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25 Things That Shaped My Career

There are a lot of social networking sites, including the new one started by this magazine (www.ProLightingSpace.com), that allow many of us in the music biz to keep in touch, or for that matter, find each other after all these years. It can be addictive and fun. It can also be annoying. But there is one feature where people can list 25 things about anything — stuff they hate, love, worship or just wish to blog about. I’m going to hijack that idea this month and list 25 things that shaped my career in music.

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Disney Castle Gets New Coat of Color

When Walt Disney World®’s Facility Asset Management (FAM) group came to Walt Disney World Entertainment’s in-house lighting designer Charley Pogue with a query about replacing the lighting on Disney’s iconic Cinderella Castle, he had little idea what might lie ahead.  FAM wanted to see what it might take to replace the 700-watt arc source fixtures that have been lighting the Castle for 10 years. The fixtures had served their purpose and parts for the discontinued luminaires had become scarce, while the labor to keep them working had increased. And there were far more environmentally friendly options available.

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Dirty Dancing

    Pre-Broadway productions are as high tech as their Broadway counterparts, with projections and LED walls helping to expand the scope of imagery in a cinematic way. For Dirty Dancing: the Original Story on Stage, which has played around the world and recently ended its pre-Broadway run in Chicago, such technology helped to recreate the film onstage.

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Snowscrapers Among Skyscrapers

“This is unsafe. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Nick Scirocco, the 6-foot-2-inch plain-spoken IATSE Local One crew chief and John Yorke, lighting designer for the Red Bull Snowscrapers event in New York City, were standing at the top of a 90-foot high structure, the wind howling all around them, when Scirocco made this pronouncement. The structure in question was the Red Bull Snowscrapers Snowboarding ramp, a thin composite of plastic and nylon decking sheets at East River Park in Manhattan.

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Chroma-Q Color Block 2

A few years ago, I toured with a lighting system that had several Chroma-Q™ Color Block™ LED color mixing fixtures lighting a white backdrop. They worked well for washing the 40-by-20-foot surface with color and, because they are small and draw little power, they set up quickly and trouped easily.

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A Few Words about SDI

No, I wasn’t planning to discuss Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, also known by the acronym SDI.  Instead, I’ll discuss a more contemporary use of the acronym as it applies to our industry, and rest assured, it has nothing to do with ballistic missiles.

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When It Stops Being Fun

I truly love working as an automated lighting programmer. In fact, I often say that “show business is in my blood.”  I have been driven by a strong passion to always do my best when I contribute my skills to a show.  Furthermore, I was raised by my parents to find a career where the paycheck feels more like a bonus.  I often forget that I am getting paid to wiggle lights or press buttons in front of a crowd.

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Doubling Down

“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.” —Benjamin Franklin

When I was in college, I had a crush on a pretty girl from my hometown. One evening, I looked up her number in the phone book and called. A soft, feminine voice picked up. I said hello, told her who I was, and after some small talk, I nervously asked if she would like to go to a concert. She said yes. It was music to my ears.

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Lighting the Club Band

I’ve been asked several times about what smaller bands playing nightclubs should carry for lighting gear. These questions come from cover bands to newly signed acts to old touring professionals who are reuniting for a club tour. The two things they all have in common is a lack of knowledge and a shortage of cash for lighting. Long gone are the days when bands put colored PARs in coffee cans and connected lots of wires to a foot pedal board for the guitarist to trigger.

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I Drink It Up EVVVERYDAY!

Picking up the pieces is what has been happening as of late. Do you know when you start little projects here and there, but they never get completed? I happened to get quite a few of those done by finishing my ESP Suite at home. In doing so I needed some key components to be able to make it all work. First was getting Boot Camp up and running on my iMac. You heard in my last blog talking about how I couldn’t get it to complete the windows setup. It turns out it didn’t have service pack two, and to run Boot Camp you must have service pack two or higher for it to properly install windows.

 

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