LONDON — A woman in her 30s was injured by a 20-by-10-foot Clear Channel LED advertising billboard that fell with its metal framework about 20 feet from the brick façade of a century-old building to the pavement below. The accident took place in South London’s Tooting district about 7:30 a.m. on May 12.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Available Light recently received a 2015 IALD Award of Merit for the National Archives Rotunda in Washington, DC. The International Lighting Design Awards were presented by the New York-based International Association of Lighting Designers on May 6.
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PALM BEACH, FL – Video equipment rental company Pete’s Big TVs provided Florida’s Palm Beach Opera and its scenic designer with their first LED video wall experience. It was also the world premiere of the opera, Enemies, A Love Story, held Feb. 20-22 at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.
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As I wandered the halls at 2015’s Prolight + Sound show in Frankfurt last month, I once again looked for the unusual items. I’ve come to expect the large manufacturers to show off some great stuff to augment their wide array of fixtures. But I am more impressed at these trade shows with the little things that are original. I’m talking about stuff so cool and simple that I have been wondering where this item has been my whole career. And it’s not necessarily something that everyone can use. I found three companies I was unfamiliar with, that showed me gear I can really use.
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Derek McLane has traveled to many different places through his scenic design work for Broadway and beyond. As he takes PLSN on a tour of the Manhattan studio space that he shares with director Doug Hughes and costume designer Catherine Zuber, the charming Tony Award winner waxes enthusiastic about his work in the theater. He shows us his wall-length library of art and design books that stands in the common conference room as well as the gallery of quarter scale models lining the shelves and the perimeter of his main work space where the drafting and model crafting happens. From the gloomy, decaying theater of Follies to the bright and cheery steamship of Anything Goes, McLane knows how to fully flesh out a set and draw audiences into the world of each story he helps to tell.
Read More »BIJIE CITY, Guizhou Province, China – The stage at the Grand Theater in Bijie, China collapsed during choir rehearsals here May 9. Eighty singers in the choir fell with the stage, along with a pianist and an onstage piano. Eight were injured and two sustained “relatively serious” injuries.
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“The whole idea of the show is essentially building from zero,” says lighting programmer Jason Baeri. “It begins without giving anything away — just a simple stage. Then as the show unfolds, there’s a little bit of Magic Blades, and then video, and then we lower the ‘V’ trussing, and then we push out to the B stage. It’s a linear progression upwards and forward, expanding in the space as the songs go by.”
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Global pop star Pitbull is out on tour where we caught up with lighting designer & director Michael Smalley and Team Pitbull on the sold-out co-headline date with Enrique Iglesias. We got some background on Smalley who says “I was always playing with lighting and sound gear since I was a child.” He got involved in those aspects in school, and when he got to college, he pursued a degree in technical theatre. His focus quickly changed to concert lighting and set design after seeing a few notable concerts, such as Phish and Chris Kuroda’s lighting design. Smalley worked shows in local bars, and then, in early 2004, hit the road with a band called Moonshine Still.
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Ethan Weber is gearing up to start yet another Rolling Stones tour. This marks the 21st year he has been on the road with these guys, but in reality it’s only a fraction of his career in stage lighting. Along with designing some top-notch shows on his own for bands such as Green Day and Fall Out Boy, he is often entrusted with running larger-than-life productions, such as U2, for other designers. I caught up with Ethan to chat for a spell.
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All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. And there are few players in the staging business better known, even legendary, than Joe Gallagher. In 40 years, he has built a reputation as solid as his stages for working magic for bands, clubs, corporate and sports events, even churches, with everything done “as you like it.” Even during our phone interview, he was as busy as an air traffic controller, solving issues brought into his office, checking truck locations and tour schedules, taking other calls, getting ready for the next tour taking off in a week.
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Real World Lighting, Inc. was founded in 1989 when Bob Peterson shifted his energy from vending to design. His primary focus has been television lighting for music, comedy and special events, with clients including Garth Brooks, CMT Crossroads, a bevy of comedy specials for Showtime, HBO, Comedy Central and the POTUS [President of the United States]. Real World recently designed lighting for the concert segments of Pitch Perfect 2, the feature film, which gets released this month. Rascal Flatts and The Band Perry have also used Real World Lighting’s tour design consultation services.
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It seems the designers of the new water-based Han Show, in Wuhan, China, have things a bit backwards. Instead of brainstorming on the conceptual basics of a theatrical show and securing the proper venue for it, the leading designers of the production have gotten support from Dalian Wanda Group, a large Chinese commercial property developer and cinema operator that constructed an entire theater for the specific purpose of housing The Han Show..
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