Scenic designer George Tsypin uses transparent and translucent materials to take the stage production for Disney’s The Little Mermaid under the sea.
Here, Sierra Boggess as Ariel ventures from a cool-lit underwater realm to bright sunshine.
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People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Suppose you owned a construction company and, along with it, some big, shiny dump trucks for hauling materials. Now suppose you’re constructing a building, starting from the foundation up. So you hire some drivers to haul sand from the sandufacturer (you know, the place where they manufacture sand) to the construction site so it can be mixed with some cement to pour the foundation.
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While I was programming a show recently, I was using one of my favorite console features and I knew right then that I needed to write about it. Most automated lighting consoles have this feature which is a holdover from standard conventional or theatrical desks. This feature is commonly known as “Cue Only” and is used when you are recording or updating cues. This powerful feature behaves almost as if the console knows what you really want and takes care of it for you! However, before explaining exactly what the feature does, you must have an understanding of basic console tracking.
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On the road to a conventional lighting update, you could say Mark Sepulveda took an “intelligent” detour. Sepulveda, who is global technical director for the six campuses of the Houston-based, 40,000-member Second Baptist Church, had a big task ahead of him in re-lighting the main sanctuary at the Woodway Campus. The system had originally been installed in the 1970s and updated in the mid-1980s, but with the increasing demand for video production and new high-definition cameras coming into the picture, the lighting needed to be updated.
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You’d think that with highway diesel fuel rolling past $4 per gallon, alternative fuels harvested from corn, soy and other crops would be a natural: good for the budget, good for the environment, good for a tour trucking company’s image. But crop shortages have pushed prices for harvested oils to record highs. And growing awareness of the connection between biofuels, high food prices and deforestation, coupled with indignation over government subsidies and mandates, have created flashpoints of controversy.
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In 2006, famed physicist Stephen Hawking said that we need to colonize space in order to preserve the future of the planet. I think we need to colonize space in order to preserve the dignity of the human race. Can we go any lower than The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars and Rock of Love with Bret Michaels?
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With the NSCA show rolling into its show this year, InfoComm becomes that much more relevant to a wider swath of professionals in lighting, staging, projection and rentals. Thus, InfoComm’s recently released annual survey of its increasingly inclusive constituency offers some insights into where these sectors might be headed.
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I sometimes wonder, “Why don’t people concentrate on making new, cooler versions of existing gear?”…I walked into Upstaging Inc.’s lighting shop outside of Chicago and… Read More »New Old Stuff
Read More »By studying the lighting rig and understanding the needs of the production, you can determine common fixture selections. Then by using the procedures outlined in… Read More »Group Your Fixtures
Read More »Sometimes I get to a one off gig and see a way I can be lazy and get away with a short programming day. But to be honest, anytime I think I’ll luck out in one of these scenarios, it usually bites me in the ass.
Read More »These new high-tech mega-spectaculars have taken traditional theatrical techniques and have morphed and augmented them into something new. So why do so many college programs… Read More »Adjust the Curriculum for a Changing Job Market
Read More »Festival season is approaching! I must say it’s very exciting because there’s a lot going on these next few months. Not only with my boys from NOLA, Bonerama, but also with a brand new festival that is getting a lot hype named Delfest. If you don’t know the basis of how some great festivals were started I have a prime example for you… When I was a younger lad our group of friends heard of a festival that was started in the small town named Limestone in the state of Maine by the band Phish. Here unsuspecting residents were welcoming a crowd of over 80,000 fans for a weekend. It so happens that this same sort of ideal is being placed in the town I grew up in with a multitude of bands based from the bluegrass genre. This year it’s come to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland where the festival will take place at the end of May with talented acts performing in this small, yet beautiful town in Western Maryland. On another note, they acquired me as the festivals lighting operator for the weekend. It will be an honor to illuminate such acts as Del McCroury, Keller Williams and the Keels, Vince Gill, David Grisman, Sam Bush, Railroad Earth, Dierks Bentley, and many more…
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