PLSN Interview

The LD on Moving from a Touring Show to TV

So, you’re directing the lights on a tour and somewhere along the way, management decides to document the show on DVD, or perhaps shoot it as a TV special. At this point, a lighting designer specializing in capturing shows on camera may be brought in to help. A fixer, so to speak. Lighting designer Allen Branton has made the “Tour to TV transition” his specialty for the past 40 years. If you don’t know him personally, you know his work visually.

Spike Brant and Justin Collie Rebrand

Performance Environment Design Group (PEDG), noted for their creative work in the live event and installation world and currently designing the Bon Jovi tour, has rebranded.

We’re chatting while peering into a spanking new Vari-Lite VL6000 at the Heroic Productions facility in Minneapolis, where production designer Paul Guthrie, (nicknamed Arlo) resides. He’s an Aussie who fell in love with an American girl and settled here back in the 1990’s. He’s pretty much covered every aspect of lighting in his career, including a huge sold out show at First Avenue’s main room last week with Poliça, a local band. His light rig consisted of six Chroma-Q Color Force 48 strip lights and six Martin MAC Auras.

Well-respected programmer and lighting director Paul Sonnleitner recently spoke with PLSN about how he started his ‘is this really a career’ career, and how he approaches his work. Sonnleitner’s credits range from Broadway to live television, from national historic events, including the Presidential Political Conventions to international sports, for which he shared Emmy nominations with LD David Grill for the 2007 Pan Am Games and the 2014 Central American Games. He also has marked New Year’s Eve for the last 13 years working in Times Square.

Not many people can stake a claim to being in the lighting business for 50 years. I sat down with my friend Jonathan, who recently passed this milestone, as he explains to me how he got fired from his latest gig just last month. “I just finished designing ARW, an offshoot of Yes members playing Yes songs. This is my fourth go around of sorts with different Yes projects. Singer Jon Anderson fired me for some difference of opinion, but it took me three more weeks to finish tightening up the lighting before I could actually go home.” Make no qualms about it, Jonathan is a unique individual. He started at a time when there was no manual for his occupation.

One day in 1976, Dr. Billy Golden, a chief of staff surgeon, came home with three Alice Cooper concert tickets, which he had bartered from a patient (apparently that’s how they rolled in Eastern Tennessee in those days). He not only made his 15-year-old son Michael happy, but inadvertently set his son on a career path neither knew existed. “I took two friends from high school, one being Steve, younger brother of Michael Strickland,” he tells. “That concert turned my complete focus toward working in the entertainment/concert field.” The motivated and presumably persuasive teen immediately got a job at the Freedom Hall Civic Center in Johnson City, TN. Thus his live event industry career was launched, though inauspiciously: He started at the bottom, if not a few elevator stops below that. “I mopped, swept … I literally popped popcorn by day and ran a spotlight at night.”

Recently, PLSN had the pleasure of catching up with the concert touring video pioneer Paul Becher for a quick talk about how he started in the industry 30-plus years ago, his long working relationship with Sir Paul McCartney, and what he enjoys about being a video director.

They say it’s a “Long Way to the Top, If You Want to Rock and Roll.” If that entails playing in a garage band and spending years of your life trudging through every back alley loading dock and taking what they’re giving to make a living until you finally get a few breaks in life, you just may win a Parnelli award. LD Rob Koenig has paid his dues, with over 20 years of schlepping gear and banging faders he has worked his way up the ladder to become one of the most sought-after lighting professionals in the touring world.

When you ask Russell Armentrout about how he came to work for Performance Lighting over 28 years ago, he laughs and says, “I was in the right place at the wrong time.” At the time, he was involved in music, but as a drummer, not a lighting designer. When Armentrout joined Pete’s Lights, the company itself was only a few years old. The owner/founders, Douglas and Robert Peterson, formed the well-respected company in July 1985, boasting among their early clients tours with George Thorogood, George Benson and REO Speedwagon. Armentrout came up through the ranks at Pete’s Lights, today known as Performance Lighting, working as a lighting designer and senior crew chief. Today, he is president of the company. PLSN caught up with him recently to discuss his career in the industry and the core of what keeps Performance Lighting’s clients coming back.

This past Memorial Day, more than 12,000 people at Cooper’s Lake campground in Western Pennsylvania attended PyroFest 2016, where they were treated to a celebration featuring two-days of fireworks and pyrotechnical special effects. Now in its fifth year, the event is hosted by New Castle, PA-based Pyrotecnico, a still-family-owned business that has been working with fireworks since 1889. New Castle is known as the “Fireworks Capital of America,” so there’s no better place to stage this spectacular annual showcase.

Reflecting on his Parnelli award, Tom Marzullo, production designer for Justin Bieber’s Believe tour, tells PLSN, “To get that recognition, especially with the caliber of people on the list with me, people I have worked for and looked up to was surprising and very rewarding.” The caliber of people Marzullo works with is a key ingredient to his success in this business, as he often points out in this recent interview. PLSN revisited aspects of his 40-plus year career, which covers the spectrum of concert, corporate, sports and movie productions. Along the way, he just happened to create the largest site on Facebook for the live entertainment industry.

The list of top lighting designers in the world is a short one. No such list would be complete without Peter Morse, who is a story all in himself. From teenage folk singer to Emmy (as well as Cable ACE and Parnelli) award wins, he’s led a spectacular life. Articles chronicling his lighting career are many, but few know that lighting is just part of the long road Morse has traveled.