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College Students Form Non-Profit Production Company at ASU

Andrew Latimer and Kelsey Booth, founders of Lighting Audio Video Arts (LAVA).

College Students Form Non-Profit Production Company at ASU

There’s a new live event production team in Tempe. And you’ll find their prices quite reasonable — likely even free. But you’ll have to be on the campus of Arizona State University to take advantage of it …

Students looking for experience, an opportunity to work with better gear, and a selfless desire to help their fellow students increase the production value of their events have formed Lighting Audio Video Arts (LAVA). It’s a student-led and student-crewed production group.

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Book of Mormon photo by Joan Marcus

The Book of Mormon

Brian MacDevitt Lights Three Distinct Worlds

Fresh from the minds of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q composer/lyricist Robert Lopez, Book of Mormon is the hottest ticket on Broadway right now, and with good reason. The profane-yet-profound send-up of religious faith is ripe with hilarious humor as a naive Mormon elder seeks to get sent on a mission to Orlando, FL but ends up in Uganda, Africa — with a socially awkward and annoying peer.

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80s Rewind Festival (Henley, UK)

80’s Rewind Festival

U.K. Designers Evoke the Past with Pastels

Pop culture’s love affair with nostalgia continues. Launched in 2009 at Henley-on-Thames, England, The Rewind Festival boasts what is perhaps the largest lineup of Reagan/Thatcher era artists this side of the US Festival.

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Rock band Bambi tells the story. Photo by Eva Mueller

Alex Koch, Adam Frank and “Goodbar”

PLSN: Can you tell us the story of Goodbar briefly?

Alex Koch, video designer: Goodbar is based on the gruesome murder of Roseann Quinn, a young school teacher by day, club fiend by night who was murdered in NYC in 1973. Judith Rossner retells the story in her 1975 novel Looking for Mr Goodbar. The book’s 1977 film adaptation directed by Richard Brooks affirmed the story’s hold on the public conscious and it was something of a cultural touchstone.

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Metallica

Xtreme Structures Rocks Through Xtreme Growth

Mike Wells had an enviable successful career as an entertainment engineer consultant. After all, he’s engineered and designed for the likes of Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Disney Live! among many others. Yet it wasn’t quite enough. “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” he stated quietly from his home recently. “I always wanted my own company.”

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Jim Fackert

Parnelli Visionary Award Winner Jim Fackert

“Jim Fackert is the MacGyver of the entertainment business,” states Bob Peterson, owner of Real World Lighting, and formerly of Upstaging. “With an idea, a pile of parts and a tube of RTV, anything could happen. Many things did. Cyklops moving lights, color changers, parametric EQ for audio consoles, bump buttons, Rainbo lighting consoles, slide matrix dimmer patching, working variable intensity pin matrices, control multiplexing, high density modular dimming, solid state dimming, Littlites… just a few of his many offerings!”

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Hometown Heroe Lighting Company Finalists

2011 Regional Lighting Company Winners

When the votes for the 2011 Hometown Hero nominees were tallied, PLSN readers once again came up with a good mix. There are some new faces in this crowd along with some companies that have been around a while (one since 1948!). They have their differences, but they share a lot of festival and corporate work. One thing they all have in common can be summed up by what Paradigm Production Service’s Jorge Valdez said: “I can say I clearly love what I’m doing, and I don’t do it for the money, that’s for sure.”

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Digital signage outside the Orleans Casino in Las Vegas

Digital Signage

In today’s advertising world, making an impression and getting your message across in just a few seconds is critical. In this fast-paced, visually over-stimulated ADD world we live in, print signage is considered static and likely gets just a glance in most locations. Unless you have a product that virtually sells itself, you will need to consider new and exciting ways to make an impression.

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Robe ROBIN 300 LEDWash

Robe Robin 300 & 600 LEDWash Fixtures

When comparing the latest LED wash lights from Robe, the Robin 600 LEDWash and the Robin 300 LEDWash, it is like comparing the same fixture.  The main difference between the two fixtures is size.  Throughout my testing of the two fixtures, everything was exactly the same except for the size, output and LED count. I’ll begin with features and functions that can be found on both fixtures.

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ETC Source Four Fresnel

ETC Source Four Fresnel

Earlier this year, Electronic Theatre Controls surprised the industry with one of their latest products, the Source Four Fresnel.  With all of the developments in LED technology and the push for greener products, who would have thought that a new tungsten product would come to market. ETC did!

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Erich Friend

Where are We Headed with Outdoor Concert Regulations?

This has been a very interesting couple of years for the outdoor event industry.  There have been numerous cases of events being devastated by weather.  The support structure damages have ranged from toppled and collapsed tents, to entire stage canopies twisting and collapsing under wind and rain loads.  The equipment losses have extended to video, sound, lighting gear and music instruments.  Nothing to say the least about the loss of lives being lost at such tragedies.

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