes that the general public is also 

free to present proposals directly to 

the NFPA. 

Interested parties can get more information 

and submit their proposed 

revisions to: 

Ken Vannice, 

Chair, USITT NEC Committee 

Leviton / NSI / Colortran 

20497 SW Teton Ave. 

Tualatin, OR 97062 

E-mail: KVannice@Leviton.com 

Letters to the Editor 

Truth and Light 

I teach lighting design at Wichita State University. 

I really enjoyed your article on booth 

lighting in the January issue of PLSN (LD at 

Large – It’s the Product, Stupid). In it I find many 

truths applicable to all sorts of lighting design. 

With your permission I’d love to copy your article 

and give it to my students to read. 

And, by the way, I don’t have a class in 

booth lighting, but I do address it in my advanced 

lighting classes and set design classes. 

Trade shows and the like are a very important 

and lucrative part of the lighting design world 

and students need to learn that there is much 

more than just straight plays out there. 

— David Neville, assistant professor of scenic 

and lighting design, Wichita State University 

Gobo Fine 

I have been a long time fan of LD at Large, 

and have really found a boatload of information 

and inspiration from them. It’s not too often that 

reading something on the Internet can get a reaction 

from me like It’s the Product, Stupid (PLSN, 

January 2008, LD at Large). Every line, every observation 

is something I have thought multiple 

times before in shows or trade show/events of 

any kind, especially the part, “There ought to be 

a fine for unnecessary gobo usage.” I choked on 

my cold shop coffee. Just want to say thanks for 

reminding me there are similar minds out there. 

Keep up the great writing. 

— Brian Hatten, lighting director, Atlanta 

Sound and Lighting 

CORRECTION 

Due to an editing error, a reference to the Air Transat 20 th Anniversary celebration 

in Montreal, Quebec on page 18 of the Feb. 2008 PLSN included the wrong photo. The 

correct photo for that event appears below. 

6 

PLSN MARCH 2008


NEWS 


CALENDAR OF EVENTS 

Rigging Seminars 

March 10-13, 2008 

Las Vegas, NV 

www.riggingseminars.com; 206-283-4419 

Prolight + Sound 

March 12-15, 2008 

Frankfurt Messe, Frankfurt, Germany 

www.prolight-sound.com 

USITT 2008 Conference 

March 19-22, 2008 

George R Brown Convention Center, 

Houston, TX 

www.usitt.org; 800-938-7488 

ETCP Exams at USITT 

March 21-22, 2008 

USITT Conference and Stage Expo, 

Houston, TX 

certification@esta.org; 212-244-1505; 

http://etcp.esta.org. 

Milos Technical & Rigging Safety 

Workshop 

March 28-29, 2008 

Milos HQ, Roudnice nad Labem, Czech 

Republic 

www.milosgroup.com 

En Coulisse 

April 2-3, 2008 

Montreal Convention Center, 

Montreal, Canada 

www.encoulisse.com 

SIB 

April 5-8, 2008 

Rimini Fiera, Rimini, Italy 

www.sibinternational.com 

NAB 

April 11-17, 2008 

Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV 

www.nabshow.com 

Founded by a 12-Year Old, Bandit Lites Marks 40 Years 


Bandit Lites’ original crew 

school theater, hung them in the gymnasium 

around the stage, and lit Paul Revere 

and The Raiders. I didn’t have any knowledge 

back then,” he said, “but neither did 

the people I was working for, so anything 

and everything I did was correct.” Word of 

Strickland’s success spread and soon other 

touring bands began requesting Bandit to 

light their concerts. 

“We’d do a show one night for the Beach 

Boys, and they’d ask us to go the next night 

to another city. The first time they asked, 

I had to say no. I was twelve years old,” he 

said. “I couldn’t drive. I had no way of getting 

there. I was ready the next time. I hired 

a friend with a car and a U-Haul trailer.” 

Juggling the demands of his nascent 

company with homework, football and basketball 

practice, Bandit Lites grew through 

Strickland’s years at junior and senior high 

school. 

“We worked most of the major rock 

concerts within 300 miles of Kingsport in 

the early years. We did it mainly to see free 

concerts and meet girls,” Strickland said. “At 

that time all the equipment we used was 

borrowed from the local schools and theaters, 

hence the name Bandit.” 

From 1968 to 1971 Bandit worked 

with a large number of national acts, 

including The Monkees, The Grassroots, 

Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Dennis 

Yost and the Classics Four, BJ Thomas, 

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, The 

Beach Boys, Kris Kristofferson and more, 

building a foundation for what would 

eventually become one of the world’s 

leading lighting companies. 



8 


NEWS 

IN BRIEF 

Rose Brand provided Voile Sheer curtains 

to the Meetinghouse Companies to 

use for their showcase event at the 2008 

Catersource Conference and Tradeshow 

and Event Solutions Idea Factory at the 

Las Vegas Convention Center… Creative 

Stage Lighting provided production 

services and equipment for Cartoon Network’s 

“Adult Swim Presents” tour featuring 

Ghostface Killah and the fictional band 

Dethklok… ETC, which introduced its Ion 

lighting control console, is spreading the 

word about its little-console-with-the-bigconsole-functionality 

with a new section of 

its Web site at www.etcconnect.com …J. 

R. Clancy, Inc. has made its entire 2008 

product catalog available on its Web site, 

www.jrclancy.com…LMG, Inc. recently 

purchased a supply of Vari*Lite 3500 Spot 

moving lights to add to the firm’s lighting 

inventory…Bandit Lites has recently 

stocked up on new equipment to light 

upcoming shows involving Carrie Underwood, 

World Wrestling Entertainment, 

and other events. The new gear includes 

1,000 Element Labs Versa Tube HDs, six 

Green Hippo Hippotizer Media Servers, 

four Grand MA Video Media Servers, 50 

Elation PZ720 stage panels, 72 Vari*Lite 

3000 Spots, 72 Vari*Lite 3500 Washes, and 

48 Vari*Lite 2500 Spots…Leprecon, LLC 

named Dave Middleton and Queensbury, 

NY-based Stage Lighting Representatives 

(SLR) as their “Rep of the Year” for 2007. 

Year-Round Ice Museum 

Lit by Rugged LED 

Light Fixtures 

CHENA SPRINGS, AK — There is a place 

where getting cold feet on your big day and 

throwing a chilly reception afterwards is perfectly 

fine. It’s the Aurora Ice Museum, a handcarved 

ice structure measuring almost 6,000 

square feet that stays open — and frozen — 

year round, one hour away from Fairbanks. 

A showcase for the carvings of awardwinning 

husband and wife team, Steve and 

Heather Brice, the Aurora Ice Museum includes 

a two-story observation tower, a spiral 

staircase, chandeliers, and life-size chess set 

and jousters on horseback among other creations 

carved from over 1,000 tons of ice. 

Calling it a museum, however, belies 

the resort perks it also offers, with a full ice 

bar complete with Appletinis served in icecarved 

glasses, four bedrooms for rent, each 

with a separate theme, ice furniture and, yes, 

even an ice altar. 

The museum remains at a brisk 20° F. 

year-round thanks to an absorption chiller 

that keeps it cold enough to withstand the 

rising temperatures during summer months. 

Lighting the interior to accentuate the details 

in the carvings without generating excessive 

heat presented a serious challenge. The Brices 

picked Chauvet fixtures out of familiarity with 

the line. 

They had participated last March in an 

ice-sculpting competition in Fairbanks, and 

became familiar with the Chauvet Colorado 

1 and Colorado 3 wash lights used for that 

event. When they learned that Ice Alaska’s 

organizers had put the very same fixtures up 

for sale, the Brices purchased them without 

hesitation. 

The units’ use of LEDs make them a good 

fit for any application where generated heat 

is a major concern, and the rugged casing allows 

them to perform even after being submersed 

in water and frozen into blocks of ice. 

Not just a museum, the Aurora Ice Museum features a fully 

stocked bar. 

OBITUARY 

Wlodek Sielski, 

Co-founder, 

AuviTran SARL 

Wlodek Sielski 

AuviTran SARL business development 

director and co-founder Wlodek 

Sielski died Dec. 29, 2007, following a 

seven-month battle with cancer. 

Born in Poland, Sielski studied 

electronics, then joined one of the former 

Soviet Union’s communist era rock 

bands as a touring sound engineer. 

He traveled extensively within Russia, 

often on the Soviet supersonic plane 

nicknamed the “Concordski.” 

After traveling restrictions beyond 

the Russian border were relaxed, Sielski 

moved to the Netherlands, did 

sound design and engineering there, 

and in the late 1980s moved to the U.K. 

where he worked for national broadcasters 

including Central Television 

and Sky TV. 

At Sky TV, Sielski met the woman 

he would later marry, Fiona. He shifted 

his career from engineering to sales, 

and began to distribute Digigram 

products. He later joined that company, 

taking charge of its business development, 

and worked with Yves Ansade 

and Jeremie Weber. Together, the three 

created a new firm, AuviTran. 

In addition to his role at AuviTran, 

Sielski served as a consultant for Fostex 

Japan and K&H Germany. 

Sielski is survived by his wife, Fiona, 

and two children, Poppy and Liam. 



NEWS 


GRAMMY Awards, After Parties Push Video, Lighting to the Limit 

Kanye West silhouetted by Pyrotek’s LED-lit cryogenic effects. 

LOS ANGELES — It’s hard to avoid superlatives 

when you’re talking about the 50 th 

Grammy Awards, which took place Sunday, 

Feb. 10. The celebrity-packed event, staged 

at Los Angeles’ Staples Center, required 

155 tons of lighting equipment, 450 microphones 

and 19 oversized video screens. 

Emmy award-winning lighting designer 

Bob Dickinson and scenic artist Brian Stonestreet 

incorporated over 1,000 high resolution 

Element Labs Versa Tubes into the 

production, with the equipment supplied by 

ShowPro Inc. 

The Versa Tubes were mounted into 

moving set pieces that could open and close 

to reveal performance areas of the stage. 

The set pieces also had a reflective finish, 

contributing to the overall fusion of hightech 

digital lighting and classic theatrical 

light box effects. 

“It’s great to see such a creative and impactful 

use of LED display on this show” said 

ShowPro president David Smith. “This further 

exemplifies the visual convergence of 

video and lighting.” 

With its look back at 50 years, the show 

combined classic design and retro looks with 

futuristic fantasy. When Kanye West performed 

“Stronger,” for example, the set turned 

into something out of a retro Sci-Fi scene. 

Pyrotek Special Effects supplied the 15-foot 

cryogenic fumes, blasting from the stage and 

lit by red LED underlighting. 

Pyrotek president Doug Adams, vice president 

Lorenzo Cornacchia and production 

manager Randy Buzzelli worked on West’s 

opening sequence. Adams and Cornacchia 

also were involved with the performance by 

Rhianna, arranging for the synchronized burst 

from 18 gold glitter mines for the performer, 

who sang a medley including “Umbrella” and 

“Please Don’t Stop the Music.” Pyrotek also 

handled special effects for Cirque du Soleil. 

The awards program itself was only part 

of what turned out to be a festive weekend, 

with after parties also pushing lighting effects 

to the limit. Called the 2008 Grammy 

Celebration, the after-party sponsored by the 

Recording Academy involved 6,000 guests in 

98,000 square feet of space in Hall A of the LA 

Convention Center. That event had its share 

of celebrities as well, including Natasha Bedingfield, 

Cyndi Lauper, DJ Chris Cox and Fourplay. 

Even the caterer was a VIP: Wolfgang 

Puck. 

Local firms Angel City Designs and 

Along Came Mary Productions, Inc. had four 

months to plan every detail of the afterparty, 

but only four hours to transform the 

event space from the pre-telecast show into 

the post-telecast party. They used Vector- 

Works Designer from the initial conceptual 

design to the placement of every chair on 

the big night. 

“There was a lot of teamwork organized 

around VectorWorks as the rallying point,” 

said Erick Weiss, senior producer for Along 

Came Mary. “There were many people using 

VectorWorks and sharing files across a broad 

range of situations. Each player added another 

layer to the master drawing we all worked 

from, and VectorWorks kept it all together.” 

From conceptual designs by Angel City 

Designs to lighting from ShowPro to truss 

and infrastructure engineering provided by 

Branam Enterprises to layouts of tent structures, 

seating, bars, buffets, and kitchen 

equipment from Classic Party Rentals, every 

detail was contained in the same master file, 

according to VectorWorks software supplier 

Nemetschek North America. 

So that everyone could know how to 

contribute to a successful event, all information 

was entered into the master drawing 

on many different layers, and the master 

file was available from an FTP site. Organizers 

created an opulent turn-of-the-century 

setting to fit in with the party’s “Night at the 

Opera” theme. 

“Our clients wanted an elaborate backdrop 

to envelop the guests in, while still allowing 

them to mingle freely, so we had a lot 

of elements to contend with,” said Damon 

Drescher, partner and creative art director of 

Angel City Designs. “Our master VectorWorks 

file became the heart and soul of the event.” 

Gwen Stefani is Easy to Spot in 

“Sweet Escape” Searchlights 


www.penn-elcom.com 


HONG KONG — American singer/songwriter 

and ex-No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani 

was easy to spot during her “The Sweet 

Escape” tour, an eclectic show described 

as “part pep rally, part Broadway musical” 

with over-the-top storylines and plenty of 

campy costume changes. Butch Allen did 

the lighting design. 

Allen chose a compact but bright assortment 

of Martin gear, including 68 MAC 

2000 Washes and 13 MAC 2000 Profiles to 

light the show. A Martin Maxxyz lighting 

console controlled the show. Jesse Blevins, 

lighting director, also helped with lighting 

programming and traveled with the tour. 

Blevins said that because of “the size of 

the LED walls and our sub-grid — half of 

the dates were shed gigs — the lights had 

to be small enough to fit into some pretty 

tight spaces but still [had 

to be] bright enough to 

compete with all of the 

video content.” He added 

that “the 2K Wash was a 

nice fit. It also helps that 

it is dependable and easy 

to find worldwide as we 

had 2 ½ months of fly 

dates through Asia, Australia 

and Japan.” 

With plenty of truss 

and LED in the air, options 

for fixture placement 

were pretty slim, 

Blevins said. “Butch hung 

about half of the rig vertically on oversized 

wire rope ladders between each of the 

nine LED walls, which was a great idea,” he 

said. “It really spread the rig out and made 

a show with only 80 moving lights look 

much larger than it was.” 

The MAC 2000 Wash and MAC 2000 Profile 

are Martin’s 1200 W full-color mixing luminaires. 

Along with the MAC 2000 Performance, 

they make up the MAC 2000 Series. 

“The lights held up great, no complaints 

whatsoever,” Blevins said. “Any problems 

we did have were easily fixed and we had 

some great techs to take care of them.” 

PRG supplied the lighting gear for the 

tour, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Robert 

Roth, Robin Wain, and Curry Grant were the 

account reps. In Australia the gear was provided 

by Bytecraft. 

Campy storylines and a compact rig captivate Gwen Stefani fans. 

10 


NEWS 

Paul Kolnik 

Projection, Lighting and Sound 

Bring Young Frankenstein to Life 

A fusion of projection and lighting enhances the image of the 

moon above the hayride scene with actors Roger Bart and 

Sutton Foster. 

NEW YORK — A combination of projection, 

conventional lighting, moving lights 

and sound creates the electrifying moment 

when Frankenstein’s monster is jolted 

to life in current Broadway production 

of Young Frankenstein, using an automated 

rig controlled by an ETC Eos system. 

The musical’s light plot is based 

around a mix of 120 Mac 2000s, including 

Performances, Profiles and some Wash 

units. “Eos is great for handling a large rig 

like this,” said Josh Weitzman, moving light 

programmer for Young Frankenstein. “It has 

unique new tools that help you manage 

that size of rig and work really quickly.” 

The fusion of projection and lighting 

starts in the musical’s opening scene. 

“With projection,” Weitzman said, “you 

can’t change the color temperature of the 

lightning bolt; you’re limited to the tone 

the image is. So we layered the moving 

lights on top of the video projection. That 

gave us a great deal more control — in 

intensity of color, in terms of strobing. I 

could make the light linger beyond the 

image without having to re-render the 

whole video.” 

Likewise, during the musical’s hayride 

scene, “we were able to enhance the image 

and effect of the moon — deepening 

its tones, changing its textures — all by 

controlling the light that is layered over 

the video projection.” 

Weitzman credited the versatility of 

the Eos system for achieving those effects, 

and added that the new Query function 

helped save time. “Let’s say you have a 

palette that’s called “Monster Down Left.” 

You can hit Query and then select that 

palette button, and it will grab all of the 

lights that are pointed at “Monster Down 

Left,” and you can then change the colors 

in them all at once— or change some 

other parameter. There might be different 

combinations and conditions used to 

build the query. You can then select any 

or all of the lights that meet the condition 

you describe.” 

Weitzman found Eos’s Trace button to 

be another useful tool. “I use this feature 

so much I can’t believe I programmed for 

years without it. It saves so much time. If 

you’re halfway through a scene and you 

decide with the designer that the lights 

should really be green here, not blue, you 

can take that light to ‘green Trace’ and that 

change will go back to where the color 

was originally set. You don’t even need to 

know what cue number you had stored 

that color in.” 

Weitzman noted that because any 

production entails many changes until the 

ideal design solutions are found, “the better 

the board is able to accommodate you, 

the freer you are to try different things. 

If it’s effortless, you find yourself trying 

many creative permutations. Being able 

to do them quickly in real time with the 

designer and the director looking on gives 

you the chance to try out more things 

than you otherwise would if you didn’t 

have the confidence to do things quickly. 

In the end you have a better production.” 

As with any musical, the pacing of 

the lighting needs to keep pace with the 

dance numbers. “Eos was a big part of 

making that work easily,” Weitzman said. 

“You’re able to group fixtures together 

into parts of a cue. And then when they 

make an inevitable change in the choreography, 

and you have to change time 

or something like that, you can do that 

quickly and easily without affecting what 

the rest of the rig is doing.” 




NEWS 


He Hired an LD, but Joe Nichols is Still Watching His Pennies 

Keith Hoagland of CK Productions joined Joe Nichols on tour 

NASHVILLE – Fresh off the release of 

his new album Real Things, country superstar 

Joe Nichols rang in 2008 with a 

national tour, which included a performance 

at Super Bowl XLII’s Super Jam 

event. With his show becoming a more 

elaborate production, the Grammynominated 

artist is now traveling with 

his own lighting ensemble and LD for 

the first time. The LD is Keith Hoagland 

of Nashville-based CK Productions. 

When putting together Nichols’ light 

show, Hoagland sought products that 

would provide the creative effects he 

needed. But he was also mindful of his 

client’s budget. “Obviously, when you 

add the expense of an LD and lighting 

gear, the tour’s overhead goes up,” said 

Hoagland, whose most recent tours included 

Wynonna Judd and LeAnn Rimes. 

“So we were looking for a way to hold 

costs within reason.” 

Hoagland found the budget-friendly 

gear he was looking for in the Design 

Spot series of intelligent moving-head 

hybrid spot/wash fixtures from Elation 

Professional. He selected six 575-watt 

Design Spot 575E units and six 250-watt 

Design Spot 250s to form the nucleus of 

Nichols’ light show. The fixtures were 

obtained on a rental basis from Keylight, 

LLC, also located in the Nashville area. 

The 575s are being used as overhead 

lights, spread out evenly above the 

stage, while the 250s are positioned on 

the band risers behind the stage. “The 

Design Spots are the core of my show, 

with other lighting based on whatever 

the promoter provides — PAR cans and 

such. I’ll just soft patch the PAR cans 

around it,” said Hoagland. “That way, 

Joe sees pretty much the same show 

every day. With Elation, the cost was so 

reasonable, we were able to put up 12 

lights for a rental fee that other vendors 

couldn’t touch.” 

Along with affordability, the Elation 

Design Spots are versatile enough to 

function as both a spot and wash, thanks 

to a variable frost filter. Hoagland also 

found that the Design Spot 250 and Design 

Spot 575E were loaded with colors, 

glass and metal gobos and other functions. 

They allow for gobo morphing, for 

example, and for an iris, strobing, and 

a prism effect. The 575 also offers full 

CMY color mixing and an effect wheel, 

letting users create dynamic vertical effects 

such as moving flames and water. 

“As a designer I look for two basic 

things: color mixing and rotating gobos,” 

said Hoagland. “I love the color mixing 

on the 575 — I haven’t had an issue with 

any of the colors that I like to use. And 

I’m really pleased with the variety of 

gobos that Elation has put in. There are 

some nice glass gobos and a multi-color 

dichroic gobo. I’m using their stock gobos, 

and the variety lets me be creative 

without having to repeat.” 

Hoagland also found some surprise 

“bonus” features. “I didn’t even know 

there was an effect wheel. When I saw 

it I was like, ‘Oh my gosh — this is amazing!’” 

Speed was another factor that 

impressed Hoagland. Both the Design 

Spot 250 and Design Spot 575E are capable 

of a maximum pan of 630° in 2 

seconds and maximum tilt of 265° in 1.5 

seconds. 

The units’ durability and reliable 

performance has been another plus, 

according to Hoagland. He spent four 

days programming them at the outset, 

during which time the lights were never 

turned off. “I was putting in 10-hour 

days and I knew I’d be back in the morning, 

so why shut them off? I left them 

on four days straight, and there were no 

problems.” After several weeks into the 

tour, Hoagland said, “not one of the 12 

fixtures has given me a single hiccup.” 

Hoagland plans to add more Elation 

fixtures in the near future. “Joe’s words 

to me were that as the show grows, we’ll 

add more lights. My immediate goal is 

to bring in six more Design Spot 575s 

for bottom lighting.” 

12 


NEWS 

Maroon 5 Tour Taps Energy of Moving Lights, LEDs 

NORTH CREEK, NY — Creative 

Stage Lighting recently provided gear 

for Maroon 5, the Grammy award-winning 

group with hits including “Harder 

to Breathe,” “This Love,” “She Will Be 

Loved,” “Sunday Morning,” “Must Get 

Out,” “Makes Me Wonder,” “Wake Up 

The gear list for Maroon 5’s tour includes PixelRange LED 

fixtures and Martin Mac 2000 Profile II “E” moving lights. 

Call” and “Won’t Go Home Without You.” 

The band, which has toured extensively 

since the release of their first 

album Songs About Jane in 2002, released 

their second studio album in 

May 2007, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long 

last May. 

Equipment supplied by Creative 

Stage Lighting to Maroon 5 includes 

James Thomas Moving Light Truss and 

4-Lite units, Avolites Diamond 4 lighting 

consoles, Reel EFX DF-50 Hazers, 

PixelRange Pixel Micro W LED fixtures 

and Martin Mac 2000 Profile II “E” moving 

lights. 

Bill Sheldon handled the lighting 

design and direction and Wayne Bukovinsky 

served as a lighting technician. 

LEDs and Battery Power Help Energize Chris Brown Tour 

SACRAMENTO, CA — The “Up Close 

and Personal Tour,” headlined by 18-year 

old R&B standout Chris Brown, had a futuristic 

look crafted by lighting designer 

Daunte Kenner that relied extensively 

on LEDs and, to a lesser extent, battery 

power. 

“For Chris, the LED look is ‘in’ and he 

insisted he wanted to use High End’s 

new ShowGun to create a young trendy 

vibe,” Kenner said. “The PixelLine 1044 is 

the perfect complement to the LED ring 

on the ShowGun,” Kenner added, saying 

its output and color-mixing capabilities 

helped fine-tune the lighting and Chris 

and his crew’s stage outfits. 

The PixelLines were attached at various 

points vertically to the set and lit up 

frosted Plexi Panels, 

creating a continuously 

changing backdrop 

of colors. Sixteen PixelArc 

Rs spiced up the 

B stage: a 12’ tall stage 

that pitches 60° and 

rotates 360°. 

“First we made the 

PixelArcs attached to 

the circular B stage 

p o w e r - d i s t r i b u t i o n 

friendly. We modified 

them by creating our 

own pass through. We 

also had to figure out 

how to power at least eight of them remotely 

without running a power or data 

cable to the stage,” he added, because of 

the B stage’s rotational movement. 

“After a full day of research, numerous 

calls and lots of fast food, we discovered 

that a 12-volt Optima dry-cell battery 

would power eight PixelArcs for over 

45 minutes,” Kenner said. “I also used 

another eight PixelArcs to uplight eight 

CryoJets for an eight-foot tall blast of liquid 

CO2.” 

In all, the rig included 28 PixelLine 

1044s, 24 PixelArc Rs and 18 ShowGuns, 

controlled by an Avolites Diamond 4 and 

an EDXM Tube. Performance Lighting Inc 

supplied all the lighting. 

Lighting on a circular stage B, which turns 360°, relies on rechargeable batteries. 





NEWS 


American Gladiators 

Returns with Bigger Rig 

American Gladiators flaunts the power of its bigger lighting rig. 

LOS ANGELES — It may be just a TV show, 

but American Gladiators returned to NBC in 

January with a super-sized gear list, including 

close to 200 Vari*Lite VL2500 moving lights and 

1,500 LEDs, with lights and video controlled by 

a scalable grandMA from MA Lighting. 

The show, now hosted by Hulk Hogan 

and Laila Ali, originally premiered in 1989. 

A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of 

the grandMA in North America. 

“For the new version of the show the producers 

wanted a spectacular, immense arena 

feel,” said lighting director William McLachlan. 

“Scenically the space is so large, it covers a 

huge footprint. So we needed a substantial 

rig just to cover the area, let alone create a 

signature look.” 

“The show is just enormous, it’s really 

hard to imagine,” said master programmer 

Benny Kirkham. “With about 1,500 LED fixtures, 

it’s like a very big rock ’n roll concert. 

Look in any corner of the building and you 

see 200 to 250 lights.” 


and an applicant can receive benefits to 

retake an exam if they do not pass. 

Reimbursement is applicable to any 

candidate who took the exam after November 

1, 2007, and those candidates 

McLachlan and lighting designer Oscar 

Dominguez wanted to update the look from 

the original show. “We use video as a way to 

move, breathe color and bring intensity across 

rig. We wanted to use the rig to explore and 

design the space and treat the light plot like a 

canvas. So the grandMA was a natural choice 

to turn the changes in the rig into colors on 

a canvas and create a really different feel of 

movement and color.” 

Each competition has its own distinct 

lighting requirements, unified by the need 

to visually amplify each victory and each 

defeat. “Scenically they were all so different,” 

McLachlan said. “We really had an opportunity 

to carve out a large surrounding look, 

animate it and bring it to life.” 

