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"Years ago,
artists would always want to go out each year with a new look, but the budgets
aren't there for that all the time anymore," says Tye Trussell of Accurate
Staging. "There's a lot of recycling going on out there. I've had people try to
sell me their old sets. It's just part of the mentality here." This
less-than-glamorous economic landscape for set building in Nashville may be
having the unintended but nonetheless salubrious effect of minimizing new
competition. ...The Nashville area also offers staging companies opportunities in
other market sectors, including corporate events and especially in churches,
which have continued expanding their own entertainment infrastructure for live
music and theatrical performances.
From
"Nashville Sets the Stage" by Dan Daley in "The Biz," PLSN, August 2010
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My parents instilled in me at a young age that the best kind
of job I could get would be one that I loved. If I saw the paycheck as a bonus, then I would be doing very
well. Often when I am programming
a console and playing with lights, I forget that I am getting paid to do my
work. I am having so much fun that
it would not really matter if I was paid or not. Just don't tell my employers this, as I do need to get paid to live, of
course. However, I do always see
the paychecks as bonuses when I am programming. Now I pass this message on to my son in the hopes that he
will find a job he loves doing too.
Thanks, Mom and Dad!
From
"Career Conundrums" by Brad Schiller, PLSN, August 2010
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A reader
wrote, "I have a contract to provide theatrical sound, stage-lighting and video
services at a university.
Recently, the university allowed multiple cell phone companies to
install equipment on the roof of the theatre. The cell phone tower equipment installed by one company
includes a conduit from the roof to the stage area catwalks on the inside of
the building. The conduit is
bonded via a decent gauge wire to the exposed steel of the building. The cell phone company also installed a
heavy wire from inside the same conduit to the exposed steel of the
building. My concern is, what
happens in the event of a lightning strike or other electrical issue from their
equipment? The building's steel is
exposed throughout the catwalk area above the stage, and the steel most likely
is also connected to our double-purchase rigging system steel. Are we at risk
for a shock in this situation?
Does it matter if the heavy wire is for lightning suppression versus
just a heavy ground wire for their installation?" ...The short answer to his
question is that it should be safe to stand on the catwalk during a
thunderstorm because the cell phone tower is bonded to the building. The reason for bonding
them is to do our best to make sure all of the metal in the building structure,
the cell tower, and the electrical system remain at the same voltage potential
regardless of what might happen. Otherwise, a lightning strike or ground fault
could create a difference in potential that could be very dangerous.
From
"Focus on Fundamentals" by Richard Cadena, PLSN, August 2010
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Montgomery
Gentry was headlining the Throwdown festival. A talented veteran by the name of Michael Shucher
has been their lighting designer for 10 years. He and I hit it off right away...I
was short a little cash for a crew guy. I asked Mike if he ever did any of the
physical work erecting his own lighting rig. "You gotta be kidding me," he
says. "I work straight from load-in ‘til load-out every day. That's how we roll
out here." I instantly found myself a working LD. Not only that, but Jamie, a guy on the MG crew, worked his
tail off helping with rigging and all the rag trusses. We developed camaraderie
between all departments that is rare these days, and it worked out great. Due
to some long overnight drives and bus failures, our production bus found us a
few hours late to a couple of gigs. But by the time we arrived, Mike and Jamey
had tipped the trucks, bolted the truss, set up the dimmers with power and were
rigging points with the locals. This was all without being asked. They just did
it. The camaraderie out there didn't stop. Traveling with us was the now
infamous "Barbecue Band." This group of guys didn't get paid, but were allowed
to play on the B stage as well as interact with everyone on the tour. Every
evening after the show, they would set up a barbecue station in the parking lot
of the venue and put up a small PA with some mics. They cooked after show
barbecue for over 100 people while all the musicians from the 10 different
bands took turns jamming with each other. These after parties went on long
after load-out was finished, and we all drank lots of beer (and Jim Beam of
course) while dining on lots of roasted pig and assorted barbecue.
From
"LD-at-Large" by Nook Schoenfeld, PLSN, August 2010
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The video
design for American Idiot underwent a substantial transformation from California to
New York, according to projection designer Darrell Maloney. In Berkeley, there
were six video feeds going to 38 monitors routed through a switch so they could
have different configurations of monitors. In the New York production, there
are 43 monitors with a distinct feed going to each one, which allows Maloney
and his team "to have different images on every individual monitor at any time.
It also opened up how I could program transitions and patterns. One place this
was used to great effect is in the opening number. I was able to treat each
video sequence to look like the kind of TV it was playing on - 1950s, 1960s,
1970s, 1980s, etc. - since many of the monitors are dressed to look like older
televisions."
Most
of the original video/projection design took place over three months at
Berkeley, and Maloney spent two more months revising and refining his work in
New York. "The amount of media in this show is very high," he says. "It's the
amount of media I used to create over the course of one year in my broadcast
design business. There are over 600 pieces of media in the show made up of
thousands and thousands of individual clips."
