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Chauvet Lights Yanni’s Puerto Rican Performance

Yanni

Chauvet Lights Yanni’s Puerto Rican Performance

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Famous for choosing historic sites for his concerts, Yanni’s most recent concert and DVD recording took place in another majestic location, at Castillo San Felipe del Morro in Puerto Rico. The front wall of the fortress became the central visual attraction for the two-day concert and recording, acting as a background for the stage positioned in front on the grass near the ocean. “The concept was to illuminate the wall of El Morro, as the fort was the main part of the scenography,” said LD Bud Horowitz. Musique Xpress Lights supplied the CHAUVET lighting.

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Sonnenfeld to Chair Panel at NATEAC 2012

NEW YORK – Industry veteran Sonny Sonnenfeld has joined the conference panel list for NATEAC 2012, set for the Hilton here July 22-23. Sonnenfeld, who joins  ETC’s Mark Vassallo, Jonathan Resnick of Barbizon and Bob Lorelli of Robert Lorelli Associates, will discuss the art and science of dealing with manufacturers’ reps when outfitting a new performance space.

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Hearing the Whole Picture

No, there’s nothing wrong with your eyes — you are reading PLSN and we are talking about sound. It is something I thought I would never in my life touch, other than the volume button on the remote. “As long as I can hear it, I am good,” has long been the extent of my experience with audio. In a visual media like lighting and projection, hearing is the last thing we think about.  But it shouldn’t be. Our sense of hearing is just as important to our jobs as our vision is.

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Yvan Miron

Live Event Tragedies: Industry Leaders Speak Out

“When someone goes to a concert, they shouldn’t come home in a body bag,” says production manager Jim Digby. This is just one example of the frank conversation that ensued when PLSN gathered six industry leaders for a roundtable discussion about recent staging tragedies.

Along with Digby, co-founder of the Event Safety Alliance (eventsafetyalliance.org), five other industry professionals offered their thoughts for this roundtable: LD Chip Monck, rigger Roy Bickel and staging providers John Brown (Brown United), Jim Evans Sr. (Mountain Productions) and Yvan Miron (Stageline Mobile Stage Inc.).

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InfoComm 2012

Show Report: InfoComm 12

InfoComm continues to grow each year.  Last year, Orlando set a record for the most attendees. In true Las Vegas style, InfoComm 2012 exceeded that number by 4 percent, with more than 34,000 attendees walking the Las Vegas Convention Center over three days. In all, there were 933 exhibitors occupying more than 487,000 square feet, along with numerous training and certification sessions happening over three days. There never seems to be enough time to see it all.

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Video elements play a big role in the production on both sides of the Atlantic. Photo by Sean Ebsworth Barnes.

Ghost Sculpting

The producers of the Tony Award-nominated Ghost: The Musical certainly wanted to create an eye-popping visual experience for their audience, and after two incarnations in England (Manchester, and then London), the Broadway version is the most video-intensive and tightly-sequenced of them all. It’s not simply telling the story of artist Molly Jensen and her banker husband Sam Wheat, who, after being murdered, emerges as a restless spirit and tries to warn Molly about impending danger through the assistance of psychic Oda Mae Brown. And it’s not about replicating the tone and look of the movie. It’s about creating a unique theatrical experience where a love story spanning life and death unfolds, but along the way we get the thrill of witnessing floating objects onstage, experiencing a supernatural subway ride and watching Sam’s spirit walk through a door.

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Lighting up Chicago’s Wrigley Field for Roger Waters’ The Wall Live tour.

Strictly FX’s Ted Maccabee

Like the name says, Strictly FX does just that, strictly special effects. The Wood Dale, IL-based company specializes in providing lasers, pyrotechnics, flames, confetti, cryogenics, and mischief. Since its founding in 1996 by Ted Maccabee and Mark Grega, the company has grown to be an award-winning staple of concert touring with a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of the music industry.

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Radiohead tour photo by Steve Jennings

Radiohead’s Andi Watson Creates Performance Environment with Bottle Wall, Moving Video Elements

As this issue went to press, Radiohead was reeling from the partial stage collapse on June 16 at Downsview Field in Toronto, which killed crew member Scott Johnson, injured three others and destroyed many of the lighting elements discussed in this Production Profile. In a statement, the band noted that, along with “the grief and shock ensuing from this terrible accident,” there were “practical considerations to deal with…The collapse also destroyed the light show; this show was unique and will take many weeks to replace.”

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Elation Platinum Wash ZFX Pro

Elation Platinum Wash ZFX Pro

Elation’s Platinum Wash ZFX Pro RGBW moving head wash fixture, which features a new Quad color Osram LED chipset and a new high output (HO) optical lens, has been winning converts all over the world since it was introduced last year, according to Eric Loader, Elation Professional’s director of sales.

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Video screens provide visual immersion at the XS Pool Club at Wynn Encore in Las Vegas.

Global Trend Productions Makes a Bigger Splash in Video

Global Trend Productions CEO Isaac Campos is a modest man, but there’s no denying the progress that he and his team have been making. The LED video display specialist, established in 1997, has supported the Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal festivals, featuring big-name DJs such as Kaskade, Tiësto and others. On the corporate side, they’ve been there for Lexus, Ferrari, Activision, Atari and Telemundo.

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RSN member Video West designed these flown scenic flats, then used them for video-mapped projections for a multi-dimensional effect.

AV’s Digital Future: Five Trends To Watch in Live Event Staging

Donald Guzauckas is president of the Rental and Staging Network (RSN), a nationwide network of 21 geographically diverse rental and staging companies committed to continual improvements in their business operations and profitability. Here, Guzauckas articulates five trends that the members have discussed recently about live event production and, in particular, digital AV. Evidence for all of these trends could be found at the NAB and InfoComm shows earlier this year.

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Lightronics Unity AB Architectural Ballast Driver

Unity AB Architectural Ballast Driver from Lightronics

The new Unity AB series from Lightronics is designed to control high efficiency lighting sources such as LED light fixtures and dimmable compact fluorescents. The AB can be ordered to control a three-wire hot-switched ballast or a four-wire 0-10VDC-type ballast. The AB is available in a three- or six-channel version with a maximum load of 20 amps per channel. Control is via a DMX-512 console or any of the Lightronics Unity architectural remote stations. Scene recall can also be accomplished using a momentary contact signal from a switch, motion sensor or similar device.

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