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A Look Ahead

Justin Lang welcomes Nook Schoenfeld as the new editor of PLSN magazine.

A Look Ahead

As we close out 2014 and I reach the end of my tenure as editor of I want offer some insight going forward in our industry. As you can gather from the past four years of my time at I am a technology junkie, always looking for new and exciting things that can make our work and personal lives that much better. Part of my daily routine is to read through press releases from around the industry. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve been making a habit of checking in on information from more than 300 news sites, technology blogs and websites. Sounds like a busy morning, right? It normally takes two to three cups of coffee to get through it all.

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Production photos by Joan Marcus

The Country House: Peter Kaczorowski Lights with Rustic Radiance

Lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski enjoys working with naturalistic sets, as evidenced in productions like No Man’s Land, That Championship Season and Born Yesterday. Even in a more surreal show like Waiting For Godot or a big musical like Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, he prefers some restraint. In Donald Margulies’ new play The Country House, about a group of actors retreating to a Berkshires home to ponder their place in the world and with each other, Kaczorowski gets to play with light in a radiant way.

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Ricky Martin performed in the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City in early October

Ricky Martin 2014 Tour

The Ricky Martin creative team came prepared for whatever happens, for wherever they play. They delivered a consistent show night after night — no excuses, no “loco.”Martin, who has amassed six Grammy Awards among numerous other honors and 85 million albums in his career, has demanding fans around the world that expect and receive a show better than the last. So the creative team has to always top themselves, no matter where they go. Martin’s manager/creative producer Veikko Fuhrmann agrees with the conventional wisdom that touring south of the border can be more challenging, but he overcomes it, starting with the design. He’s learned from others who build tours for the U.S. for the relatively cookie-cutter arenas with success only to see it buckle under the weight of its gear when playing the varied landscape of Latin American countries. “I saw one that was not able to travel into Mexico, and as was suddenly too expensive and too heavy, and the tour lost out on a major market.”

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THE BLACK KEYS, c. Steve Jennings

Eric Cathcart, Michael Grant and The Black Keys’ “Turn Blue” Tour

Eric Cathcart says that, in terms of a career, he really hasn’t done anything but lighting. In high school, he was involved in the theatre tech departments, then was a technical theatre major in college when he picked up a gig with a local production company. From there, he worked in the San Francisco Bay Area with Morpheus Lights and a few other California lighting companies. He move on to Midnight Lighting in Austin, TX as an LD and tech and did his first tour for Asleep at the Wheel. From there, it was on to Nashville, working for Bandit Lites (Def Leppard, Brooks & Dunn, Reba McEntire and many others). In 1995, he was given the opportunity to be the designer for Olivia Newton-John. From there, the design/director gigs started trickling in. He’s also working as LD under Dan Hadley on tours. Prior to The Black Keys he’s designed Michael Bolton, Thievery Corporation, LCD Soundsystem and The Darkness. The last couple of years he’s been doing CAD drawings for Premier Global Production, including designs for some sizeable festivals.

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Lightning

Perfect Storm Helps Live Event Productions Prepare for Destructive Weather

Anyone who has ever worked an outdoor show seems to have a story to share about how the weather almost defeated them. My go-to tale happened at a casino just outside of Omaha, NE. It was one of those sticky, late-July days when humidity hung heavy in the air. Doors were set for 4 pm, but by 3:30, anxious audience members had already abandoned the comfortable temperature of the casino to gather at the entrance of the large general admissions field we called our office that day.

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John Wiseman

Chaos Visual Productions’ John Wiseman

John Wiseman, CEO and president of Chaos Visual Productions, began his career in live event production in 1979 as the concert chairman at California State University, Sacramento. He managed local bands in the area and owned a small production company. He was managing the band Steel Breeze when they were signed to RCA Records and became the executive producer of the group’s eponymous debut album, which yielded two Top 10 singles.

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Create Cinematic Experiences for Live Events with a New 4K Workflow

The live event industry is taking the first steps into the next generation of staging. 4K Ultra HD products are available for consumer use, and this new workflow for event production is positioned to change how producers think about set design and staging for meetings and events. LMG Show Technology, a video production company with offices in Orlando, Tampa, Dallas and Las Vegas, has been working to provide clients with more information on how to establish a 4K workflow in a staging environment and create a new industry standard. Toward that end, the company has also designed and built a new truck-in-a-box 4K Ultra HD system for live events.
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The author notes that this screen shot is an example of how she typically structures a free form show. The playback faders for effects ands chases are set up to be easily overlaid on top of a main cue stack that consists of basic positions, colors and patterns.

Busking with a Media Server

As lighting programmers, we are frequently put into situations where we have little to no time to program for a show that’s happening the same day, so we’ve learned to improvise. Whether you call this “busking,” “punting,” or maybe even just “operating on the fly,” we all have a few techniques that help us get through the “no time to program” one-off. But what about one-off shows with a media server? What things do programmers need to be ready for a show when they have little to no idea what’s coming up next? Luckily, many of the same steps for working with automated lighting can also be applied to punting with media servers. Here are some suggestions so you can be ready to roll with the punches.

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VL4000 Luminaire

Vari-Lite VL4000 Spot

Philips Vari-Lite, an American company based in Dallas, TX, has brought us the well-known VL3000 series, LED VLX Wash and now offers the VL4000 Spot. Combining Profile (spot) and Performance (spot with framing shutters) fixtures into one, Vari-Lite’s VL4000 Spot is positioned to serve as a multi-purpose and feature-packed luminaire.

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Nomad Puck

ETC Nomad Puck

Years ago, I was afraid of controlling my lights on a PC Based lighting controller. Recently, like in the past six months, I have come to fall in love with them. Looking back on why I was so nervous about using them was the fact that almost everything had to be done with a mouse, or by remembering those awkward keyboard shortcuts. There is something about having a console’s control surface in front of you.

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Obscure Fixture Features

Automated lighting fixtures are very complex robotic devices filled with mechanical and electrical features commanded by comprehensive software. The manufacturers of these fixtures fill them with many useful features, some of which are lesser known or understood. A good automated lighting programmer will take the time to learn the capabilities of his/her luminaires by reading the user manuals and DMX protocols/maps. Furthermore, some features are simple menu settings or DMX values that may not be included in the console’s fixture library. The following obscure fixture features can be found in many common lighting fixtures and are useful tools for creating original and dynamic lighting programming.

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