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Drake World Tour

Water by the Spoonful at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Jenny Graham

Maximum Minimalism: Water by the Spoonful at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

While technological innovations have certainly become a mainstay of modern theatre, sometimes the trick is not in showing off what you have but utilizing it in a way that makes it flow seamlessly within a story. As some film buffs are prone to say, the best special effects are usually the ones you do not notice. In their rendition of Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Water by the Spoonful, which runs this spring and fall, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival uses video projections and pixel mapping to create an aesthetic that enhances the tale of chat room buddies, all of whom are addicts, spilling their secrets while staying anonymous.

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Tool 2014 tour photo by Steve Jennings

Tool 2014 Tour

Tool’s lead vocalist, Maynard James Keenan, not only shuns the spotlight, he often performs in random positions — facing the wings or upstage wall, for example — instead of looking out to the audience. There’s a bit more light illuminating the other band members, but the visuals accompanying a live Tool concert are designed to support of the music and its overall vibe, not serve up a larger-than-life display of performing band members. Tool’s guitarist, Adam Jones, plays a key role in the creation of the band’s visuals, for both its music videos and the video seen during the band’s live shows. The band members do not appear in the music videos, either. Instead, the viewer sees a mélange of abstract and representational forms that help serve as each show’s narrative while emerging as their own form art.

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Global Trend Productions added visual appeal to the expanded Bond Bar at the Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas with LED panels beneath the gaming tables.

Las Vegas’ Cosmopolitan Adds LEDs for Gaming Table Allure

Let there be light. Actually, the saying was more along the lines of, “Let there be more light.” At least that’s what The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas conveyed to Burbank, CA-based Global Trend Productions when the casino and hotel approached the company about revamping its increasingly popular Bond bar. The Cosmopolitan, with the help of its design team, had big plans for elevating the appeal of its trendy bar area, having envisioned a wondrous, hybrid space that could be infused with Sin City-styled dance performances, gaming aspects and brightly lit visual elements. The Vegas hotspot accomplished this — and more. At the end of a month long renovation process, The Cosmopolitan completely transformed the look of the Bond bar with a unique and unprecedented application of LED technology within a casino environment.

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Gary Allan at the Hard Rock in Biloxi, MS. Photo by David Venus

Gary Allan Tour: One Truck, Many Shows

Just because they’re “weekend warriors,” as production manager Sean Gary humorously calls them, doesn’t mean that edgy country music veteran Gary Allan and his band and crew are not busier than a cat on fire. They spend most weekends of the year headlining in clubs, casinos, parks, theaters, rodeos, auto auctions, hockey arenas and festivals in seemingly every corner of the country. If you were to draw lines on a map between Allan’s gigs, your diagram would look like a ball of twine that had exploded from within.

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Danny Whetstone, founder and president of DWP Live

Projection Specialist DWP Live, Inc.

Since forming video production company DWP Live in Oct. 2007, founder Danny Whetstone and his team have become widely known for projection-mapping — beaming static or moving designs onto a 3-D surface so that the images follow the topography of the surface, including window cornices, columns, doors — even gargoyles. One industry publication has gone so far as to call the company projection mapping’s “world heavyweight champion.”

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Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures ©2013 CTMG

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the first film in the Spider-Man franchise to shoot entirely in New York State, was filmed on locations in throughout New York City and Rochester, as well as on sound stages and backlots on Long Island and Brooklyn. It is also perhaps one of the last of the blockbusters to be shot on actual film. One of the pivotal sets, Oscorp’s power plant, was built on the production’s back lot at Gold Coast Studios in Bethpage, NY. To fully realize the aesthetic of the power plant scenic design, the film’s production designer Mark Friedberg collaborated with City Theatrical’s Gary Fails.

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New tools provide a better look at nasty weather that might be coming your way. Far from the vague, county-by-county watches and warnings of yesteryear, today's mobile devices provide a more granular look. In the alert pictured here, the red box is the extent of the tornado warning; if you are outside the red box then the NWS does not consider that storm to be a threat to you at that point.

Wireless Emergency Alerts

It’s spring, and that means the start of severe weather season, and also the time when many of us in show business start working on outdoor shows. I’ve done a lot of outdoor shows, and I’m also a storm chaser and weather geek, so when I’m on an outdoor show site, I’m often running real-time radar on my laptop in addition to my sound system alignment software.

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