Safety concerns have been a hot topic in the industry lately.  Accidents happen. You can never be prepared for them, but you can help protect yourself. There are a number of safety guidelines and practices available, but one that is not really talked about is insurance.

TOUR DATES: April and May in the U.S., June in Europe. Returns to U.S. in fall with new design, much bigger tour.

THE DESIGN: “This is kind of a guerilla run. There’s no production other than a small light sign we had back in 1997 and some white plastic chains hanging everywhere on stage. We are playing small clubs the band hasn’t played in 15 years."

MALMO, Sweden — If many Americans have still never heard about the Eurovision Song Contest even though it has emerged, in 58 years, as one of the world’s biggest non-sporting TV events, they’ve undoubtedly heard of the stars that the annual event has launched into the entertainment stratosphere over the decades, including ABBA, Céline Dion and Julio Iglesias.

Bette Midler’s one-woman show, I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers, pulls off a neat trick: having the comedienne enthrall us for 90 minutes while sitting on a couch for nearly the entire running time. Portraying the comically animated yet seriously commanding Mengers, Midler takes us, during the course of a single afternoon, on a journey through her late friend’s life and 30-plus year career, during which she became one of the biggest agents in Hollywood. The story starts with the mega-agent’s shy childhood, builds to the pinnacle of her star agent status, and then leads us to the winding down of her career.

At first glance, the design for the Bon Jovi Because We Can world tour looks extremely simple. When the show opens, there is no video screen, just a wide-open stage and not a lot of lights. On the surface, it seems that Performance Environment Designer Doug “Spike” Brant has taken a severely minimalistic design approach. Nothing could be further from the truth; however. Instead, the environment reveals itself, literally at the cue of the video. Building on their dynamic visuals for the last few Bon Jovi tours, Performance Environment Design Group (PEDG) and Spike Brant have taken advantage of a convergence of new technologies and a few innovative companies to realize their most ambitious design to date.

Hilton Worldwide’s ONE: Full Service Summit Tradeshow, held from April 29 through May 1, 2013 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, TX, brought together general managers and sales directors for three of Hilton’s full-service hotel brands — Hilton Hotels & Resorts, DoubleTree and Embassy Suites.

Lindsey Stirling, 26, combines violin performances with dance and performance art, with live shows picking up the momentum generated by her YouTube channel (lindseystomp.com) and her appearances during the 2010 season of America’s Got Talent as the “Hip Hop Violinist.” Along with hip hop, Stirling performs genres ranging from classical music to dubstep. A major goal for LD Joel Reiff, who worked with lighting director Allison Siegel, was to meet the visual expectations set by the artist’s music video performances, seen online since lindseystomp.com got underway in 2007.

Teams and projections don’t look as impressive when they pass through clear air, hence the profusion of hazers and foggers and theatrical scrims for visual impact.
For the 2013 tour for How to Destroy Angels, a band created by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, LD Roy Bennett worked with longtime NIN art director Rob Sheridan on various semi-transparent alternatives. The goal: to come up with something that would create a novel visual twist — surrounding the band members in a box-like shape, yet standing up to the rigors of a touring production.

Green Day released three albums in quick succession late last year — ¡Uno! (Sept. 21), ¡Dos! (Nov. 9) and ¡Tré! (Dec. 7) — along with a documentary chronicling the process — ¡Cuatro! — that premiered at the X Games in Aspen, CO earlier this year (now available on CD). After some preliminary promotional gigs, the band’s “99 Revolutions” tour supporting the album trilogy started in earnest with a North American leg in March and April 2013. The band then headed to Europe for shows slated from May through August 2013.

Lighting Co
PRG

Venue
Various (Tour)

Lighting Co
Visions Lighting

Venue
Home Depot Center
Carson, CA

Lighting Cos
Steward Independent Production, Performance Lighting Chicago

Venue
Compton Family Ice Arena
Notre Dame, IN

Lighting Co
Precise Corporate Staging

Venue
Encanterra Country Club
Phoenix, AZ

Lighting Co
Felix Lighting

Venue
Club Nokia, LA Live
Los Angeles, CA

Lighting Co
Beachsound & Lighting

Venue
Ice Palace Studios
Miami, FL

The world has changed since author Patricia Woodbridge published the first edition of Designer Drafting and Visualizing for the Entertainment World in 2000. Back then, digital alternatives to traditional hand drafting were still in their infancy, and Woodbridge, an experienced art director of feature films and a longtime teacher of scenic drafting and set design at the graduate level, focused on guidelines such as line weight in terms of pencil choices and how hard you should press on the paper.