With the scope and scale of the LED and 

effects lighting, using the grandMA offered 

“a huge advantage,” Kirkham said. “A lot of 

things I was working with had to have adjustments 

on the fly. But the editing capabilities 

of the grandMA are quick and foolproof. Its 

applications for controlling groups of light 

are great, and having remote focus was great 

for the lights I was controlling.” 

“We rely on the desk’s bitmap feature for the 

LED portion of American Gladiators, and we’re 

very happy with it,” McLachlan said. The grand- 

MA, he added. “is a very viable solution for large 

TV shows, and it fills some very specific needs.” 

“It doesn’t hem you into one kind of programming,” 

Kirkham said. “You can use it for 

any type of show, small or large. It’s very scalable 

and very flexible.” 

Veterans Administration to 

Reimburse ETCP Application Fees 

who are eligible have one year from that 

date to seek a return on their investment 

in acquiring their ETCP Certification, according 

to ESTA. 

Candidates can apply to receive this 

benefit if they are eligible for one of the 

following: the Montgomery G.I. Bill (also 

called the MGIB or Chapter 30), VEAP 

(also called Chapter 32), or Dependents 

Educational Assistance (also called DEA 

or Chapter 35). Veterans generally have 

10 years after discharge from active 

duty to use the benefits. 

Those veterans who have never 

applied for VA education benefits will 

need to do so. For veterans, they can 

find that application, VA Form 22-1990, 

at www.gibill.va.gov. Eligible family 

members need a different form, VA 

Form 22-5490. Forms may be requested 

by calling 1-888-GIBILL-1. These forms 

may also be completed online and may 

be submitted at the same time as the 

request for reimbursement. 

Interested candidates can contact 

Meredith Moseley-Bennett, ETCP Certification 

Coordinator, by email at certification@esta.org 

or call 212-244-1505 

for more information. 

The exams are available for computer 

based-testing and a candidate can 

make arrangements to take the exam 

at any of 190 testing centers around 

the U.S. and in Canada. For candidate 

handbooks, applications and eligibility 

requirements visit http://etcp.esta.org. 

14 



ON THE MOVE 

Bandit Lites has 

added Mick Freer as 

business development 

manager and Ben 

M a r t i n a s g e n e r i c 

technician. Freer ’s 

duties include bringing 

in new business 

and maintaining old 

clients, and to oversee 

all account executives. 

As a generic 

technician, Ben Martin 

will be responsible for 

overseeing the condition, 

certification and 

safety of all generic 

equipment. 

Mick Freer 

Ben Martin 

Robe Lighting 

said Gerald Heise 

has joined the company 

as sales support 

manager. Heise 

will serve as a liaison 

between Robe’s 

clients, end users, 

distributors and Gerald Heise 

Robe’s research and 

development, and sales and marketing 

departments. Separately, Robe reported 

that it has granted exclusive Italian 

distribution rights on all its products 

to Cattolica-based Robe Multimedia. 

Robe Multimedia is headed by Marco 

Bartolini. Robe Multimedia also handles 

the Anolis range of architectural LED 

products in Italy. 

Show Support, part 

of the XL Group of companies, 

has appointed 

Nick Hart as business 

development manager. 

In addition to developing 

new business, he will 

oversee the company’s 

marketing strategy. 

Strand Lighting 

has appointed Van 

Rommel sales manager 

for the Americas. He will 

work with regional sales 

managers Pete Borchetta, 

Jaime Friedstadt and 

Nicolas Champion. 

Nick Hart 

Van Rommel 

Theatre Projects Consultants announced 

that Millie Dixon, TPC principal, 

and Jules Lauve, TPC associate, were voted 

into the American Society of Theatre 

Consultants (ASTC) at the ASTC Forum 

‘07. ASTC members provide consulting 

and design services to the owners, users, 

architects and engineers of theatres and 

other performance venues. 

To get listed in 

ON THE MOVE 

send your info to 

pr@plsn.com 

Christie Lites announced that Robert A 

Roth is joining the national rentals organization. 

Through his previous self-owned company, 

RA Roth Inc, Roth supplied lighting 

equipment and design for Billy Joel, Michael 

Jackson, Madonna, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, 

Reba, Tim & Faith, Shania Twain, Hank Williams 

Jr., Willie Nelson, 'NSync, Britney Spears, and 

many others. Roth will be working from his office 

in Atlanta. Christie Lites also announced 

the addition of Ron Eliovitz to the rental rep 

team at its Calgary office. Eliovitz had previously 

worked for Christie Lites in the 1990s. 

Electrosonic 

Group has appointed 

Jim Bowie president. 

Bowie will oversee 

Electrosonic’s combined 

businesses in 

the U.S., Europe, Asia 

and the Middle East. 

The company’s Burbank 

office will also 

Jim Bowie 

become group operational headquarters. 

Electrosonic maintains offices in Burbank, 

Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, London, 

Helsinki, Stockholm, Dubai and Shanghai. 

HLB Lighting said its Daylight & Sustainable 

Design Studio will be headed by Hayden 

McKay. HLB also announced staff promotions: 

Tina Aghassian, to associate principal 

in HLB's Los Angeles office, Lee E. Brandt, to 

associate principal in the New York office, 

Carrie Knowlton Hawley, to associate principal 

in the newly opened Boston office, Justin 

Horvath, to associate in the Los Angeles office 

and Shoshanna A. Segal, to associate in the 

New York office. 

Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions, 

the new entity formed by Philips' acquisition of 

Color Kinetics, promoted Keith Gillum to director 

of sales, west region. In this role he will oversee 

the direct sales team and network of manufacturer's 

representatives, dealers and distributors 

in the western region of North America. 

Pixlvision, a Netherlands-based company 

involved in video distribution, sales, solutions, 

support and training, has been appointed as 

Dutch distributors for Element Labs and Motu. 

Element Labs and Motu join Pixlvision’s existing 

brands: Altinex, Analog Way, Christie, Doremi 

and JL Cooper. Pixlvision has also moved to new 

location in Utrecht. The new address is: 

Krommewetering 131 

3543AN Utrecht, Holland 

Phone: +31(0)30 241 2720 


INTERNATIONAL NEWS 


Lighting Helps Cinema Create Visual Drama 

Colorful lighting adds to the sense of escapism for moviegoers. 

KUWAIT CITY — Planners with the Tamdeen 

Shopping Center Development Co. 

wanted to make a colorful splash in the lobby 

of the Avenues Cinema, a multi-screen 

movie complex at the Avenues Mall. 

Tareq Darwesh, deputy general manager, 

and Ali Shiri, architect, had been trying 

to choose among various bright shades of 

paint. In the end, however, they decided 

that any one shade of paint wouldn’t 

be flexible enough. 

“If they wanted a change of color, 

the paint would need to be changed, 

which wasn’t very practical,” said Qader 

Mohiuddin of Martin Professional Middle 

East. Darwesh and Shiri, he said, “expressed 

to us their desire for a dynamic 

lighting solution instead.” 

The cinema opted to use Martin Professional’s 

LED Stagebar 54 luminaires 

to create a dramatic flourish. Moviegoers 

walk past vividly colored hues cast upon 

large columns in the main lobby and back 

lobby. The lighting helps visitors escape from 

an ordinary day. 

Cinema architect, Valode & Pistre and 

lighting designer, VP Design considered using 

Martin Exterior 200 or Martin Alien 02 

BATH, UK — Already one of the most 

distinctive features of the Bath skyline, the 

renovated tower of St. Stephen’s Church, 

which dates from 1845, took a step into the 

21 st century with a new Anolis LED lighting 

installation. 

Kieran Sturrock of locally based Enlightened 

Lighting did the design. Sturrock also 

specified the equipment and managed the 

installation for the vicar, Rev. Jonathan Lloyd. 

The church was designed and built by local 

architect James Wilson in 1845, and the 

tower — always a controversial structural feature 

— was completed in 1847. 

“It’s a fabulous building, and the idea was 

to introduce a simple and stylish lighting design 

to emphasize the architectural detail of 

the structure rather than something that was 

a blanket wash,” said Sturrock. 

One of the challenges was to keep all the 

fixtures as concealed as possible. Since the 

LED units were fixed into position while the 

tower was shrouded in scaffolding and are 

now in hard-to-access places, reliability was 

essential. 

The standard everyday color is a warm 

white with a hint of gold, but the colors can 

change for special occasions. For Remembrance 

Sunday (the second Sunday in November), 

the tower went blood red. During 

the Advent season (the four Sundays before 

Christmas) the tower was purple. 

It was Enlightened’s first major exterior 

Anolis installation. 

At the top of the tower are eight Arc- 

Source Outdoor 12s, attached to the stone 

luminaires, but eventually decided on an LED 

solution using the Martin Stagebar 54. 

The Stagebar 54 is a bright LED luminaire 

that functions as either a pixel bar or a wash 

luminaire for floodlighting surfaces. With five 

colored diodes — red, green, blue, amber and 

white — instead of the usual three, the Stagebar 

54 offers a broader range of colors. 

A pair of Stagebar fixtures is located 

on each side of the front columns in the 

lobby, with one lighting fixture on each 

side of the back columns. The installation 

utilizes a total of 68 Stagebars to produce 

its dramatic effects. 

NORR Consultants International is the architect 

for the mall, Kuwait’s largest. The first 

of four phases opened April 2007. The second 

is to be completed this year. By 2010, when 

all four phases are complete, the complex will 

rank among the world’s largest malls. 

walls and arranged in pairs, cross lighting 

the four pinnacles. Another eight ArcSource 

Outdoor 12s illuminate the second set of pinnacles 

further down. 

Two sets of four ArcSource 12s with 6º 

lenses are used for silhouetting the flying 

buttresses, hidden from view and fixed to the 

bottom of the buttresses. 

There are four ArcLine Optic 36s washing 

up the top third of the tower, bathing the 

lancets in a gentle glow, and then eight Arc- 

Source Outdoor 18s backlighting the balustrades 

two thirds of the way up the tower. 

On the front fascia of the tower, facing 

down the hill, three empty arch-shaped 

niches are lit up with six ArcSource 3s. Six Arc- 

Source 12 in-grounds – two per door – skim 

up the three entranceways on the front and 

at the sides of the church. 

The Anolis drivers are all installed on level 

one of the belfry, and the lighting is controlled 

via a DMX Creator from the Vicar’s PC in the 

basement. They are automated with a link to 

an astronomical clock which fires them up at 

dusk and shuts the installation down at 1 a.m. 

Element Labs and Showtec 

Announce Asian Alliance 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — LED video 

supplier Element Labs, Inc. and Showtecgroup 

Pte Ltd, based in Singapore, announced 

a partnership in Asia. As a first 

step, Showtec recently purchased two 

Stealth screens for demonstration purposes 

in the company’s offices in Singapore 

and Beijing. 

“We are continuously looking for innovative, 

creative products,” said Henry 

Ang, Managing Director of the Showtecgroup. 

“We knew were collaborating with 

a partner that understands the demands 

put on such products by our customers.” 

With offices in Singapore, China, 

Malaysia, Thailand and Dubai, Showtecgroup 

offers clients a full range of technical 

equipment for their events. 

Bath Church Tower Bathed in Colorful Hues 

The LEDs give a dramatic new look to the church’s features, 

which date from 1845. 



16 



INTERNATIONAL NEWS 

BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing Goes Live with Glamorous Dance Steps 

BRISTOL, UK — Anyone who isn’t an 

aficionado of stages and sets built for live 

performances probably didn’t notice, with 

all the flashy dance moves on display center 

stage during the live UK tour for BBC’s 

Strictly Come Dancing TV show. 

But Patrick Doherty’s set design for main 

set builders Total Solutions incorporated a 

number of innovations that, although not as 

attention-getting as a dramatic kick or dip, 

still added a flourish of glamour and a sense 

of occasion to the tour. 

Total Solutions’ Mervyn Thomas asked 

Fineline to supply 500 Luxeon LEDs, which 

are mounted in custom-machined wooden 

strips and fitted to the stair noses of the set’s 

lower staircase between the dance floor and 

the stage, ensuring that Fineline’s fabrication 

department would have a busy start to 2008. 

Fineline also supplied 50 two-meter long 

low level, hollow barriers fabricated from 

aluminium composite di-bond material for 

the tour. These are matte black on the audience 

side and silver-mirrored on the dance 

floor side, positioned around the edge of the 

dance floor. 

Fineline also 

supplied and 

fitted RGB LEDs 

along the front 

of the judges’ 

desk. 

The tourready 

Luxeon 

stair-nose 

strips were 

made in sections 

that are 

permanently 

fixed to the rise of each of the main steps. 

The white LEDs are wired on three channels, 

so the LEDs can be chased. With all 

the steps being different lengths, each 

strip is numbered and wired with different 

first and last channels, and the whole 

construction had to slot together in giant 

jigsaw fashion. 

The LEDs were mounted onto 3mm 

di-bond strips, which were engraved for 

easy placement of the LEDs and to ensure 

equidistance between them all. The main 

body of the strip was made from 12mm 

Five hundred LEDs dress up the staircase between the dance floor and the stage. 

thick fire retardant 

MDF, with 

25mm holes for 

the light to exit. 

The rear of the 

strips was rebated 

on Fineline’s 

three-axis 

router, and the 

LED/di-bond 

assembly was 

then fitted into 

and made flush 

with the main body, so the final unit was 

a 12mm thick self-contained strip. Fineline 

also supplied 18 three-channel constant 

current DMX power supplies, which were 

fixed to the underside of the steps. 

The judges’ desk LEDs were also 

Luxeon enhanced, with color mixing capability 

made possible by 36 RGB boards and 

three power supplies. The LEDs were permanently 

installed into the desk, with the 

power supplies concealed underneath. 

The barriers were constructed from 

di-bond, a two-layered composite of 

aluminum with acrylic. Using the flatbed 

router and the correct cutter, fabricators 

were able to engrave fold lines in 

the material, which could then be easily 

formed into solid shapes like boxes, 

or, in this case, barriers, combining flat 

sides and a triangulated top. The barriers 

were made in two halves to meet the 

specification that one side be black and 

the other side mirrored; both are standard 

di-bond finishes. Once completed, 

the two sets of halves were folded into 

shape and riveted together. 

The barriers were hollow inside, with 

cable-ways cut into the sides. That allowed 

cables from the Clay Paky Stage- 

Color 300 fixtures encircling the dance 

floor to be concealed, routed all around 

the perimeter of the dance floor, and run 

back to their PD units. 

Fineline supplied the barriers in a 

configuration that included 50 two-meter 

and two one-meter sections, plus four 

corner pieces, making it easier to adapt to 

slight variations in the sizes of the dance 

floors at different venues. 

World Soft Tennis Championship Features Multimedia Show 

A coordinated three-minute finale for the opening ceremonies for the 13 th 

World Soft Tennis Championship. 

ANSEONG, South Korea — The International 

Soft Tennis Federation doesn’t get its 

name from Dali-esque racquets, but from 

a soft rubber ball that can be hit extremely 

hard, making for fast-paced play. 

Even an inherently exciting sport 

can benefit from the multimedia 

equivalent of an overhead slam at its 

opening ceremonies — especially in 

South Korea, where such displays are 

still the exception rather than the rule. 

To score points at the opening ceremony 

for the 13th World Soft Tennis 

Championship, held last September, 

organizers used a Medialon Manager 

V4 Pro to control sound, video and 

special effects during a three-minute 

multimedia show. 

“It’s common to use show-control 

systems in other countries, but this 

was one of the first times a show-control system 

was used in Korea,” said Kye Ok Joo, assistant 

manager of Worldpower Enterprise, a 

Medialon South Korean reseller whose digi-Q 

division handled the project. “So we needed 

Medialon’s experience and support.” 

The tournament was hosted by the International 

Soft Tennis Federation and welcomed 

players from 40 countries. The multimedia 

show took place at the end of the 

opening for the six-day event, and required 

an assortment of Medialon equipment including 

a Show Control Machine with a Manager 

V4 Pro. 

The Medialon was used to play the background 

music during the multimedia show and 

also to send timecode that synchronized the 

show control and the pyro console so that the 

fireworks could be choreographed to the music. 

The Medialon system also interacted with 

a Martin W8LC system and MIDAS XL200 console 

on the audio side, a Barco Dual 200-inch 

LED screen, a Folsom Image pro HD converter 

and an Edirol SEG-2550 switcher on the video 

side, plus a Pyro Digital console. The system 

“can control several systems at the same 

time,” said Kye Ok Joo, “at nearly 1/100 second 

of time.” 



2008 MARCH PLSN 17

Antari M-5 Fogger 


The new Antari M-5 Stage Fogger 

from Elation Professional is a 1,500-watt 

fog machine designed for stage and 

touring applications. Featuring a lowprofile 

rectangular housing, the M-5 

Fogger is designed to be unobtrusive. 

Two handles allow for easy transport 

and its 10-liter tank provides extended 

operation. With a warm-up time of 

eight minutes, the machine can produce 

20,000 CFM. The M-5 weighs 33 

pounds and includes a timer remote 

and onboard DMX-512. Optional accessories include a wireless remote and a heavy-duty 

flight case. Measuring 26”L x 12.5”W x 6.7”H, the Antari M-5 fog machine has a suggested 

retail price of $799.95. 

Elation Professional • 866.245.6726 • www.elationlighting.com 

Apollo GelWraps 

Apollo Design Technology, Inc. has 

introduced Apollo GelWraps, a new way 

to color fluorescent lights. Unlike sleeves 

and tubes, GelWraps can be installed 

without removing the fluorescent bulb 

from the lighting fixture. Scored seams 

shape the gel into a triangle that allows 

the filter to be conveniently fed and 

“locked” around the bulb, reducing labor 

while safely adding color. Dimensional 

shipping and storage costs are also 

minimized as GelWraps are shipped and 

stored flat. 

Apollo Design Technology, Inc. • 260.497.9191 • www.internetapollo.com 


Chauvet Colorado Panel 

The Colorado Panel from Chauvet 

is a DMX-512 RGBW LED bank system 

that is capable of operating in 3, 4, or 9 

channel modes. Each operating mode 

offers a varying level of control over the 

48-Luxeon K2, 2-watt LEDs. Designed for 

indoor and outdoor applications with 

a UV-resistant housing (IP66), the unit 

is available in black or white. Multiple 

operating modes allow color selection 

between RGB, HSV (hue, saturation, and 

value), RGB+W and a 9-channel mode 

with control over RGBW, ID, dimmer, 

strobe, macro, auto, custom, and balance. 

The Panel is also capable of RGB 

color mixing without a DMX controller. 

Chauvet • 800.762.1084 • www.chauvetlighting.com 

GE Showbiz CSR575/S/DE/70 Lamp 


GE Consumer & Industrial has developed 

the Showbiz CSR short, double–ended 

metal halide lamp to fit a 

new compact fixture produced by Martin 

Professional. The MAC 575 Krypton 

comes exclusively with the CSR575/S/ 

DE/70 lamp. The 575–watt lamp features 

chromised seals that withstand 

temperatures of 500° Celsius, 750–hour 

rated life, a color temperature of 7000 

Kelvin and a 65–plus CRI. The 7mm arc 

gap of the lamp enables better optical 

control for optimized performance. GE 

offers a family of Showbiz lamps for 

moving light applications that call for high color temperatures and bright light sources. 

GE Lighting • 800.GE.LIGHT • www.ge.com 

18 



J. R. Clancy SceneControl Hand Held Remote 

J. R. Clancy, Inc. has announced the availability 

of a hand held device that extends the 

capabilities of the SceneControl automated motion 

control system to any point in the theatre. 

SceneControl Hand Held Remote has a six-inch 

graphic touch screen in two-dimensional color, 

and 14 function keys that allow the operator 

to select sets or multiple sets and move them 

between show-specific soft limits. From the 

touch screen, the operator can see and execute 

the presets and cues that were written on the 

theatre’s SceneControl 500 console. This allows 

the operator to run cues from the position that 

provides the clearest sight lines. 

J. R. Clancy • 800.836.1885 • www.jrclancy.com 


Martin SmartMAC 

The new SmartMAC from Martin is a 150-watt 

moving yoke profile luminaire offering fanless 

thermal management with fewer moving parts 

and extended service intervals — up to two years 

with a 9,000-hour lamp, according to the company. 

A convection cooling system uses the aluminum 

casing and fins to conduct heat away from 

the fixture head. Fewer moving parts reduce wear 

and tear, increase energy efficiency and reduce 

heat. A field angle of 24.5° allows for a greater 

projection diameter at shorter distances. The total 

output is 4,600 lumens with the standard MSD 

150/2 lamp (3,000 hours average). A long-life 

(9,000 hours) CDM 150 lamp is also available. 

Martin Professional • 954.858.1800 • www.martin.com 

Strand Light Palette Version 10 Software 

Strand Lighting says its newest Light Palette software has become faster, simpler 

and more intuitive. The Universal Attribute 

Control brings real-world control to the entire 

line of desks and allows users to copy 

attribute information across to any type of 

fixture. Features include full command line 

programming and enhanced color control, 

including gel manufacturer’s color libraries. 

The software also offers smart touring options 

with magic update, directive updates 

and fixture offset. Users can also take advantage 

of the software’s partial show loading, 

500 series import, ASCII export and Vision. 

Net support features. The software also features 

fixture status across a range of cues 

and more than 100 other enhancements. 

Palette OS V10 is available for Palette and Light Palette console users. 


Strand Lighting • 714.230.8200 • www.strandlighting.com 

VectorWorks Spotlight 2008 

VectorWorks Spotlight 2008 provides an array 

of tools and technology for entertainment 

and lighting design. The interface helps draft 

light plots, create scenic and set designs, automate 

reports and schedules, and visualize design 

concepts in 3D. New features include a headsup 

data display and new view bar, rotatable 2D 

views, improved beam geometry, the ability to 

create shutter cuts and improved collaboration 

features. Drawings, digital images, and graphics 

can be imported and exported with common 

file formats such as DXF/DWG and PDF. Models in 

Spotlight 2008 also can be moved into ESP Vision 

for visualization and simulation. 

Nemtschek North America • 410.290.5114 • www.nemetschek.net 



SHOWTIME PROJECTION 


ST 

2007 Greater Cleveland Sports Awards 

VENUE 

Renaissance Cleveland Hotel 

Grand Ballroom 

Cleveland, Ohio 

CREW 

Promoter/Producer: Greater Cleveland Sports Commission 

Lighting Company: Vincent Lighting Systems/Renaissance 

Event Technology 

Production Manager/Lighting Designer: Ted Van Hyning 

Lighting Designer/Director: Derek Hons 

Lighting Technicians: Adam Feig, Rachel Wilson, Kyle Leebove, 

Jameel Acosta, Louis Burns 

Rigger: Jamie Zammikiel 

Staging/Video Company: Renaissance Event Services 

Staging Carpenter: Rick Seigers 

Video Director: Brian Cook 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: MA Lighting grandMA 

1 CM Lodestar 1-ton chain hoists 

16 Coemar ParLite LEDs 

12 ETC Source Four ellipsoidal 10° 




1 Extron IN1508 

1 Folsom Screenpro 

14 Martin Stagebar 54s 

1 Motion Labs 16-channel chain hoist control 

1 Sanyo LNS-M01Z 

1 Sanyo LNS-S01 

2 Sanyo LNS-W05s 

1 Sanyo XF46N LCD projector 

3 Sanyo XF60A LCD projectors 

1 Skjonberg 4-channel chain hoist control 

12 Strand Ianabeam 2000 

1 Thomas 32’ circle russ 

2 Thomas 4-way corner block 

14 Tomcat truss (12”x12”x10’) 

2 truss frame screens (7’x10’) 

2 truss frame screens (9’x12’) 

6 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots 

4 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures 

2 Zenith 60” plasma displays 

112 Thomas Truss 8’ units 

N. Miami Beach Parks & Recreation Camps Rally ST 

VENUE 

Julius Littman Performing Arts 

Theatre 

City of North Miami Beach 

CREW 

Promoter/Producer: 

City of North Miami Beach 

Lighting Company: 

City of N. Miami Beach 

Production Manager: 

Miguel Valenzuela 

Lighting Designer/Director: 

Ruben Laine 

Lighting Techs: City of N. Miami Beach 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: Jands Vista T4 

6 Coloram 3-cell Far Cycs 

50 Colortran 5/50 ellipsoidals 

4 Colortran 5/50 zooms 

11 Colortran 6” Fresnels 

8 Colortran 8” Fresnels 

42 ETC Source Four lekos 

8 ground support boom and bases (10’) 

6 High End Systems x.Spots 

1 Le Maitre GS150 hazer 

1 Le Maitre XS hazer 

4 vertical lift bars 

5 Wybron Coloram II scrollers 

ST 

The Nutcracker at Northland 

VENUE 

Northland Church 

Longwood, FL 

CREW 

Promoter/Producer: 

The Russian Ballet of Orlando 

Lighting/Video: Northland Church 

Production Manager: Marc McMurrin 

Lighting Designer: Jason Roland 

(www.ilovelights.com) 

Lighting Director: George Jackson 

Lighting Technicians: Steven Hall, 

Matt Geasey 

Set Design: Vedim Fedotov 

Set Construction: Northland Volunteers 

Rigger: Jason Roland, Marty Taylor 

Pyrotechnics: Brianchild FX 

Video Director: Marty Taylor 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: MA Lighting 

grandMA 

6 American DJ LED Pars 

6 Christie DS+8 8k DLP Projectors 

150 ETC Source Four ellipsoidal 

1 grandMA Replay 

2 High End Systems DL.2s 

16 High End Systems Studio Spot 

CMYs 

8 Martin Professional MAC 2000 

Performance fixtures 


Profiles 


Wash fixtures 

48 PAR 64s 

1 Pinnacle PDS-900i SD Broadcast 

3ME Production Switcher 


20 PLSN MARCH 2008 

www.PLSN.com

ST 

Paradise Ball 2008 

VENUE 

Palm Beach Hotel 

Palm Beach, FL 

CREW 

Promoter/Producer: Paradise Fund 

Lighting Company: Hy-Lite Productions 

Production Manager: Drew Dedo 

Lighting Designer/Director: Michael Steighner 

Lighting Technicians: Chris Pennington, Erik 

Yuerika, Sarah Vilar 

Set Design/Construction: Sutka Productions 

Staging Company: Harbor Entertainment 

Staging Carpenter: Drew Dedo 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: MA Lighting grandMA 

1 Co2 Confetti Blowers 

24 Color Kinetics Color Blasts 

4 CryoJets 

8 Elation Design Spot 250s 

8 ETC Source Four Lekos w/FilmFX (fire loop) 

2 gerbs (3”) 

1 High End Systems F-100 fog machine 

1 hydraulic lift table for DJ (5’x8’) 

3 Martin Atomic 3K Strobes 

1 mirror ball (24”) 

3 mirror balls (12”) 

2 Reel EFX DF-50 diffusion hazers 

8 Strong Technobeams 

260’ truss 

4 Vari*Lite 3000s 

Straight Up 

ST 

VENUE 

Firepower Youth Meeting 

Manassas Assembly of God 

Bristow VA 

CREW 

Promoter/Producer: Marc Romero 

Lighting/Staging/Video: Manassas Assembly of God 

Production Manager: Kevin Myers 

Lighting Designer: Joe Smith, Barbara Hockman 

Lighting Director/Tech/Rigger: Joe Smith 

Automated Lighting Operator: Barbara Hockman 

Set Design: Kevin Myers, Barbara Hockman 

Set Construction: Kevin Myers 

Staging/Backline: Straight Up, 

Manassas Assembly of God 

Video Director: Genevieve Chapman, 

Michelle Fischer 

GEAR 

Lighting Console: SGM Regia 2048 

1 Barco projector 

1 Chauvet haze machine 

1 Christie projector 

2 Coemar i-Spots 

1 Custom fiber optic star curtain 

4 ETC Source Fours 

2 Fresnels 

2 Martin QFX fiber optic illuminators 

8 PAR 56s 

20’ retractable video screen 

2 Sony projectors 

12 Vari*Lite VL1000s 

2 Vari*Lite VL2202s 

10 Vari*Lite VL2402s 

ST 

PLSN wants your gig shots! Go to www.plsn.com/showtime 

to submit your Showtime pics or e-mail fhammel@plsn.com. 

