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Yvan Miron

Live Event Tragedies: Industry Leaders Speak Out

“When someone goes to a concert, they shouldn’t come home in a body bag,” says production manager Jim Digby. This is just one example of the frank conversation that ensued when PLSN gathered six industry leaders for a roundtable discussion about recent staging tragedies.

Along with Digby, co-founder of the Event Safety Alliance (eventsafetyalliance.org), five other industry professionals offered their thoughts for this roundtable: LD Chip Monck, rigger Roy Bickel and staging providers John Brown (Brown United), Jim Evans Sr. (Mountain Productions) and Yvan Miron (Stageline Mobile Stage Inc.).

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InfoComm 2012

Show Report: InfoComm 12

InfoComm continues to grow each year.  Last year, Orlando set a record for the most attendees. In true Las Vegas style, InfoComm 2012 exceeded that number by 4 percent, with more than 34,000 attendees walking the Las Vegas Convention Center over three days. In all, there were 933 exhibitors occupying more than 487,000 square feet, along with numerous training and certification sessions happening over three days. There never seems to be enough time to see it all.

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Video elements play a big role in the production on both sides of the Atlantic. Photo by Sean Ebsworth Barnes.

Ghost Sculpting

The producers of the Tony Award-nominated Ghost: The Musical certainly wanted to create an eye-popping visual experience for their audience, and after two incarnations in England (Manchester, and then London), the Broadway version is the most video-intensive and tightly-sequenced of them all. It’s not simply telling the story of artist Molly Jensen and her banker husband Sam Wheat, who, after being murdered, emerges as a restless spirit and tries to warn Molly about impending danger through the assistance of psychic Oda Mae Brown. And it’s not about replicating the tone and look of the movie. It’s about creating a unique theatrical experience where a love story spanning life and death unfolds, but along the way we get the thrill of witnessing floating objects onstage, experiencing a supernatural subway ride and watching Sam’s spirit walk through a door.

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Lighting up Chicago’s Wrigley Field for Roger Waters’ The Wall Live tour.

Strictly FX’s Ted Maccabee

Like the name says, Strictly FX does just that, strictly special effects. The Wood Dale, IL-based company specializes in providing lasers, pyrotechnics, flames, confetti, cryogenics, and mischief. Since its founding in 1996 by Ted Maccabee and Mark Grega, the company has grown to be an award-winning staple of concert touring with a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of the music industry.

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Radiohead tour photo by Steve Jennings

Radiohead’s Andi Watson Creates Performance Environment with Bottle Wall, Moving Video Elements

As this issue went to press, Radiohead was reeling from the partial stage collapse on June 16 at Downsview Field in Toronto, which killed crew member Scott Johnson, injured three others and destroyed many of the lighting elements discussed in this Production Profile. In a statement, the band noted that, along with “the grief and shock ensuing from this terrible accident,” there were “practical considerations to deal with…The collapse also destroyed the light show; this show was unique and will take many weeks to replace.”

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Elation Platinum Wash ZFX Pro

Elation Platinum Wash ZFX Pro

Elation’s Platinum Wash ZFX Pro RGBW moving head wash fixture, which features a new Quad color Osram LED chipset and a new high output (HO) optical lens, has been winning converts all over the world since it was introduced last year, according to Eric Loader, Elation Professional’s director of sales.

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Video screens provide visual immersion at the XS Pool Club at Wynn Encore in Las Vegas.

Global Trend Productions Makes a Bigger Splash in Video

Global Trend Productions CEO Isaac Campos is a modest man, but there’s no denying the progress that he and his team have been making. The LED video display specialist, established in 1997, has supported the Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal festivals, featuring big-name DJs such as Kaskade, Tiësto and others. On the corporate side, they’ve been there for Lexus, Ferrari, Activision, Atari and Telemundo.

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RSN member Video West designed these flown scenic flats, then used them for video-mapped projections for a multi-dimensional effect.

AV’s Digital Future: Five Trends To Watch in Live Event Staging

Donald Guzauckas is president of the Rental and Staging Network (RSN), a nationwide network of 21 geographically diverse rental and staging companies committed to continual improvements in their business operations and profitability. Here, Guzauckas articulates five trends that the members have discussed recently about live event production and, in particular, digital AV. Evidence for all of these trends could be found at the NAB and InfoComm shows earlier this year.

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Lightronics Unity AB Architectural Ballast Driver

Unity AB Architectural Ballast Driver from Lightronics

The new Unity AB series from Lightronics is designed to control high efficiency lighting sources such as LED light fixtures and dimmable compact fluorescents. The AB can be ordered to control a three-wire hot-switched ballast or a four-wire 0-10VDC-type ballast. The AB is available in a three- or six-channel version with a maximum load of 20 amps per channel. Control is via a DMX-512 console or any of the Lightronics Unity architectural remote stations. Scene recall can also be accomplished using a momentary contact signal from a switch, motion sensor or similar device.

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Amon Tobin is barely visible within the 3D-mapped video surface. Image by Matthew Smith.

Amon Tobin’s ISAM Tour is Visual Innovation, Squared

Visual, musical, physical, and — let’s face it — chemical stimuli, along with butt-moving bass-heavy grooves, have been the basic ingredients of the dance scene for decades. In recent years, DJs have begun to tinker with this intoxicating formula, and have sought to enhance and intensify the power of the club experience via elaborate lighting and video design.

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Avicii at Coachella with 16-foot-high head-shaped DJ platform at Coachella 2012’s Sahara tent venue. Photo by Drew Ressler.

Interview with Ian McDaniel, Vidaroo Corporation

Ian McDaniel has had his hands full lately with heavy-duty visual support for Swedish DJ/producer Avicii.  I caught up with him recently while the tour prepped in Las Vegas to learn more about his company, and I got an inside peek at what it takes to produce enough content to fill a 62-foot-wide stage during a two-hour DJ set.

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Kontrol Surface KS-1974 MIDI Controller from Smithson Martin

Kontrol Surface KS-1974 MIDI Controller from Smithson Martin, Running Emulator Modular Software

Control is something we all love to have, and, in the entertainment industry, it seems we can never have enough.  I find that my colleagues in the sound department have issues with this, but that’s a different subject….Control over the rig is an issue that the lighting folks have had a handle on for a long time, but it seems like the more gear is added under the auspices of “media,” or LEDs, or LED panels, or the ubiquitous term “video,” the more it falls to the lighting guy/gal and their desk to actually make the stuff work.

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