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Living the Dream at Age 13

Living the Dream at Age 13

You may have never heard of Cody Stoltz, but if you have, then you know why this young man is special. At 13 years of age, he absolutely loves lighting. While most people his age are still playing with their friends or dealing with the changes that come with transitioning to life as a teenager, Stoltz knows what he wants to do; he wants to be a lighting designer. He’s even saved his money and invested in his own lighting rig, and he’s an intern at New Orleans-based RZI.

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LD Assistant 08

As lighting designers, we need to provide lots of information in the form of lighting plots and paperwork. That hasn’t changed since the days when I was in college. But these days, two-dimensional drawings are not enough. We have to be able to draw in three dimensions, turn on the lights, capture cues as photo-realistic pictures, and we have to do this in the same amount of time it used to take to produce the light plot alone.

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The Master Raster Mapper

Imagine this scenario. You are hired as the video director for a tour, and they want to use HD. You want to display different images on seven LED screens, and you are using a media server that, at best, supports two layers of 1080p resolution media. What would you do to make this work? There is a way, and it involves creatively mapping out the raster.

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No Shirt, No Shoes? No Way!

Imagine this: I was working on a stadium concert for a big rock band in an indoor stadium. We had a well known LD and were just about to start the first rehearsal with the band. Our front of house technician came walking out to the consoles wearing only his shorts. With no shirt and no shoes he paraded across the floor and right up to the LD. Then he took his seat and waited for the rehearsal to start. I am sure you can guess the LD’s reaction; no one was surprised when the FOH tech was replaced just a few days into the tour.

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Lighting Up Education

The next time you see projection video in an entertainment venue, think of it as also mentoring a student in elementary or high school. That’s because the projection has been discovering potentially vast new fields to till in the education sector. The penetration of digital, widescreen, HD and other advanced projection technology into education environments are difficult to measure precisely but anecdotal evidence suggests it has become a huge trend. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) estimated that at its annual convention in San Antonio the 40 projection systems manufacturers that exhibited there last July had doubled in a little over five years. 

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Taming the Cable Monster

“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” — Robert Armstrong as
Carl Denham in the original King Kong (1933).

 

There’s a new movie in the making that will soon be playing in theatres and performing arts spaces everywhere. It’s about a new protocol that goes up against a monster bundle of cable. The winners in this battle are the techies and end users of large lighting systems. 

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Heavy Metal Thunder

I’ve been having a lot of fun this year doing something I don’t often do — lighting heavy metal tours. While it’s not my favorite kind of music, I am having a blast. I mean, what other genre of music enables you to hit 160 cues in a three-minute song?

 

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Ya gotta be kidding me.

    So my gal and I are relaxing watching CNN cover the Republican convention. Final night, it’s time to hear Mr. McCain accept his party’s nomination. So I tune in to see what he has to say. And instead of hearing him I can only think of one thing…, this is the worst lighting and video presentation I have ever seen on TV.

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