ST 


www.PLSN.com 2008 MARCH PLSN 21

Carving a Thin Line 

Projecting holiday warmth with sculpted ice and theatrical lighting 

The Grinch-themed display represents the first time the scenic designers have incorporated licensed characters into the carved ice on display. 

Scenic designer Michael Hotopp and 

his creative partner/scenic designer 

Bill Hoffman have worked together 

for two decades on myriad productions 

— touring theatre shows, trade shows, 

and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular 

— but nothing could have prepared them 

for working during the last eight years on 

ice sculpture installations as part of the Ice 

series for the Gaylord Hotels. Working on 

Christmas-based themes, they have created 

walk-through attractions that depict famous 

holiday characters and events, but this past 

year they got a real treat — designing the 

Ice! How the Grinch Stole Christmas. 

Hotopp and Grinch senior project designer 

Hoffman apply their imaginations and 

extensive theatrical backgrounds to a special 

endeavor, one that recreates Whoville and 

the magic of Dr. Seuss’ Yuletide classic, How 

the Grinch Stole Christmas. Hoffman has illustration 

skills that help him bring their ideas to 

life, and then deliver them to a talented team 

of sculptors to carve lively, colorful figures in 

ice. Hoffman and fellow scenic designer Garry 

Wichansky draft these sculptures as if they 

were being done for the theatre. 

The Challenge of the Canvas 

“I literally hand-draw most of the figurative 

items,” says Hoffman, “and as part of the book 

for the sculptors they have a front elevation 

of each piece, a top view, and a side view, so 

they’re working in a three-dimensional medium 

here at all times. I spend about 75 percent 

of my year just creating these drawings that 

they work from.” The design team actually compiles 

a 200 to 250 page, 11-inch-by-17-inch 

book with specifications for each venue. 

The ice sculpture shows generate their 

own set of challenges that are far removed 

from the more easily controlled environments 

of Broadway shows. “The artists have a very 

IT 

limited time to work on this, and it all has to 

be worked out within an inch of its life,” says 

Hoffman. “There are ways of fudging some 

things in the theatre. You can always kick a 

piece of scenery six inches to the left or pull 

out a chainsaw and cut it down a little bit and 

stretch the fabric. There are ways of cheating. 

With ice, it’s a whole new ball game. The sheer 

volume of it ... once it’s down and in place, you 

can’t decide, ‘Oh, I think it’ll look better three 

feet to the left.’ The clock is ticking, and the 

cost of breaking the ice down and starting 

again is a huge factor. We have to be buttoned 

up so tightly with our approach to the design 

in order to make this work.” 

The ice carvers come from China, specifically 

the Harbin region, which hosts the 

annual Harbin International Ice and Snow 

Sculpture Festival. “It’s outdoors, and the one 

group we worked with first on this project 

had over 300 acres, and over 3,000 carvers 

spent a month putting their particular project 

together,” Hotopp says. “One of the things 

that surprised me is where in the world do 

they have this much acreage in this small 

town of Harbin, and it turned out we were 

on the river, and it was frozen. They had 15 to 

20 story replicas of the Arc de Triomphe, and 

they built giant slides on hillsides that went 

up 12 to 14 stories,” not to mention massive 

reproductions of the Taj Mahal and the Great 

Wall of China. “It’s phenomenal.” 

The Big Ice Experience 

Hotopp and Hoffman wanted to bring 

that sense of grandeur to Americans, but 

with a holiday theme familiar to our culture 

and which could fit into a smaller space. The 

Gaylord Hotels chain has afforded them the 

forums they need to create their annual ice 

extravaganzas. For the first three years they 

were solely in Nashville, then expanded to a 

location in Orlando, then two years later one 

IT 

in Grapevine, TX. A fourth location in Washington, 

D.C. will be unveiled in Nov. 2008. 

“In conjunction with this hotel chain, we 

create a big ice experience that they sell as 

part of their holiday package to bring people 

into the area and into the hotel,” explains 

Hoffman. “All of these venues that we do are 

large, refrigerated venues. In Nashville, it is 

actually an old theatre that’s been gutted, 

painted black, and then it’s refrigerated. They 

bring in huge air coolers and bring the temperature 

down to nine degrees. In the other 

two venues, in Florida and Texas, the Gaylord 

people have purchased large tents, and we 

refrigerate the tents and create this huge 

holiday ice environment within the tent. 

These experiences are only holiday-related. 

The carving process begins about four weeks 

before Thanksgiving, and they roughly open 

these up to the public around Thanksgiving 

and run through the first of the year.” 

Ice Sculpting 101 

Hotopp reports that the spaces for their 

ice exhibitions are between 15,000 and 18,000 

square feet. “Close to two million pounds of 

ice is carved in 35 days by the carvers from 

China,” he says. “It’s a gated attraction that 

runs approximately 45 days. It’s incredible.” It 

also features music in the background. And 

it’s a lot of work. “There are no ‘Ice 101’ courses 

being taught in any universities anywhere as 

far as design is concerned,” says Hotopp. 

All of the sculptures are cut from cubes 

that are each roughly four-feet by two-feet by 

one-foot. “Everything is stacked, and then it 

becomes a subtractive process,” says Hoffman. 

“We’ll have large, seamless blocks of ice, but 

everything is built from a basis of a block that 

is roughly four by two by one. Sometimes we 

stack it vertically, sometimes we stack it horizontally, 

depending upon the shape, quality, 

and feel of the piece. In Harbin they carve from 

IT 

very large blocks that are literally pulled out of 

the frozen river that they’re working from, and 

we don’t have that luxury.” 

The duo explains that the Ice! show includes 

seven to eight areas that feature 

chronological vignettes from How the Grinch 

Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. The trail leads 

people through the Grinch’s large igloo cave 

through to Whoville center to scenes in the 

house, on the mountaintop, and ultimately 

back in the village, with characters like the 

Grinch, Max, and the Whos included among 

the scenery. There are even ice slides for 

people to glide down. Most of the exhibit is 

carved out of ice. 

Putting on a Good Face 

The ice is colored from a twelve different 

possibilities — clear, white, and a palette of 

ten other colors. “Within that we do add a few 

selected props that we design here and have 

built by a scene shop,” Hoffman says. “We add 

that to the ice as a supplementary visual. We 

always work very hard to keep the focus on 

the ice, and 75 percent or more is ice.” 

For the Ice!, the duo used a fair number 

of non-ice items. “There’s no way that you 

can architecturally and engineering-wise 

do some of the poses,” states Hotopp. “Bill 

came up with a great solution that all those 

figures live on a clear, round cylinder, and 

the legs are shaped to it. But the arms are 

non-ice as well as the headpieces and some 

of the props of food. There’s no way we 

could do them effectively in the ice, and the 

sublimation over the 45 days, maintaining 

all that detail, is just a massive job.” 

Hoffman says that one of their biggest 

hurdles is to present intricately carved faces 

and figures to the public, but coping with 

the fact that every day the attraction is open 

to the public, it sublimates. “It evaporates, 

so as a rule we have to work with very large 

IT 

22 



shapes, and yet keep them as interesting as 

possible in the hopes that they hold up well 

throughout the run of the show,” he says. 

“There’s a team of sculptors left behind that 

does touch up work throughout the run of 

the show, but that’s a challenge.” 

Heatless Light 

IT 

When it comes to lighting ice sculptures, 

heat and cold certainly make for a volatile 

combination. “We have internal lighting in 

the ice,” says Hoffman. “There are channels 

cut in the ice and fluorescents and now some 

LED bulbs are placed inside them, and all of 

that is designed as part of the sculpture. Now 

when we have opaque ice we can’t light it internally, 

so we light it theatrically.” 

“Ideally someday it will all be LED,” adds 

Hotopp, “but for now a lot of is conventional. 

It has to be very, very carefully placed in 

its design, and we’ve got to watch the levels 

of intensity. We’ve learned a lot over the 

years about melting things unintentionally 

with lighting, but as we move forward, and 

the Gaylord group has their in-house lighting, 

we’re encouraging them and they’re 

planning to buy more and more LED equipment 

for its lack of heat, which is really crucial 

to this process.” 

As far as conventional lights, Hotopp says 

they utilize everything from Lekos to PARs, 

but they have not installed any moving fixtures 

because the room is kept at a freezing 

9°F., which leads to some difficulties with motors. 

They have used some mirror balls and 

rotating gobos. “We’ve had projection in the 

spaces before, but those all wind up in little, 

suspended hot boxes to keep them going,” 

he says. “It’s a real trial and error process. In 

Whoville this year we managed to get smoke 

to come from the chimneys, but that was not 

without a great deal of difficulty.” 

Wichansky solved their smoke dilemma 

with the TD on site. “They worked for several 

weeks and tried several different things, and 

ended up buying a very small fogger from 

Radio Shack at a local mall,” Hoffman says. 

“They figured out a way to run it through the 

ice through a system of plastic piping, and 

the heat would not radiate into the ice. To 

make a complicated story short, there were 

channels cut that were large enough but not 

visible to the audience, and the fogger ran 

through the ice and worked effectively.” 

“They had to have the fogger working 

on the outside,” Hotopp says. “There is a perimeter 

of warmth or semi-warmth, and the 

problems they kept having were in terms 

of its intensity and its volume because we 

wanted wispy little trails. We didn’t want to 

have a continuous smoke machine.” 

“It also had to evaporate very shortly 

after it hit the air because any kind of floating 

precipitation would coat the ice and 

create an entirely a different set of problems,” 

Hoffman says. “It would fog the color, 

the clear ice would become cloudy, and the 

white ice would build up layers, so it had to 

evaporate very quickly also.” 

The Design Triumvirate 

IT 

Solving such problems comes naturally 

to this team, of which Wichansky has been 

on board for the last five years. “For the first 

couple of years Michael and I would conceive 

it ourselves, and I would draw it all,” 

says Hoffman. “I was on-site director for the 

first three or four years, and as we began to 

get so big, Garry, who is a wonderful designer, 

joined our team. Garry and I have taken it 

over and made it all happen with Michael’s 

years of expertise in dealing with the corporate 

structure, the clients, and helping us 

bring our collective ideas to life.” 

Working on these ice shows is certainly 

challenging, but this designing triumvirate 

is up to the task. Hoffman believes they 

bring a lot to the work with their theatrical 

background. “As beautiful as the stuff is in 

China, it’s very architectural and presentational,” 

he says. 

“It’s not emotional,” adds Hotopp. “There’s 

no emotional connection with the stuff in China, 

other than just the awe of its scale. Over the 

years, as we’ve developed themes, especially 

with the Grinch, which is the first licensed idea, 

and many ideas from Santa’s Workshop in the 

North Pole and Mr. and Mrs. Claus’ Kitchen, as 

you go through and see these elements and 

walk through gardens and over bridges, there 

are a lot of things that you really do connect 

to emotionally. That’s a big difference, and 

also the detail and the amount of work that 

goes into the development of these wonderful 

characters and animals is in itself a wonderful, 

whimsical kind of style for the carvers. 

Even the Chinese acknowledge that this is so 

unique for them because it is so different from 

what they’re used to doing.” 

“From year one we’ve worked very hard to 

try to give a sense of movement to ice,” says 

Hoffman. “Ice lends itself to being very staid, 

very heavy, and very blocky, and we’ve always 

pushed it to dance, if that makes sense. To 

make it visually move, to bring it alive.” 

“He’s talking about a skating polar bear 

that was on one leg,” laughs Hotopp. “We 

do a lot of things like that,” says Hoffman. 

“Everybody’s seen a swan or fish in ice, but 

not moving, not with a sense of life about 

it.” With their colorful characters and luminous 

landscapes, Hotopp and Hoffman 

hope to make the Grinch-iest visitor smile 

with delight. 


PRODUCTION PROFILE 


Club Shoots for the Stars, Gets Rabbit in the Moon 

Adapting the touring rider for a nightclub 

Text by ThomasH.Freeman 

Photography by JustiAkard 

Limiting the stage movement of the Bunny character helped keep the 

lighting design within budget. 

The Rabbit in the Moon production is a scaled-down version of the 

extravaganza envisioned in the rider. 

When Kevin Mitchell of Sugar Society 

booked Rabbit in the Moon 

at Amos’ Southend, the ace up his 

sleeve was Jack Kelly of Eye Dialogue, who 

had four years of experience doing shows at 

the Charlotte, NC music hall. He handed Kelly 

the tour rider and asked if he could light 

it for $4,000. 

Rabbit in the Moon shows are legendary. 

If you’ve never witnessed one of their 

events then you have no idea what a show 

with great visuals, lasers, giant beach balls 

with people in them and a million beams 

looks like. 

“I never imagined that one day I would 

be the designer for their show,” Kelly mused. 

But it would not be easy. The rider was 

some time for Kelly to wrap his mind around 

the budget, the stage, and the rider. Welcome 

to the club touring circuit. 

“I don’t know if any music venue or night 

club can completely satisfy a rider,” Kelly 

said. Like a lot like of business plans, riders 

can look good on paper. But when it comes 

down to realizing them, they have to be flexible 

or they will fail. “Just like drawing a map 

based on the descriptions of explorers, the 

real landscape seldom looks like the dreamscape 

of a touring rider,” Kelly added. 

Though the rider for Rabbit in the Moon 

included a large stage plot, massive towers, 

and myriad fixtures, it supplied the key to 

satisfying the band’s artistic goals, including 

important information about the artistic di- 

the same energy in the venue, all the while 

honoring the promoter’s budget. It was a tall 

order. 

“The first step was to squeeze everything 

into a 10- by 17-foot picture frame,” 

said Kelly. “Lots of lights on a big stage is 

easy; power-packed shows on a small stage 

is not.” He designed the projection using 

two custom 5.4- by 4-foot projector screens 

framed in “goalie post” trussing on each side 

of a stage riser. Behind the riser was a 6- by 

8-foot fast fold screen. The smaller screens 

were rear projected and the upstage screen 

was front projected. All together there were 

24 linear feet of video projection surfaces. 

Although the whole stage set could only 

be viewed from the middle of the room, the 

sual presentations in Charlotte this year.” 

To complete the set and to conveniently 

mask all of the cables, two 42-inch monitors 

were placed in front of David Christopher, 

the keyboard and digital effects player. Besides 

hiding the cables, the LCD monitors 

also hid the stands and provided another 

layer of visuals. 

“I love using prime numbers with 

screens,” Kelly said. “The five-screen visual 

packed onto the stage created a very balanced, 

yet focused look. A single centered 

screen followed by two pairs of screens 

shrinking in size as they move towards the 

floor subconsciously distorts depth perception 

and keeps the eye traveling up and 

down stage.” 

“I don’t know if any music venue or night club can completely satisfy a rider.” 

– Jack Kelly, lighting designer 

very detailed with CAD drawings and an 

equipment list that exceeded the budget 

and size of the stage. There were truss towers, 

moving lights, strobes, blinders, LED up 

lights, down lights, five LCD TVs, and three 

projector screens, all covering a 40- by 

30-foot stage. 

“My brain went into overload,” Kelly said 

later on. Since the stage in the club was only 

17 feet wide and the ceiling is lower than the 

lighting plot specified, Kelly thought, “I have 

to really rack my brain for this one.” 

Mitchell and Kelly have worked countless 

events together, creating some of Charlotte’s 

most memorable parties. Still, it took 

rection for layering, elevations, and effects. 

With this in mind, Kelly’s approach was to 

“scale the performer’s vision with a little 

imagination, creating a dynamic performance 

on any stage.” 

“Typically, bands are not trying to establish 

a dictatorship,” Kelly said. “Most bands 

understand that every space is different and 

they want help from those who are familiar 

with a space. However, they are understandably 

upset if their rider and their vision are 

completely ignored.” His job as the lighting 

and video designer and supplier, he said, 

was to try to understand the purpose of 

the stage design and create a design with 

expansive set upstage created a nice visual 

from all angles. 

In order to stay within his budget, Kelly 

had to use a smaller projector and work to 

control the ambient light on the stage and 

in the room. “In a dark room,” he said, “a 2000 

lumen projector can look amazing.” Part of 

keeping the environment lit correctly meant 

having to avoid putting light directly on the 

screens and keeping the stage illuminance 

under tight control. “Three 5000-lumen projectors 

would have taken most of the budget 

before we even started,” Kelly said. “However, 

with the right lighting, three 2000-lumens 

projectors pulled off one of the biggest vi- 

The audience blinders that were specified 

in the rider were both out of budget and 

too big for the stage. So Kelly subbed Color 

Kinetics ColorCast 14s, using four of the LED 

fixtures on each truss leg. The units proved 

to be ideal for a stage of this size. Kelly used 

them to build anticipation with color changing 

flashes, strobing, and sweeps through a 

range of colors, until front man Bunny (Steve 

Eachon) took the stage. 

To light the moon bunny, two 250-watt 

Elation moving head fixtures followed him 

wherever he ventured. To help make the 

task a bit easier, an 8- by 8-foot platform was 

used for “Bunny control,” limited his move- 

24 



PRODUCTION PROFILE 


GEAR 

2 5.3’x4’ custom screens 

4 American DJ Accu Scan2s 

2 Antari Z-1020 fog machines 

24 Color Kinetics ColorCast 14s 

1 Da Lite 6x8 Dual Vision fast fold screen 

12 Elation Opti RGB 

2 Elation Power Wash 250s 

2 Elation Vision Scan 250s 

2 Elation Vision Scan 575es 

2 Elation Vision Scan 575s 

1 Global truss system 

1 Le Maitre Neutron XS haze machine 

2 Martin Light Jockey + Laptop control systems 

1 Sony VX2000 camcorder 

3 View Sonic 2000 lumen projectors 

ments to a small area. For the general stage 

wash, six color-changing PARs were used to 

front light the stage and six color-changing 

PARs were used to up light the performance 

platform. With the platform to help control 

the roaming bunny, Kelly could place more 

fixtures on the floor, which were obscured 

by a 12-inch lip running the length of the 

stage. The placement was ideal, providing 

nearly 360° of light and allowing Kelly to 

create interesting shadows and up lighting 

when called upon. Eight more ColorCast 

fixtures were placed behind the truss to 

backlight Christopher. 

That’s not all that was lighting Christopher. 

“Unfortunately, he had a projector in 

his face the entire night,” said Kelly. “Thankfully, 

he’s a seasoned performer and graciously 

accepted this fate.” 

Because of the limited ceiling height, 

using the automated lights was a bit of a 

challenge. “In order to create crowd energy, 

the lights have to sweep through the 

air, especially at an electronic event,” said 

Kelly. However, the audio speakers and 

conventional lights in Amos’ will block the 

light from any fixtures rigged on stage six 

feet high or higher, which precludes projecting 

above the crowd. But Kelly had a 

fix. “By putting Bunny on the platform, we 

were able to use the space on the floor 

around him for both the LEDs and scanners,” 

he said. The moving mirror fixtures 

were placed on the floor around Bunny, 

and the beams could either scan Bunny or 

the crowd. Four more scanners were set six 

feet off the ground and four more were inverted 

on the truss to create cross beams 

with the floor scans. “Rays of light seemed 

to come from every corner of the stage,” 

Kelly said. 

For the final touches, Kelly used a solidstate 

laser, haze, fire, glow tubes, hand held 

lasers, cryo systems and “lots of fun interactive 

effects.” The show was programmed 

with transparent cues so colors, positions, 

and effects could be piled on and changed 

on the fly. 

Due to the complexity of the show, 

there were two operators on two lighting 

consoles; one for the moving lights and 

one for the LEDs. A Clear-Com system was 

used to communicate with the VJ, who 

called the lighting cues. “Although this was 

my first time working with Rabbit in the 

Moon,” Kelly said, “their communication 

was clear and allowed for creative interpretation. 

After three intense hours of the best 

live show I have ever seen, I have never 

been prouder of my team and the finished 

product.” 

The gig validated Kelly’s adaption of 

the tour rider to the club circuit. Even with 

the substitutions and budget cutting, the 

band and promoter were ecstatic with the 

results. For Kelly and crew, it was exhausting, 

if rewarding, work. 

“I crawled into bed that night,” Kelly 

said, “and dreamed of carrots and rocket 

ships.” 

Despite the constraints in space and the budget, the band and promoter were happy with the results. 

A 40- by 30-foot vision was shoehorned into a 10- by 17-foot space, for a $4,000 budget. 

One of the two 5.4- by 4-foot projection screens framed in “goalie post” truss 

Lasers, projected images and giant beach balls with people in them are some of the visual effects packed into the show. 

26 



INSTaLLaTIONS 

aTIONS 

BYU-Idaho’s Make-Do Makeover 

An older building’s lighting upgrade serves students awaiting a new auditorium 

The Hart Building’s 4,300-seat auditorium is in the second phase of a three-part plan for a total lighting upgrade. 

BYU-Idaho acquired a digital media server last June, and put it to good use within two weeks for a student-run show. 

By DavidJohnFarinella 

Many of the students at Brigham 

Young University-Idaho in Rexburg 

can’t wait for the new 15,000-seat 

auditorium to open on campus. The senior 

class, in fact, can’t wait — it won’t open until 

2009 in the earliest, and most will graduate 

before then. Not that there’s a lot of grumbling 

on campus. Students are aware that 

tithing dollars from faithful LDS Church followers 

around the world are funding the 

construction that surrounds them. 

In the meantime, the social scene revolves 

around the 39-year old John W. Hart 

Building and its 4,300 seat auditorium. 

Once a gym, the Hart building has been 

reborn as the place to go for social dancing, 

or to see and hear musical and dance 

performances and to participate in weekly 

devotionals. It’s also the spot where those 

seniors will be gathering for commencement 

ceremonies later this spring. 

A Three-Step Plan 

Inst 

Brent Pritchett, BYU-Idaho’s lighting designer, 

is in the second of a three-step upgrade 

plan, scheduled over three years to meet budgetary 

constraints. The first step, which was 

completed last year, included buffing up the 

venue’s lighting control system. This year’s 

work will include an upgrade of the distribution 

system and then, in 2009, the Hart building 

will get the final touches on a state of the 

art lighting system with rigging additions. 

The Hart building isn’t shutting down 

amid the upgrades. In February, the building 

served as the venue for staged events including 

a performance by the Vienna Boys Choir 

and “Trek: Nashville Tribute to Pioneers,” a 

musical tribute to LDS Church founder Joseph 

Smith and his followers. 

The goal of the upgrades, Pritchett says, 

is to support those events and more with a 

top-notch system that boasts redundancy. 

“On-campus entertainment is a big thing,” he 

says. “The school supports a lot of different 

events that come in to the campus as well 

as groups that perform here and go out and 

tour. So, this room needed to support any 

of those specific events and we can’t have a 

show go down because of lighting.” 

Moreover, he says, “we like to add a bit 

of flash to these concerts, because they are 

student performances and it’s not necessarily 

the best quality. So, we try to put on a light 

show that can help.” 

The install work done in 2007 included 

an upgrade in the venue’s control system, 

including a dimmer rack with processor upgrades, 

console upgrades and a handful of 

additional control options. 

For Students, By Students 

Inst 

Pritchett is responsible for the system’s 

design and implementation, but students set 

up the events. The size of the space within 

the Hart building, and the fact that Pritchett 

relies on student crews, have dictated much 

of what Pritchett has installed there. 

“It is a large room, so we have to train the 

students on all of the rigging aspects, how to fly 

a truss and how to take care of data distribution,” 

he says. “So, we wanted some standardization 

to the system so they would understand where 

things plug in on a regular basis without having 

to reconfigure the system constantly, depending 

on what kinds of events are happening.” 

There are quite a few node locations in 

the Hart Building’s catwalks, Pritchett adds, 

and that makes it easier for students to plug 

in for data distribution. 

Pritchett is using an MA Lighting Grand- 

MA console as the main board and has a 

GrandMA Lite board for backup. Both are 

running ETC Net2 to eight universes. 

This part of the upgrade has made the Hart 

Building, which opened almost 40 years ago, 

one of the campus’ top spots. 

As for fixtures, four Vari*Lite VL 1000 TSDs 

have been permanently hung from a front of 

house position. “That takes care of quite a 

bit,” he says, “from a spot on the stage to a 

toning wash during a dance.” 

For concert performances, Pritchett 

brought in 12 Martin MAC 700 Wash fixtures to 

buff up a moving light system that already included 

eight MAC 550s and 14 RoboScan 918s. 

The lighting rig also features a number of ETC 

Source Four ellipsoidals, PARs and PARNels. 

New Digital Media Server 

Inst 

The university also bought a Martin Maxedia 

Compact digital media server as part of 

the upgrade. The content from the Maxedia 

is delivered to a 25- by 50-foot rear projection 

screen via either Epson 7900 or 8300 projectors, 

which were pulled from classroom stock. 

There are also two 4:3 format screens on either 

side of the stage that receive images from 

double stacked Epson 8300 projectors and 

four 50” plasma screens in parts of the room 

where the screens are not visible. 

“We looked at quite a few servers,” 

Pritchett says. “We were looking for something 

that we could move easily from venue 

to venue,” adding that he was “pretty 

happy with how easy it is to load content 

and play it back.” 

