Many of the students at Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg can’t wait for the new 15,000-seat auditorium to open on campus. The senior class, in fact, can’t wait — it won’t open until 2009 in the earliest, and most will graduate before then. Not that there’s a lot of grumbling on campus. Students are aware that tithing dollars from faithful LDS Church followers around the world are funding the construction that surrounds them.
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Let me put this right up front: I’m not the brightest lamp on the truss. At times, I can make Jessica Simpson look like Marilyn vos Savant, who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for five years under “Highest IQ” for both childhood and adult scores. I’m not particularly proud or embarrassed about that, but admitting it has served me well. An empty head can be like being an empty vessel looking for understanding with which to be filled.
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Motorized rigging eliminates the need to figure out how to safely adjust rigged loads with counterweights in a conventional fly system. You just push a button, and up it goes. And so far, for the most part, it’s stayed there. Catastrophic hoist brake failures have been exceedingly rare. With the scarcity of major hoist failures, we want to avoid breeding a new kind of danger: complacency.
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Nick Freed, president, Inner Circle Distribution
Who: Nick Freed, president; Noel Duncan, vice president; and Gary Mass, vice president of business development.
What: A full-service distributor of entertainment lighting products for professionals.
Where: Sunrise, Florida
Read More »The first Strike Survival Workshop that IATSE’s hard-hit Local 728 in Hollywood ran late last year was standing-room-only, which suggests the impact that the strike by the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) was having on those who literally do set the stage for filmed and televised entertainment. The second one, held Feb. 8, a clinic for financial help and counseling from the Motion Picture Trust Fund, was just as packed.
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Last night I found myself sitting in a bar with a bunch of lampys. How unusual. So I decided to check in with them on how they’ve seen the business of lighting shows change in the last few years. Between the five of us we have close to 100 years of experience in the entertainment biz. And since we’re lighting guys, it goes without saying that we have opinions about everything. So I posed a few questions.
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When Ozzy Osbourne recently hit the road, it was the first time in almost ten years that he was the headliner. His recent forays into reality television have pro-pelled him back into the limelight and the world now knows that Ozzy’s shows can’t have bubble machines. Lighting Designer/Director John Clark grew up in Nashville, so he’s been around the business enough to be familiar with the no-bubbles rock genre. Having worked for Vari-Lite and VLPS and toiled under the tu-telage of Eric Wade, he has lit everything from hip-hop to country to rock shows, the last two of which were tours with Disney’s Cheetah Girls and Ashley Simpson. He has also worked with Available Light in Boston doing corporate shows, trade shows, and “a lot of one-offs.” He’s currently touring with Ozzy and making sure the Osbournes are happy.
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That giant fluttering sound you heard last month was the sound of 600 million American eyelids opening at once. Such was the reaction to Mike Wallace’s report on 60 Minutes highlighting a study from Leicester University in Leicester, England about happiness. The study reported that Denmark was the happiest country in the world. In fact, it has ranked first in Eurobarometer surveys for the last 30 years.
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You’re in a nightclub on a Saturday night, you’ve had a drink or two, the DJ is spinning wicked live, and the most incredible guy/girl in the place walks up, and stands at the bar next to you. You (A) lean over and softly say, “Hey babe, are you tired? You’ve been running through my dreams all night.” (B) put on your sexy voice dripping with suggestiveness and ask if you can buy him/her a drink, or (C) don’t notice because you’re too busy watching the light show.
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At 530 feet in diameter and 152 feet tall, the Tacoma Dome is one of the world’s largest wooden domed structures. For the past 25 years, it has been the hub of entertainment in the city, with events ranging from music concerts to freestyle motocross taking place here. Yet the Dome’s management team started to feel the pinch of competition coming from Key Arena in Seattle, White River Amphitheater in Auburn and Everett Event Center.
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An automated lighting programmer is often called upon to help determine the best backup plan for Front of House. Technologically speaking, there are many types of backup solutions, some of which are very simple while others are extremely complex. A backup plan can range from nothing to full redundancy. Usually the importance and the budget of the event will be a key factor in determining how much backup protection is available. Of course every system has weaknesses, but we should always strive for no single point of failure.
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What is a theatre consultant? What do they do? Who are their customers? For this month’s PLSN Interview, we spoke with Bill Conner of Bill Conner Associates, LLC. Conner studied under the father of modern stage lighting, George C. Izenour, en route to building a successful career in the field. In this interview, he explains the vital role theatre consultants perform in our industry and why the discipline deserves full-time attention.
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