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Creating a ‘Beautiful’ World

'Beautiful' on Broadway. Photo by Joan Marcus

Creating a ‘Beautiful’ World

The lively musical Beautiful captures the musical essence of Carole King while chronicling the life events and artistic evolution that led up to her landmark solo album, Tapestry. “She’s an amazing songwriter,” declares the show’s scenic designer Derek McLane. “Most of us are familiar with Tapestry and with the stuff that she wrote for other people, but we don’t associate [all of] it with her and don’t necessarily know that she wrote it. What surprised me when I first read it was that she wrote ‘The Loco-Motion.’”

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Super Bowl halftime show with Bruno Mars. Photo by Brad Duns

One Cool Show

A look at the lighting, video and pyro for The Pepsi Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show

This year’s Super Bowl was held in MetLife Stadium, located in East Rutherford, NJ. It was the first — and many on the crew hope the last — cold weather Super Bowl in a stadium without a roof. To pull off the potentially cold and snowy Pepsi Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show with Bruno Mars and his band along with special guest, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it took a lot of pre-planning. Known for high tech lighting and video, the show’s core technology is not exactly comprised of gear that loves cold temperatures, much less Arctic conditions.

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Beyonce tour photo by Steve Jennings

Beyoncé: The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour

The Visual Team Keeps Pace with Beyonce’s Creative Output

As the lead singer of Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé Knowles had already enjoyed considerable success before launching a solo album, Dangerously in Love, more than a decade ago (while Destiny’s Child was in hiatus, in in 2003). By the time Destiny’s Child disbanded, in 2006, the trio sold 60 million albums worldwide. Combining her solo and collaborative efforts, Beyoncé, now 32 years old, has 46 Grammy nominations to her credit and 17 wins.

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Florida-Georgia Line tour photo by Justin Mrusek

Florida Georgia Line

Lighting Director Scott Cunningham Helps ‘The Line” Shine

Country music’s Florida Georgia Line, comprised of Floridian Brian Kelley and Georgian Tyler Hubbard, are hotter than a $10 pistol. Their sextuple-platinum song “Cruise” broke the record for longest Number One on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart, scoring more than 6.3 million downloads in the U.S. alone. It is the second-highest-selling country single ever. Entertainment Weekly magazine called “Cruise (Remix) featuring Nelly” the eighth-best single of 2013. Their first three singles hit Number One for several weeks each, an accomplishment equaled only by Brooks & Dunn. Their debut album, Here’s to the Good Times, earned the highest album sales of 2012 for a new country act.

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Katy Perry held an album release party for her latest studio offering, Prism, at iHeartRadio Theater in Burbank, CA

iHeartRadio Theater, Burbank, CA

In October 2013, pop music icon Katy Perry held an album release party for her latest studio offering, Prism, at iHeartRadio Theater in Burbank, CA. After making a special appearance at the media and events venue, Perry was interviewed by The X Factor host Mario Lopez for an event that was broadcast by 175 Clear Channel stations across the U.S.

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Summer Sonic 2013 design by Atomic Design

Atomic Design: Giving Designers a “Blank Canvas”

“How do you keep the creativity going, and how do you find different ways to keep the sizzle — that’s something we ask ourselves constantly,” says Rob Barber, vice president of Atomic Design’s rental division. The answer for Atomic is making sure the common denominator is modularity in all things, providing a level of flexibility in renting scenic pieces that allows for a completely original end result.

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James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, MO

St. Louis Planetarium, Dark for Years, Glows Anew

Architects building cool, inevitably iconic buildings don’t always think about how the heck the exterior will be lit. At least they probably didn’t in 1963. That year, the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, MO was built by modernist architect Gyo Obata. The planetarium, part of the St. Louis Science Center, is where stargazers can sit reclined in a circle, looking up as the interior and ceiling are lit up to show the solar system.

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Fig. 1-A: To receive Art-Net for controlling video, you need to assign the Art-Net universe and DMX starting channel in the ArKaos program’s preferences box.

Merging Art-Net with an MA2

A while back, I wrote an article describing the process I used for pixel-mapping the RGB values from a media server to the LEDs of a lot of GLP impressions in my rig (“Video Digerati,” March 2012, page 52). Fast-forward to December of 2013 when, on another gig, I again set out to pixel-map RGB values from a media server (an ArKaos MediaMaster Pro) to 48 MagicPanel 602 fixtures while controlling the other features of the panels using a grandMA2. Luckily for me, the grandMA2 has a very convenient feature for merging incoming Art-Net values to outgoing Art-Net stream. Here are the steps involved for setting up this Art-Net /DMX Merge functionality.

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ADJ Vizi Beam Hybrid 2R

ADJ Vizi Beam Hybrid 2R

It is nice to have a pleasant surprise once in a while. I had just that after ADJ, formally American DJ, sent me one of their latest products, the Vizi Beam Hybrid 2R. Let me start off by saying that this is not your typical DJ fixture. Think of it a crossover between a DJ light and a professional grade fixture — hence the “hybrid” reference in the fixture’s name. It truly is a hybrid, meaning that simple DJ setups can include a light that could also work well in a professional rig.

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The BGA Greener Lighting Guide

The BGA Greener Lighting Guide

The Broadway Green Alliance, a group founded in 2008 to promote environmentally beneficial practices within the theatre community and entertainment industry, has been compiling information about live performance lighting instruments within its BGA Greener Lighting Guide.

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High School Stage Collapse Injures Two Dozen Students

ANAHEIM, CA — A portion of the stage at Servite High School here collapsed March 8 when some 250 visiting students from Rosary High School in Fullerton, CA were onstage as part of their annual “Red and Gold” musical theatre challenge. Two dozen were injured. Although some of the injured suffered broken bones, most of the injuries were described as minor to moderate. All hospitalized students had been released from hospitals within a day of the incident.

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