Maloney
points out that in Berkeley they used many different brands of televisions,
which was problematic, given all of their inherent color and contrast
differences. He says it was impossible to get the content to look the same
across all the monitors, which was most evident with the graphic pieces. They
came up with a solution on Broadway: use Sony TVs exclusively.
For
Maloney, the challenges in working with a set with dozens of TVs was how they
could be used to tell the story and set place and mood without stealing focus from
the performances. "The two techniques I found for this were pattern and chaos,"
he says. "If an image repeated over the monitors they became pattern and your
eye could accept it and check in and out." The same applies when they were all
different. "What would grab focus every time was one TV on by itself, or with
different content. People would have a hard time looking away."
From
"Inside Theatre" by Bryan Reesman, PLSN, July 2010
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Matt Mills
has been working on the Daughtry tour since March 2009 as the lighting director
and programmer. It would be very easy to get complacent running the same show
day in and day out. Instead, he has found ways to stay creative, changing the
way the console uses pixel mapping, the way followspot cues are called, and
adjusting to last minute changes to the set list. Mills uses a Catalyst v4
media server to map content to 24 Martin Stagebar 54s. The Catalyst is triggered
by an MA Lighting grandMA console. He uses an ELC Node 6 to merge the ArtNet
outputs from both the grandMA and the Catalyst. This allows him to have full control of the Martin Stagebars
from both the console and the media server at anytime using highest takes
precedence (HTP) control. The ELC Node6 also acts as an ArtNet hub allowing him
to split the signal and route them to each truss as well...In addition to pixel
mapping, Mills has continually refined other areas of show execution driven by
his knowledge of show control software and his desire to make other aspects of
running his show more efficient and consistent. One of these is a unique
automated solution to calling followspot cues that he devised.
From
"Video Digerati" by Vickie Claiborne, PLSN, July 2010
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The
responsibilities of an automated lighting programmer are similar to that of an
airplane pilot in several ways. We
have to control expensive equipment, ensure a successful production (flight),
and we must be masters of our crafts. Before beginning a flight, an airplane
pilot always checks the airplane from top to bottom, inside and out. In the same manner, it is important for
a lighting programmer to confirm "all systems are GO" prior to starting a
programming session. With any size
lighting rig, there are certain procedures and tests that should be performed
before a single cue is written.
Failure to accurately test the rig can result in long delays or
inaccurate values being recorded.
From
"Feeding the Machines" by Brad Schiller, PLSN, July 2010
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Some of the
loads we use every day exhibit high inrush currents when they are first turned
on. An incandescent lamp with a cold filament can draw almost ten times its
normal operating current on startup. I took a snapshot of the inrush current in
a 500-watt PAR 64 using a Fluke 43B power quality meter. It measured a peak
inrush current of 41 amps at 120V before it settled down to 5.7 amps in half a
second. Discharge lamps also have a large inrush current. I measured it in a
575-watt MSR lamp fixture at 20 amps at 120V, settling down to 7.1 amps in 0.6
seconds. Chain hoists and other motors also produce high inrush currents. The
chain hoists that we most often use in this industry are induction motors. When
they are started from a stand still, it requires a lot of torque to start
lifting a load. Even if they are lowering a load with the aid of gravity the
windings still have to be energized before the motor will start moving. A 1-ton
CM hoist can draw as much as 30 amps at 230V on startup before settling down to
11.4 amps (3.8A 3-phase) in about half a second.
From
"Focus on Fundamentals" by Richard Cadena, PLSN, July 2010
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Around
1973, Howard Ungerleider attended a military auction in Washington, D.C. with
his friend Bill Pace, who was the LD at a club called The Bayou. They came upon
some old, large marine beacons. Howard noticed the bright thin beam of light
that Bob See had seen as well. He ended up buying a case of the lamps used in
these fixtures and returned to New York. He and Bob took one of the lamps and,
lo and behold, it fit in the PAR fixtures, retaining ring and all. He wired
them in a series and saw the future of his lighting designs.
From
"LD-at-Large" by Nook Schoenfeld, PLSN, July 2010
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The
K.I.S.S. rule - "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
- can be extremely freeing and useful when programming any
production. However it is
important to remember that it is not the only rule to follow. If you were to keep everything simple all
the time, you would end up with a single light illuminating the stage for the
entirety of a production. The
point is to use the K.I.S.S. rule wisely and apply it only when the time
savings is a benefit. You should,
of course, always work your hardest on every production to achieve the best
possible lighting, but sometimes this can only happen with the help of the
K.I.S.S. rule. And remember that
when you go home to your significant other you can kiss all you want!
From "Feeding
the Machines" by Brad Schiller, PLSN, June 2010
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