BOSTON — Anolis ArcLine Outdoor Optic LED strips have been installed into Paul Oakenfold’s custom rolling riser DJ platform, which has been used for his opening sets on Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet world tour stadium shows.
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LONDON — Baz Halpin, LD for the current tour for Queen + Paul Rodgers, was looking to create a “good, old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll lighting show,” but with the kind of consistency in color that wasn’t always available with the monster rigs of yesteryear. He opted to include 80 Coemar Infinity Wash XL lights to meet the challenge.
Read More »AGOURA HILLS, CA — A.C.T Lighting announced its intention to roll back pricing on MA Lighting products to match Oct. 2007 levels, attributing the company's decision to an unexpected increase in the value of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro. The company said the new pricing goes into effect immediately, and is good on all orders shipped between now and the end of calendar year 2008.
Read More »SANTA, CLARA, CA — Musson Theatrical, Inc. recently expanded into a new 35,000-square-foot space at its existing facility. “When the business that used to occupy the other half of the building that Musson occupies vacated, we saw a golden opportunity to expand our business and improve service to our customers,” said Bob Downs, president.
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MANCHESTER, U.K. — Lighting designer Tom Kinane used I-Pix BB7 LED wash lights for the first time on the set of the final episode of the Peter Kay talent show spoof, Britain’s Got The Pop Factor … And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly On Ice.
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WALNUT CREEK, CA — Northcreek Church (NCC), now in the third phase of a construction project that started two years ago, needed lighting, video and stage components for the new building being added to the church campus in response to an increase in church attendance, and relied on Michael Garrison Associates (MGA) to do the job.
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I was recently asked to take a look at a new Elation lighting fixture, the LED 36 Tri-Brick. I thought to myself, “Great, yet another LED fixture in the shape of a brick.” But then I turned it on and all I could say was, “Wow.” Elation has once again stepped up and taken the LED fixture to a new level.
Read More »On Feb. 17, 2009, at the stroke of midnight, an amazing era comes to a close, and another one begins. It’s called the DTV (digital television) transition, and as mandated by our good friends at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), every chief engineer at almost every television station in the U.S. is going to throw the big “off” switch on their trusty old analog transmitters. From that point forward, all terrestrial video transmission at “full power” TV stations will be blasting out ones and zeros, as the sun sets on analog broadcasting. (Psst— Hey buddy, wanna buy a 50,000-watt analog transmitter?)
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“Buy me a seat at the opera house. I don’t care if it’s Mozart or Strauss.” —from “Take Me Out to the Opera”
Today, when most people think about opera (if they think about it at all), they envision an elegant night out with fancy clothes, jewels and a stuffy be-on-your-best-behavior attitude. That’s how it is in the movies, and even sometimes in real life.
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The Beijing Summer 2008 Olympics may have been destined to be controversial, and it didn’t take long for the Games to spark public debate. One of the earliest flashpoints centered on what took place — and didn’t — during the opening seconds of the opening ceremony. Leading up to the dramatic, drummed countdown at 8:08 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2008, viewers at home and on giant screens inside the National Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest, watched as 29 giant footprints outlined in fireworks proceeded gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square to the 29th Olympiad.
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When the price of fuel began its dizzying ascent a few years ago, few of us could have predicted the far reaching implications. But it might not have been so difficult to predict that the truck pack would become more important than ever, especially for those of us who have to pay the fuel bills. Upstaging, Inc., who is planted firmly both in the lighting and trucking side of the business, understands as well as anyone the implications. That’s one of the motivating reasons that they helped develop the new High-Performance Utility Design (HUD) Truss.
Read More »A good automated lighting programmer will always prepare for the tasks at hand long before the trucks are loaded. Most lighting companies will prepare the fixtures, cables, truss and more prior to the first load-in. In the same manner, an automated lighting programmer should prepare the show file and console configuration before arriving on site. There are many important procedures and provisions that you should follow when you are beginning a new project.
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