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Glitz and Glam: Putting the best light on Turner’s Fall Season

Two-thousand attendees. Dozens of high-powered executives. A cavalcade of actors and one rock star, Lenny Kravitz, topping off the night. Putting on the annual Turner Upfront event, where TBS and TNT sell their upcoming season and programs to advertisers of Turner Broadcasting, is no small feat. This year set designers Atomic Design not only transformed the Theatre at Madison Square Garden into a flashy corporate showcase, they also reinvented the lobby as a glitzy faux nightclub for the after-party.

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Keep On Truckin’

I was working at a now defunct lighting company in California, and we had a tradeshow exhibit for a trucking show at the Louisville Convention center. I was in New Orleans finishing up a show at the time, so I missed watching the shop fill the order and ship it out. I flew directly from New Orleans into Louisville, expecting a typical tradeshow load-in. Hardly.

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From The Programmer Seat To The Designer Seat

Whoa! Wait a minute. What I am doing back here on the LD page? I was hired for the programmer’s gig! Okay, I can do the LD gig too. I hope I will get paid the LD rate. What? You expect me to be the LD for the same rate? Okay, just this once. But next time I’m getting paid as both the LD and programmer.

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A Little Light on the 419 Scam

Few people have escaped opening their e-mail in the morning and finding an appeal to their greedier side, offering to let them share in a multimillion-dollar bonanza tucked away in the Ministry of Whatever in some third-world country. Law enforcement officials refer to these as 419 scams, named for the section of the rather toothless criminal code of Nigeria, where most of these scams originate. Most people simply delete them, figuring no one would ever fall for the grammatically fractured and incredulous requests asking the reader to put up some of his or her own money in order to secure a piece of this windfall.

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Chauvet Scorpion Scan LG-60

In the movie Toy Story, a forgotten toy cowboy by the name of “Woody” is replaced by a “laser-toting” action figure with the dashing name of “Buzz Lightyear.” Surrounded by other talking toys, including Mr. Potato Head and a piggy bank named “Hamm,” the following conversation ensues…

Mr. Potato Head: “How come you don’t have a laser, Woody?”

Woody (angrily): “It’s not a laser. It’s a little light bulb that blinks.”

Hamm: “What’s wrong with him?”

Mr. Potato Head: “Laser envy.”

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Getting the Picture

I sat in on a product demonstration for a projector the other day. While the projector was impressive in terms of brightness, noise level, and ease of set up and operation, I was not impressed with the image. It seemed a bit fuzzy. The material on-screen was a rather generic slide show, and the projector had been set up and focused properly. Then I realized what the problem was. It wasn’t the content or the projector, but the fact that the projector and computer were at different screen resolutions. I mentioned this to the rep, who very quickly reset his laptop so that they were matched and the image was improved dramatically. It was a pixel for pixel match to what the computer was putting out.

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Pretty As A Pixel

If you have a piece of video content, whether you have created it or purchased it, and you load it into a media server to use it in a show, and you think the digital lighting programmer’s work is finished, think again.

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Designers Transform Studio D for PBS Soundstage

It’s 5:00 p.m. on a gray, drizzly night on the north side of Chicago. Surrounded by the urban campus of Northeastern Illinois University, the production studios of Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WTTW 11 Network Chicago, are deceptively still on the outside. A few security guards and a packed parking lot are the quiet indicators of what waits for me inside.

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ONE! TWO! THREE! It’s Triple Duty for WWE’s John D’Amico

The world of professional wrestling is one part theatre, one part soap opera and three parts loud music, rabid redneck fans and outrageous wrestlers. Good or bad, everybody has a take on wrestling. Yet no one can argue with its marketing prowess. Imaging and branding have been prevalent in professional wrestling ever since Terrible Ted, the wrestling bear, took down Bunny Dunlop in the 1950s. But how do they do it now? As WWE’s senior production manager John D’Amico explains, it’s a lot good people, hard work, and of course, a lot of sweat.

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Martina McBride’s Timeless Country Classics

Martina McBride’s new album, Timeless, features a selection of classic country songs that were originally recorded 30 or 40 years ago. Naturally, when she started touring in support of the album, she wanted the look of the show to reflect the simple but eloquent nature of the traditional country sounds. Tom McPhillips of Atomic Design was an integral part of creating a set with those production values.

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Scenery Transforms The Drowsy Chaperone

One show on Broadway has pulled ahead from the back of the pack, emerging as the unexpected hit of the season. Winner of five Tony Awards, The Drowsy Chaperone is currently playing at the Marquis Theatre. It is regarded by many as one of the best new musicals in recent years, both for its originality and traditional theatricality. The show’s concept is simple enough: A theatre buff sits in his drab, lonely apartment and reminisces about the theatre of yesteryear. He puts on his favorite album to demonstrate the classic nature of 1920s musical comedy, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek way. As the record plays, the show comes to life in his apartment. The small, drab room is transformed into a full stage production where the apartment literally bends and opens onto a new world of classic theatre.

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