Country Music Event at Daytona Speedway Revs Up for the Long Haul
In this month’s issue of PLSN, we present a focus on two festivals, starting with the inaugural Country 500 event, which debuted over Memorial Day Weekend at Daytona International Speedway. We also cover the fourth annual BottleRock Napa Music Festival, which also took place May 27-29 on the opposite side of the country; that article can be found here.
Read More »
RHCP LD Scott Holthaus and Others Chat About the 2016 BottleRock Napa Music Festival
The sold-out BottleRock Napa Music Festival is now in its fourth year, and it’s going stronger than ever. Held over three days in beautiful Napa, CA, in the heart of California’s wine country, the event featured more than 80 bands including Stevie Wonder, Florence + The Machine, Lenny Kravitz, Buddy Guy, Ziggy Marley and others.
Ayrton is proud to have established itself a reputation for developing only original and innovative products, and this year’s release of fixtures has served to reinforce this view as the company launches DreamSpot™-18k, the world’s first laser-source automated profile. Fitted with an Osram™ Laser Phaser™ P6000 phosphor conversion module, DreamSpot-18K is capable of both beam and spot projection and offers an astonishing 18,000 lumen output, in a uniform beam with no hot spots, plus continuous pan and tilt capability.
Read More »
LD Ed Warren Updates the Looks as the Band Adds New Songs; Par Cans Still Play a Key Role
“I never toured as a light tech. I was a merch guy, and one day I found myself behind a lighting console, running lights for a band. By the end of night, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.” And so it began 13 years ago for Ed Warren as he, like so many others, got into a different part of the business through a twist of fate. He’s out once again designing the lights for the globally famous band Mumford & Sons, as he has done for the last seven years. And yes, he’s still into Par cans.
LD Joshua Hutchings brings a classic feel to Match Game on ABC
ABC has gone back into the game show business, and they are doing it in a big way. They have four “new” game shows on the docket for this summer and, while many are new to ABC, many Americans will instantly remember these as classic shows from the 1970s and ‘80s. The re-launched game show lineup includes $100,000 Pyramid, Celebrity Family Feud, To Tell the Truth and Match Game. Perhaps the biggest update from the past versions of these beloved shows is that they will be aired in prime time.
Yvan Miron started out like so many young people in the entertainment biz, as a musician. An accident to his finger derailed his guitar playing ability, but not his love for music, as he became a promoter of shows and managing bands back in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, he was working with a friend organizing outdoor events — a feat that can be cumbersome when you are located in Northeast Canada. Quebec certainly has its share of climatic changes. He explains what drove him to start his own staging company.
LASER — “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” While lasers weren’t invented until 1960, by the 1980’s they had cemented a place in the… Read More »Laser Systems
Read More »
The Invictus Games Orlando 2016, which took place May 8-12 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, celebrated the camaraderie of competitors. Created by Prince Harry in 2014 to honor wounded service men and women, the Invictus Games deepen the respect for wounded military personnel. With 55 hours of ceremonies and games televised across ABC and ESPN, the events drew a viewing audience that went beyond the 56,000 live spectators to reach more than 10 million viewers worldwide.
This article has nothing to do with good system design. Let’s just get that out there first. If you want to learn to design systems, go to school (hard knock U or other) and start designing. Designing is a learned process, and you learn by doing. That said, I’ve been designing a lot of systems lately. I’m a system technician by trade, but for some reason, the phone keeps ringing and I get a line like, “We’re wanting to do this crazy thing, and we weren’t quite sure who to call, but your name kept coming up.”
Read More »
Tracing the Evolution of HES’ MMS Orbital Head: A look at moving mirror systems technologies offered by High End Systems, a Barco Company
Rather than struggle with the challenge of rigging and precisely pointing the beam from a big, bulky projector, it’s often easier and more efficient to fine-tune the position of a flat mirror that reflects and angles the light beam. That simple truth has led to the creation of MMS (moving mirror system) technologies by Austin, Texas-based High End Systems, now owned by Barco. Here, PLSN takes a closer look at the MMS concept and how it evolved.
Read More »
Today, we’re looking at the IP54 Light Sky AquaBeam from SHS Global. Originally known as a used gear company, SHS has since expanded their operations into distributing various lines, including the AquaBeam from Light Sky, an IP rated moving head beam projector with a lot of power. There’s still a solid place for arc-based lights in the industry; LEDs still don’t have the raw output needed for certain applications. Extremely short-arc lamps like the one found in the AquaBeam pack a tremendous punch for low wattage, which makes them very attractive for this class of narrow-beam moving heads.
Read More »
Chauvet Professional showed the world the prototypes for their new stellar line of fixtures, dubbed the Maverick Series, at the Prolight + Sound show in Frankfurt last April. This only whetted my appetite; I have waited a couple of months to get my hands on the first fixture of this series to be released, the Maverick MK2 Wash. Rest assured, the fixture lives up to its hype as a powerful wash light with some tasty effects.
Read More »