I sometimes wonder, “Why don’t people concentrate on making new, cooler versions of existing gear?”…I walked into Upstaging Inc.’s lighting shop outside of Chicago and saw truckloads of something new rolling into their shop. It was truss. And that made me smile more than any new moving light possibly could, because someone had reinvented something old and done it properly.

— Nook Schoenfeld, from LD-at-Large, PLSN, May 2008. 

     Sometimes I get to a one off gig and see a way I can be lazy and get away with a short programming day. But to be honest, anytime I think I’ll luck out in one of these scenarios, it usually bites me in the ass.

These new high-tech mega-spectaculars have taken traditional theatrical techniques and have morphed and augmented them into something new. So why do so many college programs act as if theatre is still the only game in town? How many college programs are covering these new technical subjects adequately?

— Prof. John Huntington, on big-budget theatrical productions, quoted by Dan Daley, The Biz, PLSN, April 2008

Festival season is approaching! I must say it’s very exciting because there’s a lot going on these next few months. Not only with my boys from NOLA, Bonerama, but also with a brand new festival that is getting a lot hype named Delfest.  If you don’t know the basis of how some great festivals were started I have a prime example for you… When I was a younger lad our group of friends heard of a festival that was started in the small town named Limestone in the state of Maine by the band Phish. Here unsuspecting residents were welcoming a crowd of over 80,000 fans for a weekend. It so happens that this same sort of ideal is being placed in the town I grew up in with a multitude of bands based from the bluegrass genre. This year it’s come to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland where the festival will take place at the end of May with talented acts performing in this small, yet beautiful town in Western Maryland. On another note, they acquired me as the festivals lighting operator for the weekend. It will be an honor to illuminate such acts as Del McCroury, Keller Williams and the Keels, Vince Gill, David Grisman, Sam Bush, Railroad Earth, Dierks Bentley, and many more…

Luminance is an important concept in this age of video-heavy production. The amount of light being reflected from a surface area dramatically affects how the camera reacts to it. If we have a large, highly reflective surface on the set, then the reflected light can cause the camera iris to close, rendering all of the other areas of the set very dark.

— Richard Cadena, Focus on Fundamentals, PLSN, April 2008

Hey all, just dropping in to post some pics from the tour. It all went really good and the band was throwing down hardcore. A lot of new tunes were played and some really neat arrangements to a few classic covers were thrown into the mix. We ran through Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania I believe. Sometimes we all forget where the heck we are on most of these tours so I imagine I may be forgetting a state or two, hah!

    Well I’m back at the old Sound Stage TV studio at WTTW in Chicago. Familiar building, but boy has the look changed. This is my fifth year doing shows down here, with 3 different directors. This time Bob Peterson is at the helm and the difference is quite noticeable.

If I have the option, I use a different console to program media servers than when I’m programming a bunch of moving lights.  I find that one suits me very well for the first task, while another gives me the ideal tools for working with the second. While many consoles are designed to do many tasks well, a few of them shine in some very specific scenarios.

                 — Phil Gilbert, Technopolis, PLSN, April 2008

What makes club lighting work? Energy! The visuals in the room should match the energy of the music. A wash fixture with a shutter chase is usually a great way to keep the beat of a song. It wouldn’t be prudent to tell you not to use your frost, focus and all of the other attributes, but they don’t really have much punch. And club lighting is all about punch.

— Morgan Landrum, from “So You Want to Run Lights in a Nightclub?” PLSN, March 2008