On the surface, the latest version of Vectorworks computer-aided design, visualization and rendering software may not look as if it has had a radical upgrade, but when you replace the 3D modeling engine with a new kernel, there’s a good argument for saying so.
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Bandit Lites got its start when founder and chairman Michael Strickland was just 12 years old. In the early years, Strickland would have to “borrow” the lights from a local high school theatre to light the Monkees, the Beach Boys and other bands of the 1960s — hence the name. Today, Strickland’s company has emerged as a global leader in the entertainment lighting industry, with offices in Knoxville, Nashville, San Francisco, the U.K., Hong Kong and Taiwan, and while the company is still called Bandit Lites, Strickland no longer scours local high schools for gear.
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I was recently asked to take a look at a new Elation lighting fixture, the LED 36 Tri-Brick. I thought to myself, “Great, yet another LED fixture in the shape of a brick.” But then I turned it on and all I could say was, “Wow.” Elation has once again stepped up and taken the LED fixture to a new level.
Read More »On Feb. 17, 2009, at the stroke of midnight, an amazing era comes to a close, and another one begins. It’s called the DTV (digital television) transition, and as mandated by our good friends at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), every chief engineer at almost every television station in the U.S. is going to throw the big “off” switch on their trusty old analog transmitters. From that point forward, all terrestrial video transmission at “full power” TV stations will be blasting out ones and zeros, as the sun sets on analog broadcasting. (Psst— Hey buddy, wanna buy a 50,000-watt analog transmitter?)
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“Buy me a seat at the opera house. I don’t care if it’s Mozart or Strauss.” —from “Take Me Out to the Opera”
Today, when most people think about opera (if they think about it at all), they envision an elegant night out with fancy clothes, jewels and a stuffy be-on-your-best-behavior attitude. That’s how it is in the movies, and even sometimes in real life.
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The Beijing Summer 2008 Olympics may have been destined to be controversial, and it didn’t take long for the Games to spark public debate. One of the earliest flashpoints centered on what took place — and didn’t — during the opening seconds of the opening ceremony. Leading up to the dramatic, drummed countdown at 8:08 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2008, viewers at home and on giant screens inside the National Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest, watched as 29 giant footprints outlined in fireworks proceeded gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square to the 29th Olympiad.
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When the price of fuel began its dizzying ascent a few years ago, few of us could have predicted the far reaching implications. But it might not have been so difficult to predict that the truck pack would become more important than ever, especially for those of us who have to pay the fuel bills. Upstaging, Inc., who is planted firmly both in the lighting and trucking side of the business, understands as well as anyone the implications. That’s one of the motivating reasons that they helped develop the new High-Performance Utility Design (HUD) Truss.
Read More »A good automated lighting programmer will always prepare for the tasks at hand long before the trucks are loaded. Most lighting companies will prepare the fixtures, cables, truss and more prior to the first load-in. In the same manner, an automated lighting programmer should prepare the show file and console configuration before arriving on site. There are many important procedures and provisions that you should follow when you are beginning a new project.
Read More »That giant sound you heard coming from Europe last month was the falling expectation that the world would come to an end when they started the Large Hardon Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. It turns out that fears of the collider destroying the world through the production of microscopic black holes never materialized. What did materialize was an anticlimactic flip of the switch that started the collider — not that you would have noticed had the press not been there. In the long term, what is learned from these particle collisions could change the way we view the world. In the short term… yawn… stretch… yawn.
Read More »“To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory… a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.”
— Ivars Peterson, Mathematical Association of America
Nowadays everyone is concerned with power consumption for two logical reasons. One, we want to save ourselves some cash, either at the pumps or in our house with heating oil, and, two, we want to save our planet by lowering our fossil fuel consumption and emitting less toxic waste into our atmosphere. I firmly believe that the time has come to start getting rid of incandescent light bulbs, not just in our households, but also in our stage work. We are facing obstacles in doing this, but really, is it something our industry cannot overcome? I don’t think so. It seems we are well on our way.
Read More »Over the past few months the gigs for Marco Antonio Solis has been a real experience for me in many ways. Getting the opportunity to be working arenas and amphitheaters has been awesome. With having bigger rooms, definitely comes more responsibility. I couldn’t tell you how many patch sheets I’ve gone through and updated in the past month, lol. I haven’t done the design gig a lot so Vectorworks was a must purchase.
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