The university acquired the Maxedia 

in June, just two weeks before a studentrun 

show, “Guitars Unplugged,” hit the 

Hart stage. With no training on the server, 

Pritchett spent about a week programming. 

“I got a copy of auditions, watched 

performances and built effects using the 

existing Maxedia content,” he said. “We 

didn’t have time to create custom content 

but we did quite a bit of manipulation of 

the content that was already in the server,” 

Pritchett says, adding that he used content 

downloaded from the Maxedia Web site 

and relied on “the online forum, where I 

could read up on any questions I had.” 

Pritchett is also looking forward to 

using the screens and the server to provide 

scenic backdrops during dance performances, 

although he’s looking at different 

projectors for that piece. “That will 

be part of 2008’s budget,” he says, “a better 

projector that can support the large 

format. We’d really like to use the media 

server as a way to do a backdrop for the 

dance department.” 

On the infrastructure side of things, 

Pritchett cleaned up the 400 dimmers 

in the room with two ETC Sensor + Touring 

Racks, six SR 12 racks that have been 

mounted in the ceiling and a Sensor+ Portable 

Pack. “They are all CEM+, so it’s all 

network configurable,” he states. “That’s a 

really nice benefit, because they are scattered 

everywhere.” 

28 PLSN March 2008 



Once a gym, the building is now the place to go for social dancing, musical and dance performances and weekly devotionals. 

BYU-Idaho’s LD handles the lighting design and implementation, but students set up the events. 

“We wanted some 

standardization to 

the system so the 

students would 

understand where 

things plug in on a 

regular basis without 

having to reconfigure 

the system 

constantly.” 

—Brent Pritchett 

Switching To Touring Nodes 

Inst 

Part of the upgrade included removing permanently 

mounted nodes and turning them 

into touring nodes. “We made it so we had two 

ports available,” he explains. “We put in an Ethercon 

XLR connection so we could access both of 

the pairs of wires that were going to the back of 

those nodes. One of them was just a spare, but 

since we were always needing to add universes in 

certain locations, we made it so we could do two 

portable nodes there. We basically left the nodes 

alone, but then we have access to all the Ethernet 

jacks that were put into the lighting system.” 

It took a bit of time for ETC to understand 

what he was after, Pritchett reports with a laugh. 

“Really, it was pretty simple,” he says. “Most of the 

terminations were already there, so it was just 

putting it into a new faceplate and building the 

touring nodes out of the permanently installed 

nodes. It just took a day or two to do that portion 

of the upgrade and that way we were able 

to, instead of pulling additional Ethernet jacks 

to everywhere in the room, we were able to utilize 

all of the wires that were already pulled.” 

This part of the upgrade has made the 

Hart Building one of the campus’ top spots. 

“It’s a great room,” Pritchett says. “For the 

most part it’s as flexible as the physical part 

will give us options. We do our best with it.” 

That doesn’t mean, though, that he’s not 

looking forward to the new auditorium. “This 

room has been great for the past 39 years, 

but it’s too small for our student body now,” 

he says. “We have 13,500 students on campus 

now and the president of the university really 

wanted a venue that all of the student body 

could use to meet together. Since we don’t do 

competitive sports, an auditorium was a logical 

solution. We’re pretty excited.” 


2008 March PLSN 29

FEATURE 


So You Want To Run Lights In A Nightclub? 

To get your message across, it’s best to keep it simple, and energetic. Club lighting is all about punch. 

By MorganLandrum 

You’re in a nightclub on a Saturday 

night, you’ve had a drink or two, 

the DJ is spinning wicked live, and 

the most incredible guy/girl in the place 

walks up, and stands at the bar next to 

you. You (A) lean over and softly say, “Hey 

babe, are you tired? You’ve been running 

through my dreams all night.” (B) put on 

your sexy voice dripping with suggestiveness 

and ask if you can buy him/her 

a drink, or (C) don’t notice because you’re 

too busy watching the light show. 

If you answered C, there’s no doubt you 

wound up kicking yourself later when the 

hottie left the bar, and you realize you missed 

another hook up. The good news is you’ve 

got what it takes to be a lighting jock. 

Welcome to Exhilaration 

So you want to run lights in a nightclub? 

Welcome to one of the most exhilarating 

jobs on the planet. If you are 

inspired by music, lights, and the atmosphere 

of a crowd in the mood to party, 

running lights and video in a nightclub 

can be as fun and addicting as any extreme 

sport. This is a job where, if you’re 

lucky, you’ll be getting paid good money 

to listen to music and let your creative 

side play. The hotties decked out in their 

club garb are just an added bonus. 

It’s Not About You 

The most important thing about club 

lighting is, it’s not your show. It’s the DJ’s 

show. It’s their name on the marquee. If 

the evening goes badly and drink sales are 

crappy, it’s the DJ’s job on the line, not yours. 

With the stakes high, DJs are understandably 

concerned that the performance goes 

in the direction they intend. Most of the DJs 

are glad to have a tech add their own creativity 

to the show. They are a remarkably 

gracious group of people who understand 

that your job requires an equal amount of 

talent, energy and creativity as their own, 

and they are happy to let you have your 

way with it. When a DJ does have request, 

however, you should do everything in your 

power to make it happen. Often those requests 

are about the amount of lighting on 

the DJ. Some DJs like to be the star of the 

show while others are more comfortable 

being heard and not seen. You should plan 

for both types, and always have a dedicated 

DJ light available on a dimmer. Beyond 

that, it’s nice to have some extra, unobtrusive 

work lights handy (like gooseneck LED 

Littlites) and a couple of open power strips 

on a circuit that isn’t already overloaded. 

Your knowledge and help during set up will 

build a good working relationship for the 

show later on. Be friendly, be helpful, and 

Beams work better for club lighting than break ups, which are generally too busy to register. 

The most important thing about club lighting 

is, it’s not your show… Once your DJ is happy, 

you’re ready to move on to lighting the music. 

If you’ve been running lights for theatre 

or concert acts, you’ll immediately 

discover some fundamental differences 

with nightclub lighting. In theatre the 

rule is often, “the better the lighting, the 

less you notice it.” In concert lighting, at 

least everyone is facing the stage. Nightclub 

lighting is exactly the opposite. Far 

from the captive audience just waiting to 

be dazzled, the nightclub audience is free 

roaming and far more interested in each 

other than your show. Your canvas is not 

a set on stage but an entire environment, 

all 360º of club space. The energy of the 

music needs be felt no matter which way 

the audience is facing. To make it even 

trickier, you’re working live, on the fly. 

There is no script and no set list. You have 

to make your rowdy audience respond 

and you’re not going to do that with subtle 

color washes and slow fades. To get 

their attention you’re going to have to 

slap, poke, and smack those people and 

then, at exactly the right moment, turn all 

the lights out on them. 

For all their lack of attention, your audience 

will subconsciously know if you get 

it right or wrong. Dull, uninspired lights, or 

an operator that spends more time at the 

bar than in the booth, can ruin a potentially 

great evening. A good light tech should 

be a lightning rod, helping the DJ direct 

all the pent up energy in the universe into 

one mighty party. 

be open to suggestions. Once your DJ is 

happy, you’re ready to move on to lighting 

the music. 

What makes club lighting work? Energy! 

The visuals in the room should match the 

energy of the music. It’s your job to express 

sound as light and sometimes as visual 

images. It may seem simple, but there are 

plenty of light techs who just can’t seem to 

grasp the concept. Match your visuals to 

your music. There is a great deal of talent 

and creativity involved. It is subjective, and 

while there’s no single way to do it right, 

there are lots of ways to do it wrong. For 

example, a big, steady, bass beat lit with 

twinkling egg strobes and visuals of sparrows 

in flight is just wrong. What you use 

will, of course, depend on what you have 

in your rig. If you are fortunate enough to 

have hundreds of expensive lights of different 

types, consider yourself lucky. But even 

simple rigs have plenty of options if you are 

aware of the capabilities of each type of fixture 

you have. Here are a few suggestions 

for using some of the most common attributes 

found in most moving lights. 

Shutters are Your Friend 

A wash fixture with a shutter chase is 

usually a great way to keep the beat of a 

song. Most fixtures have several preset shutter 

speeds including a hyper setting that you 

can access on the shutter attribute channel. 

The downside is that you don’t have fine 

The general rule is simple: match the visuals to the music. 

A heavy color bounce works well to keep the beat. 

30 


What makes club lighting work? Energy! The 

visuals in the room should match the energy 

of the music. 

There’s no single way to do club lighting right, but there are lots of ways to do it wrong. 

Simple contrasts in colors can have more impact than complex, busy effects. 

control of the speed and many fixtures lack 

a “random” setting. Other options include 

fanning an effect on the strobe channel 

(and assigning a speed group if your board 

allows) or building a stack of cues with 

shutter on and shutter off to run as a chase. 

Some fixtures have a lamp effect that looks 

similar to the strobe chase, but the jury is 

still out on whether that significantly shortens 

the lamp life. To be on the safe side, stick 

with the shutter chase since the effect is not 

that much different — at least not enough 

that drunken people would notice. 

Mixing and Wheeling 

Consider yourself lucky if you have fixtures 

with both color mixing and a color 

wheel. Color mixing gives you a much greater 

range of color, but a fixed color wheel allows 

you to snap between colors, create half 

colors, or do color spins. If your wheels don’t 

snap (and this goes for gobo wheels too), try 

building cues in four steps. First, open the 

shutter in color one. In the second step, close 

the shutter and change to color two. The 

third step is to open the shutter with color 

two, and the fourth step is to close the shutter 

and change to color one. The resulting effect 

is a heavy color bounce, especially if you 

have light and dark colors or colors on the 

opposite side of the color wheel. A bounce 

works well to keep a beat, while spinning the 

color wheel adds an extra punch of energy 

on a long build up. 

Spinning or Not Spinning 

Most fixtures now have at least two 

wheels with gobo patterns in them somewhere. 

The second set may be hiding on 

the effects wheel or even in some cases, 

(mysteriously), on the color wheel. Two different 

wheels make layering fun and you 

can create some unique effects by combining 

gobos. But remember, your audience 

will be steadily progressing towards 

an inebriated state where they can’t walk 

a straight line, much less look at one. To 

get your message across, it’s best to keep 

it simple. Beams work better for club lighting 

than break ups. Break ups are generally 

too busy to register, and sometimes 

they’re so busy that it becomes difficult 

to tell when they’re rotating. Cones and 

single solid lines are some of the most 

effective gobos, but fancier ones are fine 

too. The same suggestions for color wheels 

also apply to gobo wheels. 

Where Have All the Scanners Gone? 

There are two types of automated 

lights; those with moving heads, and 

those with moving mirrors, or scanners. 

The industry seems to be dismissing 

moving mirror fixtures in favor of moving 

heads, probably because moving head 

fixtures have a greater range of motion. 

But a good rig has an equal number of 

both moving head fixtures and scanners. 

A moving mirror fixture allows quick, 



FEATURE 


The best crowd response comes at the end of a long buildup of 

frantic strobe effects with intensity and punch. 

Some clubs have hundreds of lights, but simple rigs can be effective as well. 

Club goers are more interested in each other than in your 

show. But they’ll subconsciously know if you got it right or 

wrong. 

snap movements that moving head fixtures 

can’t replicate. The snap is great 

for expressing beat. A group of fixtures 

moving in a series of snapping steps 

with a rotating gobo, strobe or color 

chase nicely expresses everything going 

on in a song. A moving mirror fixture 

on a truss that travels up and down 

throughout the night is much steadier 

than a moving head fixture. Big, heavy 

moving heads can build enough momentum 

to whip the trusses around. 

Smaller moving mirror fixtures won’t. 

All the Other Stuff (is Just for 

Conventions) 

It wouldn’t be prudent to tell you 

not to use your frost, focus, and all of 

the other attributes, but they don’t 

really have much punch — and club 

lighting is all about punch. The one 

exception is the iris. A good iris chase, 

especially if it can be combined with 

a zoom chase, makes an eye-catching 

display to music. 

No matter how many or what type 

fixtures you have, you can create an effective 

light show if you remember to 

keep it simple and to use opposites. 

Some people may not notice that the 

person they’ve just exchanged numbers 

with is old enough to be their 

father (mother) but they will notice 

strong contrasts like red/blue, strobing/steady, 

moving/static, and light/ 

dark. Invariably, the best crowd response 

comes at the end of a long 

build up of frantic strobe and bright 

intensity lights. Then, at exactly the 

right moment, yank every fader on the 

board down. Silence…darkness. And 

the crowd goes wild. 

Morgan Landrum is the lighting crew chief 

for the BET Soundstage Club and 8trax. 


When you are at the controls, you are part of the performance. 

It can be as fun and addicting as any extreme sport. 

32 



PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT 


Ron StageMaster 


Do you know how you can tell a rookie 

entertainment professional from 

a veteran? When they walk into a 

show, the rookie cranes his neck to admire 

the lighting rig while the veteran cranes his 

neck to see if it’s safe to walk under the rig. 

As shows get larger and more complex, 

rigging issues become more serious. A small 

error in calculations can result in a big disaster. 

And when you have multiple rigging 

points with dynamic loads, things can get 

really hairy. And that’s no time to compromise 

on safety, especially when lives are at 

stake and there are people under the rig. 

When more than two hoists are being 

used on a truss, or more than three hoists 

are used on a structure, you can encoun- 

The computer-based system runs on 

a laptop while communicating wirelessly 

with up to 16 or 32 load cells per channel, 

which are rigged in line between the chain 

hoist and the load. Load cells are available 

for loads ranging from a half ton to six tons 

and they are small and lightweight. They 

run on four AA batteries or on 110/220VAC. 

The load cells can operate up to 1,500 

hours on one set of disposable batteries. 

Measured end to end, the smallest load 

cells are 5.5 inches and weigh 2.5 pounds 

while the largest are 7.9 inches and weigh 

4.5 pounds each. The wireless system has 

a range of up to 450 feet and operates at 

radio frequency. The receiver is about the 

size of a PDA and it is housed in a light- 

When more than two hoists are being used 

on a truss, or more than three hoists are 

used on a structure, you can encounter an 

unpredictable load distribution, or a phenomenon 

known as “statically indeterminate 

structure.” 

ter an unpredictable load distribution, or a 

phenomenon known as “statically indeterminate 

structure.” Even if the load appears 

to be balanced and equally distributed 

among multiple points, some of the hoists 

may be overloaded. It can happen to inexperienced 

and experienced riggers alike. 

One good way to avoid this situation is 

to monitor the load in real time. Ron Stage- 

Master is a wireless, multi-load-cell system 

that does just that. In addition to monitoring 

loads in real time, it also detects overload 

and underload situations. When certain 

conditions are sensed, it can set off an 

alarm, stop the hoists, or both, depending 

on how the system is configured. 

weight ABS plastic. It connects directly to 

the laptop with a cable. 

The software includes a load map that 

can be overlaid onto an AutoCAD drawing, 

or any other drawing converted to bitmap, 

to provide immediate identification of each 

rigging point. Names can be assigned to a 

group of points and individual points can be 

monitored or summaries of several points 

or the entire structure can be accessed. For 

larger systems, multiple systems can be 

used to monitor the entire rig. 

Some of the parameters that the system 

can monitor include overload, danger, 

zero load, tare weights, load sums 

and maximum load. In addition, the resolution 

for the entire system can be preset. 

The data can be downloaded from the 

data log and it can store weeks worth of 

continuous measurements including the 

operator’s name, time, weights, danger 

alerts, overload situations, and the cumulative 

weight for each group. The software 

can be configured to display units of measure 

in metric tons, short tons, kilograms, 

pounds, newtons, deca-newtons or kilonewtons. 

With any rigging system, it’s always a 

good idea to design with a healthy safety 

factor. In this case, the load cells have a 

built-in safety factor of five or 10. The resolution 

of the load cells varies from two 

pounds to 10 pounds, depending on the 

load rating of the cell. 

The system deals with the out of doors 

rather well. The load cells can operate in 

temperatures ranging from -15ºF to 175ºF 

and they are IP rated 65 (NEMA 4). And since 

there are no messy cables to deal with, the 

load cells can be installed quickly and easily. 

The show must always go on, but 

there’s no reason it can’t do so safely. The 

Ron StageMaster system is your safety insurance 

policy for any rigging situation. It 

is an easy system to deploy and use, and it 

provides an extra layer of safety that can’t 

be matched by a rigging expert alone. 

Putting the Brakes on Aerial Risks 

continued from page 59 

If you take a second motor side brake and put it 

right next to the first one, you have now added 

protection in case the first brake fails.” But, he 

cautions, “there can be several gear meshes and 

couplings between the cable drum and these 

brakes. 

If any of these fail, the motor shaft will still be 

locked in place, but the load will fall. In this case, 

you had better be very confident that the gearbox 

and intermediate couplings will not fail. 

“Now, take the second brake and move it 

onto the end of the drum (or sprocket) shaft so 

that it is at the opposite end of the mechanical 

drive train from the motor brake. This is a load 

side brake. Now, if one brake fails, the other will 

still hold the load. Also, if the gearbox or any 

other coupling or shaft between the motor and 

the drum fails, the load side brake can still hold 

the load.” 

An analogy might be that of a car with an 

automatic transmission parked on a steep hill 

without a parking brake engaged. There is a 

brake inside the automatic transmission that 

keeps the drive shaft from rotating. The drive 

shaft, in turn, prevents the differential gears 

from moving, which keeps the rear axles from 

moving, which then keeps the wheels from 

moving. If any one of these elements lets go, the 

car is going to roll down the hill. Contrast this 

with the parking brake: it clamps directly onto 

the wheel and keeps the car from rolling even if 

the drive shaft falls completely off of the car. 

Simply matching the same style of brake on 

the load side might not be enough, however. 

“There is no gear ratio between the new brake 

and the cable drum, so the brake needs to be 

larger than the one on the motor shaft.” The 

paper also notes that “as hoists become larger, 

brake units large enough to be applied as load 

side brakes become very expensive,” and that 

for a large enough load “it can be more costeffective 

to use two complete sets of motors, 

gearboxes and motor side brakes than it is to 

use a single load side brake.” Even so, the admonition 

bears repeating: “Even the most carefully 

designed and manufactured systems are subject 

to factors such as material flaws, misuse, or 

lack of inspection and maintenance.” And the 

simple warning, repeated as a mantra, works as 

an antidote to complacency: 

“It is the nature of machinery to fail.” 

Me So Stupid 


So as long as the loads are equal in 

value, then the line current is not twice 

the single-phase current, but 1.73 times 

the single phase current. 

In this case, we have 7.2 amps in 

phase A and 7.2 amps in phase B. So 

the resulting line current is 7.2 × 1.73 

amps = 12.5 amps. 

If we added another automated light 

across phases A and C, then all three 

legs will have 12.5 amps going through 

them. We can confirm this by using the 

formula for three phase power, which is 

W = V × I × PF × 1.73. In this case, with 

all three lights hooked up the wattage 

is 4500, so we have 4500 = 208 × I × PF 

(we’ll assume it’s 1) × 1.73, or I = 4500 ÷ 

(208 x 1.73) = 12.5 amps three-phase. 

It turns out that our friend, the 30-year 

electrician who uses the formula I = (W × 

2) ÷ V, is close, but technically not correct. 

However, every good electrician always 

builds in a de-rating factor, usually about 

20%. If we take that magic number, 1.73, 

and give it a 20% overhead, we end up with 

– you guessed it – 2, or something very close 

to it (1.73 × 1.2 = 2.076). 

Now I can sleep at night knowing that 

the classic formula for a three-phase load 

does indeed produce the correct answer. 

But I might never have confirmed it had I not 

had a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance 

and welcomed the doubt and discussion 

that drives both science and art. 

When the author is not waving to complete 

strangers he can be reached at 

rcadena@plsn.com. 

34 



FEATURE 


lighting the action for video games live 

The orchestra plays video game themes ranging from Tetris to Halo 3. 

By DanDaley 

When you watch a performance of 

Video Games Live, the touring orchestral 

show of music from video 

games, now in its third season, you get a bit 

of a history lesson. “They start out with the real 

classics, like Donkey Kong and Tetris, some of 

which had only two or three colors in the entire 

game,” says Heath Marrinan, LD for Video 

Games Live. “As it goes through the night, the 

lighting begins to blend more with the video. 

We choose color schemes that reflect those 

of the games themselves, and the cues follow 

the dynamics of the music and the action on 

the screen. It can be sweepy and soft as you 

watch a guy cruising in an airplane on screen; 

then he jumps out and starts shooting a machine 

gun. I’ve never lit a symphony orchestra 

shredding on Halo 3 before.” 

But there is structure, says Marrinan. In 

laying out the show’s lighting design he had 

to keep the hardware compact and adhere to 

show co-developer Tommy Tallarico’s dictum 

that no one element overshadow another in 

the program. “Tommy’s very into production 

and he wants the show to be an overall experience, 

not a music experience with lights and 

video or a video experience with music and 

lights. Just like a video game, he wants it to be 

a total experience.” 

The hardware is indeed compact. Marrinan 

laid out four 15-foot lighting towers, each with a 

Vari*Lite 3000 Spot, a PixelRange PixelPar 90 fixture, 

an ACL bar and a PixelLine 1044 LED ministrip. 

A pair of 40-foot trusses complements 

the towers. The upstage truss has six VL3000s, 

split three on the far ends of the truss to allow 

a 20-foot gap for the video screen and a set of 

PixelPar 90s to tone the truss. The downstage 

truss holds six more Vari*Lite 3000 Spots and 

two PixelPar 90 fixtures, seven Lekos (four to 

light the choir, two to illuminate conductor and 

Video Games Live co-founder Jack Wall’s podium, 

and one for a featured vocalist) and two 

9-lamp omni-directional Mole Fays to light up 

the audience. There are four more ACL bars on 

the stage floor, and an MDG Atmosphere APS 

High-Output dual-output fogger adds haze. 

The lighting design, worked out on ESP 

Vision software at Video Games Live’s lighting 

vendor Theatrical Media Services (TMS) 

in Omaha, hews closely to the music, though 

for the first two seasons the cues for each song 

were manually triggered using the video start 

as the signal. Within each song, Marrinan programmed 

an average of two dozen individual 

cues that he says were flawlessly synched with 

the music thanks to the click track fed to the 

orchestra through small earphones from a 

hard drive at the FOH position. The cues were 

programmed using the Learn Time feature on 

the Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 3 console 

that travels with the show. However, this year’s 

The firing button is in the shape of an explosives 

plunger. “Just try getting it through airport 

security,” says Tommy Tallarico. 

production will use SMPTE timecode generated 

by a Doremi media server newly added 

to the show’s technical complement. 

“We get a ton of looks out of a relatively 

little amount of gear,” says Marrinan. “We’re 

playing mostly small and mid-sized, kind of 

cozy venues, and we’re able to use what we 

have to really shape the stage.” 

Tracking “Reality” 

PLSN 

Tracking Synchronizing “Reality” via eyeball isn’t the only plsn trick 

Video Games Live has used to stay on budget. 

When audience members are brought up on 

stage to play a round of Space Invaders on the 

projection screen — with the orchestra following 

Wall’s lead based on where the play is taking 

them — Tallarico hands them a remote-control 

firing button and a T-shirt with a luminescent 

green Space Invaders logo 

on the back and tells the 

contestant that he’ll be 

“tracking the game” as he 

moves about on stage. In 

reality, Tallarico has rigged 

a Sony PlayStation2 game 

console that video designer 

Mike Runice is operating; 

Runice follows the bright 

logo on the player’s back 

to keep the screen properly 

positioned. “I’ve had 

some very good players 

up there who can wipe out 

the entire first screen and 

get to the second level,” 

says Runice. “But in general 

it’s a lot more challenging 

to play a video game on a 

screen that’s 19 feet wide.” 

But the firing button — in 

the shape of a cartoonish 

explosives plunger (“Try 

getting that through airport 

security!” quips Tallarico) 

— is definitely under 

the player’s control, hardwired 

with 100 feet of cable 

running to the master 

PS2 console. 

Projection 


Projection 

plsn 

Video Games Live’s video is front-projected, 

in pursuit of the brightest possible image to 

maintain the vid-game effect, says Runice, who 

has done video for Jack Johnson and is also 

the LD for Mannheim Steamroller. “We want 

to get it as bright as possible to make it work 

with the light rig,” he explains. “Rear projection 

wouldn’t have as good an off-axis brightness 

response and we don’t have to throw as many 

lumens at it to get a good image.” 

Video Games Live uses a pair of Sanyo XF 

46 12K LCD projectors showing on to Screen 

Works screens that range from 12 by 16 feet 

to 15 by 20 feet, depending upon the size and 

configuration of the venue’s stage area. A DVD 

Tommy Tallarico, Video Games Live co-developer. 

This year’s production will use SMPTE timecode to trigger lighting cues. 

Link from the Zelda series is one of the many recognizable characters appearing during the 

production. 

player originally fed them, but the widely varying 

nature of the venues led Tallarico and Wall 

to burn new DVD content for each show to allow 

for changes in songs and sequences. The 

move to the Doremi hard drive system now 

lets them select from any song on the drive 

and sequence it internally. “It’s become our 

overall central engine for the show,” he says. 

What’s less predictable is where the projectors 

will be rigged at each show. “That literally 

changes at every venue,” says Runice, who 

will sometimes fly them from a central truss or 

on the main floor. At times he has to co-opt 

space adjacent to the FOH position. “But I have 

to make sure the fan noise doesn’t interfere 

with the [FOH mixer] Matt Yelton’s ability to 

mix the show,” he says. 

36 

PLSN MARCH 2008 


PROJECTION PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING LIGHTS & NEWS STAGING NEWS 

VITAL STATS 

The Sanyo projectors are HD-capable 

and the Doremi has sufficient capacity to 

hold high-resolution content. However, the 

world of video games has been, until very 

recently, a decidedly low-res universe. “We 

have to get the video to match the audience’s 

expectations,” Runice says. “Frogger looks like 

Frogger did 20 years ago — only a lot bigger. 

The graphics aren’t fabulous but we don’t try 

to dress it up. But having the HD capability 

is necessary because the newer games that 

we include, like Halo 3, look pretty good on a 

video monitor and have to look that good on 

a big screen, too.” However, the Video Games 

Live videos will retain one other element 

common to most vid-games: they still utilize 

a 4:3 aspect ratio. “Space Invaders just doesn’t 

look right letterboxed,” he says. 

