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Elton John- The Diving Board Tour

Elton John (c) Steve Jennings

Elton John- The Diving Board Tour

Before embarking on a second three-year Million Dollar Piano residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas this month, Elton John headlined a New Year’s Eve concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. The Barclays Center show incorporated set elements and visuals from the artist’s 2013-2014 Diving Board tour — which marked the last chance for LD Patrick Woodroffe and the late Mark Fisher of Stufish Entertainment Architects to collaborate on the look of an Elton John concert. Fisher died June 25, 2013; the tour launched Nov. 8 and ran through Feb. 28, 2014.

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FleetWood Mac (c) Steven Jennings

Fleetwood Mac: The Full-On Mac is Back

I’m having lunch today with Paul “Arlo” Guthrie, who could well be the finest Australian export to the States since Vegemite. He has again assumed his recurring role as production designer for Fleetwood Mac’s latest world tour. The band wrapped up well over a year ago when one of the founding members, bassist John McVie, had to take a leave of absence due to health issues. But that was after another original member, Christine McVie, sat in with the band for a show in London last year. She had been missing from the lineup since 1998, and for the first time in 17 years, the five members from the powerhouse lineup of the 1970s were involved in the show. I also spoke with lighting director Chris Lose and with screens provider Danny O’Bryen about the tour.

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GrooveBoston University of Texas at Arlington, Christ Dutton (c) GrooveBoston and ECLPS

GrooveBoston and ECLPS Make Raves on Campus

It’s a Friday afternoon, and Nate Almeida and the rest of the East Coast Lighting & Production Services team (ECLPS) are gearing up for another stop on Groove-Boston’s Cohesion Tour. These players have been collaborating on large-scale shows for 10 years and six consecutive tours. GrooveBoston combines massive pro-ductions with resident DJs to create immersive concert events on college campuses. ECLPS has been a key partner in creating a majority of the visual designs for each show since its’ inception.

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Laser effects for Tiësto.

Image Engineering’s Sibling Revelry

It started when they were children. The three Suehle brothers were those kids at your grade school assembly who were in the back fiddling with projectors and lights, trying to make something unique happen. Enthralled with the production aspects of shows, Andy, Joe and John first worked on events at schools and churches. Their obsession became their profession. John, the eldest, got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering (yep, he’s Dr. John). Joe, in the middle, got a degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA. Andy, with a degree in mathematics, became the marketer and salesman of the trio. PLSN spoke to Joe for this article.

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Tyler Elich

Tyler Elich: A Designer You Should Know

At 34, Tyler Elich has already crafted fresh looks for projects that range from theater to comedy to huge arena pop shows. He has lit artists ranging from Bob Dylan, Janet Jackson and comedian Eddie Izzard to Fun, Sugar Ray and Everclear. He divides his time between drawing event renderings, corporate shows and designing and directing touring projects. He has been drawing for LD Paul Normandale for more than 12 years, and last summer he got a “dream” assignment: serving as lighting director for the Nine Inch Nails tour.

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Tomorrow World

TomorrowWorld Gets AV Boost from NEP Screenworks

Tomorrowland, the international dance music festival founded by Dutch concert promoters ID&T and staged in Boom, Belgium since 2005, branched out to the U.S. in 2013 with TomorrowWorld, which featured a roster of 300+ EDM artists and a collective audience of 140,000 for its Sept. 27-29 debut in in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, outside Atlanta.

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Freelance cameraman Danny Zemanek

So, You Want to be a Cameraman

I’ve often wondered how someone gets their start these days, if they’re aspiring to work in the video industry. Where does one acquire the knowledge and the skill? How can you get that first big break? Certainly the colleges, universities and trade schools provide a comprehensive background, teaching a little bit of everything involving audio and video— but rarely concentrating on specific marketable skills.

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Robe BMFL

Robe BMFL

I just spent two straight hours playing with this remarkable new fixture from Robe, the fine Czech Republic manufacturer of quality lighting fixtures. The latest in their series of hard-edged spot fixtures is cleverly called the BMFL, which stands for Bright Multi-Functional Luminaire. This fixture is so unique in the way that it projects textures that it took me all that time just to glance at all the amazing designer macros in this fixture and the fact that I’m playing with a whole new beast of a light here, not another clone of a typical spot fixture. This fixture has every bell and whistle of all the other spot fixtures I have used, rolled into one.

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