With so many Broadway shows becoming glossier and more high tech, it can be difficult for smaller shows to compete with bigger production values. The solution? Bring in people who work on those larger shows, which is what The Happy Embalmer director Kelly Devine did when she mounted her catchy, off-the-wall musical at the New York Musical Theater Festival last fall.
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U2 has never been afraid to explore new avenues in production technology. Their 1997-98 PopMart tour broke new technological ground by using an LED video display screen rather than video projectors. Their Vertigo tour in 2005-06 introduced the concept of spherical LED pixels in a beaded curtain look.
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It's not unusual for manufacturers to promote their products as "innovative." It is, however, unusual for the products to actually be innovative. But the new Lightlock, developed by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and manufactured by Total Structures, actually is a very innovative idea with a very practical purpose – it dampens the centrifugal force of rotation produced by moving lights as they pan on flown structures.
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LD Mamo Pozzoli used Martin's LC Series panels in a cylindrical configuration for Gianna Nannini's 15-date GiannaDream tour. The LED structure is positioned at center stage and serves as the visual centerpiece of the set.
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Video control solutions specialist SNP Productions supplied video rental house Creative Technology with two Catalyst v4 PRO media servers with 250 Gb hard drives for the Pet Shop Boys' Pandemonium world tour, for which CT was the video contractor.
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LOS ANGELES – A few years ago, Paul O'Neil's Trans Siberian Orchestra (TSO) did shows in small theatres, two or three times a week. Now, the dual touring productions do two arena-sized shows a day on both the East and West coast, a challenge even to Chaos Visual Productions, which is used to handling video for large shows.
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Large-scale projections designed by Ross Ashton helped bring the year-long celebration for Cambridge University's 800th year to a close. Called Transforming Tomorrow, the light shows were projected onto Cambridge's Senate House and adjacent Old School, and also part of Kings College Chapel and the nearby Gibbs Building.
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For want of a better phrase, call it the sports-bar syndrome. Yep, every monitor on the wall looks a bit different, yet they're all showing the same game. The football gridiron's too yellow over there, and too red over here. And why is Terry Bradshaw so green?
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When the company that paved the road for the era of automated lighting and drove down the highway of that technology on cruise control for more than 25 years suddenly takes a left turn at the intersection of LED Boulevard and Automated Lighting Way, it's bound to turn some heads.
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Automated lighting consoles have several innovative functions to help the programmer, many of which have become commonplace. One of these is called "fan" or "align." In the simplest terms, this is a tool that mathematically spreads parameter values in even proportions.
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"Nice house. Would you like to see it with Ionic instead of Doric columns? No problem. Click." That conversation is not uncommon when architects or real estate developers and clients are working with scale models or 3-D animation. But imagine what it would be like when the scale was 1:1, no matter how big the building.
Read More »Over the holidays I reread The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. The last chapter is entitled "Sharpening the Saw," which is a reference to a story about a woodsman who is busy sawing down a tree. He's been at it for hours, and he's exhausted. Someone happens upon him and asks why he doesn't stop and sharpen his saw. "I don't have time to sharpen the saw," he says, "I'm too busy sawing!"
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