NEW YORK – Scharff Weisberg teamed with projection designer Zachary Borovay to integrate video into two more Broadway productions, Lombardi and Elf, continuing a nearly 10-year relationship including collaborations on other Broadway productions such as Xanadu, To Be Or Not To Be and Peepshow in Las Vegas.
Read More »BLACKBURN, U.K. – Within the last two months, UK lighting rental company HSL reports that it has invested some $3.9 million in products acquired to service its current work.
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BURLINGTON, VT – Mike Potashnick, a production and stage manager for numerous concerts and festivals in the Northeast, died Jan. 10, 2011 at age 52 after a short illness. He had been an integral part of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival, the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Terrapin Presents, Inc., and other events and organizations.
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When founder Paul O'Neill and tour director Elliot Saltzman first put Trans Siberian Orchestra on the road 11 years ago, the entire production fit in a single truck. Today's TSO holiday shows, which give Christmas-themed orchestral music a heavy metal edge, are visually animated with massive video displays, moving truss, lasers and pyro, and it takes 20 trucks of gear, including one generator truck, to make the East and West Coast shows happen.
Read More »There's a small island in the Pacific Ocean called Yap, where very large discs carved out of stone represent a form of currency. Some are six or eight feet across and weigh several thousand pounds. You should see the size of the wallets on Yap.
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Education is important to every society and in every industry. From the outside, show business might seem like a magical land of make believe, but to us it's how we live our lives and make our living.
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Matthew West's Grammy nomination in 2009 was the culmination of several years writing songs and scoring number one hits in the contemporary Christian market and the country scene. Most of his songs reflect his own life experiences, but in 2010 he decided to turn the mic around. He reached out to his fans and asked them to share their life stories. In return, he would write songs that were inspired by those stories.
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Rock operas, jukebox musicals and tribute shows have been bringing the rock to the Great White Way over the last few years, and one of the most striking productions in recent memory is Rain: a Tribute To the Beatles, a tour that has landed on Broadway for a three-month run extended until Jan. 9, 2011.
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Would you pay to train your competitor? PTT of Florida, LLC does…sort of. PPT is a temporary employment company that provides manual labor, professional crew, and rental equipment for lighting, sound, and rigging primarily for live events.
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Trusses are best neither seen nor heard. They float in the theatrical limbo behind the high scrim curtains, the orchard for lighting and sound and video nodes. As far as people are concerned, the truss is a way station, a place you go to work with or on one of those nodes and scamper back down as soon as you're done. The truss is a stop on the theatrical technology train, not a destination.
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I'm currently prepping for another New Year's Eve event here in Las Vegas, and this year I am up to my eyeballs in video content. I've been plotting the lighting design, attending meetings and making budget refinements, but the most creative part of the preparation so far has been selecting video content for the party. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is, for the most part, but there are a few items on my checklist that help make the process flow smoother, so I thought I'd share them with you.
Read More »This is the time of year when business columns turn their attention to tax strategies for the coming year. The lighting, projection and staging businesses are heavy with freelance professionals and that's a topic that's right in their wheelhouse. However, 2011 is going to be a wild ride for freelancers when it comes to both taxes and healthcare legislation. For starters, we nearly started the New Year with a lot of uncertainty about what the actual tax rates are going to be.
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