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2014 Parnelli Visionary Award Honoree Howard Ungerleider

2014 Parnelli Visionary Award Honoree Howard Ungerleider

2014 Parnelli Visionary Award Honoree Howard Ungerleider

You are the architect of your own future, and you get out of it what you put into it,” Howard Ungerleider says. Ungerleider is, himself, a helluva architect, and he has put his heart, soul, sweat and passion into a remarkable career that continues to inspire and influence not only the work of other lighting designers, but the manufacturers who create lighting tools. For all that and more, he will be honored with the Parnelli Visionary Award at the 14th annual Parnelli Awards ceremony, set for Nov. 22 in Las Vegas.

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2014 Hometown Hero Finalists Announced

The 2014 Hometown Hero Finalists

Companies driven by people doing what they love to do most are what make a “hometown hero.” There’s a lot of passion in this eclectic collection chosen by the readers of PLSN. And while this can be, as one honoree described it, a “dog eat dog” world, there’s a lot of good people doing good work out there. Here are the six best lighting companies in North America for 2014. One of these companies will be honored with a Parnelli Award for Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year at the annual awards ceremony, set this year for Nov. 22 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

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This 4K blend, presented at InfoComm 2014, used E2 and two Barco HDQ-4K35 projectors.

The Next Evolution in Presentation Switching

Over the last few years, I’ve written several columns on the subject of 4K, and the message in the consumer marketplace remains unchanged: the big television manufacturers need shiny new toys to sell, and 4K gets the nod. Granted, the pictures are stunning, the resolution is remarkable, the price point is way higher than HD, and 4K content is very scarce.

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ExtraPro Patch Player

ExtraPro Patch Player

What  options do you have when managing the playback of content in multiple locations from a single source? Until recently, the answer would have been to create a matrix of routers, cables, media servers, and controllers to accomplish what should be fairly straightforward. Patch Player, by ExtraPro LLC, is a new content playback application that lets users control content playing in various locations from a single source.  Created by developer/owner Ted Mizrahi, Patch Player promises to simplify control and setup for presentations, tradeshows and other types of multi-show environments via any Android OS device.

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Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 Spot

Chauvet Professional’s Rogue Series

For the past few years, lighting designers have been in search of a light that is an all-around workhorse — able to do almost anything they ask while still being lightweight, compact and LED-based. Rental houses want what the LDs want, too, of course — with the added requirements that the fixtures be easy to maintain, comparable to a 250W discharge fixture and — oh yeah — offered at an affordable price.

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Marsha Stern at the Pines Pavilion back in the late 1980s. Photo by Bob Howard

The Good Ol’ Disco Days

I have been programming automated lighting since the late 1980s and have seen many things change and grow. However, most of today’s programming has its roots in a time even before I started programming. The disco era of the 1970s and 1980s was filled with many different types of fixtures and control. Automated lighting desks did not exist, yet complex lighting sequences had to be produced and recalled. Lighting designer Marsha Stern was lucky enough to have been a pioneer at the time, controlling lighting in some of the New York City’s most iconic discos. I sat down with her to better understand the tools available at the time and their influences on today’s automated lighting concepts.

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ABC’s MDA Show of Strength aired as a two-hour special Aug. 31. Photo by Design Partners

Designing for the MDA Telethon; Gambling on Casino LDs; Quick Cues

Children in wheelchairs not only have special needs, they need special design consideration when they’re part of a show. Getting them in and out of the audience, getting them onto the stage requires ramps, elevators and other accessibility features. While the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has recently swept social media to raise funds for ALS, the MDA Telethon has been raising money for ALS, muscular dystrophy and other neuro-related diseases since 1966, traditionally during Labor Day weekend.

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Illustration by Andy Au

Taking What They’re Giving

I successfully spent the summer as a fill-in LD. Running shows for various friends who couldn’t cover their own gigs during a particular time period. The size or particulars of the gig don’t really matter to me. What I found amazing was this turn-around cycle I am experiencing. Many of my friends that I had hired at some point during their careers were suddenly calling me up, looking for somebody to cover for them. This is nothing new, except this summer I took these gigs myself.

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Screen shots from the Nemetscheck (above) and Bluebeam (below) website home pages

Nemetschek AG Acquires Bluebeam

COLUMBIA, MD — Nemetschek AG, corporate parent to Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., announced that it will acquire 100 percent of Bluebeam Software, Inc., headquartered in Pasadena, CA. Bluebeam is a leading provider of PDF-based workflow solutions for digital processes and collaboration in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry with more than 650,000 users worldwide.

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Seventh Knight of Illumination Awards Winners Announced

Seventh Knight of Illumination Awards Winners Announced

LONDON — The seventh Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI), held at the at the Troxy Theatre here on Oct. 5, honored the creative achievements of lighting and video professionals working on shows across the U.K. The awards, organized by The Society of Television & Lighting Design (STLD), The Association of Lighting Designers (ALD), Clay Paky and Ambersphere Solutions, included touring, television and theatrical lighting and video design categories. LD Mark Jonathan served as host at the event.

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