Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show with Katy Perry, Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott
“It’s the hardest show I do, but I love it because you’re working with the best of everybody,” Mark Grega of Strictly FX says of the Super Bowl.
Read More »Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show with Katy Perry, Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott
Chauvet Celebrates 25 Years by Looking Forward, Not Back
It’s 9:40 a.m. on a warm January South Florida morning, and gathered around a conference table are three lighting professionals who have been brought to Chauvet’s HQ for a visit. Typical of lighting guys, they are sharing war stories on the challenges of providing lighting and video (in this instance, as it relates to the house of worship market).
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Red Bull Crashed Ice Tour, St. Paul, MN
What started out as a single event 15 years ago has blossomed into the Ice Cross Downhill World Championship Series. For the fourth year in a row, one of these sporting spectacles took place in downtown St. Paul, MN on Jan. 24, 2015, where an estimated 140,000 spectators got right into the up close action of this sport. A plethora of the worlds’ fastest skaters go head to head down a narrow track skating at speeds of 40 mph. While the races themselves were exciting, I couldn’t help wondering who and how a company can erect this gigantic structure along with all the lighting, video and audio it takes to put on a world televised event like this.
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The Dark Side of Visualizers
Visualizers are awesome. Doesn’t matter which one you use, Vectorworks, Martin Show Designer, ESP, or Capture, or the myriad of other selections out there, they are indeed cool. Visualizers are designed to save us time in crating shows, and also give us some pretty powerful renderings to blow our clients minds and convince them that our vision is indeed amazing, and worth buying. Visualizers can make your design much more clear to your client than just having a set of blueprints or pencil drawings.
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Strictly FX’s Reid Nofsinger
They ought to put Reid’s picture in the dictionary under “pyro technician.” Take one look at him, and you know he’s the type of guy you would expect to drive fast cars, own his own custom fit Storm Trooper suit and blow up stuff for a living. He’s been the lead engineer and technician at Strictly FX, Chicago’s premier special effects vendor for the entertainment biz, for more than 15 years. PLSN sat down to chat with how he and Strictly got to where they are today.
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So, You Want to be a Video Editor
Everything you watch on television is edited — every program, commercial, promo, news story, every clip on the LED wall at a concert, you name it. Every scene is meticulously edited in order to move the story line along and create the program’s drama, comedy or excitement. Think about it — even live events are edited in realtime by the director (with each and every camera cut)for the very same reason — to move the story along.
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Vaddio RoboSHOT Cameras
Vaddio has been around for more than 10 years now, supplying the world with robotic cameras. Yesterday I made a trip out to their Minnetonka, MN office space to find a pretty massive office and warehouse where the employees numbered over a hundred. Everything made by the company is built in America, assembled right here at their sparkling clean facility. That was just the first thing to impress me.
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Elation Sniper 2R
In a world where every manufacturer is chasing the next great LED configured fixture or inventing their version of a hybrid luminaire, it is pretty exciting to see a light come out that isn’t competing with anything else in the market. Elation’s design team has once again raised the bar by unleashing their Sniper 2R. This award-winning fixture was released last year at the PLASA show in London, and its laser simulation capabilities and high speed scanning mirror system made it the talk of the show floor.
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Weather vs. Lighting Designer
Even if Oscar Wilde did once say “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” we all still love to talk about the weather. And, sooner or later, we will all have to do a show outside, or at the very least in a tent.
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Clay Paky Mythos
Italian lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has brought the industry something much more than its series of Sharpy fixtures. Although it looks almost identical to a SuperSharpy from the outside, let’s have a look on the inside to see what the Mythos is all about.
Read More »Would You Survive?
Automated lighting programmers operate in a world of extreme danger. We are often put into situations that require us to make immediate decisions and take action. Lack of success in these endeavors can lead to loss of work, unimaginable stress, and even financial loss. By studying actual situations, you can determine if you would respond accordingly and survive the most treacherous of programming moments. Listed below are some of the most hazardous programming moments I have personally encountered. After reading each setup, ask yourself if you would survive before you read the actions.
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Lighting The Tragically Hip, Neil Diamond, Rush, Steve Aoki and Cars in Qatar
LD Brent Clark operated his design for The Tragically Hip’s Fully and Completely tour through mid-February in Canadian arenas. He then returned to Sarah McLachlan’s U.S. run Feb. 27-April 1. Describing The Hip’s design, Clark explained: “Our main focus was to create two distinct shows. The main part of the show was the band playing the album Fully Completely in its entirety, which they had never done before, and then book end that set with five songs. So those five songs had to look and feel entirely different. We did this by using only black and white I-Mag side screens and straight up rock and roll lighting with no video content. So when Fully Completely started, all the video elements rolled into play and the side screens sprang into color. It was quite a fun project to work on.”
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