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USITT 2008 Show Report

USITT 2008 Show Report

When the rodeo comes to town, everyone is firing up their outdoor grills, and fields of bluebonnets line the highways as far as you can see, you know it’s springtime in Texas. But this year, spring also brought USITT to downtown Houston. And with it came the sweet fragrance of budding new technology, including just a hint of RDM and ACN. Along with the new growth, there was also plenty of ripe Ruby Red Rio Grande Valley grapefruit-like technology to tempt the attendees.

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Console Agnosticism

There is a certain fervor that constantly surrounds discussions of lighting consoles. So much so that discussion may be one of the nicest discourses that could happen between the often zealot-like users of different desks.

 

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Elation Impression

There has been a proliferation of LEDs in the entertainment lighting industry, including a number of new LED fixtures with various form factors. But the Impression, the latest LED moving yoke wash fixture from Elation, is one of the first moving yoke LED fixtures that can compete with conventional moving yoke fixtures. As such, it serves as a versatile, compact and bright alternative to conventional discharge wash luminaires, combining low power consumption, high efficiency (60 lumens per watt), low heat emission, no UV or IR, long life operation and fast and smooth color fades.

 

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Chauvet Colorado 6

Chauvet’s Colorado® 6 is the newest in the Colorado series of LED fixtures. The fixture is compact, consisting of three LED modules per unit. Each module consists of about a dozen 1-watt red, green and blue LEDs. The fixture resembles a 3-light Mole Fay, but each fixture can mount to another via a series of clips and knobs that are quite simple to assemble. The fixture can be turned into a long strip light for cyclorama lighting or giant wash fixtures by stacking them four wide by three tall. They have 12-inch long AC and DMX512 cables protruding from each one to make for easy daisy chaining of power and data. They draw 1.2 amps each, and you can connect 12 fixtures in series on a 120VAC 20-amp circuit, or double that amount using a 240VAC 20-amp circuit.

 

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Pepper’s Ghost Returns in High Definition

Just about 150 years ago, at a performance of Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man, audiences were astonished when they witnessed a remarkable visual effect — one in which ghostly images appeared on stage, side-by-side with real actors. The magical illusion was created in 1862 by an inventor named Henry Dircks. But because the illusion required an almost complete reconstruction of a theatre, the concept garnered little attention — until a young chemist name John Henry Pepper witnessed the illusion and modified it for easy incorporation into existing theatres.

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New Products

American DJ’s Quad Gem DMX

American DJ’s new Quad Gem DMX is a four-lens effect with 224 red, green, blue and white LEDs configured in groups of 56 per lens. The LEDs project four moonflower ef-fects from a single unit. The highly portable, DMX compatible unit was designed for DJs and clubs. It consumes 20 watts of power and the LEDs are rated at 100,000 hours. The Quad Gem DMX features 12 built-in programs, fast to slow strobing, and 0 to 100 percent electronic dimming.  It can be operated in three modes: sound active, DMX, or with American DJ’s UC3 optional universal controller, sold separately. 

American DJ • 800.322.6337 • www.americandj.com
 

 

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How Many LDs Does It Take to Light a Show?

I’ve recently worked on a couple of gigs that truly required more than one lighting designer. Each gig had multiple lighting systems supplied by different vendors. In the past I’ve done gigs like these where I was the only console programmer/operator. While there was a staggering amount of overtime, the end product delivered to the client was not as good as it could have been. That’s because I wore too many hats and burned myself out. Nowadays I’m thankful to share LD duties on many large gigs.

 

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Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy, LD for American Idol and other TV shows, doesn't just blast the set with white light, as the lighting for Fergie's performance in the CBS special, Home for the Holidays, attests.

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AO – The Fantastic Legend

Over the past couple of years François Roupinian, principal founder and designer at the Montreal-based lighting firm Lightemotion, has been called on to supply his talents to a wide range of projects. In fact, he’s traveled from Montreal to the States to Singapore to Italy to work on show, museum and event installations, but it was a job in his own backyard last year that might have been the most demanding.

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In the Land of Perspective

Scenic designer Peter J. Davison brings new angle to classical approach

 

 

The persepective of the set plays a role in Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, shown here with, L-R, Norbert Leo Putz, Michael McGrath, Jeremy Bobb and Tom Alan Robbins.

 

 

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Three Out of Five Ain’t Bad

“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” — Duane Michals

I was surprised to learn that three out of five people think I can’t count, and the other three have no opinion. At least that was what I gathered from the e-mail after the article in this column about the five lighting metrics. Apparently the three lighting metrics that were covered in the article don’t account for all five.

 

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The New Training Day

Live performances have become the currency of the entertainment industry. It’s most obvious in music, where an ever-growing percentage of recording artists derive more revenues from their concert tours than from CD sales. But the rise in the number of live events is evident in many other sectors, from spectacular corporate presentations to events like the celebration at the start of the New York City Opera’s season last year, which saw Times Square filled with thousands of folding chairs facing huge video monitors beneath light and sound rigs. With gala events taking place in unique outdoor settings, it isn’t just Elvis who’s left the theatre.

 

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