One other video component to Video Games 

Live is a bagful of inexpensive Sony webcams 

that Runice attaches to various moving and 

stationary objects. “We tape them to everything 

— light towers, the backs of music stands, inside 

the podium facing up to Jack [Wall] and even on 

Tommy [Tallarico],” he says. “They’re low-res but 

that gritty look really works with the look of the 

classic games. The webcams are tiny so the audience 

can’t see them. I can punch up dissolves 

and cut shots from them using the basic Edirol 

V4 switcher we’ve been using.” Runice is auditioning 

a couple of HD-capable digital switchers, 

including the Sony Anycast, which Video Games 

Live tried out in Spain. “They come across as a total 

surprise for the audience because it’s not like 

there are hand-held cameras walking around 

the stage.” Best webcam shot? “Tommy headbanging 

with the viola player,” says Runice. 

At a time when the emphasis in entertainment 

is shifting from prerecorded and packaged 

to live and in-person, Video Games Live 

is nicely positioned to benefit both from that 

trend and the burgeoning video game business 

itself, which is forecast to reach a global value of 

$104 billion by 2010. And with only $13 billion of 

that in the U.S., the world may well be an oyster 

for this kind of entertainment symmetry. 

Not surprisingly, Video Games Live has 

company, if not outright competition. Last year 

the Eminence Symphony Orchestra performed 

its spring tour in Australia with its entire set list 

comprised of pieces from video games and 

featuring several of the world’s most famous 

game composers as special guests. Other touring 

companies have been organized, such as 

Play! A Video Game Symphony. And the Symphonic 

Game Music Concerts are a draw at the 

opening ceremonies of the GC Games Convention, 

an annual trading fair for video games in 

Germany. Still, Video Games Live is an original. 

“You can tell we all have a passion for the music 

and the games,” says Tallarico. “We put on a 

great show.” 

The lighting plot has a limited array of gear, but the show still achieves a lot of different looks. 



FEATURE 


The Tacoma Dome truss grid measures 400 by 160 feet, with over 

275 rigging points and a truss grid capacity of 625,000 pounds. 

wooden wonder meets a mass of metal 

The Tacoma Dome’s new super grid is called one of the largest suspended aluminum structures in the world 

By DavidJohnFarinella 

At 530 feet in diameter and 152 feet tall, 

the Tacoma Dome is one of the world’s 

largest wooden domed structures. For 

the past 25 years, it has been the hub of entertainment 

in the city, with events ranging 

from music concerts to freestyle motocross 

taking place here. Yet the Dome’s management 

team started to feel the pinch of competition 

coming from Key Arena in Seattle, 

White River Amphitheater in Auburn and Everett 

Event Center. 

The Dome’s management team discovered 

that the more popular acts were heading 

to the other venues in part because of 

production expenses, reports Tacoma Dome 

Operations Manager Cynthia Davis. “For us to 

do a concert in the round it would take a prerig 

day, plus between two and four 125-foot 

boom lifts, which are expensive. So, for us 

to be more competitive to get those bigger 

shows, we had to make it a lot more cost effective 

and a lot more user friendly,” she says. 

They also made it impressive. In fact, the 

newly installed Tacoma Dome truss grid is a 

whopping 400 by 160 feet with over 275 rigging 

points and 750 bridle legs that enable a maximum 

truss grid capacity of 625,000 pounds. The 

grid is capable of supporting a 2-ton motor at 

any location, and with a trim height of 85 feet 3 

inches, there’s plenty of headroom. 

“We believe this is the largest suspended 

aluminum structure in the world,” Davis states. 

“We wanted to go bigger. We wanted to go 

wider so that it covered as much of the floor 

as we could, but because of the slope of the 

building and the weight of the grid, it wasn’t 

possible. So, this was the cut down version.” 

The first step in bolstering the grid was 

taken in 2006 when the Dome’s management 

team reached out to the original engineering 

firm to see if the wooden roof structure could 

support the additional load. When the word 

came back that it was possible, a bid request 

was put out. “We didn’t have any successful 

bidders,” Davis reports. “Nobody seemed to 

want to do the whole thing, which was the 

hub upgrades, the construction of the grid 

and the hang. So, we broke it up into pieces.” 

That seemed to catch some companies’ 

attention, including Xtreme Structures & Fabrication 

in Emory, Texas and Athletic & Performance 

Rigging in Tiffin, Ohio. By the end 

of the project, Davis explains, there were 10 

different companies involved in the project, 

including Atlanta Rigging Systems, Entertainment 

Structures Group, Woodland Structures, 

PCS Structural and Western Wood Structures. 

Xtreme won the bid to build the massive 

grid. In the end, it took three months 

of 50- to 60-hour weeks to build over 500 

truss components, primarily 24-by-20.5 inch 

plated truss. That’s more than 8,100 linear 

feet of truss. The job consumed over 114,000 

pounds of aluminum, more than 15 miles 

worth of aluminum tubes and plates and 

two and a half miles of welds. 

Delivering the truss was as much of a challenge 

as building it. “They wanted to take delivery 

all at once and so we had to rent a whole 

separate building just to store it,” Mike Wells, 

CEO of Xtreme Structures and Fabrication, 

reports. “It took 5,000 square foot of storage 

space just to stand the trusses up on end and 

get them out of the way. When we shipped, it 

was 12 completely full trucks of truss.” 

Xtreme hired Entertainment Structures 

Group as their specialty engineer. ESG Project 

Engineer Jeff Reder was impressed by the 

size of the job and points out that working in 

a wooden dome was one of the more unique 

aspects of the job. “These structures behave 

quite differently than a typical building system,” 

he says. “There was a lot of coordination 

involved between ESG, Xtreme and the building’s 

structural engineer as to the lateral bracing 

scheme and how the grid structure hangs 

from the dome.” 

The grid was built out of aluminum, Wells 

says, primarily because of the weight issue. 

“Aluminum costs more than steel and it’s not 

as strong as steel, but the weight is a huge 

factor in a wooden dome structure that is 

sensitive to what’s hanging off of it,” he says. 

“To go in and hang a steel truss, which would 

have weighed three times as much, would 

have absorbed all of the dome’s capacity. So, 

in this case, aluminum was mandatory.” 

The grid is unique on a number of fronts, 

according to Wells. A plated catwalk was 

placed on top of the grid so a rigger can get to 

the truss, connect into the fall protection line 

and then walk the catwalk to get to any point 

on the grid. “There are four access points,” 

Wells explains, “one in each corner. We have 

catwalk bridges that go between the grid and 

the existing catwalk system in the Dome.” 

The new catwalk bridges are independent 

of the existing wooden catwalk system, 

he adds. 

The bridles are attached to the wood 

beams via 300 or so U-shaped steel brackets 

One of the first tasks was to install over 250 steel brackets to the 

existing wooden structure to support the aluminum grid. 

that slip around the beam and are secured via 

12-by-1-inch thick steel bolts. Wells says there 

were 1,200 holes drilled during the process. 

Xtreme supplied the steel brackets that 

attached to the beams and the truss, while 

Athletic Performance Rigging and Atlanta 

Rigging Systems put together the cables 

and the bridles. 

While the engineering and fabrication 

teams were steaming ahead, the Tacoma 

Dome management folks were finding the 

time on the schedule to get the install done. 

“We had a grid in the building. It was as small 

38 


The new catwalk system allows riggers to walk to any point on the grid. There are four access points, one on each corner. 

Steel brackets wrap around the beams, secured to the wood with 12- by 1-inch thick steel bolts to support the aluminum truss. 

as 80 by 100 feet on the east end and we 

didn’t want to jeopardize events that we already 

had on the books, but we knew we had 

to fit it in,” Davis reports. “We found a space 

of time where we had very few events that 

would use the grid and then we dropped it.” 

The work started in June, continued in 

August and was completed in December. 

One of the challenges was removing the 

“spider web” of cables that was holding the 

existing grid. That took a week. “There was a 

lot of demo,” Wells recalls. “One of the problems 

with this dome is that you had to rig off 

of the dome, and no two points were at the 

same elevation, because it’s a curved structure. 

So, there was a lot of cable that was just 

left hanging from the dome, I mean, hundreds 

of cables. It was a huge mess up there.” 

The next step included taking down the 

grid, installing the brackets and rigging. The 

third phase, which was done over 10 days, 

was constructing and hanging the new grid. 

The final step was installing the fall protection 

lines and the bridges. 

The final phase was completed right before 

Christmas. Davis admits the rush wasn’t so 

much about the holiday season as it was the 

desire to get it done as fast as possible. “The 

longer we went without it the fewer shows we 

could do and the less opportunity we had to 

have different concerts coming in,” she says. “It 

was costing us money not to have it, because 

we didn’t want to impact the artists.” 

The advantages of this grid are many, 

Wells says. “First of all, they have a completely 

level, flat grid that’s trimmed out at 85 feet. 

That’s going to provide them with more than 

enough headroom for any show that comes 

into that building,” he says. “Then the access 

— to be able to walk up a stairway out onto 

the grid and immediately start dropping 

lines, with the right crew you could rig 200 

points in one day. A 200 point show before 

would take four days of rigging and they 

would have had to rent the boom buckets 

and those are expensive.” 

Indeed, Davis points out that the venue 

has already felt the positive impact of the install. 

“We’ve had a couple of events that would 

have had points coming off our old grid,” she 

explains. “We had a Strike Force Mixed Martial 

Arts event that was in the round and I don’t 

know if we would have done it as well without 

the new grid. One of the ways we were 

able to book Celine Dion for October was to 

guarantee that it would be in.” 

This, Davis says, is the first part of the venue’s 

upgrades. In fact, by April they will be upgrading 

the curtains, trusses and motors. “We 

are a 22,000 seat building and we want to be 

able to go down to 5,000 seats,” she says. “With 

the curtains, trusses and motors we’ll be able 

to close off the upper deck as one piece and 

have a curtain backdrop.” 



ROAD TEST 


Strong Technobeam: Now Even Stronger 



“Any time I can get 

over 100 footcandles 

of white 

light, assuming I can 

control the ambient 

lighting, then I’m 

happy…” 

The new logo caught me by surprise. 

Though I knew Strong had recently 

purchased the rights to build and 

sell the Technobeam from its former 

manufacturer, High End Systems, it didn’t 

really fully register. But when I took it out 

of the box, grabbing it by its two handles, 

and set it down on the floor standing on 

end, there it was, staring me in the face. 

The Strong logo on the mirror end of the 

fixture is a stark reminder of the new 

manufacturer. The question is, is it the 

same fixture? 

Familiar Look, Familiar Feel 

RT 

From all outward appearances it 

seems that it is the same fixture. The 34” 

long, 16” wide and 13” high fixture (with 

the yoke) still has the familiar black polycarbonate 

housing (although it’s available 

in white upon request) with the 

sleek-looking rounded mirror head. The 

two side handles make it easy to carry 

and the bottom of the fixture allows it to 

stand upright. The polycarbonate helps 

keep its weight down to a very manageable 

41 pounds. 

One of the original advancements in 

this fixture when it first came out was the 

optical efficiency. The patented two-piece 

combination elliptical/spherical reflector 

was designed to capture as much light as 

possible from the MSD 250 lamp while 

offering the optical clarity of a spherical 

reflector design, and it is still on par with 

the current technology. 

The manufacturer may have changed, 

but little else has. It still has seven great 

looking Lithopatterns and 11 dichroic 

colors plus a CTO and an open no color. 

The quality of the etched glass patterns 

and the richly saturated colors remains 

consistent with the original product and 

the colors are well chosen to provide a 

good range of color without choking 

the light output. The dark magenta and 

indigo colors are really nice looking. The 

Lithopatterns are also noteworthy for 

their great colors, especially the psychedelic 

TB-Lumoil and the rich red Technowedges, 

and their grayscale depth and 

textures. The optical system provides the 

“The manufacturer may have changed, but 

little else has.” 

sharpness that makes these glass gobos 

nice and crisp. The effects wheel includes 

a 5-facet rotating prism, lenticular glass, 

“slow glass,” and a frost filter. 

Still Packs a Punch 

RT 

Using a Minolta T-10 Illuminance meter 

I measured the illuminance with a 

40-foot throw at 129.6 footcandles. Any 

time I can get over 100 footcandles of 

white light, assuming I can control the 

ambient lighting, then I’m happy because 

I can always dim my other sources 

or zoom them to their biggest beam angle 

to match the intensity of all the other 

sources. This particular measure was done 

with the narrowest beam angle of 11°, 

which produced a spot that was 7 feet 

8 inches in diameter. And that brings up 

another nice feature of this light, namely 

the manual zoom. In a perfect world every 

light would have a remote zoom, but 

that’s not the reality. The second best scenario 

is to be able to manually adjust the 

zoom when you need a different beam 

angle. In this case, you can adjust it by 

opening the access door, popping open 

the lens tube, and moving the adjustable 

lens to another position. I did it with the 

light on, though I wouldn’t necessarily 

endorse that method. 

Accoutrements 

RT 

In addition to the features already 

mentioned, the Technobeam also has 

split colors, color spins and scans, an iris 

with macros, remote focus, shutter with 

macros, dimmer and 28 macros. The dimmer 

looks smooth but it’s not entirely uniform 

from the perspective of watching it 

projected on a wall. But dimming a white 

spot on a wall is seldom the way it’s used. 

The pan and tilt is very smooth and fast 

— it can pan 180º in less than a second — 

and slow diagonal movements are very 

graceful. The shutter strobes well, if a bit 

slow by today’s standards. It’s a mechanical 

strobe as opposed to an electronic 

strobe, and once you’ve become accustomed 

to electronic strobes anything else 

seems slow by comparison. 

All in all, the Technobeam is still a fine 

lighting instrument. It provides plenty of 

light for many applications with throws 

of up to 40 feet. The colors and projections 

are well designed and they present 

bright, colorful, sharp images. The moving 

mirror means that it can pan and tilt 

quickly but it also does slow movements 

very well. It has plenty of effects to keep 

the show fresh and interesting while offering 

a variety of looks. And it doesn’t 

take a behemoth to rig it and troupe it. 

Strong Entertainment Lighting has 

chosen a proven product with which to 

launch into the automated lighting market. 

Their 75 years in the business and 

reputation for reliable products are in 

good hands. 

What it is: moving mirror automated 

luminaire 

Who it’s for: anyone who needs an 

automated profile fixture for throws 

of up to 40 or 50 feet 

Pros: small, bright, fast, relatively inexpensive, 

great effects and colors, 

lots of features 

Cons: no remote zoom, some nonuniformity 

in the dimming, mechanical 

strobing 

Retail Price: POA 

40 


When we started putting together our 

March Buyer’s Guide, we were a bit 

surprised by the results. Our original 

idea was to create a guide for a segment of 

conventional lights including cyc lights, striplights, 

and borderlights. We put out a call to 

manufacturers and when the results came 

back, we found two things: (a) there are few 

manufacturers of conventional cyc lights, 

borderlights, and striplights, and (b) each of 

them also gave us information about their 

LED products as well. 

In this age of rapidly advancing LED technology, 

it’s not out of the question to wonder 

whether or not LEDs will ever replace conventional 

lighting. Everybody, it seems, is 

jumping on the LED bandwagon. Philips recognized 

the importance of LEDs several years 

ago when they bought shares of Lumileds, a 

manufacturer and developer of LED products. 

Their commitment to the technology was 

confirmed when they bought Color Kinetics 

last year. Other manufacturers have followed. 

Martin Professional A/S was recently awarded 

a technology grant from the Danish National 

Advanced Technology Foundation (Højteknologifonden) 

for the development of new 

LED technologies, and even conventional 

lighting stalwart Altman has an assortment 


Lights, Borderlights, Striplights, Multi-circuit Lights 


of LED products. That’s the proverbial tip of 

the iceberg. 

LEDs have their place, and their place 

seems to be expanding by the day. But 

there are still some hurdles they have to 

clear to become even more mainstream. 

They are still more expensive than conventional 

lights, although they are dropping 

in price steadily. The cost of operation is 

also much lower than conventional lights 

but that’s seldom taken into full account 

because it’s not readily apparent and it’s 

somewhat dependent on the current price 

of electricity and the efficiency of the HVAC 

system. Secondly, it remains to be seen 

whether or not an LED point source can 

ever be bright enough and cool enough to 

be used effectively in a hard edge projection 

fixture. There’s also the issue of how 

to make LED fixtures dim as smoothly as 

conventional fixtures. And lastly, it’s still up 

for debate whether or not an LED fixture 

can ever match the color rendering of an 

incandescent source and whether they can 

match the variety of color available with 

an incandescent source and the currently 

available range of gels. I’ve seen one particular 

fixture that I think does an excellent 

job, but I’m not a Broadway designer. 

The question of how dominant LED 

sources will become probably hinges, to a 

certain degree, on three things: GE Lighting’s 

High Efficiency Incandescent technology, 

the tungsten lattice technology, and David 

Cunningham’s patented incandescent technology, 

all of which promise to raise the efficiency 

of the incandescent lamp to levels 

that are competitive with today’s discharge 

lamps and perhaps even higher. Although 

these technologies exist on paper, there have 

been no public exhibitions, to my knowledge, 

of any prototypes. Hopefully, that will soon 

change. In the meanwhile, LEDs continue to 

make gains on the incandescent lamp. 

Here are the latest offerings from some 

manufacturers of striplights, borderlights, cyc 

lights and multi-circuit lights, including some 

with LED sources. 

BUYERS GUIDE 

PixelRange PixelLine 1044 RGB linear LED batten 

Lighting & Electronics Runt 

Elation Professional’s Design LED 60 Strip 




BUYERS GUIDE 

Manufacturer/web 

address 

Model Description Light Source(s) Construction 

Compliance 

(UL, CUL, CE, 

etc) 

Field Angle 

(single cell) 

Beam Angle 

(single cell) 

Candelas 

(single cell) 

Field Lumens 

(single cell) 

Spectra Cyc (SC-1) 

new DMX512-controlled colorchanging 

LED, ground/sky cyclorama 

RGBA LED 

aircraft grade sheet 

aluminum 

UL, cUL and CE 

pending 

n/a n/a n/a n/a 

Focusing Cyc (FC-1) ground and sky cyclorama luminaire 300-1500W QT3, QT4, QT5, QT6 

die-cast & aircraft 

grade sheet aluminum 

106º x 104º 95º x 101º 16,000 29,664 

Altman Lighting 

altmanlighting. 

com 

Sky Cyc 

Ground Cyc (GC-*) 

multi-lamp compartmented "sky" 

mount cyclorama light available in five 

configurations 

multi-lamp compartmented ground 

mount cyclorama light intended as a 

ground row 

1000 or 1500W QT3, QT4 

300-1000W QT3, QT4 

die-cast aluminum and 

sheet steel 


aluminum 

UL, cUL, CE 

108º x 107º 100º x 105º 10,924 25,709 

70º x 83º 50º x 65º 8100 12,375 

Econo Cyc (EC-1) 

cost reduced, multiple hanging and 

mounting configuration cyclorama light 

300-2000W QT3, QT4, QT5, QT6, 

QT8 


aluminum 

106º x 104º 95º x 101º 32,600 41,040 

Coemar 

Color Kinetics 

colorkinetics.com 

Striplight LED 

linear LED striplight with RGB color 

mixing 

10, 12, 20 or 24 LEDs (4 models) 

in RGB or RGBW 

n/a n/a n/a 30° n/a n/a 

Razorlight LED linear LED batten w/ RGB color mixing 36 1W RGB LEDs n/a n/a 12°x24° n/a n/a 

ColorBlaze 48 

ColorBlaze 72 

linear LED color mixing wash fixture 

144 LEDs (48 red, 48 green, 48 

blue) extruded aluminum w/ 

mounting brackets 

216 LEDs (72 red, 72 green, 72 

blue) 

UL/cUL, CE, PSE 

n/a 10° 

44,140 2282 

56,898 3532 

Design LED 60 Strip 

68" LED strip w/ RGB color mixing 

60 x 1W Luxeon LEDs (20 R, 20 

G, 20 B) 


Elation 

Professional 

ElationLighting. 

com 

Design LED 60 Strip WA 

ELED Strip 50 RGB 

68" LED strip w/ white and amber LEDs 

15W RGB LED Strip w/ RGB color mixing 

60 x 1W Luexeon LEDs - (40 

White, 20 Amber) 

15 x 1W LEDs (5 Red, 5 Green, 

5 Blue) 



ELED Strip 100 

30W RGB LED Strip w/ RGB color mixing 

and pixel control 

30 x 1W LEDs (10 Red, 10 Green, 

10 Blue) 


ETC 

etcconnect.com 

Source Four MultiPAR 

multi-unit Source Four PAR fixture 

available in 3-, 4-, and 12-cell units 

HPL 750/115; HPL 750/115X; 

HPL 750/120; HPL 750/230; HPL 

750/230X; HPL 750/240; HPL 

750/240X; HPL 575/115; HPL 

575/115X; HPL 575/120; HPL 

575/120X; HPL 575/230; HPL 

575/230X; HPL 575/240; HPL 

575/240X; HPL 550/77; HPL 

550/77X; HPL 375/115; HPL 

375/115X; HPL 375/230X; HPL 

375/240X 

Die cast and 

extruded aluminum 

construction; Sturdy 

sheet metal steel 

parts; Spring loaded 

gel frames; Eight-inch 

centered lamps; Toolfree 

lens and lamp 

access 

UL, cUL 

15, 19, 22x30, 

or 32x47 (lens 

dependent) 

9, 10, 12x18, 

or 17x27 (lens 

dependent) 

63,300-330,00 

(lens 

dependant) 

10,100-10,800 

(lens 

dependent) 

Broad Cyc 

Runt 

Cyc light that accepts various (T) lamps 

housed in an aluminum reflector. 

Cyc light that accepts 4-11/16" MOL (T) 

lamps housed in an aluminum reflector. 

EHM, EHZ, FCL, FCZ, FDF, FDN, 

FCM/HIR, EJG, EMD, FCM, FHM, 

FFT/HIR, FFT, FDB, FGT, FFW welded code gauge 

steel 


FCM/HIR, EJG, EMD 

UL, c-UL, CE 

95° horiz, 86° 

vert 

72° 

n/a 28,000 

n/a 20,600 

Lighting & 

Electronics 

le-us.com 

Echo 

Feed through cyc light available 

in 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, & 6-cell continuous 

configurations. 


FCM/HIR, EJG, EMD, FCM, FFT/ 

HIR, FFT 

extruded aluminum & 

steel construction 

ETL, cETL n/a 28,000 

Ministrip 

Nanostrip 

MR16 striplight used where masking 

must be kept to a minimum. 

MR11 striplight used where masking 

must be kept to a minimum. 

FRB, FRA, FMW, EXT, EXZ, EXN, 

FNV, EYF, EYJ, EYC, EYF, EYJ, EYC 

FTB, FTC, FTD, FTE, FTF, FTH 

welded code gauge 

steel. 

UL, cUL 

74° w/ EYC 

lamp 

45° w/ FTH 

lamp 

40° w/ EYC lamp n/a n/a 

30° w/ FTH lamp na n/a 

PixelRange 

pixelrange.com 

Pulsar 

Pulsarlight.com 

PixelLine 1044 RGB Linear LED batten 1044 red, green, and blue LEDs 

PixelLine 110 

ChromaBatten 300 

Chromabank Mk2 

RGBA Linear LED batten 

linear LED batten w/ RGB color mixing 

LED lighting bar 

110 red, green, and blue Luxeon 

LEDs 

108 LEDs (36 1W red, 36 3W 

green, 36 3W blue) 

960 LEDs (324 red, 420 green, 

216 blue) 

UL, CE n/a 20° 11,046 1622 (in white) 

all metal construction 

CE n/a 6° 12,305 2751 (in white) 

metal IP65 enclosure 

n/a 10° or 25° n/a n/a 

ETL, CE 

metal n/a 10°/20°/20°x90° n/a n/a 

X7-XTRA 62 

228 3W Luxeon III and Luxeon 

K2 LEDs 

n/a 

n/a 

n/a 

Selador 

Selador.net 

X7-XTRA 41 

X7 48 

linear 7-color LED batten 

152 3W Luxeon III and Luxeon 

K2 LEDs 

128 1W Luxeon LEDs (red, redorange, 

amber, green, cyan, 

blue, indigo) 

Powder-coated 

steel and anodized 

aluminum in matte 

black; custom colors 

available by special 

order 

UL 

n/a 12° 

n/a n/a 

n/a n/a n/a 

X7 72 

192 1W Luxeon LEDs (red, redorange, 

amber, green, cyan, 

blue, indigo) 

n/a n/a n/a 

Times Square 

Lighting 

tslight.com 

Sunset Strip 75-watt 

MR16 

Series 702 

Multi-compartment MR16 striplight 

available in 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-circuit 

versions. Low profile for tight spaces 

where wash light is desired. 

Multi-lamp fixture for general wash 

manufactured in portable lengths of 6', 

7-1/2' and 8'. 

FMT/FG; FMV/FG; FMW/FG; EXT/ 

FG; EXZ/FG; EXN/FG; EYF/FG; 

EYJ/FG; EYC/FG 

90PAR38/SP; 90PAR38/FL; 

120PAR38/SP; 120PAR38/FL; 

Q250PAR38/SP; Q250PAR38/FL 

welded steel 

construction 

UL/CUL 

64-degrees 

75-watt EYC/FG 

30-degrees 

Q250PAR38 

14-degrees 75-watt 

EYF/FG 

10-degrees 

Q250PAR38/FL 

n/a 

n/a 

n/a 

3600 lumens 

Q250PAR38/ 

SP or FL 

42 



Illuminance (footcandles or lux) 

with 10' diameter field 

Weight Dimensions Retail Price Comments 

dependent upon color 10 lbs/cell 12" x 10" x 6.5" + yoke $1775/ cell 

Made in USA; on-board power supply and DMX512 interface; includes safety cable, feet, yoke and 

keypad for stand-alone 

40fc @ 20' 10.5 lbs./cell 16" x 12" x 9" plus yoke $493/ cell 

Made in USA; patented pivot-focus mechanism; includes color frame, safety cable, safety screen & 

tool-less interconnect device/latch 

35fc @ 20' 10-18 lbs. per cell as per configuration $390/cell 

Made in USA; 1-cell, 2H, 2V, 3H or 2x2 units available; includes color frame, safety cable, safety screen 

and pipe clamp 

20fc @ 20' 13.5 lbs/cell 12"x9"x8.5" per cell $340/cell 

Made in USA; 1 to 12-cell units available; includes color frame, safety cable, safety screen & floor 

trunnions 

57fc @ 20' 9.5 lbs/cell 16" x 12" x 9" plus yoke $290/cell 

Made in USA; includes color frame, safety cable, safety screen & tool-less interconnect device/latch 

n/a 

18 lbs 

19.68"L, 24"L, 39.36"L or 48"L 

x3.84"x3.72" 

n/a 

Optional 20° or 110° lenses available 

n/a 16.9 lbs 39.36"x24"x44.64" n/a Optional lenses available for various beam angles 

205fc@10' 40 lbs 45.1"x8.97"x7.73" 

200fc@10' 60 lbs 68.6"x8.97"x7.73" 

n/a 

Color Kinetics "Optibin" optimization process minimizes effects of LED variance by proprietary 

binning for optimal uniformity of color. Incorporates power on board. Controllable in 6" increments. 

