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Rehearsal, Cue, Performance OH MY!

Almost every show I light involves scripting cues. This is the process of breaking down a show’s events. If it’s a corporate production, most likely I will be handed many pages showing the schedule of rehearsals and performance times for the next week. If it’s a musical or theatrical play, the lighting department may get a full script with hundreds of hand-written notes detailing potential lighting cues. If it’s a rock show, we may get a set list with some discs of music you can expect the band to perform.
   

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Hike Up Your Skirt and Plan Like a Man

I belong to a group of people who would sooner wrestle an alligator than to have to plan ahead. There’s even a name for people like us—men. We don’t make lists before we go to the store, or plan routes before we drive across the country, and we don’t put on our blinkers before we change lanes. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re going to change lanes until we see all the cars around us scrambling to get out of our way. But give me a job where thousands upon thousands of dollars are at stake, and I’ll be the first to hike up my skirt and wade through the deep waters of planning and plotting.

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How Bright is Right?

When we’re deciding on a projector and screen (or screen placement), the question that always comes up is, “Will it be bright enough?”

Lots of folks think that they can just get a brighter projector and that will solve their problems, but it ain’t always that simple. The more common problem encountered when we’re trying to project in a well-lit space is the contrast — or lack thereof. No matter how many lumens the projector outputs, if there is too much ambient light we will have a poor image.

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The Controlled Chaos Of The Black Eyed Peas

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with changing venues, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Envision touring with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are no production rehearsals—ever. In fact, they never had any prior to the tour.

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Clay Paky Revitalizes Itself with Alpha Series

Though Italian entertainment lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has been around since 1976, it was about 10 years later when they became one of the first to offer an automated luminaire that you could purchase instead of rent. The Golden Scan was an innovative product for its time, featuring stepper motors and crisp optics with a uniform beam and a sharp focus. After many years of partnering with Group One, their former U.S. distributor, Clay Paky has recently set up Clay Paky America with managing director Francesco Romagnoli and former High End Systems account rep Eric Mueller. This article is part of the ongoing series of automated lighting manufacturer profiles leading up to the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Vari-Lite.

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VectorWorks12

In the past decade, the use of drafting software has become rote for designers in this industry, and the available offerings have increased dramatically, with each software package offering various industry-specific tools and an eye toward ease of use, much to the delight of those of us without engineering or CAD degrees. (see PLSN Product Gallery, February 2006 – ed.)

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“It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll” to LD Steve Cohen

You may know Steve Cohen’s work through some of the mega tours that he’s designed lately – Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Justin Timberlake… But you may not know that inside the business-savvy exterior of the man beats the heart of an artist who sees his craft as an extension of the music, who approaches the console like a band instrument and his job like performance art. After running the gamut from the early days with Billy Joel to the over-the-top productions of late, Cohen is settling back into the groove of a pure lighting show and loving every minute of it. He’s currently on the road with Billy Joel again, running the console and getting back to his roots. We caught up to the tour at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas where we spoke with Cohen.

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The Rebirth of a Legend

America saw one of its most difficult economic eras in the 1930s. In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression put an effective halt to the boom-time spending of the previous two decades. Oddly, the movie industry was one of few to not only survive, but flourish, during the thirties. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the online encyclopedia, has this to say about the trend:

“The emergence of sound films in the late 1920s, combined with the escapism that film provided to a nation down on its luck, made the film industry one of the few that succeeded in profits and in setting a national mood.”

So it should come as no surprise that some of the most beautiful and ornate theaters were built during an otherwise pennywise period.

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Lestat Takes a Bite Out Of Broadway

As vampire musicals come and go on Broadway, they leave very little by which to remember them. This spring promises a new kind of vampire story in Lestat, based on the best selling books by novelist Anne Rice. Lighting designer Kenneth Posner, projection coordinator Howard Werner and visual concept designer Dave McKean, who have been involved with the project for the past two years, have brought a unique and powerful visual aesthetic to this dark dramatization, which has come of age on Broadway at the Palace Theatre.

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Biting Back

The true context to globalization is the intellectual property (IP) debate. As industries redistribute their sales and manufacturing throughout the world in search of both new markets and increased productivity, it’s inevitable that cultures are going to clash. That’s at the heart of the IP issue: from a Western perspective the need for IP protection is a no-brainer—the ability to protect ideas enables companies to move forward in developing and capitalizing them in anticipation of a return on that investment.

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ESP Vision 2.0

Zzyzx Inc. of Las Vegas has recently released version 2 of their ESP Vision visualization software program designed for programming lighting cues outside of the venue without using a lighting system. With this program, a lighting designer can make beautiful photo realistic renderings that depict what a show will look like, and convert these drawings to a video presentation of the event.

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