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David Heald photo of James Turrell's

James Turrell’s “Aten Reign” at NYC’s Guggenheim Museum

“It looks like the rings of Saturn,” said one observer, craning his neck to grab the attention of his companion to his left.

Nearby, another individual, standing amid a small huddled mass people, blurts out, “It makes my eyes bug out.”

Still others remain silent and still, not verbalizing their thoughts as they lay supine as if glued to the floor, their eyes turned skyward, mesmerized by a series of mysterious and monolithic elliptical bands, which float above their heads, changing colors at regular intervals.

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TLS Productions, Inc. in the beginning stages of a corporate event.

TLS Productions, Inc.

Quick. When you think of Ann Arbor, MI and stagecraft, what comes to mind? Alice Cooper? Commander Cody? Iggy Pop, Bob Seger, George Clinton? Madonna (who was a dance major at University of Michigan)? Sun Ra (who lived there in 1969)? You’ll soon be able to add TLS Productions, Inc., to the list. The noted lighting, production and special event management company plans to be settling into its new headquarters there by year’s end.

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Solaris LED Flare

Solaris LED Flare

Audience blinders are perfect for those times during a production when the talent on stage wants to see the people who came to see them. During those moments, as the name of the fixtures suggest, the lighting crew gets to turn its attention from blinding the performers and start abusing the optic nerves of the audience as well, using thousands of watts of tungsten or high discharge lamp sources.

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Screen shot showing the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Browser windows of Capture Polar.

Capture Polar 3D Visualizer

It all starts with a great idea in your head.  Maybe you were at the bar, and you drew your thoughts out on a cocktail napkin. Isn’t that how all great designs begin? That beer-stained napkin may have helped you preserve that initial flash of inspiration, but when it comes to presenting our amazing visual ideas in all their detailed glory to the people who will be paying your fees, it’s a good idea to seek out a more professional-looking alternative.

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Beachsound has expanded from sound into lighting and video.

Beachsound & Lighting: From Sound to Lighting and Video

Like many in the live entertainment production industry, for Andre Serafini, it started with the music. In the late 1980s, he was a drummer/songwriter and part of an alternative/punk band called Quit, known for its 1990 album, Earlier Thoughts, which receive substantial air play on local radio stations. The Miami native gravitated toward the technical side of the entertainment industry, becoming a partner in Tapeworm Studios. With his many contacts and connections on the thriving local music scene, it wasn’t long before the gear he had been accumulating was being loaned, then rented, for a variety of gigs, and a major regional rental company, Beachsound & Lighting, was born.

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With Kling-Net, you’ll need to run a second cable to each fixture (yellow). But for heavy-duty pixel-mapping, Kling-Net lets you bypass the need to patch all those LEDs individually and then use DMX Merge to combine RGB DMX values output from the media server back into the signal stream. In that respect, Kling-Net is a cleaner and more direct way of pixel mapping than using DMX.

Kling-Net: An Alternative to Merging DMX

Because some LED fixtures now allow each of the LEDs on the face of the unit to be controlled individually via DMX, they can also receive mapped RGB values from a video using a media server and can thus appear to display lo-res video images. LED fixtures are not small LED video panels, however, and typically they do not accept a video signal directly at the fixture. Instead, the RGB values for each pixel are usually sent from a media server using a DMX or Art-Net type connection. This presents a challenge, especially for fixtures that also have Pan/Tilt or other DMX channels that will be controlled via a lighting console.

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They Stand Their Ground, We Pay the Price

I don’t tackle politics, religion or race in this space very often — in fact, I don’t think I ever have. One rule I have stood by — which has evolved over the course of the last several years as our society has become increasingly polarized — is to never discuss politics or religion with strangers, especially if you’re going to be stuck sitting next to them on a five-hour flight. Even with friends, I’m cautious — I have no idea if someone has been surreptitiously radicalized by prolonged exposure to Glenn Beck or MSNBC while I wasn’t looking. These days, even your best friend might suddenly want to occupy something.

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Turning Virtual Lighting Into Reality

Our industry is very exciting as it is filled with many different types of technology. Automated lighting programmers are skilled at to not only operating high-tech consoles and new robotic lighting fixtures, but we also find ourselves playing with virtual simulations of the real world. Lighting visualizers have come a long way over the past 20 years and now provide nearly realistic looking emulations of the lighting and production on a stage. However, there are still challenges involved when working with a visualizer, and it is very important for a programmer to be aware of the pros and cons of the technology.

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Selena Gomez' Stars Dance tour

Lighting Selena, Million Second Quiz, Lightswitch at 20, KISS to the Crue, More…

One of the most enjoyable rehearsal processes I have ever experienced.” That’s how Seth Jackson describes the new Selena Gomez Stars Dance world tour, which kicked off Aug. 14 in Canada. “Taking on the role of creative director and production designer for the tour allowed me to call in a great team of people to put all of this together. Lighting designer Nathan W. Scheuer and video designer Brent Sandrock and I have all worked together in the past, and I really enjoy the energy that this team brings to any project I’m offered. Add in a great management team, a terrific lighting director (David Convertino), a great artist and an organization that is run brilliantly and you end up with a great tour.”

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Illustration by Andy Au

The Color Yellow

I believe most people have a favorite color. I’m partial to a deep blue myself. I asked around. Guys seem to like blues and purples. Girls like red and pinks. Some musical acts hate certain colors and have actually asked me to never light them in a certain color, while others only allow themselves to be lit in certain colors. But one thing I found is that nobody really digs yellow.

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Maroon 5 Overexposed tour photo by Steve Jennings

Maroon 5’s “Overexposed” Tour: Focus on Video

Maroon 5’s Overexposed world tour, which ran through late April in the U.S. and is set to resume in the U.K. and Europe in Jan. 2014, has emerged as the largest production for the band to date and also marked the first time production designer and creative director Demfis Fyssicopulos worked with the Grammy winning group. The design for the tour’s latest incarnation starts with a large mainstage in the shape of the letter “M,” which works together with the Roman symbol for “5” (a “V”) that doubles as the downward-pointing angle for the “M.”

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Robert Plant Presents Sensational Space Shifters’ LD Chris Lisle

On the Road with LD Chris Lisle

 Tour: Robert Plant Presents Sensational Space Shifters

 2013 Dates: Singapore/Australia/New Zealand March 21-April 11; North America June 20-July 27; UK/Europe Aug. 31-Oct. 31.

 Design: “Minimalistic. With just 12 feet of truck space, the tour counts on filling front and back trusses with local gear and 14 moving lights. Plant always wants par cans as side light; he loves the ‘70s feel. But at some points he wants psychedelic looks. As this tour would travel to South America with active crowds, Plant thought ‘let’s do some flash, some fun’ in the lighting looks to appeal to dance-oriented crowds.”

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