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Big-Time Lighting Coming To A Housing Development Near You

Big-Time Lighting Coming To A Housing Development Near You

Audiences loved surround sound and Dolby Digital in theatres so much they wanted to take it home with them. Home video was so much fun that they decided they wanted to make their own. And who needs Bon Jovi when you have Garageband and can make your own music? Some lighting makers are looking at this historical DIY phenomenon and realizing that lighting will soon be no exception to the trend of bringing it all back home. With a stop at the mall first.

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Help! I’m Synching!

If you have ever tried to play a long clip simultaneously on multiple media servers in a show, then you know what a real challenge it can be. Say for instance that your client pays you to create a three-minute product demonstration movie, and the content is delivered to you as one long clip. So you load it into your media servers, then start the clip while you watch them on your screens. Much to your dismay, you watch helplessly as the clip loses synch between the servers—that is, the same frame isn’t showing at the same time on all media servers. Simply starting the clip and letting it roll obviously isn’t going to be acceptable during the show. So how do we correct this problem? Can it be fixed in with programming?

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Pretty Pictures on the Wall

Projectors are pretty simple.  The zoomies go in, the zoomies go out, voila, pretty pictures on the wall—not!
While on the surface it may seem that simple, it can be a rather complex evolution to get from input to output on a video projector. Every manufacturer has unique methodology for accomplishing this.  We will look at a basic overview of signal flow through a projector and some of the other key components that make projectors work.

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Lazy Lighting Designers Lack Looks

I’m always asked how I get lighting design gigs. Half the time they are return gigs, meaning it’s the same trade show or band that goes on tour every year. Forty percent of the time I am called by production people or other designer friends to cover a gig. The other 10% are people calling because they’ve seen one of my shows and want to hire me based on what they’ve seen. You never know who’s in the crowd watching your work.

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The Dark Side of Chiaroscuro

Pop quiz: What are the two most important tools of a lighting designer?

If you said Starbucks or the Internet, maybe you should consider a career in audio. If you said light and dark—congratulations, you just might have a future in this business.

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Video In Captivity

Media servers allow the lighting designer to easily call up and play back video clips in real-time via a lighting console. Another advantage, however, of using a media server is having the ability to integrate live video into the show. Since the media server is a computer, it can be simple to connect a digital video camera and incorporate live images into your lighting cues.

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Tom Bagnasco: Lighting In The D

If you’re from the Midwest, it’s not hard to figure out that the automotive giants in Detroit and their subsidiaries have met with economic hard times. In the land of buyouts, downsizing and exodus, Tom Bagnasco has been a fixture with the world’s largest auto manufacturer, General Motors, for more than 18 years—a feat for any designer. As an adept small business owner, he has learned plenty along the way and diversified his customer base. In our PLSN Interview, Bagnasco discusses lighting in the D.

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Anidea Innovations Gadget

If you’ve ever spent any time chasing down DMX data problems, then you’ll appreciate this little Gadget from Anidea Innovations, Inc. I once went to a job site at a permanent installation to program a console after being assured that all of the automated lights were installed, powered, cabled and working. When I got there I found all of that to be true except for the “working” part. Oops.

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Tarzan Swings To Life

Transforming Broadway theatres into exotic locations is not a new concept; however it is rarely done to the extent found at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, which has been converted into the tropical jungle home to Disney’s latest Broadway effort, Tarzan. Within this relatively small Broadway theatre, the untouched jungles of southern Africa come to life every night to tell the story of a boy left without his parents, taken in by a tribe of apes and raised as one of their own. To illustrate this classic tale, the production has utilized an extensive array of rigging and flying equipment to literally make the actors fly off the stage and in and out of the set with total grace. With the set designed by Bob Crowley, the production turned to Natasha Katz to light the show and capture the visual essence of this jungle adventure.

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Women Who Light – and Lit – The Way

It doesn’t take an inordinate amount of scrutiny to see that the technical jobs in entertainment are a male-dominated domain. Look around at concerts and theatrical productions or on the credits after a television program or a feature film—the LDs, the mixers, the gaffers and the techs are overwhelmingly male. (They don’t call them best “boys” for nothing.)

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Glitz and Glam: Putting the best light on Turner’s Fall Season

Two-thousand attendees. Dozens of high-powered executives. A cavalcade of actors and one rock star, Lenny Kravitz, topping off the night. Putting on the annual Turner Upfront event, where TBS and TNT sell their upcoming season and programs to advertisers of Turner Broadcasting, is no small feat. This year set designers Atomic Design not only transformed the Theatre at Madison Square Garden into a flashy corporate showcase, they also reinvented the lobby as a glitzy faux nightclub for the after-party.

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