I had a great time at NAMM. It was a totally different, and at the same time, refreshing show from the usual ones I attend. I put it more on a scale of the Prolight + Sound show than any other trade show, as it featured gear from all aspects of the entertainment biz. Everyone I ran into remarked that it was a great time, some called it a different beast.
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It’s that time of my life where I need to start dumping stuff that is of no use to me other than sentimental value. For… Read More »Out with the Old and In with the New
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I love when people raise the bar, and a lot of that was done this year. It has become quite evident that discharge bulbs are quickly going the way of fossil fuels. Only the old folks will still think there’s money to be made in these things. Heck, one look at the LED Engin series of light sources that Osram has shows us how committed manufacturers have become.
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I like coming to Vegas in November. I prefer it over October simply because by the time you read this it will be freezing outside where I live and Vegas is always warm if you’re outside. I wouldn’t mind if they went back to having LDI rotating cities though. I always catch up with a different set of friends on the right coast than I do out here. But hey, it’s that time of year and it’s gonna be great regardless.
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There used to be a time when you designed your show around two types of moving lights — hard edge and wash fixtures. I grew up in a time where the hard beams were from Vari-Lites or lekos and the wash came from pars. The only color changing we saw was from color wheels and color scrollers on conventional fixtures.
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I don’t spend a lot of time in church as I am booked on shows most weekends or flying home Sunday mornings. But it’s nice to visit various house of worships when I can. I like to see what experience these offer to people as well as check out the latest production equipment being used at these facilities. I will tell you this, if you want to check out some of the latest lighting and video technology on the market, you may not have to go very far from your own house to find it. It could be in use at the church on your corner.
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Have you ever gone to a show, and been totally overwhelmed by your senses to the point that you were actually moved? I mean, seriously touched by a performance?
There are those rare moments in life where you are just overcome by emotions of happiness caused by witnessing something that was just so spectacular it left you posing a question to the patron standing next to you along the lines of “Holy Cow, did you just see what I just saw?” I count five times in my life.
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“Attention all lighting manufacturers: Concerning the continuous rise in color temperatures in your discharge lights. Some of us LD’s still like the color red.”
This was a recent post on social media. The time has come to call out the system, the trend, the fact that almost everyone is sacrificing the LD’s right for a full color palette for more lumen output, higher CRI in LEDs and a native color temperature of 7,000° Kelvin in discharge fixtures.
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I think that a picture was worth a thousand words. But I think a picture is often worth 100 lights as well. As video has become a staple in concerts, we see lights being used to augment the big look of a big screen and gosh — be used to just light the money. The need for more original designs using video tiles is common. Designers need fresh ideas. With all the productions we cover this month, it’s clearly evident that different minds do not always think alike.
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Last month I crossed the pond in search of the latest toys in the lighting, video and staging world, as I do every April at the Prolight + Sound show in Germany. I saw some new products, but what I noticed most were a lot of companies rehashing old fixtures with newer ones that featured a new function or different light source. Lots of clever ideas to modify existing technology. But none of that jumped out as fresh and innovative, other than a couple items.
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I stopped down at the USITT show last month in St. Louis. I enjoy going to this show for a day every year to watch all the enthusiasm that thousands of kids have for the Arts. Plus, it’s great to see the various vendors giving back their knowledge to the next generation. Since the government seems to care little about the arts during the current administration it’s so much more important to see the other companies that did show up to pass knowledge.
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The Super Bowl halftime shows rarely thrill me. I think the lighting, production and staging of these shows is usually incredible, year after year. But to be honest, the last time I think I saw an artist that really impressed me with their performance was when Prince killed it. But this year rocked.
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