Blogs

Although programmers for film do record cues, we typically are not playing back cues like you would on a live show. We do have our… Read More »Live Lighting For Feature Films

Pop quiz: What are the two most important tools of a lighting designer? If you said Starbucks or the Internet, maybe you should consider a… Read More »It’s all Black and White

Imagine discovering an incorrect DMX assignment on a somewhat inaccessible unit. Never happens in real life, but hey, let’s pretend. Some newer intelligent lights allow… Read More »Esoteric Light Menu Functions You’ll Be Glad You Found

As an automated lighting programmer, you are often exposed to many different productions, designers and other contacts. Every gig should be approached as a learning… Read More »Jumping From Programmer to LD

Video scalers can be both a blessing and a curse. While a scaler will allow us to adjust the input resolution or even the format… Read More »What To Look For In A Video Scaler

Often it can be very useful to adjust the default pan and tilt position of your fixtures. For instance, if we have some moving head… Read More »Building Positions with Moving Head Fixtures

If a lamp tests good and the plug tests good (you might not know for sure until you open things up) the problem is in… Read More »Light Trouble-Shooting

If a known good light doesn’t light in a circuit, that proves it’s not the light, so we go the other way; we start troubleshooting… Read More »The Mystery of the Lost Light, part 2

[The Crabb Family] didn’t want machinery industrial, but they didn’t want everybody to feel like they’re in church. So the first concept was some scaffolding… Read More »How He Designed Spectacle for a Christian Show

When you are testing a lighting circuit for continuity (a complete circuit), any non-infinite reading on the meter is accepted as good. A cold lamp… Read More »Ohmmeter Basics

Remember this rule: If you put poorly-rendered content into a server, the media server will output poor graphics. Low-resolution images and movies that are formatted… Read More »Garbage In, Garbage Out

New stagehands are only as good as the person instructing them. First of all, they provide muscle. First thing I have them do is carry… Read More »Show, Not Tell