Fleetwood Mac’s 2013 Live tour, marking the 35th anniversary of the release of Rumours, combined the talents of original band members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie — the “Fleetwood” and “Mac” namesakes for the band’s formation in 1967 — with those of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who joined the band in 1975.
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It does not take a large budget or ambitious design to revitalize a local lounge into a dynamic new space. It just takes ingenuity and know-how. A case in point: Ian Hoffer’s transformation of the interior look for the Level 2 nightclub in Harrisburg, PA. “It’s an upscale restaurant and lounge,” he tells PLSN. “But it just had gotten stale and needed a fresh look.”
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To mark 100 years and celebrate the holiday season, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)’s Metro-North Railroad subsidiary and partner Toshiba contracted with designer Michiru Tanaka and Babylon, NY-based Bestek Lighting & Staging, Inc. to add a festive seasonal touch to the west side windows of the Main Concourse at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Bestek handled engineering, custom hardware, installation labor, programming, technical direction and logistics for the project, and the company’s president, Van Allen Rice, served as project manager onsite.
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Well beyond his boy band days in ‘N Sync, actor/singer/dancer Justin Timberlake has emerged as one of the most versatile stars of his generation. Following a nearly six-year hiatus from music to focus on his acting career, Timberlake was back in the studio and on stage in a big way in 2013 with two album releases and two high-profile tours.
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As media servers evolve, many are adding features that until recently have been reserved for separate, dedicated hardware packages. Creating a video blend is one of these features that typically has been reserved for display presentation switching systems like the Barco Encore, Dataton Watchout or Vista Spyder. These types of switchers allow you to combine multiple displays together to increase the total resolution possible for the image being displayed.
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A few years ago, Elation Lighting unveiled their version of the low wattage, high lumen output pencil beam moving light. They were the first company to use the Philips Platinum 5R lamp in a moving head. The Platinum 5R was a successful product in the overall lighting industry, yet it left room for improvement. Elation felt the need to grab the ball and run in another direction by developing an “Extreme” version of this popular fixture. And in the process, they appear to have scored a touchdown with this beauty.
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Automated lighting fixtures and consoles are very complex systems based on millions of lines of computer code. No system is perfect, and every console and fixture has its own share of bugs or glitches. When you encounter these, you must think fast and develop a plan to work around the bug. At one point in my career, a friend dubbed me “The King of the Work-Around,” because I had an uncanny ability to quickly resolve unexpected problems, yet still achieve the desired result. Although you don’t need to become a king, you should certainly be ready to get yourself out of a jam with minimal effort. Many of your work-arounds can actually develop into good habits that save you from future problems.
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This month’s “Designer Watch” column started with two simple questions: How will you remember 2013? And what do you resolve to do, or expect from, 2014? We got informative, enlightening and entertaining responses from more than 20 lighting professionals. Read on, and enjoy!
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I travel to different venues daily. I’ve done gigs in every grand arena as well as crap hole pretending to be a proper concert venue, on this planet. Of course some gigs are better than others. Some are very tough to load into, but many of them can be overlooked as physically bad gigs because the local stagehands there are just great. But often enough, the opposite is seen. Horrible venues with less than desirable hands are not fun. Especially when the local hands can’t shut their mouths for a minute. Then these gigs just plain suck to work.
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