To Download PLSN's December 2009 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

In 1997, few people believed that LEDs could ever be bright enough and affordable enough to play a major part in lighting a stage. When Color Kinetics introduced their first product at LDI that year there was a collective expression of doubt about the feasibility of an LED PAR fixture.

To Download PLSN's Nov. 2009 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

The history of haze machines is a bit foggy, but it seems that Reel EFX DF-50 haze machines have been around since Juliet first uttered to Romeo, “Wherefore art thou Romeo? I dost not see thee through yonder haze.”

To Download PLSN's Oct. 2009 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

Only a dimmer tech could come up with a term of endearment that we know as “dimmer beach.” It conjures images of lounge chairs, exotic drinks, sand, surf and bikinis. In reality, dimmer beach is not for the faint of heart. It’s typically very loud, hot, and cable is strewn about like vines in the Amazon. And if anything goes wrong, it’s typically the first location to be yelled at through the comm system. The term clearly overstates the reality. 

For a PDF of the September 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

If you’re old enough to have gone to a concert in 1979, and then the next concert you went to was not until 1981, then you would have noticed a huge step up in production values. Not only were automated lights introduced in the interim, but also color scrollers as well.  

For a PDF of the August 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

(Note: The data gathered this month was extensive and required significant editing. For a PDF with the full data gathered for the August 2009 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.) 

You’re probably familiar with Moore’s law — that computer power doubles approximately every two years — but you may not be familiar with Groves’ law: network bandwidth doubles approximately every century. That was Intel founder Andy Groves’ tongue-in-cheek swipe at the slow pace of networking technology. But that’s all about to change.

For a PDF of the July 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

Moving mirrors fixtures have been around for at least 40 years and they have been tried in the theatre, on concert tours, and in nightclubs. George Izenour undertook a project to build a remote followspot in a moving mirror form factor in 1969. The water-cooled fixture had heat problems and never found much commercial success but a couple of them that were installed in the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.  

For a PDF of the June 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

Almost 20 years ago, Emmy-nominated director David Niles, a.k.a. Captain Video, had one of the first high-definition studios around. It was in the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York and it featured a giant projection screen and a hi-def projector on which he could show his work.

For a PDF of the May 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.
 

Deep Throat: Follow the money.
Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat: Oh, I can’t tell you that.
Bob Woodward: But you could tell me that.
Deep Throat: No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I’ll confirm. I’ll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that’s all. Just…follow the money.

For a PDF of the Mar. 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

In his book, Stage Rigging Handbook, Jay Glerum jumps right in with both feet discussing the four Ks: Know the rigging system you’re working with; Keep the equipment in safe and working order; Know how to use it; and Keep your concentration. Whether you have or use a manual counterweight rigging system or an automated rigging system with remote control, we can’t pick and choose among the four Ks because none of them are optional. And lately, much of the rigging in theatres and performing arts centers has been moving towards automation. 

If you’re in the lighting industry and you have the slightest compulsion to design, program, or direct lights in a show, you’re living in what is perhaps the best time ever to be in the industry. Given the wide availability of lighting software and the low cost of computer hardware, there has never been easier access to the tools of the trade. Anyone who can get their hands on a computer and jump on the internet can download a variety of software for free, try it out, learn how to use it, and take an entire show from concept to virtualization without ever leaving the comfort of the home or office. That includes software to lay out a lighting plot, patch it to a virtual console, program it and play it back on a visualizer. Though you may not be able to save your work unless you actually pay for the software, you can still test drive the software, log some time on it, figure out which programs and consoles you like and dislike and even prepare for a real gig.

For a PDF of the Jan. 2009 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE .

A decade ago, Ethernet was to our industry what ethics and morals were to politics — a great idea that’s not commonly used in practice. Politics hasn’t changed, but our industry has.

When DMX was introduced in 1985, it was never intended to run automated lights, much less media servers with hundreds of control channels and arrays of LEDs numbering in the tens of thousands. At the time, a baud rate of 250K, which is the speed of transmission of DMX, was just fine, and the 512 channel limit of a single universe of DMX was not an issue.

For a PDF of the Dec. 2008 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE .

I have no idea if the following story is true, but I have a good idea that I’ll hear from several of you about this. The story I’m thinking of is one told to me by Peter Cutchey, an Englishman who worked in the lighting industry from the early 1970s until shortly before he passed away in 2002. According to Cutchey, he was once sitting in an outhouse in England smoking a ciga-rette when he noticed a bright ray of sunshine streaming in through a tiny hole. When he blew cigarette smoke at it, he could see the beam of light a lot better. That gave him the idea to start building fog machines. If I remember the story correctly, he was working for Optikinetics at the time (now called Opti), and fog machines fit right in with their line of psychedelic lighting effects.

For a PDF of the Nov. 2008 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE .
 

If you need any convincing that we’re entering a period of amazing technology, click here and watch Blaise Aguera y Arcas demo Photosynth. You’ll see a powerful piece of software that grafts together a variety of images and links them in 3D space. It’s amazing to watch the pixels fly.

For a PDF of the Oct. 2008 PLSN Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

If there was an economic stimulus package for the live event production industry, it would have to have a passel of automated lights. The multi-parameter luminaire has done more to stimulate the industry than any other technology, with the possible exception of the multi-pixel LED luminaire or display device. But automated lighting was first, and, as such, deserves recognition as the technology that started the exponential growth of the DMX512 channel count in a rig.