5.7fc @ 10' 24 lbs (10.5 kgs) 68" x 8.5" x 3.25" $2,199.95 

9.2fc @ 10' 24 lbs (10.5 kgs) 68" x 8.5" x 3.25" $2,199.95 

LEDs rated 100,000 hours average; 8 built-in programs; individual LED control via DMX; sound 

control via built-in mic 

11.2fc @ 10' 

7 lbs (3.2 kgs) 22.5" x 6.25" x 4.25" $599.95 

LEDs rated at 50,000 hours average; 5 control modes: sound-active, macro, auto, auto speed adjust, 

DMX 

8 lbs (5.4 kgs) 41.5" x 4" x 6" $1,199.95 LEDs rated at 50,000 hours average; 4 control modes: DMX, preset, RGB, sound-active 

132fc @ 50' (VNSP) 125fc @ 50' (NSP) 

128fc @ 35' (MFL) 101fc @ 25' (WFL) 

MultiPAR-3: 30lbs w/ yoke 



8.3"Hx12"D MultiPAR-3: 24.5"L 

MultiPAR-4: 32.5"L MultiPAR-12: 

96.6"L 

P.O.A. 

Patented filament geometry provides efficient light collection and transmission; four heat resistant, 

molded borosilicate glass lenses supplied for each lamp cell: VNSP, NSP, MFL, WFL; tool-free lens 

changing; modified parabolic and multi-faceted reflector; enhanced aluminum deposition process; 

integral heat sink fins designed into reflector and body casting for thermal control 

n/a 11 lbs 10-1/4"x11-7/8"x8" $296.00 One unit can be field configured into a multiple unit striplight. 

n/a 6 lbs 7-5/8"x9"x6-1/8" $253.00 Field configureable into multiple light units using an integral sliding joiner bracket. 

n/a 9.5 lbs 7.81"x10.31"x12" $300.00 

n/a 45 lbs 5"x5-1/2"x50-3/4" $1,072.00 

Neon indicator lamps provide viewing without de-focusing the unit & wired in parallel with each 

lamp pair to indicate lamp failure. 

n/a 10 lbs 8 oz 3-1/2"x4-1/2"x21-1/4" $328.00 

73fc@10' in white 26.9 w/ yoke 46.5"Lx3.25"x6.5" (w/o yoke) n/a 

123fc@10' in white 25.8 w/ yoke 46.5"Lx3.25"x6.5" (w/o yoke) n/a 

Optional light shaping diffusion lenses available in 10, 20, 30, 40, and 60x1 or 1x60° 

n/a n/a n/a n/a 

n/a 23.1 lbs 52"x8.5"x5.3" n/a Included accessories: 15˚ (clear), 20˚ (frosted), 20˚x90˚ (reeded) and very wide angle (Quadlightpipe) 

n/a 

58 lbs w/o mounting hardware 

69.1"x7.1"x9.91" (w/ mounting 

hardware) 

n/a 

n/a 

n/a 


46.6"x7.1"x9.91" (w/ mounting 

hardware) 

n/a 

n/a 

Adjustable correlated color temperature from 800K to 20,000K; CRI from 87 to 90 for white; beam 

spreading lenses available in 14 standard patterns; standard lenses control vertical and horzontal 

beam spreads independently in 10-degree increments, 20° to 80° in each direction. 

n/a 


69.1"x7.1"x9.91" (w/ mounting 

hardware) 

n/a 

110 footcandles at 10' - 75-watt EYF/ 

FG 

1-circuit 16 lbs; 2-circuit 30 lbs; 

3-circuit 45 lbs; 4-circuit 58 lbs 

1-circuit 4-3/4" x 6" x 24-1/2"; 

2-circuit 4 3/4" x 6" x 49"; 3-circuit 

4 3/4" x 6" x 73 1/4"; 4-circuit 4 

3/4" x 6" x 97 5/8" 

n/a 

Custom trunnions allow multiple units to be linked together providing support and full rotation at 

each link. 

90 footcandles at 10' - Q250PAR38/FL 6' - 47 lbs; 8' - 57 lbs 

6' - 7-3/8"x9-3/8"x72"; 8- 7-3/8"x9- 

3/8"x96" 

n/a 

Available in custom lengths and circuitry. 


VITAL STATS 


Inner Circle Distribution 

A sit down with Nick Freed, Noel Duncan, and Gary Mass 

By KevinMitchell 

BUSINESS 

Who: Nick Freed, president; Noel Duncan, 

vice president; and Gary Mass, vice president 

of business development. 

What: A full-service distributor of entertainment 

lighting products for professionals. 

Where: Sunrise, Florida 

When: December 4, 2004, when Freed, 

Duncan, and Mass decided to start ICD over 

some beers in Duncan’s driveway 

First gig: Duncan and Mass did the Boca 

Pops with Garret Sound in 1987, and vaguely 

remembering getting about $50 each 

Current clients of note include: 

Genesis, The Police, New York City’s New 

42nd Street project (exterior lighting), 

American Idol, Maroon 5, Martina McBride, 

and Garth Brooks 

I knew I wanted to do this when …. 

Freed: “I saw The Song Remains the Same. 

Immediately after that I begged my mom 

for a Les Paul guitar. As it turns out, you 

had to have a full head of hair and be able 

to sing a high note! Therefore, lighting 

was the next best option.” 

Career Low Point: Duncan: “I was working 

a show at the Miami Marine Stadium, 

which was a floating barge in Biscayne 

Bay. We took for granted that we were 

loading in at high tide. Needless to say, 

the show ended at low tide and the ramps 

were then inclined at a 45-degree angle. 

This presented problems, as none of the 

gear had wheels! Me and the volunteer 

help worked a five-hour load out trying 

to heave everything up over the sea wall. 

“There is nothing more satisfying than setting 

out to reach a goal, then exceeding your own 

expectations.” 

— Gary Mass, vice president of business development 

‘No-See-Em’s,’ vicious bugs, were involved. 

I got paid $100, minus taxes of course.” 

Career high point: Mass: “I had the chance 

to start this company. There is nothing more 

satisfying than setting out to reach a goal, 

then exceeding your own expectations.” 

Coolest New Toy: Freed: “The Infinity Wash 

XL, from Coemar.” 

PERSONAL 

Home front: Freed: Girlfriend Sidney, daughter 

Taylor, and cats Duper and Clayton 

Duncan: Wife Leslie and daughters 

Kristina and Brianna 

Mass: Wife Emma and daughter 

Isabella 

Island sounds “mon:” All confirm 

they are all currently on a huge 

Island kick, and especially fond of 

Damian Marley. 

If I could be someone famous 

for a day, it would be…. Freed: 

“Gordie Howe. Hands down, 

the greatest hockey player of 

all time.” 

My greatest fear is…. Mass: “Being 

99.9% positive” 

If I could go back in time and 

tell my younger self one thing, 

it would be: Duncan: “Don’t be 

afraid to talk to the women that you 

thought wouldn’t talk to you!” 

People might be surprised to 

know: “ICD has a mirror ball from 

a Product of the Year Award years 

ago, that each salesman covets 

for the ‘Biggest P.O. of the Day.’ 

This award can be taken one day 

for a $500,000 purchase order, 

and lost for $1,000 the next. Either 

way, we proudly display and 

protect this object.” 

Words to live by: “If you ain’t first, 

you’re last!” 

Noel Duncan, ICD vice president 

Nick Freed, ICD president 

Gary Mass, ICD vice president of business development 

Garth Brooks performs The American Idol set The Police on tour 

The 

Event Production Directory 

is now available online! 

The Industry’s #1 Directory 

Is Now the Industry’s 

#1 Searchable Databasee 

www.EPDweb.com 

24/7 access to 1,000s 

of companies 

The EPD is used year-round by: 

Event Producers Touring Shows Corporate Producers 

Rental Companies Production Managers Fairs & Festivals 

Promoters Production Companies Production personnel 

Facility Managers Personal Managers Producers 

Basically, anyone who is involved in 

live event production will use the EPD.

Video, Lighting Multiply 

Impact of BBC’s One and Only 

Hitting the Road with 

“American Man” Trace Adkins 

XL Touring is providing 80 Barco D7 tiles for the eight-week tour. 

LONDON — BBC’s One and Only, a talent search 

for a top tribute artist, is weaving together scenic 

video and lighting effects to enhance the illusion 

that the audience is watching real celebrities ranging 

from Frank Sinatra to Kylie Minogue. 

Lighting designer Mark Kenyon worked closely 

with set designer Patrick Doherty to devise the visual 

look and feel of the show, aired on Saturdays in prime 

time. He’s also working with three recently upgraded 

BBC’s talent search for tribute artists uses three Catalyst digital media servers. 

Catalyst digital media servers to create the various 

scenic video and lighting effects for show. 

“We wanted to make it big, bold, poppy, glamorous 

and exciting,” Kenyon said. “Using Catalysts 

to drive various video surfaces gives us exactly 

the dynamics we need.” He added that both set 

and lighting also have to be extremely versatile 

to adjust to the vastly different stylistic range of 

artists being emulated. 


BANGOR, ME — Hitting the road has its adventures and 

hardships, but XL Touring Video, which is joining Trace Adkins 

on his 2008 American Man Tour, is not likely to hear too many 

complaints from the country singer-songwriter. 

A lot of country music stars have a rugged persona, but 

Trace Adkins has a personal history to match. If his left hand 

looks a little odd, it’s because he lost his pinky finger in an oilrig 

accident, and he asked doctors to reattach the finger at an 

angle so he could still be able to play the guitar. 

XL is providing 80 Barco D7 tiles during the eight-week 

tour. Steve Owens is lighting designer and Kyle Brinkman is 

XLTV’s LED tech. Josh Huffman, XLTV’s Project Manager, said, 

“We are excited to be working with Steve Owens again…his 

design as well as this tour has gone off without a hitch.” 

The cross country tour kicked off Jan. 24th in Bangor, ME., 

and wraps up March 16th in Fairfax, VA. 

Projected Images Join the Ride on Rio Ferris Wheel 

A trio of 25K projectors light up an 118-foot high Ferris 

wheel in Rio de Janeiro. 

RIO DE JANEIRO — Ferris wheels are attention 

getting, particularly when they’re lit up 

at night. Images projected by a trio of Christie 

Roadie 25K DLP units onto a 100-foot diameter 

projection surface from a 39-foot scaffolding 

tower nearby are taking that visual draw up a 

few turns. 

The Ferris wheel, on Rio’s Copacabana 

beach, flashes images projected with a total 

75,000 ANSI lumens spanning the 154-foot gap 

from the tower to the Ferris wheel’s projection 

surface. 


48 

56 

Inside... 

L’arte from la mort 

A 26,000 square-meter building in Paris, 

long synonymous with death, is being 

reborn as an artistically lit cultural Mecca. 

Feeding the Machines 

A comprehensive automated lighting backup 

plan can be costly, but for major events like the 

Olympics, complete redundancy is a must. 


NEWS 


Toyota Unveils 2009 Venza and A-BAT with LED Video 

DETROIT — Toyota chose the 2008 

North American International Auto 

Show (NAIAS) in Detroit to unveil its 

2009 Toyota Venza and Toyota A-BAT, 

but the technical innovations on display 

were not entirely automotive in nature. 

The unveiling was supported with full 

video, dynamic color transitions and virtual 

scenery made possible through Creative 

Technology (CT), a major provider of audio, 

video and staging solutions, and Daktronics 

Inc., using Daktronics’ PT-4 modular LED 

video display technology, recently added 

to the ProTour product line. 

The 2009 Toyota models were both were 

unveiled at Cobo’s Riverview Ballroom during 

the NAIAS event. Event marketing company 

George P. Johnson Co. and CT equipped 

the stage with PT-4 modular LED video 

displays. “The product’s high contrast level and 

Video screens show off Toyota’s latest models at the NAIAS show in Detroit. 

quiet design made it the ideal choice for 

the event,” said Jeff Meyer, general manager, 

CT Chicago. 

The modular panels were built to 

form two 3x5 meter video screens. 

The screens displayed corporate logos, 

graphics and video content to a 

full room of attendees during Toyota’s 

opening press conference. “The client 

was impressed with the image detail 

shown on the screens and the overall 

quality of the displays,” said Meyer. 

With its image processing capabilities, 

picture quality, LED layout for contrast 

and fanless design for silent operation, 

the PT-4 was well suited to the 

event. The Daktronics PT-4 joins other 

ProTour models, including the Daktronics 

PT-6, PT-8, PT-10 and PT-13 modular LED 

video display systems. 


Video, Lighting 

Multiply Impact of 

BBC’s One and Only 


Several layers of video give Kenyon and 

the show’s director a varied array of narrative 

images. Camels, roads, mountains, cityscapes, 

water, rain and thousands of ambient 

and abstract effects are all at their fingertips. 

The Catalyst-driven video and digital 

lighting effects appear on five main surfaces 

around the studio. At the rear of the set are 

two curved surfaces made from the new 

Martin Professional LC2140 panels. There are 

a total of 28 of these 2 x 1 meter panels, with 

a 40mm pitch. 

The central screen — masked by the set 

to appear round — is made up of Barco 6 

mm high res LED panels. A 25mm video wall 

under the circular stage floor also receives 

Catalyst input. 

The fourth Catalyst driven area includes 

six curved scenic fins strategically positioned 

around the stage perimeter, filled with semitransparent 

Barco MiTrix modules. 

Catalyst also drives a series of four ChromaQ 

ColorWeb borders rigged above the 

stage. The furthest downstage has a 2-meter 

drop and the other three have a 1-meter 

drop. These mask the studio roof from where 

the audience sits and appear as sparkling, 

animated banners. 

One Catalyst machine is dedicated to the 

ColorWeb and capitalizes on the system’s PixelMad 

pixel-mapping capabilities, outputting 

14 streams of DMX sent via Artnet from the 

gallery back to the control position. 

The second and third Catalysts, each 

capable of running on 12 layers and outputting 

10 streams of DMX, drive the LC, the 

MiTrix fins, the 6mm central screen and the 

25mm video floor. 

Kenyon and lighting designer/director 

Will Charles were early adopters among TV 

lighting designers to use Catalyst systems. 

They now have three machines that are 

used regularly and upgraded frequently. 

Catalyst reseller Projected Image Digital 

supplied the systems. Roger Williams operates 

the Catalysts used for the show with 

a Compulite Vector lighting console. Mark 

Nicholson, Rob Bradley and Julia Smith 

round out the visual team. 

The lighting includes over 150 moving 

lights and additional LED sources. That equipment 

and the video LED for the show were 

supplied by a combination of two rental companies 

— RML and Finelight. The MiTrix, the 

Barco 6mm screen and the 25 mm LED ensconced 

in the floor were supplied by CT. 




NEWS 


Funeral Services Locale Gets New Life as Arts Space 

Le Cent Quatre (104) preview visitors trigger randomly projected images as they walk through the new art space. 

PARIS — A new international arts space, Le 

Cent Quatre (104), won’t be opening until this 

fall. But during a two-day preview called “La 

Traversee,” some 10,000 visitors got a sneak 

peak at the revamped building’s interior. And 

while the building is still mostly empty, innovative 

lighting accented the visual interest of 

the building’s many architectural details. 

From 1874 to 1997, the structure’s 26,000 

square meters had served as the main center 

for Parisians who needed to make funeral arrangements. 

With the provocative use of color, 

video cameras and projected video shows, 

lighting designer Jean-François Touchard 

brought the arcade-style interior to life. 

Along with the use of colors and textures, 

Touchard created shadow play and other 

ephemeral lighting effects in the building’s 

interior, which is enclosed by a glass ceiling. 

Touchard worked closely with Pierre-Yves 

Toulot, director of Cosmo AV, which produced 

the video content for the event. 

The main video feature used two of E/T/C 

Paris’s Christie 20K HD video projectors. These 

were controlled by E/T/C’s OnlyView 3 multimedia 

control platform and were used to project 

Cosmo AV’s footage onto the back wall of 

the space, which measures 14 by 20 meters. 

Positioned on 5-meter high platforms 

about 30 meters away from the back wall, 

the projectors ran up to eight 20-second sequences, 

each of which were stored as shows 

on the two OnlyView servers. Guests walking 

through four pools of light further down the 

hall would randomly trigger the shows. 

Touchard created the 1-square meter 

pools of light by using four tightly shuttered 

profile spots. Each one had a camera rigged 

above it, linked via MIDI running on a Mac 

Book Pro, to a MA Lighting GrandMA console, 

which in turn fired the OnlyView 3 that was 

running the video loops. 

In between the triggered shows, the 

projectors defaulted to a show consisting of 

white-on-black images mirroring the building’s 

architectural structure. Cosmo AV animated 

these images in a way that would give 

visitors the illusion of backward or forward 

movement through the arcade. 

Cosmo AV’s Toulot opted against traditional 

video editing software to achieve this 

effect. Instead, he took a series of still images 

and animated them in OnlyView, relying on 

key frame animations, dynamic warping and 

other software features to build the show. 

Others from Cosmo AV who worked 

on the project included two video designers, 

Rodolfo Saavedra and Xavier Mailliez, 

OnlyView programmer Joseph Christiani 

and producer Jacques Nougaret. 

“For this job, we also needed a system 

that could be MIDI-triggered,” Nougaret 

said, adding that the OnlyView was flexible 

enough to run media in different formats, 

using a “countless” number of layers. 

Along with the effects created by the 

pools of light and video projections, an 

elevated gallery gets an added spatial dimension 

with a pool of water suspended 

by gangways on all four sides. Lighting and 

video projections can reflect off the “water 

mirror” below, and the glass ceiling above. 

E/T/C also supplied video equipment and 

plasma screens for several exterior video installations 

during “La Traversee” as well, including 

a Barco G5 projector for an interactive dance 

game at one of the building’s entrances. 

When it opens, curators Robert Cantarella 

and Frédéric Fisbach will be staging 

exhibitions of all types of art. The building 

will also be home to artist workshops and 

living quarters, screening rooms, theatre 

and studio spaces, and also retail space for 

restaurants and boutiques. 






LED Panels Create New Look for Finnish Talent Show 

A contestant performs on Talent Suomi. 

HELSINKI, Finland — Talent Suomi is the 

Finnish version of the “Talent” TV franchise 

(America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent, and 

so on). The series, filmed at Angel Studios, 

appeared last fall on the Nelonen network 

(channel 4) and wrapped up with the finals in 

December. LEDs played an important role in 

achieving the overall look of the show, and in 

keeping costs under control. 

“As always, the budget for lighting was not 

very big here, even for a big scale production,” 

said LD Teemu Pietiläinen of Martin distributor 

Electrosonic Lightinen Oy Ab of Finland. 

Fremantle Entertainment “agreed to use the 

Martin LC Series panels that I specified,” including 

“a 4- by 6-meter LC Series LED screen (12 LC 

2140 panels) at the back of the stage.” 

Pietiläinen, who also programmed the 

LC panels, said he chose them for their light 

weight and flexibility, but added that the 

panels’ transparency was the main factor 

in their choice. With LEDs encased in clear 

acrylic tubes, the LC screens are 60% transparent, 

and allow light, air and effects to pass 

through them. 

“The transparency gives you so many 

more advantages and possibilities,” he said. 

“You can place fixtures behind the LCs or 

throw some smoke through them. One quite 

interesting point was that they look like prison 

bars when they are lit from the top. We 

weren’t actually going for that but it was an 

interesting look. And of course everybody in 

Finland, LDs especially, were quite interested 

to see how they would perform on television 

with its lower resolution.” 

Teemu said that Juha-Matti Valtonen, the 

director of the show, liked the resolution of 

the panels. “We have of course seen those 

high resolution panels on TV,” Teemu says, 

“but the LC gives you such a nice effect on 

TV compared to them. You cannot actually 

see the pixels of the screen on close-up shots, 

but instead you see much larger ‘points,’ like 

coins, behind the performance and that is really 

something new. The color depth of the 

screen is absolutely fantastic.” 

The panels, which were used at only about 

30% intensity, performed well throughout 

the show. “We couldn’t drive the panels with 

their full power,” Pietiläinen said. “They really 

are bright. The strobe effect is powerful and 

quite nice as well.” 

With a familiar truss assembly, the panels 

were easy to assemble, and “it was quite simple 

to set up with the LC software,” Pietiläinen 

said. “The ease of installation is really amazing. 

It took only one hour for the guys to take the 

panels out of their cases, hang them on the 

truss and make the connections.” Each LC unit 

contained a switch mode power supply, plus 

a genlock feature, to minimize light-flicker 

when the screens are seen on TV broadcasts. 

Other Martin gear used on the show included 

10 MAC 2000 Profiles, 8 MAC TW1s, 6 

MAC 600s, 6 MAC 300s, 6 MAC 250 Entours 

and 4 Atomic 3000 strobes with a pair of 

Jem Glaciator providing a low lying carpet of 

heavy fog. Qualifying rounds featured 8 MAC 

TW1s and 4 MAC 2000 Profiles. 

A Hippotizer media server, placed behind 

the stage, was used to provide the digital 

media. Lighting control was from a GrandMA 

with lighting programming by Jani Toivola. 

All Martin gear was supplied by Finnish company 

Moving Light. 

NEWS 

Projected Images 

on Rio Ferris Wheel 


Along with 25,000 ANSI lumens, 

the projectors each offer HD+ (2048 x 

1080) resolution and 10-bit image processing. 

The Ferris wheel can hold up 

to 144 passengers, but they aren’t the 

only ones who can see the images. The 

projections are visible from miles away. 

They help draw customers to two bars 

at the base of the structure that offer 

games, dancing and dining. 

ON Projecoes, which handled the 

installation, is accredited by InfoComm 

International as a Certified AudioVisual 

Solutions Provider (CAVSP). The company 

also won an award for its giant, 

multi-screen display using 36 Christie 

projectors at the annual São Paulo 

Fashion Week, 2005 Winter Edition. 

Tieres Tavares, manager of ON Projecoes’ 

Miami office, noted challenges 

including the need to erect a temporary 

tower that could withstand the strong 

winds coming in from the bay. “Because 

of the location of the installation, it was 

important that we used quality projectors 

with a proven track record of performance,” 

said Tavares. “Christie projectors 

have an excellent reputation.” 



www.PLSN.com 

2008 March PLSN 49

NEW PRODUCTS 

Doremi GHX-10 

Doremi Labs’ new GHX-10 HD video cross converter 

features HDMI, DVI, and SDI connectors that 

allow for any input to be converted to any output 

format or scan rate. It supports SD and HD video 

and employs 12 bit bi-cubic interpolation. In addition 

to audio support, sync output and gunlock, the 

unit features dual-link SDI and 3Gb/s SDI connectors 

for 4:4:4 2K film resolution. It can be used as a computer DVI to HD-SDI converter, a HDMI resolution converter, 

or as a HD video upconverter or downconverter and much more. The GHX-10 supports up to 8 channels of AES, HDMI 

and SDI audio. 

Doremi Labs, Inc. • 818.562.1101 • www.doremilabs.com 

High End Systems DL.3 

High End Systems Inc.’s new DL.3 with integrated media server is 

equipped with a 6500-lumen, 3-chip LCD projector and features 2000:1 

contrast ratio, new optional lens accessories for longer throw projection 

applications and SDI input/output. Other new features include a DMXcontrolled 

vertical lens shift function and a large surface area, low noise 

HEPA filter to protect the projection optics from theatrical haze. Collage 

Generator enables arrays up to 8x8 to create seamless vertical, horizontal 

or central panoramic media projections controlled from a lighting 

console. The company has also expanded its royalty-free stock libraries 

with a greater selection of high-resolution still images and video footage. 

High End Systems, Inc. • 512.836.2242 • www.highend.com 

Mega-Lite Enigma Matrix LED Panels 

In late 2007, Mega-Lite introduced the Enigma Matrix 16mm and Enigma 

Matrix 20mm LED panels. Both products are used to display higher resolution 

media and video. The LED display panels are 30 by 20 by 9 inches and 

weigh 74 pounds, requiring only two people to install them. The weathersealed 

cabinet design gives the display panel an IP rating of 64 in the front 

and 54 in the rear, making it possible to be used outdoors. Each panel is capable 

of reproducing 1,536 real pixels and 6,144 virtual pixels. Applications 

include live video, set designs, outdoor billboards, stadium scoreboards and 

more. 

Mega-Lite • 210.684.2600 • www.mega-lite.com 

Sanyo PLC-XF47 LCD Projector 

Sanyo’s new PLC-XF47 LCD projector offers 15,000 lumens 

and is equipped with four 330-watt lamps. In the 

event that the lamp burns out, the projector is equipped 

with a failsafe feature to ensure the image is not interrupted. 

In addition to wired networking capabilities, the 

unit is the first Sanyo projector to provide an HD-Wireless 

System, which is capable of receiving uncompressed 

720p and 1080p data wirelessly from distances approximately 

100 feet away with less than one millisecond of 

latency. It supports video data rates of up to 1.5Gbps and 

operates in the 20MHz bandwidth, conforming to worldwide 

5GHz regulations. 

Sanyo • 888.495.3452 • www.sanyoLCD.com 

TVOne-task HDMI Extender with DDC Correction 


The TVOne-task 1T-DA-631 HDMI Extender is a dynamic cable 

equalizer with DDC correction that restores the HDMI v1.3 signal at the 

end of long cable runs, just prior to the input to the display. It has a 

maximum distance of 40 meters from the source to the equalizer input 

and up to five meters from the output to the display when using Z-Plus 

grade HDMI cables. All signal components present within the encoded 

signal are maintained, including stereo or 7.1 audio and HDCP encryption. 

HDTV resolutions of 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p are supported. 

The MSRP is $99. 

TV One • 800.721.4044 • www.tvone.com 



By VickieClaiborne 


Components of a 

Digital Video Signal 

VIDEO DIGERaTI 

Have you ever wondered what is actually 

happening in that cable connecting 

your video source to your 

monitor or projector? If you’re like me, you 

may be fascinated to know that the video 

signal being transmitted down those cables 

is comprised of many parts, all seamlessly 

working together to provide the information 

that our eye can use to get as much 

detail as possible. Here’s a look at a few of 

those components. 

