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Top 40 Rules of the Road

Industry veteran Bob Higgins has more than 30 years of experience in the touring industry as a video producer, director, editor, dancer, troublemaker, and problem solver. With the help of contributing minders K. Lipschutz, G. Jones, V. Jarvis, A. Kramer, R. Alvarez, W. Willoughby, and B. Riedling, he’s pieced together the following rules, gleaned from his own early mistakes, mistakes he’s seen along the way (with the shipping records as proof), eyewitness accounts, and road stories too numerous to mention. Please read carefully, you will be tested daily…

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Elation Event Cylinder

Elation Event Cylinder

Elation’s Event Cylinder, designed in conjunction with Port Lighting Systems, gives lighting professionals a new color-changing LED element to work into their own creative designs, from dangling LED chandeliers to glowing horizontal arrays, tabletop centerpieces and stacked columns of illumination.

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GAM LED Stik-up with filter

GAM LED Stik-up

The Stik-up, an ultra-compact, four-ounce incandescent single source luminaire from GAM Products, has a new LED sibling, the LED Stik-up. As with the original tungsten-based version, designers can use LED Stik-ups as a general wash light to fill holes, light back stage areas or sneak extra illumination into the nooks and crannies of set elements from a completely self-contained package of portable LED light.

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Roland V-800HD Video Switcher

Roland V-800HD Multi-Format Video Switcher

The world of video switching gets thicker and more competitive by the month, it seems. For example, the small-to-medium multi-format market is booming right now — and for good reason. Lots of different devices offer lots of different I/O options. Designers “in the biz” realize that they need to provide a lot of bang for the buck, and it usually falls upon the technical crew to come up with the solution.

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Vectorworks Spotlight Label Legend Manager

Making the Most of Vectorworks Spotlight

In contemporary society, some may argue that man is plenty without tools, but perhaps Thomas Carlyle was on to something. Perhaps a stronger argument can be made for the fact that man improves with tools—so long as they’re the right ones. That sounds right to me, especially when it comes to design tools for the entertainment industry.

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Tragedy Strikes Again

It happened again. This time, it was in Brazil, where 238 people were killed when fire raged through a nightclub in late January. It will take time to sort out all of the factors that led to the fire and to the carnage, including locked or inaccessible fire exits and clueless venue staff, but initial reports point yet again to a sadly familiar scenario: live pyrotechnics used in an enclosed space, with less-than-ideal supervision and apparently little in the way of planning for potentially disastrous outcomes.

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Smooth Moves

Automated lighting fixtures are extremely sophisticated, to the point that some people even refer to them as “intelligent.” While the fixtures are packed full of very smart features, they actually require a human with a bit of knowledge to operate them properly. This is very true when it comes to controlling the movement of pan/tilt or other features. Fixtures and consoles provide a multitude of methods to ensure that these movements are either perfectly smooth or extremely quick. A thorough understanding of the various options is imperative for any automated lighting programmer.

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LD Dale Doucette with Heart sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson

Designing with Heart; ESA Needs You; TV Lighting Interns Sought; Quick Cues

Production/lighting designer Dale Doucette describes Heart’s touring schedule as “Two week tourettes.”

 “During March to November, we do ‘tourettes’ — two weeks of shows in a particular section of the country in casinos and small 3,000-5,000 venues, then we go home. Every day is a different gig. I carry a file of shows and a handful of songs I keep consistent.

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Illustration by Andy Au

Sub-Renting

This month, I continue on my quest to figure out which gear has the best return for a lighting company investment. Is it as easy as following the old “Supply and Demand” way of thinking? I always assumed that a lighting company chose what fixtures they would purchase based on what the customer’s latest needs were. But what if you did many shows each year with various LD types, and they all want different fixtures? Do the lighting buyers choose to base their decisions on the latest, coolest moving heads in the business? Or do they buy from certain manufacturers because they have good, lasting relationships with them and their salespeople?

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Rig view, Moving Light Assistant

Moving Light Assistant

Moving Light Assistant is a new software title for the entertainment lighting industry. Many of us have either grown up on John McKernon’s Lightwright software or have gone “home brew” by creating our own paperwork in Excel. Moving Light Assistant fills a new segment in tracking data between the designer, the console and multi-attributed devices.
Keeping tabs on a moving light is a bit more challenging than a standard dimming circuit. Rather than just one attribute to track, each moving light has at least two, and usually multiple, attributes, and it can be mind boggling to keep track of all the individual fixture variables across an expansive lighting rig.

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Yanni LD Bud Horowitz

Bud Horowitz, Production Designer/LD for Yanni

Tour Name: World Without Borders Concert Tour, 2012/2013

2013 Tour Dates: Starts mid-March and includes performances in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Romania, Russia and other international destinations. Yanni just finished 80 dates through the U.S. and Canada, and another extensive tour through South America in 2012. During his “off time” in 2013, Yanni was off to do a private wedding in Chennai, India. “It was for two of the richest families in India — quite the three-day extravaganza!” said production designer/LD Bud Horowitz, now preparing Yanni’s new tour.

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