The 56th Eurovision Song Contest included three live broadcasts – two semi-finals the finals – with a combined live audience of over 45,000 and an estimated 200 million TV and internet viewers. Broadcast by NRK from Telenor Arena in Oslo, Norway, there were singers from 39 countries and an equally-impressive assembly of crew and gear backstage.
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Zig Zag Lighting is providing gear for jazz-pop singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Cullum, on tour in the U.K. and Europe to support his recent album, The Pursuit. The lighting design by Hadyn Thomas uses a rig that includes Robe fixtures for all the moving lights.
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Pianist Balázs Havasi and his symphony performed with a 40-voice choir for a corporate event at the Budapest Congress & World Trade Centre recently. Attila Lenzsér, who served as LD, programmer and operator, used a rig provided by Lajter Light Ltd. that included 80 Clay Paky fixtures.
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For the Winter Jam 2010 Christian music tour, which featured acts like Third Day, Newsboys, Newsong and Sidewalk Prophets, Axxis, Inc. provided LC Series LED panels as the visual centerpiece – then changed that centerpiece by flipping the panels from a horizontal to vertical configuration as the tour was underway.
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Church on the Move in Tulsa, Okla. draws about 10,000 to its multiple weekly services and regularly fills most of the 2,700 seats in its main church. I-Mag gives everyone a better view of what's happening and is a key part of the draw.
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When Green Day released their raucous rock opera American Idiot back in 2004, no one knew that the album would turn out to be one of the biggest of their career, that it would lead to a massive world tour, win two Grammy Awards and multiple MTV Video Awards and ultimately become a Tony Award-winning Broadway show at the St. James Theatre.
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Music, Lights and Video, in Four Acts
Carrie Underwood tour-goers would not be blamed for mistaking this concert for the kind that is associated with a pop diva, as opposed to a country artist who first sang her way into American hearts on a TV show just a few years ago.
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In the post-MP3 world, production values in live events are often dictated by economics. Those fat advances that record companies used to front to recording artists have gone the way of reel-to-reel tape machines and typewriters. Today, they are much more reliant on ticket sales and profitable touring, so every means of saving money on the road is of capital importance.
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Early this year I was cruising the aisles of NAMM when I came across the Elation Platinum Spot 5R. It's pretty difficult to assess a new light at a trade show, but what caught my attention was the contrast between this light and the ones right next to it. It was brighter. But the kicker was that it was smaller and it drew less power than those other lights. I had to figure out why.
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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.
Read More »The sine wave that is country music's fortunes periodically intersects with the boundaries of the larger mainstream pop music paradigm, and this summer, Nashville-based music finds itself all over that map. Artists like Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts and the ubiquitous Taylor Swift have kept country on the cover of People magazine and on the broader cultural radars. One other thing they have in common is major video projection systems out on tour with them.
Read More »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.
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