“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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At a concert, the director controls what the audience sees on the I-Mag. At a professional sports event, the director controls the visual story that’s seen on television, or on a stadium’s huge video screen. Here, we’re talking about directing for live events, with multiple cameras, media servers and various other video sources at the director’s fingertips. There are certainly other types of directors, such as the Kubricks and the Coppolas — but that’s a different breed of cat entirely.
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With the popularity of LEDs on the rise and the increasing need for better tools to program them, the boundaries of existing software solutions is constantly being tested. Take, for instance, the world of pixel mapping. Once upon a time, pixel mapping more or less was confined to a 2D flat plane on which an image would be displayed. That has changed in the last several years. With products like Pixel Tubes (Eurolite) and LT 100/200 3D Graphic Tubes (SGM) being used to create three-dimensional structures of pixels, traditional 2D pixel mapping software quickly falls short of the task.
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Are you LOOKing for an atmospheric effect machine? What do you need? A hazer, fogger, low fog generator, battery powered fogger, or miniature fogger? Whatever your needs are, Look Solutions has it covered. Let’s take a quick look at three of the 10 units available from Look Solutions.
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Let it be known that a manufacturer has finally built a hard edge moving light with an LED source that’s brighter than the 1200W discharge fixtures now on the market. Barco-owned High End Systems has proven that their SolaSpot Pro 1500 fixture has the horsepower to outshine most of the top selling fixtures others offer while only using a 400-watt white LED light source.
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Last fall at LDI, I was privileged to walk past the Lightwave International booth and see their new fixture, the Phenom, a moving-head RGB laser that combines the best parts of a moving head fixture with the power and visuals of a laser, offering LDs a brand new, previously-unseen effect for their toolkit.
Read More »To quote Nickleback, “We all just wanna be big rock stars, live in hilltop houses, drivin’ 15 cars….” Or, more to the point, our clients do. Over the past 25 years, we’ve seen corporate shows change in dramatic and unexpected ways, the most profound being the energy level and aesthetic of the productions.
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