So, how do you transport an image from 

the camera to your TV or projector? You 

may be asking, “Why not just transmit the 

RGB information as the camera captured 

it?” The answer has to do with bandwidth. 

Uncompressed RGB uses up a lot of expensive 

bandwidth, so the first thing that typically 

happens before transmitting a picture 

is that the RGB signals are converted into a 

more compact (compressed) format known 

as “component video.” 

Analog component video is made up of 

three signals. The first is the luminance signal, 

which refers to the brightness (or black and 

white information) that is contained in the 

original RGB signal. It is usually referred to as 

the “Y” component and it could actually be 

viewed as black and white video. The second 

The composite signal is typically carried 

through a cable terminated with an RCA connector, 

and the signal can conform to NTSC, 

PAL, or SECAM formats. 

Digital video, on the other hand, uses a 

different scheme for encoding chrominance 

values. Instead of Pb and Pr, a different conversion 

algorithm is used that allows for 

more compression and bandwidth reduction. 

The resulting red and blue components 

are called Cb and Cr. 

Why not just transmit the RGB information as the camera 

captured it? The answer has to do with bandwith. 

scheme, and in particular, understand the 

tradeoffs in terms of signal quality 

and compression, you’ll be able to 

make better decisions when planning 

a video workflow and obtaining the 

proper equipment. 

Vickie Claiborne is a freelance control systems 

and digital media server training developer, 

lighting director and programmer, and 

an industrial training specialist. She can be 

reached at vclaiborne@plsn.com. 

It all comes down to RGB 


Three colors—red, green, and blue – are 

the only colors that the human eye can actually 

see. All the other perceptible colors and 

shades of the spectrum are the result of your 

brain interpreting the mix of red, green, and 

blue signals coming from your eye’s optical 

sensors. Therefore, a video system only needs 

to capture red, green, and blue (a.k.a. RGB) in 

order to capture images. 

The camera must capture RGB on the front 

end. That information must be delivered accurately 

to your television or projector, which 

then reproduces RGB in the display. By varying 

the intensity of red, green, and blue, every 

color of the spectrum can be reproduced. The 

results are, hopefully, very close to what you 

see in real life. 

Bandwidth 


Composite video packages and sends RGB video as one compressed signal for broadcast. 

Green (Y), blue (Pb) and red (Pr) cables capture RGB on the front end. 

and third signals are called the “color difference” 

signals, and they indicate how much 

blue and red is present — relative to the luminance. 

The blue component is “Pb” and the 

red component is “Pr.” The color difference 

signals are mathematical derivatives of the 

RGB signal. 

The green information doesn’t need to be 

transmitted as a separate signal since it can 

be derived from the “Y, Pb, Pr” combination. 

The display device fills in the green information 

based on how bright the image is (the Y 

component), how much of that information is 

blue, and how much of it is red. 

In most professional video gear, analog 

component video cables are terminated with 

BNC connectors, although SCART connectors 

are typically used in Europe. The cables are usually 

colored green (Y), blue (Pb), and red (Pr). 

Saving Bandwidth 


Once the video information is packaged 

in component video format, the bandwidth 

requirements are reduced by a factor of 1/3, 

as compared to uncompressed RGB. But 

more compression is required for broadcast 

purposes, so with the introduction of the 

color television in 

1953, the National 

Television Standards 

Committee (NTSC) 

developed a technique 

that allowed 

all of the component 

video information to 

be compressed into 

one signal known as 

“composite video.” 

Composite video 

provides a way of 

packaging and sending 

the luminance 

( b r i g h t n e s s ) a n d 

chrominance (color) 

information through 

a single cable, instead 

of the three individual 

cables required for 

component signals. 

By mixing the three 

signals in a frequency-division 

multiplexing 

scheme and then 

modulating them 

with a radio frequency 

carrier, the result is 

a single composite 

signal that can be 

broadcast using less 

bandwidth. 

Chroma Subsampling 


In addition, digital uses chroma subsampling 

to further reduce bandwidth. Subsampling 

means that the color information is 

sampled at a lower rate than the luminance 

information. Since the human response system 

is less sensitive to color information than 

to luminance information, the eye can’t detect 

the difference even though there is less 

color information. 

The “color sampling ratio” describes 

the relationship between sampling rates 

of the luminance and chrominance values 

in a digital video signal. For professional 

digital video, the color sampling ratio 

is known as 4:2:2. Here, the two chroma 

components are sampled at one half the 

rate of the luminance component. 

The resulting signal has a particular 

data rate which depends on its compression. 

The more compression present in 

the signal, the faster the transfer rate — 

but more compression has its drawbacks 

in terms of a degraded visual image. 

For this reason, a plethora of codecs are 

available for compressing and decompressing 

the data, hopefully minimizing 

the signal degradation. 

Video acquisition and encoding is a 

complex subject. There are many encoding 

schemes and video formats. Some of the 

more important terms to remember are: 

Component Video – A video signal in 

which the luminance and chrominance 

signals are kept separate, and three wires 

are required for transmission. Component 

requires a higher bandwidth, but yields a 

higher quality picture. 

Composite Video – the luminance and 

chrominance signals are combined into 

one signal, and one wire is required for 

transmission. Signal quality is not as high 

as component, but composite video facilitates 

easy transmission in standard video 

formats, such as NTSC, PAL or SECAM. 

Luminance - the black and white, or 

brightness, part of a component video signal; 

also called the "Y" signal. 

Chrominance – the part of a video signal 

which carries the color information such 

as hue and saturation. 

As noted, there are many factors that 

can affect the final result of a video signal. 

If you understand the advantages and 

disadvantages of each video transmission 



2008 MaRCH PLSN 51

WIDE ANGLE 


Osbourne: No More Bubbles 

Text & photos by BreeCrystalClarke 

When Ozzy Osbourne recently hit the road, it was the first time in almost ten years that he was the headliner. His recent forays into reality television have propelled him back into the limelight 

and the world now knows that Ozzy’s shows can’t have bubble machines. Lighting Designer/Director John Clark grew up in Nashville, so he’s been around the business enough 

to be familiar with the no-bubbles rock genre. Having worked for Vari-Lite and VLPS and toiled under the tutelage of Eric Wade, he has lit everything from hip-hop to country to rock 

shows, the last two of which were tours with Disney’s Cheetah Girls and Ashley Simpson. He has also worked with Available Light in Boston doing corporate shows, trade shows, and “a lot of 

one-offs.” He’s currently touring with Ozzy and making sure the Osbournes are happy. 

Napkins to Curtains 

“We went to Ozzfest and got to design everything from scratch. Rich Barr, the production 

manager, and I worked really close together. We came up with the lighting and all the video 

elements in the air. Rich did a lot of the work with that too. He came up with a lot of the curtains 

and moving video screens. He basically took all my napkin drawings and converted it into a 

whole rig. It’s funny; we’ve gone from a napkin to this. It’s been a lot of fun.” 

Getting Input from Sharon and Ozzy 

“Sharon and Ozzy both have a lot of input into certain aspects. Everything gets run by 

Sharon. She liked what we showed her so she let us go with it. We got everything we asked for. 

It’s been amazing working with them. They are both really smart and they know what they are 

looking for. They know how to tell you what they want to see without telling you how to do 

your job. So it’s very rewarding working for them.” 

Adjusting to the Venue 

“Every show is different because we’ve 

got so much stuff in the air that it’s very tight. 

We have very little clearance, so Bob Powers, 

our rigger, had to make quite a few adjustments 

for different venues. It’s all been arenas. 

We did one show in Vegas at The Joint, 

so we used the house lighting package and 

their house stuff.” 

“With Ozzy, it’s Ozzy; 

he is the show.” 

— Lighting Designer/ 

Director John Clark 

LD/Director John Clark 

CREW 

Production Manager: Rich Barr 

Lighting Designer/Director: John Clark 

Tour Manager: Steve Varga 

Production Coordinator: Mimi Sullivan 

Tour Accountant: Blaine Brinton 

AEG Promoter Rep: Lonnie McKenzie, 

Drew Cantor 

Video Director: Mike Duque 

Stage Manager: Luke Lowes 

Tour Rigger: Bob Powers 

Audio FOH Engineer: Greg Price 

Audio Monitor Engineer: Raza Sufi 

Lighting Supplier: Premier Global 

Productions, Nashville, TN 

Account Rep: Steven Creech Anderson 

Lighting Crew Chief: James Vollhoffer 

Lighting Techs/Camera Operators: Cliff 

Sharpling, Niel Davis 

Rigging: Five Points Rigging 

Account Rep: Bobby Savage, Danny Hayes 

Video Supplier: Screenworks 

Account Rep: Danny O’Brien 

Pyro: Stage Effects and Engineering Inc 

(Pyro Pete) 

Pyro Techs: Casey Lake, Alex Kingry 

Trucking: Upstaging Inc 

Tracking System: Tait Towers (Winky 

Fairorth) 

GEAR 

46 1-ton motors 

6 2-ton motors 

6 Arri 5K Fresnels 

1 flaming Ozzy cross (12’x8’) 

12 High End Systems Color 

Commands 

15 High End Systems Studio Beams 

12 High End Systems Studio Colors 

26 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes 

24 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles 

12 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures 

24 Martin MAC 700 Profiles 

2 Martin Maxedia media servers 

2 Martin Maxxyz consoles 

1 Martin Maxxyz Playback Wing 

12’x21’ Panasonic video cross 

8 PGP 10’ pre-rig truss 

10 PGP 8’ pre-rig truss 

propane flame cannons 

2 side screens (20’x12’) 

1 Sony drum riser facade 

1 Sony keyboard riser facade 

16’x9’ Toshiba video screen 

10’x12” truss 

15’x20” truss (circle truss) 

60’x12” truss (curtain truss) 

60’x30” truss (triple track) 

3 video cameras 

52 


“Ozzy changes his set occasionally so we have to be ready to jump anywhere within the song list 

at any time.” — Lighting Designer/Director John Clark 

All Eyes on Ozzy 

“With Ozzy, it’s Ozzy; he is the show. I 

use truss spots on him. We don’t use FOH 

spots so my downstage truss trim is really 

critical as far as getting those truss spots 

in the right position. Venue to venue, as 

long as it’s been arenas we haven’t really 

had to change a lot. It really is a tight rig. 

It’s so compact and we’ve got so much stuff 

up there that there’s not enough room to 

move stuff around because there’s not a lot 

of straight stuff. Everything’s crosses, circles, 

pyro, so the clearances are very small. “ 

An Open Stage 

“We’ve been selling almost 270 degrees 

of seating area, as many seats as we 

can sell. So we have a very open stage. We 

don’t have a lot of stuff hanging upstage of 

where the drum riser starts and other than 

downstage of the speaker clusters, it’s pretty 

open so that venue site lines are maintained 

throughout the building. 




INTERVIEW 

Making the Most of the Theatre Space 

Bill Conner, theatre consultant with Bill Conner 

Associates, LLC. 

Bill Conner on educating the architect 

and client, and watching the ROI 

The Kinkaid School in Houston needed a 50-foot fly loft in an area with 35-foot zoning. The 

780-seat theatre is sunken 23 feet below ground. 

By RobLudwig 

What is a theatre consultant? What do 

they do? Who are their customers? 

For this month’s PLSN Interview, we 

spoke with Bill Conner of Bill Conner Associates, 

LLC. Conner studied under the father of 

modern stage lighting, George C. Izenour, en 

route to building a successful career in the field. 

In this interview, he explains the vital role theatre 

consultants perform in our industry and 

why the discipline deserves full-time attention. 

PLSN: How did you get started in the industry 

and what led you to theatre planning? 

Bill Conner: In reverse order, I was exposed 

to the idea of facility planning as an 

undergraduate, and then again in graduate 

school at Yale, from George C. Izenour. I took 

classes with Izenour, but at that time, it was 

not really an option; there were so few theatre 

consultants in the 1970s, it was hard to 

follow that idea as a career path. 

So I graduated from Yale and taught all 

aspects of technical theatre at a college for 

several years. Then, Bill Warfel at Yale called 

one day. He had been doing theatre consulting 

part-time and decided to go full-time. I 

went to work for him in 1982. 

What was that like back then, considering 

the equipment you had to work with? 

Equipment in terms of theatre equipment 

or in terms of the Radio Shack TRS-80 computers 

we were working on? 

Good point…both. Did you do a lot of 

your designs manually, or were you 

using computers? 

The only thing done on computers, 

initially, was word processing. Actually, 

I started with Warfel at Systems 

Design Associates in 

1982. Gene Leitermann, who 

is now the head of Theatre 

Projects US,was also working 

there with me. Both of us have 

gone on and done fairly well 

in the business. AutoDesk introduced 

AutoCAD around 

that time, and we bought it 

at the end of 1982. In terms 

of tools, we were an early 

adopter and I’m a CAD geek, 

not that that’s interesting. 

That’s actually very interesting. 

We were still doing an awful lot of drawing 

by hand but we starting to do some by 

computer in December of 1982. 

And what about the gear? 

I don’t think it has changed that much. 

But technology has changed. 

The Strand CD80 was a revolutionary departure 

from patch panels and 6K dimmers. 

And now, with the dimmer per circuit system, 

with the modern console, control systems 

have gotten better and more powerful. And, 

dimmers do a little bit more than they did, but 

there isn’t a huge change. Two things have 

happened: when I started, the expectation of 

the number of circuits was growing, so you’d 

go from 50 circuits, that being a lot, to several 

hundred. Now, 25 years plus later, I see that 

changing back because of automated lighting. 

Are you adding other types of technology, 

now? 

Yes. 

Are those new technologies more prevalent, 

now? Do you see this as somewhat of a revolutionary 

time for theatre design? 

I think that, in terms of the growth of 

the use of automated lighting, it is a major 

change, and also with the introduction of viable 

distributed dimming products. 

Are most of your systems networked, as 

well? 

I stopped using DMX in the wall in 

about 2000 and realized it was time to go all 

Ethernet. That’s one of the hard things; I’ve 

got to figure out what the technology is going 

to be when the theatre 

opens and the years after that, 

not what it is today. 

There are lots of people 

out there that advocate putting 

in a lot of DMX wire because 

that’s what they are 

used to. But I see that as shortsighted 

when you’re starting 

with a new building that’s 

supposed to last 25 or 50 

years. A modern school building 

isn’t considered a 50-year 

building anymore, and that’s 

one of the unfortunate things. 

In fact, I asked the other day, and the school 

district said it was considered a 40 to 45 year 

building before they tear it down and replace 

it, which is kind of a frightening thought. 

Especially if you compare the state of new 

theatres now, as opposed to when you 

started — the high school theatre is much 

more like a professional theatre, now. 

Yes — some are. There are clearly a large 

group of them that are not, which professional 

consultants are not involved in. 

That brings us to a good point: Describe 

the importance of your role in the theatre 

planning process. 

A hundred years ago, an architect would 

probably make every decision — mechanical, 

structural, and electrical — with maybe 

some input on some of the specialties. On 

25 sheets of drawings he would show everything 

for the building — lighting, heating, the 

whole thing. Today, the systems have gotten 

so complicated that there might be 25 consultants 

on a major project because everything 

is so specialized. I think the growth of 

specialization is a significant change. People 

ask me why things aren’t more coordinated 

and that’s the answer, unfortunately. 

The dirty secret of architecture, and anyone 

with a little experience will not take exception to 

this statement, is that construction documents 

have gone to hell in the last 30 years. It means 

the systems are too complicated, and even the 

electrical engineer is going struggle to keep 

track of what he’s doing with the stage lighting. 

The importance of my role is bringing 

an overall plan to the whole facility. What 

a professional theatre consultant brings is 

Hope auditorium 

much more than equipment selection and 

arrangement. 

How does your role differ compared to professionals 

that might get involved in theatre 

planning as part of a separate endeavor? 

I think that the subject matter deserves 

a full-time effort. If part of your time is spent 

as an educator, or as a sales person, I don’t 

think you can possibly be as well versed or 

well founded as someone who does it fulltime, 

nor have a broad of command of the 

subject. The depth and breadth of knowledge 

needed to be a part of a building design’s 

team is different than what an educator, 

or a sales rep, has. 

Who is your primary customer? 

I do, generally, work for architects. I’m 

usually part of a design team that is led by an 

architect. 

Can you tell us about the design process? 

In a typical, or best case project, the 

theatre consultant produces the first program 

of requirements for the facility that 

determine everything from seat count, to 

stage size, and scale of lighting and type 

of rigging and so on. The number of restrooms, 

size of the lobby, need for concession 

stands, and the number of loading 

docks and so on, are all basic building 

program of information. It’s a lot more 

than just equipment. 

Most professional theatre consultants, 

on projects they find successful, 

develop the first plan of the seating and 

stage, usually called resource drawings, 

or general arrangement drawing. 




Do you typically start with a big, blank 

box? 

I typically start with a blank sheet of paper 

and then hand that off to the architect 

for developing the whole building plan. 

In the ideal case, they are going to wrap 

a building around the space that I lay out. 

There’s a lot of negotiation. 

What are some of the more difficult 

challenges that you face? 

Always budget. Because everyone’s 

dreams always exceed their budget. 

In the past, you stated that you work with 

lots of the same architects. Is it safe to say 

you’ve gotten to know each other fairly 

well? 

My practice over the years has been a lot 

of repeat work with a fairly small group, in 

total number, of architects. Eighty or ninety 

percent of my work is with the same group 

of architects. 

That might be unlike someone who works 

with many different architects. You don’t 

need to re-educate them to help them 

understand what you are trying to accomplish, 

isn’t that right? 

Yes. But a lot of what I do is education, 

of both the architect and the client. You talk 

about the challenge — a lot of it is education 

of why it’s going to cost so much, and why 

they say what they want costs more than 

what they thought. A lot of it is very fundamental 

education, like why a slab is shaped 

a certain way for sightlines and explaining 

the fundamentals of sightlines, for instance. 

A slab that has more bends and curves costs 

more, so you’re always trying to defend every 

recommendation based on cost and value 

return. I use the phrase return on investment 

quite frequently for making good decisions. 

In our industry, a lot of newcomers see 

one path, namely design, and don’t see 

all the opportunities for challenging careers. 

What would you say to someone 

who might be thinking about a career in 

theatre planning? 

I think I agree with your statement. I don’t 

know how some people have ended up, for 

instance, working for manufacturers or sales 

organizations. It doesn’t seem that people 

who are involved with theatre in high school 

or college are made aware of these sorts of 

different options. Besides being a Broadway 

designer or faculty designer, there isn’t much 

talk about it. Like I said, when I started, this 

was an extremely small profession. I think 

there are some pre-requisites in terms of 

education; you need to understand the basics 

of theatre and how it works, and some 

of that may need to be through experience. 

Secondly, you need to have an understanding 

of modern drafting and CAD techniques. 

The industry standard is AutoCAD. The architectural 

engineering world is based on 

AutoCAD. Beside those two things, I think 

you need to send your resume out to theatre 

consultants. 

county’s commitment to the performing arts 

and the management they “found” that make 

it a very vital part of the community. I visit as 

often as my schedule permits. 

But “most proud” has to go to a miniscule 

project of a campfire ring at the local 

Boy Scouts of America Council’s camp in 

Wisconsin, resulting from being asked if I 

could improve the lighting. I was architect 

and general contractor, fund raiser, theatre 

consultant, and laborer, and it was all built 

in one long weekend. With its raked stage, 

footlights designed around propane lanterns, 

combination backdrop, masking and 

acoustical shell, it has been special from the 

first “performance” the last evening of construction 

through every opening and closing 

campfire each summer since. Out of less 

than $4,000 worth of materials we probably 

improved the quality of the events and the 

experience twentyfold, all condensed into 

one leader’s appreciative remark and comment 

that after many years he could finally 

hear and see his kids perform there. 

And that’s what it’s all about. 

What project are you most proud of 

and why? 

That’s a good question and not an easy 

one to answer. There are two. The first is the 

John Hardin PAC just north of Elizabethtown, 

Kentucky. It was a breakthrough project in 

many regards for me but in the end, it is simply 

a very sweet 850-seat high school theatre 

with all of the elements pretty well worked 

out: balcony, full working stage, pit with lift, 

robust rigging and lighting systems, and support 

spaces. What is truly remarkable is the 


FEEDING THE MACHINES 


No Single Point of Failure 

By BradSchiller 

An automated lighting programmer 

is often called upon to help determine 

the best backup plan for 

Front of House. Technologically speaking, 

there are many types of backup solutions, 

some of which are very simple 

while others are extremely complex. A 

backup plan can range from nothing to 

full redundancy. Usually the importance 

and the budget of the event will be a key 

factor in determining how much backup 

protection is available. Of course every 

system has weaknesses, but we should always 

strive for no single point of failure. 

When Things Go Wrong 

FTM 

In our industry there are many different 

types of problems that can occur and 

cause the failure of a lighting console. 

During the course of my career, I have 

seen failures due to power loss, console 

hardware failure, console software failure, 

unplugged cables, loss of communication, 

liquid spills, malicious attacks 

and even acts of nature. As I learned in 

Boy Scouts, we must always be prepared, 

and this applies to planning for the unexpected 

at Front of House. 

Backup Plans 

FTM 

When you’re specifying a lighting 

control system for a production, you 

should always consider backup gear. 

Will the event require a spare console? 

Common Practice 

FTM 

Most productions fall somewhere between 

the wedding reception and the 

Olympics. This means that your common 

backup plan may be as simple as having 

a spare console on site. It’s fairly common 

to have an extra console loaded with the 

same show file. This way if something goes 

wrong with the main console, the backup 

could be set up and running in a few minutes. 

Lighting designer John Broderick 

once taught me that it is important on the 

first day to fully test the spare console. He 

stressed that I must turn it on, save a show 

on the main console, and load this show on 

the backup console. Then I need to connect 

the spare to the rig and confirm DMX512 

output. This way I have established that 

the spare console is in working order early 

enough to order another if necessary. As always, 

his wisdom was proven correct once 

when I had a spare desk that could not load 

in the show file from the master. I was able 

to get another spare desk right away. 

As a console operator, you need to understand 

how the tracking backup needs 

to be set up and how to make the switch 

happen in an emergency. I remember 

working with one well-known operator 

who seemed to get very flustered when 

something went wrong. In his panic, he 

would forget how to properly switch to 

the backup system. This left the band on 

stage in the dark unnecessarily for a long 

time. The system was set up for a smooth 

transition, but because he was not prepared, 

the operator slowed down the plan 

and the show suffered. Just like a fire drill, 

you should practice with your backup plan 

to ensure that it is working and that everyone 

understands the routine. 

Programming Tracking Backup 

FTM 

A few consoles offer tracking backup 

functionality for programming sessions. 

This is also accomplished with either MIDI 

or networking. The promise is that as you 

program your show on one desk the back- 

Most automated lighting console manufacturers include a method 

for tracking a backup console. 

What about redundant DMX512 distribution? 

How complex should the 

backup be? The type of production will 

help with some of these choices. For 

example, if you are programming the 

dance floor for the Bitterman’s wedding 

reception you probably do not need to 

be too concerned with backup equipment. 

However if you are programming 

the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics 

that is aired live to over four billion 

people worldwide, then a solid backup 

plan is essential. For a show of this caliber, 

you should have two completely redundant 

systems. That means two consoles, 

two sets of DMX512 processors (if 

applicable), a DMX512 switching device, 

and a method for the consoles to track 

each other. 

With two completely separate 

systems, each with their own power 

sources and UPS, you should be able to 

switch to the backup with only a minor 

interruption on stage. However every 

system has an Achilles’ heel. You need 

to really think through things such as 

separate network cables and switches, 

independent DMX512 runs, individual 

MIDI and timecode inputs. It may be 

impossible to create a system with no 

single point of failure. But by trying to 

achieve this you will create the most 

secure backup system possible. 

When planning to swap from one 

desk to another, you must have a plan. 

You must decide if you will have time 

to unpack a desk, boot it and connect 

the DMX512 outputs or if you need the 

backup to be instantly ready. There are 

many DMX512 devices on the market 

that will allow you to connect the output 

from two consoles to the rig. Then you 

can simply toggle a switch to change 

which console controls the show. Some 

of these devices can also automatically 

switch the DMX512 input if they detect 

data loss on one of the lines. 

Playback Tracking Backups 

FTM 

Most automated lighting console 

manufacturers include a method of 

tracking a backup console. These features 

typically use MIDI, MIDI Show Control, 

or networking to ensure that the 

spare console is always in the same cue 

state as the main desk when it’s configured 

correctly. This way if some audience 

member throws his beer cup on your 

main console, you can instantly switch 

to the backup console without a hiccup 

or glitch on stage. The backup console 

tracks along with the main console so 

it is always ready to take over. Typically 

this type of tracking is used for playback 

only and does not track programming 

actions — more on that later. 

up desk will mirror all your actions, creating 

an exact copy of your work. While this 

is a handy feature, it should never take 

the place of a regular routine of saving to 

external media. Usually what happens is 

that a bug in the software will crash both 

the main console and the backup console 

because they are both running the same 

software and receiving the same keystrokes. 

At this point you have two dead 

consoles and a show file that might be 

corrupted. I prefer to make regular backups 

to external media. That way, playback 

tracking isn’t my only backup solution. 

Keep It Safe 

FTM 

Remember, there are no perfect answers 

for a console backup solution. The best idea 

is to carefully plan and determine the best 

backup scheme for your production. No 

matter how complex your system is, consider 

that there is probably at least one point 

of failure. Try to identify all the possibilities 

and plan accordingly. Above all, you should 

always make regular backups of your show 

files onto external media, as this is the best 

protection of the show data. A good console 

backup strategy will ensure that the 

production on stage never suffers due to the 

unexpected at front of house. 

Brad Schiller can be reached by e-mailing 

brads@plsn.com 


With two completely separate systems, each with their own power 

sources and UPS, you should be able to switch to the backup 

with only a minor interruption on stage. 





The Strike Season 

What the WGA job action has meant to the lighting and staging industry in film and television 

The first Strike Survival Workshop 

that IATSE’s hard-hit Local 728 in 

Hollywood ran late last year was 

standing-room-only, which suggests the 

impact that the strike by the Writer’s Guild 

of America (WGA) was having on those 

who literally do set the stage for filmed 

and televised entertainment. The second 

one, held Feb. 8, a clinic for financial help 

and counseling from the Motion Picture 

Trust Fund, was just as packed. 

That was the scene just before an 

end to the strike was announced that 

very weekend. The fact that the threemonth-old 

strike had finally come to a 

dramatic conclusion, while a huge relief 

for the entire entertainment industry, 

doesn’t change the fact that it has left 

the labor infrastructure of that industry 

in disarray, and worse. 

