Sister Act’s Co-Headlining Tour Rocks with New Rig, LD
Forty years after their first hits climbed the charts, American rock band Heart teamed up with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts for a “Queens of Sheba” 2016 tour through Canada. The Wilson sisters — Nancy and Ann — performed their rock staple hits beneath an automated rig provided by Solotech.
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Sommer Cable America is introducing their DVM-HDT-KIT– HDMI Engineers Toolkit with 4K and HDMI 2.0 support at the at NAB show in Las Vegas. The kit promises to make HDMI installations easier for rental companies while also enhancing trouble-shooting and product development.
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One remarkable and impressive transition after another has happened for Parnelli Award-winning lighting designer Seth Jackson’s career since he was a teenager growing up in St. Louis. “I hate to say this, since my students might see this, but I only got my first job with a resume. Everything else has been an evolution of relationships,” he says. “I have always had such a passion for this business and this industry. I worked hard, I did a good job, I built the relationships, I studied the people that came before me, and the result is that I kept getting opportunities. It was never planned, per se, but I was obsessive about getting where I wanted to be.”
When the production staff at San Diego Opera opened the containers from the rental house — the ones that were supposed to contain the Michael Yeargan-designed set for their production of Aida — they could hardly believe what they saw. They saw nothing. The containers were empty. Their one-week production schedule did not allow for setbacks, nor could they replicate the set in their own scene shop. The automated, winch-driven scenery with its steeply raked floor had to exist somewhere, but finding it could take hours, or even days.
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To cast a light on a subject but avoid pesky shadows, you require a soft light beam. This is very important in film shoots as… Read More »Fresnels and Softlights
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“Light Night Conversations” is a new recurring series of PLSN interviews with the lighting designers of the various late-night talk shows on television. These designers face many interesting design challenges that go beyond simply lighting a desk and an interview area, which, for the record, is not as simple as it may appear. Late-night LDs need to light musical guests, often both inside and outside the studio, design sketch comedy setups, audience interactions, man-on-the-street exchanges and full show location remotes. We start on the West Coast with Jimmy Kimmel Live’s LD Christian Hibbard. –ed.
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The highly diversified band 311 once again took the stage at the Smoothie King Center (formerly New Orleans Arena) on March 11 to celebrate the unofficial holiday they created back in 2000. The biannual celebration happens on March 11 (on even years), in a numeric parallel with the band’s name. Once again, there were just too many songs on the set list to fit in any one performance, so 311 Day 2016 included a concert on March 12 as well.
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Martin Professional has a very long history in the entertainment lighting and effects industry, starting way back in 1978 when founder Peter Johansen created a smoke machine from a coffee maker. Since then, the company has conceptualized and brought to market a huge number of effects, including the wildly popular Atomic 3000 DMX strobe, which has for many years dominated the market for strobe effects in concerts, special installations and live events. With the evolution of the market away from arc-based sources and toward LED, however, the creative minds at Martin decided it was time for a significant update to their flagship strobe.
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I have always been critical of hybrid lights. That’s because, for several years, I have heard boasts from several manufacturers that they have come up with the ultimate Swiss Army Knife of a fixture. Yet every time I drive a new one on a gig, I find something missing, or a trade off in certain features, that leaves me disappointed. I find lights where the lumens disappear when I pop out the tight narrow lens or a color system that is not up to snuff with what I desire. So I’m putting the BMFL WashBeam through the wringer to see if everything’s as great as what I’m hearing on the web.
ARGYLE, TX – This is big. No seriously…this is HUGE! Bristol Motor Speedway will soon be home to the world’s largest outdoor, permanent, center-hung digital display. Fittingly named “Colossus,” the screen – comprised of 8,694 square-feet of state-of-the-art digiLED Toura 6mm LED panels – will give race fans an unprecedented audio-visual experience when it debuts later this month.
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LONDON — Prolyte launched its Verto truss at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt and invited attendees to take the Verto Speed Challenge. The Verto truss is based on a new principle of truss connection, where the sections are joined by a rotating coupler system.
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LONDON– Lumiere London lit up the winter streets of the capital this past January with an installation of 30 illuminated artworks by a contingent of international artists. Two of the installations, at Oxford Circus and on the BAFTA façade, featured d3 Technologies’ creative solutions deployed by QED Productions.
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