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Imaging For A Living

Imaging For A Living

In 1999, Valy Tremblay launched Proluxon (www.proluxon.com), a company dedicated to supporting visual designers and helping them make their concepts become reality. One of the early pioneers in pre-visualization in Québec, he recently partnered with industry veteran Andre Girard to bolster a company that strives to live on the cutting edge of technology. From playing with batteries and bulbs as a child, to harnessing the power pre-visualization in the present, he strives to stay ahead of the curve.

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All You Need Is Love

The amazing combination of Cirque du Soleil and The Beatles and how they came together for a permanent installation at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas is something of a magical mystery tour. As the Beatles are notoriously protective of their music, it took a personal friendship between the late George Harrison and Cirque founder Guy Laliberté to make it possible. Sir George Martin and his son Giles Martin got involved, and the two, working from Abbey Road’s master tapes, created unique collages and arrangements that have never before been heard. Add Celine Dion’s long-time lighting designer, Yves Aucoin, and more video than has ever been used in a Cirque show, and you’ve got one of Las Vegas’s most anticipated and talked about entertainment events.

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Sin City Puts The Spectacle In The Phantom Of The Opera

Subtlety doesn’t exist in Las Vegas. Ask a local and they’ll probably tell you it’s a new Starbucks drink. But don’t tell this to the designers and crew of Phantom—The Las Vegas Spectacular at the Venetian Hotel-Resort-Casino. Despite a title that includes the word “Spectacular,” despite a budget that ballooned from $25 million to $40 million, despite recreating the interior of the Paris Opera House from 1894, LD Andy Bridge still insists the strongest design element of the show is subtlety.

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Da Gilmour Code

If you were among the few to catch David Gilmour’s first U.S. solo theatre tour, you can count yourself among the very lucky, given he would normally be seen in an arena or stadium setting. We have seen some great performances from him of late; his show at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002 that was recorded for a DVD and that rare performance that only Bob Geldolf could pull off, the reformation of Pink Floyd with Roger Waters at the Live 8 spectacular in London last year. It’s been twelve years since we’ve seen a Pink Floyd tour, so Gilmour’s outing has been long anticipated. In support of his third solo album On An Island, he plays it in its entirety for the first half of the show, then all Pink Floyd songs in the second half, some of which have never before been played live. We spoke with lighting designer Marc Brickman about covering the show and he graciously wanted to turn the spotlight over to his colleagues on the tour.

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Mothra Attacks!

In 1973, a gig at the Pocono State Fair in Pennsylvania offered a regional lighting company a wonderful summer break from daily four-hour load-ins and load-outs and endless driving. It was like a paid vacation. What could be better than a week of easy work and an eclectic mix of great acts from Bob Hope and Sammy Davis, Jr. to rock and even The Jackson Five?

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Rehearsal, Cue, Performance OH MY!

Almost every show I light involves scripting cues. This is the process of breaking down a show’s events. If it’s a corporate production, most likely I will be handed many pages showing the schedule of rehearsals and performance times for the next week. If it’s a musical or theatrical play, the lighting department may get a full script with hundreds of hand-written notes detailing potential lighting cues. If it’s a rock show, we may get a set list with some discs of music you can expect the band to perform.
   

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Hike Up Your Skirt and Plan Like a Man

I belong to a group of people who would sooner wrestle an alligator than to have to plan ahead. There’s even a name for people like us—men. We don’t make lists before we go to the store, or plan routes before we drive across the country, and we don’t put on our blinkers before we change lanes. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re going to change lanes until we see all the cars around us scrambling to get out of our way. But give me a job where thousands upon thousands of dollars are at stake, and I’ll be the first to hike up my skirt and wade through the deep waters of planning and plotting.

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How Bright is Right?

When we’re deciding on a projector and screen (or screen placement), the question that always comes up is, “Will it be bright enough?”

Lots of folks think that they can just get a brighter projector and that will solve their problems, but it ain’t always that simple. The more common problem encountered when we’re trying to project in a well-lit space is the contrast — or lack thereof. No matter how many lumens the projector outputs, if there is too much ambient light we will have a poor image.

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The Controlled Chaos Of The Black Eyed Peas

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with changing venues, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Envision touring with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are no production rehearsals—ever. In fact, they never had any prior to the tour.

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Clay Paky Revitalizes Itself with Alpha Series

Though Italian entertainment lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has been around since 1976, it was about 10 years later when they became one of the first to offer an automated luminaire that you could purchase instead of rent. The Golden Scan was an innovative product for its time, featuring stepper motors and crisp optics with a uniform beam and a sharp focus. After many years of partnering with Group One, their former U.S. distributor, Clay Paky has recently set up Clay Paky America with managing director Francesco Romagnoli and former High End Systems account rep Eric Mueller. This article is part of the ongoing series of automated lighting manufacturer profiles leading up to the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Vari-Lite.

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VectorWorks12

In the past decade, the use of drafting software has become rote for designers in this industry, and the available offerings have increased dramatically, with each software package offering various industry-specific tools and an eye toward ease of use, much to the delight of those of us without engineering or CAD degrees. (see PLSN Product Gallery, February 2006 – ed.)

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