The WGA strike wreaked financial 

havoc on the broadcast and film entertainment 

industry, both in New York and 

Los Angeles, particularly in the latter, 

where entertainment production makes 

up a significant amount of the city’s revenues. 

Jack Kyser, chief economist for 

the Los Angeles Economic Development 

Corp., estimates that the strike resulted 

in a $1.5 billion hit to the local economy. 

Some forecasts suggest that the impact 

isn’t nearly as severe; the UCLA Anderson 

School of Management asserts an 

estimated loss of $380 million or less. 

Either of those numbers is staggering, 

putting the impact of the 2007/2008 

writer’s strike in the same league as the 

1988 writers’ strike, which cost the L.A. 

economy alone $500 million. But the big 

numbers don’t tell the full story. According 

to Mark Deo, executive director of 

consulting firm the Small Business Advisory 

Network, it’s the small businesses 

and individual technicians who will hurt 

the most on a percentage basis. Speaking 

in an interview in Business Week, he said, 

“A mid-budget film costs about $17 million 

to produce, generates $1.2 million in 

state and local taxes, and employs more 

than 300 contractors and subcontractors 

to support it. A big-budget film costs an 

average of $70 million and employs an 

estimated 928 direct and indirect contractors. 

The bulk of those are independent, 

small contractors doing lighting, 

sound, set construction and teardown, 

leasing out props, and many other niche 

jobs.” Furthermore, he added, it’s estimated 

that entrepreneurial firms supply 

70 to 80 percent of the services provided 

to production companies with less than 

100 employees. Some of them may not 

have made it past the strike. 

The human and career costs became 

visceral, and the situation illustrated how 

the absence of scripted material directly 

impacted the amount of work a stage 

The WGA strike wreaked financial havoc 

on the broadcast and film entertainment 

industry, both in New York and Los Angeles… 

technician can get. “NBC re-assigned studio 

department heads to news productions, 

and the number of work calls for 

steady extras and others was reduced 

by many dozens each week,” says one 

IATSE member who worked on The Conan 

O’Brien Show and who prefers not to 

be identified. “The resumption of Conan 

O’Brien [along with the other late-night 

talk shows that came back on the air in 

early January] resulted in a small number 

of calls for daily hires, but the lack of 

sketch comedy kept that number from 

returning to pre-strike levels.” 

Saturday Night Live has always 

loomed large for stage technicians in 

New York. It’s nearly a full week of setting 

the stage for what is mostly sketch 

comedy, with a complete 90-minute 

dress rehearsal followed by the actual 

show on Saturday nights, a regular worker 

on the show said. 

Even with the end of the strike, the 

impact will continue for some time. 

Like national employment reports in 

the news lately, small drops in the unemployment 

numbers do not so much 

suggest that people are finding work as 

they have simply stopped looking. “You 

could easily find many individuals who 

have been fired as soon as the strike entered 

its second week and others who 

have stopped looking for work,” said one 

of NBC’s regulars. “The WGA strike had 

a very detrimental effect on my income 

and work schedule. I failed to make the 

hours of employment required for fulltime 

status at NBC in New York.” 

WGA members appeared grudgingly 

satisfied with what they got from the 

strike: for content streamed free over 

the web, writers will get a fixed payment 

of $1,200 per year for one-hour webcasts 

over the first two years, followed by two 

percent of any revenues earned by the 

distributor in the third year. 

Lighting and staging technicians get 

a less-immediate benefit. Ending the 

strike in February saved at least some of 

the awards show season that is to stagehands 

what the Christmas sales season 

is to retailers. The Golden Globes had 

already been reduced to the production 

equivalent of a teleprompter and a desk. 

The Oscars, the big moneymaker ($1.6 

Even with the end of the strike, the impact 

will continue for some time....and some 

sectors won’t get back to pre-strike levels. 

million per 30-second commercial spot), 

which is also celebrating its 80 th anniversary, 

got saved, as did a few others, like 

the Grammy Awards. 

Production of television and films resumed 

quickly, with many strike-bound 

workers getting rushed callbacks. But some 

sectors won’t get back to pre-strike levels. 

Top executives from the corporate parents 

of NBC, ABC and Fox had already made clear 

that they planned to order far fewer pilots 

this year. Instead, networks will choose 

more new shows from scripts or video presentations, 

and that is one change that may 

carry into future years as networks search 

for ways to curb costs. 

Strategic lighting, and dimming, 

at trade shows 


One rule that can’t be ignored at trade shows is this: Light the product. And white light is king. DMX512-controlled 

PARs with an arc source and a power supply built-in can produce an extremely bright white light output, 

great for auto shows. But they pose problems for other shows, mainly because most of them can’t be dimmed. At 

some shows, if the lights are not placed in the perfect place on a truss and focused just right, they produce glare. 

Glare on a computer screen is a big no-no. To avoid situations where I have no choice but to douse that light or 

focus it someplace else, I use an old-fashioned ETC Source Four PARs with a dimmer. I will color correct them with 

CTB gel to make them look white instead of brownish. Now if a client complains that it is too bright or they can’t 

read a computer screen, you simply dim the light to an acceptable level. 

— Nook Shoenfeld, from LD at Large, PLSN, Jan. 2008


TECHNOPOLIS 

Putting the Brakes on Aerial Risks 

Today’s high-flying productions are hoisting a heavier array of equipment and scenery, 

raising the need for strategically redundant braking systems. 

By FrankHammel 

Motorized rigging eliminates the 

need to figure out how to safely 

adjust rigged loads with counterweights 

in a conventional fly system. You 

just push a button, and up it goes. 

And so far, for the most part, it’s stayed 

there. Catastrophic hoist brake failures have 

been exceedingly rare. With the scarcity of 

major hoist failures, we want to avoid breeding 

a new kind of danger: complacency. 

The Danger of Complacency Tech 

As lighting and stage designers push for 

spectacular shows beyond anything tried 

before, however, the combined weight of 

scenery, video and lighting is moving hoisted 

loads from a few hundred pounds to 

multiple tons of potentially lethal gear. The 

consequences of any failure can be dire, 

and so the mechanical designs of hoisting 

systems frequently incorporate redundant 

brakes in order to keep the performers and 

audiences safe. 

“It is the nature of machinery to fail,” 

notes Pete Svitavsky, a mechanical engineer 

with J.R. Clancy, a Syracuse, NY-based 

supplier of rigging equipment. “Even the 

most carefully designed and manufactured 

systems are subject to factors such as material 

flaws, misuse, or lack of inspection and 

maintenance. A design for any machine 

that lifts or holds loads over the heads 

of people requires consideration of what 

happens when any one given component 

in the system fails. Wherever possible, we 

want to make sure that if a component fails, 

some other component or feature prevents 

the load from being released.” 

Beyond hoist braking action, there are 

also issues raised by load imbalances posed 

by multiple-winch rigging setups. Any time 

there are more than two hoists working 

together, there is an opportunity for load 

distribution imbalances, according to Ron 

Crane Scales, maker of the Ron StageMaster 

system of devices used to alert riggers 

to imbalanced loads. 

“Overload situations might happen to 

the most experienced riggers, even if each 

hanging point’s load is calculated and the 

calculation falls within the limitations of the 

nominal hoist and truss capacity,” the company 

says. “The actual load distribution on 

the truss is still unpredictable and cannot 

be calculated, or even estimated” from a visual 

assessment alone. 

Another issue is the effect on the structural 

integrity of the truss, or even the 

whole building, if tons of equipment were 

to be caught in a sudden, jerking stop as 

opposed to a slow, gradual braking action. 

As secondary brakes become more widely 

specified in the U.S. market, J. R. Clancy 

recognized the need to clarify some of the 

subtleties of how brakes are described and 

integrated into the machinery. For this reason 

they published a white paper titled, appropriately 

enough, “Brakes for Theatrical 

Hoists.” 

The first issue that the paper addresses 

is the possibility that people who are writing 

and reading the specs for hoists and 

braking systems will have a different idea of 

what the same words mean. The paper provides 

a list of terms and definitions based 

on those used by the American Society 

of Mechanical Engineers, recent drafts of 

ESTA’s proposed ANSI E1.6 standard, “Powered 

Hoisting Systems for Places of Public 

Assembly.” and J. R. Clancy’s internal standards. 

Knowing the difference between a 

“holding” or “parking” brake and a “stopping 

brake” is important, for example, not 

just because they are radically differewnt 

in what they do and how they work, but 

because the friction lining for a stopping 

brake is likely to wear out far sooner than 

that for a holding or parking brake, and will 

need to be maintained accordingly. 

Motor Side vs. Load Side 

Tech 

Another important distinction is made 

between “motor side brakes” and “load side 

brakes.” “Consider a simple drum hoist comprised 

of a frame, a drum, a gear reducer, and 

an electric motor with an integral brake. The 

brake is on the high speed side of the gearbox, 

so it is a motor side brake,” Svitavsky says. 

“Now, take that same drum hoist and add an 

electric brake mounted to the drum shaft. 

The new brake is a load side brake because it 

is on the same shaft as the drum.” The reason 

for making the distinction is this: If a brake or 

a motor is not attached directly to the drum 

of a hoist, the failure of any component between 

them and the drum could cause the 

load to be released. 

In his discussion of load side brakes versus 

motor side brakes, Svitavsky points out 

that this effect needs to be considered when 

building redundant brakes into theatrical 

rigging systems. “Many gear motors feature 

a motor side brake attached directly to the 

shaft of the rotor. continued on page 34 




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FOCUS ON FUNDaMENTaLS 

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It is our responsibility as scientists, 

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progress which comes from 

a satisfactory philosophy of 

ignorance, the great progress 

which is the fruit of freedom of 

thought, to proclaim the value 

of this freedom; to teach how 

doubt is not to be feared but 

welcomed and discussed; and 

to demand this freedom as our 

duty to all coming generations...” 

— Richard Feynman, “What Do You 

Care What Other People Think?” 


Let me put this right up front: I’m not the 

brightest lamp on the truss. At times, I can 

make Jessica Simpson look like Marilyn vos 

Savant, who is listed in the Guinness Book of 

World Records for five years under “Highest IQ” 

for both childhood and adult scores. I’m not 

particularly proud or embarrassed about that, 

but admitting it has served me well. An empty 

head can be like being an empty vessel looking 

for understanding with which to be filled. 

Last month I was in the Washington D.C. 

area leading a seminar on electricity for the 

entertainment electrician. There were a lot of 

very experienced and very good electricians 

By Richardcadena 

The Tao of electrical load calculations 

fig.1 

in attendance. When we started talking about 

how to calculate the feeder cable current in a 

three-phase system, the Jessica Simpson in me 

made her appearance. 

The classic formula for power in a threephase 

system is: watts = volts × amps × power 

factor × 1.73. By manipulating that formula we 

can come up with the formula for three-phase 

current, which is: I = W ÷ (V × PF × 1.73). 

One of the electricians in the class said 

that he uses a different formula for figuring 

out the current in a three-phase system: I = 

(W × 2) ÷ V. Even I could figure out that these 

two formulas are nothing alike. 

At this point, I could have invoked the 

teacher/student clause, which is, “I am the 

teacher, you are the student; now shut up and 

listen to me.” But I realized that dismissing his 

approach would be tantamount to dismissing 

his 30 years of experience. Admitting you don’t 

know something, particularly in front of your 

colleagues, is kind of like when someone is 

waving to a person behind you, but you think 

they’re waving at you. So you wave back and 

then you realize...and you feel…so…stupid. 

After fumbling for an answer to this conundrum, 

I punted. I called a break to think about 

it and when the break was over, I not-so-gracefully 

moved on, promising myself to address it 

once and for all in the next day’s class. 

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I went to bed 

and for two solid hours, I stared at the ceiling 

and contemplated the question of why 

the two approaches yielded different results. 

My mind went blank. Eventually, the words 

of Lao-tsu came to my mind: “The usefulness 

of what is depends on what is not.” In other 

words, the usefulness of your mind depends 

not on what you already know, but what you 

might gain by not knowing, contemplating, 

and then understanding. The answer suddenly 

popped into my head. I fell asleep. 

The next day, I went to the class and here’s 

what I tried to convey. Suppose we have, for 

example, a single 1500-watt 208V automated 

light connected across phase A and phase B 

of a three-phase wye-connected transformer. 

With nothing else is connected, the line current 

will be 1500W ÷ 208V = 7.2 amps (assuming 

unity power factor). In this case we can use the 

formula for a single-phase system because we 

only have one single-phase load connected. 

If we then connect another automated 

light across phase B and phase C, then we 

have a more complex situation. Phase B is 

now feeding current to both loads. How do 

we figure out the resulting line current? 

To simplify it and make it easier to understand, 

we can redraw it as a delta-configured 

secondary with the same two loads, as shown 

in the right half of the illustration in Fig. 1. If 

we pay close attention to the two drawings 

we’ll see that they are exactly the same even 

though they are illustrated differently. Now 

we can see that the line current in B is being 

drawn from two different places; phase A and 

phase B. Does that mean that we can simply 

add the magnitude of the two currents, I1 

and I2, to get the resulting current? 

Not exactly. 

Because these two currents are 120 degrees 

out of phase with each other, the resulting 

current is something less than twice the 

current in one of the phases. The mathematical 

solution to the addition of these two out 

of phase sinusoidal currents is a little bit complex, 

but the simple answer is that they add 

up to 1.73 times the magnitude of any of the 

phase currents. 




Entertainment 

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MARKETPLACE 

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






Technical Advertisement 

Extend the Limits of the Possible! 

At Cirque du Soleil, amazement is part of the job. 

In order to astonish thousands of people around 

the world each evening, a tremendous amount of 

behind-the-scenes talent is required. Over 2500 

technicians work help present our spectacular 

performances every night. Our Production 

and Operations teams include energetic and 

passionate individuals across the globe, each 

making invaluable contributions so we can 

present our phenomenal shows. Every year, the 

Technical Recruitment Team scours the globe for 

hundreds of technicians to fulfill the needs of all 

our current productions and upcoming creations. 

You might be one of them! 

Cirque du Soleil will be 

conducting interviews 

March 20 th -22 nd at USITT 

2008 in Houston, Texas 

Our new and existing shows require 

technical expertise in the following areas: 

• Aquatics • Lighting • Project Management 

• Audio • Make-up/wigs • Rigging 

• Automation • Props • Special effects 

• Carpentry • Projection • Wardrobe 

• Fluid effects 

If you are attending USITT and want to be 

considered for an interview, please submit 

your application at 

www.cirquedusoleil.com 

Select “Working at Cirque” located at the 

bottom of the page, then select “Technical 

positions: USITT 2008 Houston, TX - 

Interview Selections.” 

Only qualified applicants will be 

considered for interview -- position 

descriptions are available online. 

“What are you doing tomorrow?” 

Employment 

Cirque du Soleil 

is searching for a 

Head of Rigging 

for its Luxor 2008 

Production. 

They are looking for candidates who 

meet the following requirements: 

Minimum 10 years experience in 

theatrical and/or circus rigging 

Minimum 5 years experience in a similar 

role on large-scale productions 

Experience with motorized & manual 

counterweight systems and installation 

of acrobatic rigging is a must 

Experience Supervising or Managing a 

 

Rigging Department is preferable 

Union Experience preferable 

Please apply online at 

www.cirquedusoleil.com. 

Click on “Working at Cirque”, 

then select “Jobs...Apply Online”, 

then select 

“Head of Rigging—Luxor Show”. 

For Marketplace/ 

Classifieds rates 

call Greg at 

818.216.5336 

or email: 

gregg@plsn.com 




COMPANY PG# PH URL 

A.C. Lighting Ltd. 29 416.255.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-101 

A.C.T Lighting Inc. 23 818.707.0884 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-100 

All Access Staging & Production 49 310.784.2464 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-102 

Apollo Design Technology 55 800.288.4626 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-104 

Applied Electronics 45, 59 800.883.0008 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-105 

Atlanta Rigging Systems 14 404.355.4370 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-107 

Barbizon Lighting Company 6 866.502.2724 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-108 

Bulbtronics 41 800.227.2852 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-110 

Chauvet Lighting 5, 25 800.762.1084 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-111 

Checkers Industrial Prod. 18 800.438.9336 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-112 

City Theatrical Inc. 53 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-114 

Clay Paky America 7 609.812.1564 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-115 

CM Rigging Products 12 800.888.0985 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-116 

Coemar/ Inner Circle Distribution 35, C3 954.578.8881 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-304 

Creative Stage Lighting Co., Inc. 14 518.251.3302 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-118 

Doug Fleenor Design 18 888.436.9512 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-119 

Ed & Ted’s Lighting 2 805.278.2400 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-257 

Elation/American DJ C4 866.245.6726 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-121 

Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc./ ETC 15 608.831.4116 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-122 

ESTA 37 1.800.968.3782 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-261 

ETCP Certification 48 212.244.1505 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-123 

Full Sail 49 800.226.7625 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-124 

High End Systems 9, 11, 13 512.836.2242 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-126 

InfoComm 46 1.800.659.7469 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-262 

Jack Rubin & Sons 48 310.635.5407 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-226 

James Thomas Engineering 60 865.692.3060 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-194 

Le Maitre Special Effects, Inc. 57 519.659.7972 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-156 

Leprecon/ CAE 20 810.231.9373 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-130 

Leviton 27 800.736.6682 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-230 

Light Source, The 4 803.547.4765 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-305 

Lightronics 1 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-132 

Littlite 19 810.231.9373 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-232 

Martin Professional C1 954.858.1800 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-135 

Mega Lite 13 210.684.2600 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-202 

Mega-Stage 32 (01) 450.359.4000 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-218 

Milos Structural Systems 50 800.411.0065 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-186 

Mountain Productions 31 570.826.5566 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-302 

Musique Xpress Lights 10 787.787.2306 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-235 

ADVERTISER’S INDEX 

COMPANY PG# PH URL 

Navitar 51 800.828.6778 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-263 

Omnisistem 41 253.395.9500 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-253 

Osram Sylvania 39 888.677.2627 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-139 

Penn-Elcom 10 973.378.8700 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-172 

Philips Lighting 17 800.555.0050 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-187 

Pixel Range 8 865.588.7660 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-297 

PR Lighting/ Pearl River 33 253.395.9494 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-138 

R&M Materials Handling 8 800.955.9967 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-140 

Robe Lighting s.r.o. 3 954.615.9100 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-141 

Roc-Off Productions 11 877.978.2437 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-142 

Scharff Weisberg 16 212.582.3860 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-174 

Sew What 56 866.444.2062 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-144 

Shockwave Cargo 16 310.643.6024 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-240 

Staging Dimensions 21 866.591.3471 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-145 

Strong Entertainment Lighting 19 800.262.5016 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-146 

Syncrolite 58 214.350.7696 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-176 

Techni-Lux C2 407.857.8770 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-147 

Theatrical Media Services, Inc./ TMS 60 402.592.5522 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-177 

Times Square Lighting 18 845.947.3034 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-264 

TMB 19 818.899.8818 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-120 

Tyler Truss Systems 17 317.485.5465 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-148 

Wireless Solutions 47 888.936.9512 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-248 

Xtreme Structures & Fabrication 37 903.473.1100 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-159 

MARKET PLACE 

3DX Flame Coat 63 513.469.1015 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-265 

Arena Drapery Rental 62 404.713.3742 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-221 

City Theatrical Inc. 63 800.230.9497 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-114 

DK Capital 63 517.347.7844 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-151 

ELS, Entertainment Lighting Services 62 800.357.5444 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-152 

Light Source Inc. 62 248.685.0102 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-180 

Lightronics 62 757.486.3588 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-132 

New York Case/Hybrid Case 63 800.346.4638 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-298 

RC4 Wireless Dimming/ Theatre Wireless 62 866.258.4577 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-153 

Roadshow Services 62 800.861.3111 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-154 

Special FX Lighting 63 435.635.0239 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-161 

Theatrical Lighting Systems, Inc./ TLS 62 866.254.7803 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-157 

Upstaging, Inc. 62 815.899.9888 http://plsn.hotims.com/17853-158 






LD-AT-LARGE 


By NookSchoenfeld 

From a Lighting Tech’s Point of View 

Last night I found myself sitting in a bar 

with a bunch of lampys. How unusual. 

So I decided to check in with them on 

how they’ve seen the business of lighting 

shows change in the last few years. Between 

the five of us we have close to 100 years of 

experience in the entertainment biz. And 

since we’re lighting guys, it goes without 

saying that we have opinions about everything. 

So I posed a few questions. 

“What’s the most significant change in a 

lighting tech’s career the last few years?” 

One guy immediately points out that we 

are being forced to learn about video gear. 

Another states that we have to look at our 

job from a whole new angle since every show 

seems to be revolving around video. And he is 

correct. A few years ago media servers started 

coming around and now they are on 50% of 

my shows. There was a bit of a learning curve, 

but from a programmer’s point of view it was 

just like a new moving light fixture. 

The unanimous vote at this table of 

techs is that they would rather see trained 

video people taking care of video stuff while 

they keep up with lighting. Plus the lighting 

guys feel like they are lowering their standards 

by becoming video guys. Ouch! But 

it doesn’t stop there. Go to LDI and all the 

lighting companies are now pedaling their 

own line of video gear. As if moving head 

projectors aren’t enough, they are now 

building lo-res video walls. 

I actually enjoy designing with video. And 

I think that video and lighting are all part of 

the same genre. But these guys have a valid 

point. If a lighting company is going to venture 

into video, should they hire video guys 

to run this equipment? And vice versa? We’re 

just pondering here, but it seems the reverse 

is becoming reality now. Barco is making a 

COMING NEXT 

MONTH... 

Keeping it in 

Perspective 

Peter J. Davidson likes to 

bring a new perspective to 

his job as scenic designer. 

A Lite Alternative 

Design for JB 

Lighting designers 

Paul Normandale and 

Glen Johnson of Lite 

Alternative collaborate on 

James Blunt’s new tour. 

Buyer’s Guide 

TV and film lighting 

get the Buyer’s Guide 

treatment 

moving head projector to 

compete with High End 

Systems’ DL.2s. Does that 

mean that video companies 

are going to hire lighting 

guys to fix their gear? Who 

knows? 

I think I do. I’ve been 

watching salesman from 

big lighting companies 

move on to running big video 

rental companies. And 

they are hiring my lighting 

brethren more and more. 

Next question: “Has the 

state of moving lights 

gotten better?” 

The answer to this is a 

unanimous yes! The consensus 

is that manufacturers 

are actually listening to 

lighting techs and asking 

them questions before they 

start planning how to build 

their next fixture. This is exemplified 

by Martin probably 

more than any others. 

All the techs love that they 

sent a representative to ask 

questions about their current 

product line and how 

to make things better. They 

came to me and listened to 

what I had to say for hours 

about building a lighting 

desk. Now they’re asking if 

the techs would like better servo motors and 

if everything should be modular. The days of 

repairing moving lights on the road are numbered. 

We now design shows with a hundred 

moving lights. The techs take countless 

hours to set up enormous rigs. They should 

be able to quickly swap a color module and 

let a guy in the shop fix the faulty one. 

As a side note I ask, “What kind of fixture is 

missing from the market place?” 

Everyone has the same answer: a new 

moving mirror light. It’s been 14 years since 

the Cyberlight came out. The Coemar Nat 

and the Telescan were too heavy and too 

high maintenance. And they disappeared 

when Obie’s Lighting did. Can’t anybody 

get this right? I know a hundred LDs who 

will tell you the same thing, “We want something 

fast that can black out, reset position 

in under a second and be reliable.” 

Next question: “What about all the new 

consoles we have to choose from?” 

They say that five years ago we all had the 

‘Hog 2 and it was easy. Getting through all the 

networking and patching of all these desks is 

three-quarters of the work. Once you can actually 

turn a light on, the rest of the programming 

is almost the same on most consoles. Heck, 

Jands makes a lighting console that thinks in 

video timeline terms now. While none of us at 

this table wish to think in those terms, others 

do. There’s no denying they’ve thrown a whole 

new way of thinking into the works. 

Next up: “What’s the difference in lighting 

crews now from when you guys started?” 

One guy says that the biz has grown so 

diversified that it takes longer to learn everything. 

There was a time when learning how to 

patch an analog dimmer was a big step. Now 

techs are expected to master dimmers and 

everything about power in a much shorter 

time span. Someone questions why everyone 

doesn’t start with just pulling cable and working 

their way up anymore. I realize he’s right. 

I get calls from people who want to be my assistant. 

I ask them if they know what feeder 

cable is, and they don’t. Excuse me for stating 

my opinion, but I think all LDs need to work 

from the ground up. 

Somebody points out that crew chiefs 

don’t bother to explain things to young techs 

any more. But these guys I’m sitting next to 

are all crew chiefs themselves. Aren’t they 

pointing their fingers at themselves? 

Everyone agrees that there are two kinds 

of young lighting techs: the kind who want 

you to stop and show them the proper way 

to do their task, and the kind who think they 

know what they are doing and are insulted 

that you would even stop to tell them differently. 

I’ve seen both. And the latter will certainly 

become a freelance tech soon, and not 

necessarily by choice. 

Next question: “Do any of you guys do gigs 

with only conventional lights?” 

It gets really silent and after a while 

we realize we don’t. I can’t remember the 

last time I did this and I’m a bit ashamed 

now. Everyone likes a PAR can rig, or so 

they say. But in reality, do we really want 

to go back to hours of focus time, multiple 

boxes of heavy cable and a wall of 

dimmer racks? Hmmm…maybe. 

Going back to the subject of video, a 

friend says he saw the band My Chemical 

Romance this year and they had no video 

or LEDs at all, and it looked stunning. Well 

of course it did; Ethan Weber designed it. 

Then another guy pointed out that Bob 

Peterson and I didn’t use a single LED or 

piece of video gear on the Bob Seger tour 

last year, but it was not for lack of trying. 

We set up panels of Soft LEDs and hi-def 

video walls for the manager to look at 

over at the Upstaging shop in Chicago. 

When the manager walked in, he looked 

at us like we were out of our mind and 

told us to take that crap down. Just use 

good old-fashioned rock lighting, he said. 

So we did, and in the end I have to admit, 

he was right. 

Last week I designed a tour for an act 

I’ve been lighting for 10 years. For the first 

time ever, we went out with no video, no 

pyro, no confetti, a minimal set with only 

a few LEDs to under light it. I thought I 

would be bored, but in reality the show 

came out looking great and nobody asked 

for their money back. 

Nook Schoenfeld is a freelance lighting designer. 

He can be reached at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.

Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 - PLSN.com

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