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Biting Back

Biting Back

The true context to globalization is the intellectual property (IP) debate. As industries redistribute their sales and manufacturing throughout the world in search of both new markets and increased productivity, it’s inevitable that cultures are going to clash. That’s at the heart of the IP issue: from a Western perspective the need for IP protection is a no-brainer—the ability to protect ideas enables companies to move forward in developing and capitalizing them in anticipation of a return on that investment.

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ESP Vision 2.0

Zzyzx Inc. of Las Vegas has recently released version 2 of their ESP Vision visualization software program designed for programming lighting cues outside of the venue without using a lighting system. With this program, a lighting designer can make beautiful photo realistic renderings that depict what a show will look like, and convert these drawings to a video presentation of the event.

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Cue Theatre Vibe, and Go

Last winter, I got a call from a Chicago friend asking if I would be interested in designing the lighting and a set for a theatre tour. The artist is R. Kelly, a popular R&B singer, and he wanted to do something different. Robert (the artist’s real name) was used to playing arenas, but this time he wanted an intimate show in a theatre environment, complete with set changes and different themes for five sets of music.

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Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud

“No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.” – Christian Nevell Bovee, author/lawyer

If ever you feel like the deposits in your self-esteem account are outpacing your withdrawals, you might consider letting your significant other loose with your ego credit card. That should take care of any excess balance you might have.

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Three Years After Rhode Island, Pyro Shoots Back

On Feb. 28, there was an explosion on the steps of the state capitol building in Nashville. It wasn’t terrorism; in fact, it was a politician who pushed the plunger. Rather, it was a wakeup call, a demonstration of the power—and the danger— of pyro, and it came almost three years to the day that nearly 100 patrons died in a pyro-induced fire at The Station nightclub in Warwick, R.I.

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Riders on the Storm

It was a day just like any other Texas day  at the Cotton Bowl: hot and humid. A crew from Showlites was making steady progress, and we were well ahead of schedule that day, putting up a fairly decent-sized lighting rig for a Journey show that was about to be unleashed upon unsuspecting Dallas residents that weekend. The rig was a 400-plus lamp system, not including audience lights and the Molefays that were to be used on the P.A. wings to light two enormous scrims on either side of the screens used for Eidophore (large scale) projections.

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At the Copa, I Mean, the Hilton

As Las Vegas continues to boom, it seems as if there is constantly a new hotel vying for our evenings (and our checkbooks): Cirque du Soleil shows now outnumber the seats at a blackjack table, Celine Dion performs in her own Coliseum, Elton John fills in when she’s weekending in the Hamptons and Franco Dragone produces everything but burlesque shows.

To compete in this field, venues on the strip are going after big-name performers that can pull in viewers from every generation, including one of the most well-known crooners of modern day, Barry Manilow.

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Getting Your Video Freak On

For most event companies, video is a jump that seems too costly to make and the return on investment is questionable. That does not need to be the case with the new technologies being applied to processing equipment and to projectors.

Starting with a small system for corporate A/V or club use, a complete system can be assembled for less than $50,000. The system will include a basic input switcher, the appropriate amps and drivers, cabling, and for simplicity’s sake, one screen and projector.

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Let’s Talk Content

What are you going to do when…

  • The content you’re going to use for a show is being specially created for the gig, and the art department comes to you to ask about the media server’s specs?
  • During the first day of rehearsal, the client hands you a JPEG of one of the corporate VIPs and wants to use it in the show the next day?
  • You use your video camera to capture a beautiful sunset in an exotic location and you want to use it on your current fashion show? What’s the common theme in all of the above scenarios? The content will not all be correctly optimized, and it will need to be re-rendered and exported in a new format before it can be used in the media server properly. As the programmer of a media server, familiarizing yourself with the manufacturer’s specs regarding codecs and file types is an important part of your role.
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