Road Tests

Creative LED products are becoming more and more popular, especially in the installation and touring markets. Designers are looking for unique ways to design with light and video while also bringing to life their artistic visions. However, in order to be able to design freely with LEDs, products have to be easily manipulated and flexible in order to be shaped into virtually any design; this means that LEDs have to be available in configurations other than linear strips or matrices like those found in LED video panels. The VC-Dot series from Martin meets these demands and excels in ways other LED strings stop short.

The worlds of Live Event Production and Studio are vastly different creatures. What we see as the norm on the road, they see as completely abnormal from their air-conditioned cush-domes. We do share some things — killer deadlines, the need for super-high-performance gear, long hours. I’ve seen “studio” types get thrown into road situations and just completely fall apart from the exposure to chaos. Likewise, put a roadie in a studio, and you’ll have no problem picking out which “one of these things is not like the other.”

The recent video boom has spawned a number of applications that allow you to do pretty much anything with anything. Warping, mapping and multiple layer playback, exotic even a few years ago, are fairly commonplace. But as app designers pack more of these advances into their software bundles, users are yearning for an easy way to arrange and play back some simple files. As a believer in using the right tool for the right job,  I was pleased to try out Millumin on a recent gig. I found it to do exactly what I needed.

Audience blinders are perfect for those times during a production when the talent on stage wants to see the people who came to see them. During those moments, as the name of the fixtures suggest, the lighting crew gets to turn its attention from blinding the performers and start abusing the optic nerves of the audience as well, using thousands of watts of tungsten or high discharge lamp sources.

It all starts with a great idea in your head.  Maybe you were at the bar, and you drew your thoughts out on a cocktail napkin. Isn’t that how all great designs begin? That beer-stained napkin may have helped you preserve that initial flash of inspiration, but when it comes to presenting our amazing visual ideas in all their detailed glory to the people who will be paying your fees, it’s a good idea to seek out a more professional-looking alternative.

Pathway Connectivity’s latest product, the Cognito Lighting Console, has sliders like any other lighting console, but also has a gaming console vibe. The first question you might have upon seeing one is, what am I going to do with this thing, control lights or play Call of Duty? The second question is, why would Pathway Connectivity, a leader in network control devices, develop a lighting console? Upon closer inspection, however, the Cognito console makes a lot of sense.

Last year, ArKaos launched MediaMaster Pro 3.0 at PLASA 2012 and then recently continued their evolution with the announcement of a new division called ArKaos Pro at Prolight+Sound 2013. ArKaos Pro has been formed to focus on the specific needs of the large scale events and professional markets, and they have already released their first new server aimed at meeting the demands of this market head on: the Stadium Server. Not to be confused with the A30, this server is a standalone media server system designed for the professional lighting designer that targets the touring and large venue markets. Here’s a closer look under the hood of the new Stadium server from ArKaos.

Robe’s Robin MMX WashBeam incorporates some of the same elements as Robe’s previously introduced MMX Spot, including the use of Philips Platinum 35 lamp as the light source. But unlike the Spot, the WashBeam gives users two different lens options — a plastic Beam lens and glass Fresnel Wash lens. Only one can be installed at a time. The fixture is smart enough to tell which one is currently being used, and that changes the functions of some of the features found inside along with the beam coming out the front.