Live Lighting For Feature Films
Although programmers for film do record cues, we typically are not playing back cues like you would on a live show. We do have our… Read More »Live Lighting For Feature Films
Read More »Live Lighting For Feature Films
It’s all Black and White
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… Read More »It’s all Black and White
Read More »Esoteric Light Menu Functions You’ll Be Glad You Found
Imagine discovering an incorrect DMX assignment on a somewhat inaccessible unit. Never happens in real life, but hey, let’s pretend. Some newer intelligent lights allow… Read More »Esoteric Light Menu Functions You’ll Be Glad You Found
Read More »Keep On Truckin’
I was working at a now defunct lighting company in California, and we had a tradeshow exhibit for a trucking show at the Louisville Convention center. I was in New Orleans finishing up a show at the time, so I missed watching the shop fill the order and ship it out. I flew directly from New Orleans into Louisville, expecting a typical tradeshow load-in. Hardly.
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From The Programmer Seat To The Designer Seat
Whoa! Wait a minute. What I am doing back here on the LD page? I was hired for the programmer’s gig! Okay, I can do the LD gig too. I hope I will get paid the LD rate. What? You expect me to be the LD for the same rate? Okay, just this once. But next time I’m getting paid as both the LD and programmer.
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A Little Light on the 419 Scam
Few people have escaped opening their e-mail in the morning and finding an appeal to their greedier side, offering to let them share in a multimillion-dollar bonanza tucked away in the Ministry of Whatever in some third-world country. Law enforcement officials refer to these as 419 scams, named for the section of the rather toothless criminal code of Nigeria, where most of these scams originate. Most people simply delete them, figuring no one would ever fall for the grammatically fractured and incredulous requests asking the reader to put up some of his or her own money in order to secure a piece of this windfall.
Read More »Chauvet Scorpion Scan LG-60
In the movie Toy Story, a forgotten toy cowboy by the name of “Woody” is replaced by a “laser-toting” action figure with the dashing name of “Buzz Lightyear.” Surrounded by other talking toys, including Mr. Potato Head and a piggy bank named “Hamm,” the following conversation ensues…
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Mr. Potato Head: “How come you don’t have a laser, Woody?”
Woody (angrily): “It’s not a laser. It’s a little light bulb that blinks.”
Hamm: “What’s wrong with him?”
Mr. Potato Head: “Laser envy.”
Read More »Killer Color Combos
Several years ago I was on a job site completing a lighting design and programming a show when the producer asked me a great question: “How do you use color theory in lighting a show?”
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Getting the Picture
I sat in on a product demonstration for a projector the other day. While the projector was impressive in terms of brightness, noise level, and ease of set up and operation, I was not impressed with the image. It seemed a bit fuzzy. The material on-screen was a rather generic slide show, and the projector had been set up and focused properly. Then I realized what the problem was. It wasn’t the content or the projector, but the fact that the projector and computer were at different screen resolutions. I mentioned this to the rep, who very quickly reset his laptop so that they were matched and the image was improved dramatically. It was a pixel for pixel match to what the computer was putting out.
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Pretty As A Pixel
If you have a piece of video content, whether you have created it or purchased it, and you load it into a media server to use it in a show, and you think the digital lighting programmer’s work is finished, think again.
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Designers Transform Studio D for PBS Soundstage
It’s 5:00 p.m. on a gray, drizzly night on the north side of Chicago. Surrounded by the urban campus of Northeastern Illinois University, the production studios of Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WTTW 11 Network Chicago, are deceptively still on the outside. A few security guards and a packed parking lot are the quiet indicators of what waits for me inside.
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New Products for August 2006
Robe ColorSpot 2500E AT
Robe Show Lighting’s new ColorSpot 2500E AT is Robe’s most powerful moving light fixture to date. It features an MSR Gold 1200 SA/SE FastFit lamp with a 1400W electronic ballast, a parabolic glass reflector, focus lens, multi-step zoom lens (10°–30°), anti-reflection coating, a CMY color mixing system with 63 color macros, color correction from 5600 to 3200K, a color wheel with four dichroic filters, a UV filter, a 6000K filter and white, two gobo wheels, an effects wheel with 3- and 5-faceted prisms and 2 glass effects, a 1-15 FPS variable speed strobe, iris and frost.
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Robe America • 954.615.9100 • www.robeamerica.com