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LeRoy Bennett’s Design for The Weeknd’s Fall Madness Tour

The Weeknd tour photo by Steve Jennings

LeRoy Bennett’s Design for The Weeknd’s Fall Madness Tour

The Weeknd recently wrapped up the sold-out The Madness Fall Tour, which was in support of the artist’s second studio album, Beauty Behind the Madness. Known by the stage name The Weeknd, Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer Abel Tesfaye wanted to build on the success of the album with the tour through extremely effective use of production elements to support his music. Production and lighting designer LeRoy Bennett, one of the principals in Seven Design Works, was asked to realize that goal.

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The Martha Graham Dance Company in Shanghai

The Martha Graham Dance Company Performs in Shanghai, Lit with Gio-Controlled Source Four LED Fixtures

SHANGHAI, China – The Shanghai Grand Theatre (SGT) featured performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company. LD Nick Hung lit Graham’s classics with Source Four LED luminaires controlled by a Gio lighting-control system. ETC’s Chinese dealer, Hangzhou YiDaShi Lighting Equipment Co., Ltd., also played a significant role in the event by providing technical support for the show.

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X Ambassadors photo by Foster White

X Ambassadors: Rolling Renegades

Everyone in the music industry feels the crunch of the digital revolution. Used to be a band would tour the world in the hopes of attracting interest in their new album or latest creation. These days, however, it seems up-and-coming artists who circle the globe place less emphasis on earning royalties from record sales than in racking up revenue from concert tickets.

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Litec's Libera Alusfera truss, built as a domed roof structure

Area Four Industries: Tomcat, James Thomas Engineering, Milos and Litec Team Up for Efficiency

Competition between vendors in any business is commonplace. But the entertainment business has long been known as a cutthroat place where saving dimes can amount to earning thousands of dollars in the long run. So many companies make similar products that a buyer can easily shop around for the best deal. Companies spend serious cash on R&D for a new product, only to find other companies copying their ideas a year later. The business of metalworking — especially truss manufacturing — is no different.

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Laura Frank at FOH for the 2015 Latin Grammys, which were staged at the MGM Grande in Las Vegas.

Luminous FX Owner Laura Frank

Laura Frank is the proprietor of Luminous FX, a company that specializes in dealing with getting the properly formatted media to the proper projectors or LED walls at an event. In these days of having a dozen or more surfaces on one stage covered with pixels, she has created a niche’ for herself. While she is not the only person in the entertainment business tasked with her job, it’s the unique way her company operates that sets her apart from the rest of the world.

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PRG GroundControl Followspot System

PRG GroundControl Followspot System

Launched at the recent LDI show, the PRG GroundControl™ Followspot System is making people re-think how they use followspots in production. Awarded the LDI 2015 Best Debuting Product, the GroundControl is a huge step forward in not only safety in getting the truss followspot ops out of the truss and safely on the ground, but also in how designers use followspots. The LDI judges summed up their feelings on the GroundControl system, “The GroundControl advances the cause of staging and rigging in the concert industry by offering the possibility of removing spot operators from trusses forever, and continuing the efforts to make our industry safer.”

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Vibrio Lighting iPad App

Vibrio Lighting iPad App

Newer-generation touchscreen devices have always held the promise of new and exciting ways for us as lighting designers and programmers to interact with our rigs. Carrying around a small tablet at a show beats standing behind a console in many situations — walk onto the stage and focus your movers on a particular spot instead of squinting from FOH, or explore during a show to get a different perspective. Previous control solutions were mostly console software shoehorned into the device’s OS, which was hardly ideal. Enter Vibrio from Toast Mobile, an application built from the ground up to control small to midsize rigs on Apple’s iPad family of devices.

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Vocalist Shawn Christopher, a Chicago native who sings at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, performs with Willow Creek worship leader Matt Lundgren.

Willow Creek Church Marks 40 Years with Event at Chicago’s United Center

Significant milestones deserve memorable celebrations. For most organizations, a rented ballroom or restaurant space is sufficient. The game changes when the organization is among the nation’s largest and well-known mega churches. In the case of the South Barrington, IL-based Willow Creek Community Church, its 40th anniversary celebration called for a much larger space — Chicago’s 20,000 capacity United Center arena. The goal was to deliver the same immersive visual experience that congregants had come to expect from the church’s worship services.

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The eight-minute presentation, filmed by aerial drones this year, required close to 2,000 lighting cues.

Santa’s Boldest Beacon: Fred Loya’s Holiday Display in El Paso

Every winter, we see videos of some amazing large-scale Christmas light shows that take place. We see houses adorned with a million sparkling lights. Projection mapping on houses mixed with choreographed lighting. I’ve seen live animals, moving lights and trucks decked out with lights. But the Granddaddy of all of them takes place every year at Fred Loya’s house and grounds in El Paso, Texas.

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