Respect Your Intuition
Let your intuition lead, and your intellect will follow. In a recent study that I Googled for this introduction, car buyers who had chosen their… Read More »Respect Your Intuition
Read More »The Story of Jack Genner and Suzy Ciffic
I have two suppositious friends in this business. They are Jack Genner and Suzy Ciffic. I respect both of them equally for their exemplary work ethic. They are both able to hold down a family life and great jobs. They are both educated and easy to get along with. Their stories have been spread through the cement floors of our industry in many ways. Both Jack and Suzy have chosen separate and distinct paths to their own comfort level in our fine industry. I would like to take time to tell you both of their stories in an effort to let you decide which path you most identify with.
Read More »Just Wing It!
Unorganized productions are the body of the chicken flailing around after the head has been chopped off. They are, pun intended, “just wingin’ it.” Organization is the guard dog that keeps the feathery artistic minds of our field contained in the coop of progress….Since I have started working on high profile gigs, I have become complacent. I have started to take daily schedules for granted. They come in my email; I glance at the lighting lobby call time and then discard them as if no one put any serious time and effort into producing them. After my most recent gig, I will never take another schedule for granted.
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Arrgh Ye Prepared for the Pirate Invasion?
Shiver me timbers! All of these pirated products are driving me to the end of me plank! Walking through New York City a few days ago, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of designer handbags for sale on the street. Why would anyone go into a boutique store and pay 15 times the price when they could just get the “same” product from the head-to-toe denim-wearing, shady-looking, amateur salesman with the white Reeboks selling Coach handbags on the street corner from the milk carton above his ratty blanket?
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The Subtle Art of Self-Promotion
Tooting your own horn in public can be very successful, as long as you toot properly. I have had to toot my own horn to get where I am today. Learning how to walk the line between blasting a trumpet from the rooftop and noodling on a kazoo can be tricky. The world of self-promotion can be a real entanglement for the corporate artist type.
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Lighting Inside the Lines
Creating art while working inside client-imposed limitations can be more difficult than coloring inside the lines of an M.C. Escher painting. Constraints would seem like the last thing you’d want or need while embarking on a creative project, but they’re actually beneficial when it comes to doing beautiful work. We all know what it’s like to be paralyzed by a mountain of insurmountable options and opportunities. Restrictions take away some of the choices available to us, and with them, the fear of making the wrong choice. Working within the confines of artist restrictions can be taxing, but with these few ideas, I hope to make it minimally more palatable.
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Thank You for Using Restraint
Sometimes, it’s the things that you don’t do that make all the difference.
I recently attended a show that was painful to watch and more difficult to experience. I couldn’t see the artists for half the show because the upstage wall was built with a tractor-trailer’s worth of LED strobes that were aimed at my face. No matter where I went in the audience, they seemed to track my eyeballs and flash open white on every downbeat.
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Kung Fu Lighting
A Tale of Lighting, Confusion and Pandas in the Land of the Red Dragon
Lighting direction has taken me all over the world for some extravagant gigs in far-off lands. I have been asked what it’s like to travel for work in so many foreign countries. I can tell you that, for the most part, it is similar to what you are used to. It’s just the same loading dock in a different country. The food is a little different, the money is a different color and the stagehands speak only slightly less English than at home.
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Stop Doing Things Right. Right Now
“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” —God (from the Futurama Season Three episode 20, which was titled “Godfellas.”)
“When you mess up, people race to post it on social media.” —Chris Lose
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Wirque du Soleil
If you are thinking about embarking on a career as a crew member for the Circus of the Sun, let me tell you about my experience, and you can see if you still feel the sunshine.
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“The Great One” and Stage Lighting
A good LD lights where the guitarist is supposed to be. A great LD lights where the guitarist is going to be.
I recently moved from Las Vegas to Canada for a number of reasons. One reason for moving is the current political climate in the U.S. Canada has proven to be very polite and rather pleasant. I moved to a small community where my services as a concert lighting director might not be in high demand. Belle River does not have any casinos, convention centers, ballrooms or arenas. But it does have hockey rinks — lots of them.
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Be Kind to Your Friends in the Shop
I’m a firm believer that people who have spent time in the shop have a better understanding of the lighting business than those who have not. I am lucky enough to have spent four knuckle-busting years in the shops of Vari*Lite, Morpheus and Cinelease. I was there to receive hand written shop orders, assemble gear, tech lights and repair rain-drenched VL6s and Mac 2Ks that came back from multiple Olympics from around the globe.
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