July 2017 New Products
PLSN’s July 2017 New Products section features the following items: Acclaim Lighting Pixel Bar LED Fixtures Blackmagic Design Camera Control iPad App Chauvet Professional Epix… Read More »July 2017 New Products
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Honey, I Shrunk the Studio
A Look at Four Compact Tools for Video Production
I’ve been using a Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio for a while now, so I was excited to get my hands on the newly released Television Studio HD. Why stop there, though? This month you get a bonus equipment review — I took possession of not only the ATEM TVS HD, but also a HyperDeck Mini, a Web Presenter and a Teranex Mini Smart Panel. Basically, a complete eight-input switching/record/playback system designed to fit in a 1RU space, with the exception of the Web Presenter.
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Handheld Gadgets
As I walk along convention floors, I often notice cool little gadgets, from tools to lights to smoke devices and more. Each of these fits a nice little niche in our world of live events. Whether it’s a physical gadget, pressurized effect or an electronic device, we’ve compiled a few nifty devices we felt were worth a look this month.
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Move – Beyond – Live On Tour
Back for their third tour, siblings Julianne and Derek Hough of TV’s Dancing With the Stars fame were out on their Move — Beyond — Live On Tour, which launched April 19 in Akron, OH and crisscrossed the country before concluding in Santa Rosa, CA June 17. With a combined total of nine wins on the show, the dancers are delighting audiences with their routines with the show visuals adding their own razzle-dazzle. The tour’s designers include Peter Morse (lighting) and Butch Allen (set). We spoke with Morse about the show.
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Hall & Oates and Tears for Fears
Fresh Looks for a Unique Co-Headlining Tour
One of this summer’s best tickets for fans to spend their money on is the co-headliner of a set of artists who achieved that rare strata of both popular and critical acclaim, top forty titans Tears For Fears (TFF) and Hall & Oates (H&O).
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Pot of Gold Music Festival
10th Annual Event Gets Versatile Assist from Creative BackStage
It was late March, and the 10th annual Pot of Gold Music Festival outside Phoenix had just completed a successful run. John Garberson, the owner of Creative BackStage, which supplied the lighting rig for the two day event, was in his Chandler, AZ shop talking to friends. “This was a very big deal for us,” he said. “I think it holds a lesson for other small and mid-sized rental houses too. You know, we could not have built this two or three years ago.”
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EventPM Lets the Predators Loose on Nashville
Crowd Takes Over Downtown Streets During Team’s Stanley Cup Run
Huge crowds descended upon downtown Nashville during the 30 days the Predators advanced through the NHL Western Conference, with hockey fever building to a frenzy during the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals series in early June. All that took placed in late May and early June, during one of Nashville’s busiest times of the year, with CMA Fest [June 8-11] and the CMT Awards [June 7] and related concerts happening around the same time. Fan fever pitch in the city streets was unlike anything the aptly nicknamed “Nash Vegas” had ever seen before.
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LD Dave Herrman with the Gipsy Kings
Tour: April-December: U.K., Canada, U.S., Europe.
Design: “It is all ‘big picture’ stuff. Other than my console, we are not carrying gear, so every night is a different show — it may be all par cans one night, moving lights the next or a mix of the two. I take a theatrical approach, trying to keep a consistent look for the Gipsys, lighting the stage of 11 musicians and highlighting vocals or a guitar break as needed. It’s not flash and trash.”
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Lightronics Architectural Dimmers
Lightronics got their start building dimmers, plain and simple. Founder Kevin Nelson was introduced to theater while a young man in school down in Virginia Beach, where he got involved with the audio and lighting gear he used. Eventually he was hired on by a local music store and got hands on work repairing lighting gear. Along the way he started using gear for shows, working long into the night before loading out his gear and going to the next venue the next day. At a point, he realized that dimmers needed to be constructed a bit more ruggedly to endure the rigors of being travelled in a van and be able to perform consistently every day.
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