Names like Tiësto, Deaudmau5, Steve Aoki and Calvin Harris bring gatherings like the Electric Daisy Carnival, Ultra Music Festival and Coachella to mind, along with the Las Vegas nightclub scene — lots of late night revelers, partying to the beat to impressive, and sometimes blindingly bright, lighting and video displays. But what happens when you take the same big-name DJs and use them to draw partiers to the casino’s pool, in broad daylight? They can serve up the same throbbing basslines, but when the DJs are spinning in the sun, there’s no way a light show can deliver the same impact.

This month we take a look at media servers.  There are a whole host of options depending on your needs, from the software based titles to the full-fledged complete package with hardware. Finding the right media server starts with how many layers of output you need, and the hardware.

To download a PDF copy of the June 2013 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.

The way TV works has radically changed over the decades, from only three major networks and one screen per household to an explosion of options, not just with an expanded array of networks delivered via cable and satellite, but a whole new array of interactive media platforms as well. But one tradition that’s still holding steady, and keeping those on the live side of the entertainment industry busy, is the TV network “upfront” — elaborate corporate events designed to pique the interest of TV advertising buyers, the press and other VIPs in advance of the annual crop of new TV programming.

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.

In late 2012, Elation Lighting introduced a new fixture in their LED product line, the Rayzor Q7. It is a wash/beam moving head that produces a 7° beam angle.

"Trying to build a business was tough, as we were competing against larger companies with a lot more gear,” Active Production & Design’s Matt Clouser says, as he reflects on his company’s 20th Anniversary. “We had to be aggressive, and that usually meant with cost. I think any of us that start a business will end up ‘giving shows away’ as they say in the business until we build it up enough to understand there are costs in a professional organization.”

Every year in the spring, the worldwide broadcasting and post-production community gets together at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas. The show has become a remarkable incubator of audio and video technology, and this year was no different — with thousands of exhibitors and over 90,000 attendees from 155 countries.
At NAB, I’m always on the lookout for something different — a new technology or a new production tool that’s destined to change the way we work, and possibly change the way that content is created. This year, it wasn’t an “app” or a software program, or even a new 4K camera. In fact, this year — it had rotors.

If your business includes providing lighting, projection video or staging for live corporate events, you may want to sign up for a frequent-guest program at some of the hostelries in the U.S. very soon. After several years of lackluster room and event-space bookings during the worst of the economic downturn, that kind of spending is predicted to climb 5.1 percent this year, to $268.5 billion, according to trade group the Global Business Travel Association. Its forecast, released in April, is up substantially from the 1.8 percent rise in industry spending in 2012, and is even higher than the group’s previous prediction for growth of 4.6 percent.

I remember a long time ago when I first started programming automated lighting that the skill was held as very secretive. People had to teach themselves how to program and, once they gained that knowledge, many chose to hold it tight. Most people did not want to share their skill, as the programming jobs were rare and no one wanted to have increased competition. Luckily, this has changed considerably through the years, and now, many are willing to share their knowledge and skills with others. To help foster our industry, we should all look for opportunities to instruct others and share what we have learned. By doing so, we will learn more and expand the abilities and professionalism of our entire field.

When I was in high school, like many of us, I was in the AV club and did lighting for all of the school shows. I guess that would have been my first exposure to convergence. The idea of using multiple disciplines of technology to create an onstage experience started back in 1988 for me. Even then, we were attempting to use slide projectors for some of the images in our shows (pretty high tech for a school in a town with only one traffic light).

LD Iain Reed Turns Sydney Icon into Interactive Artwork
Vivid is the winter festival of light, music and ideas, held around the harbor in Sydney, Australia; for 2013, it ran from May 24-June 10. Winter down under is surprisingly scheduled when it is summer in the USA. Vivid came about in the dying days of the previous state government, and was such a success that it has returned each year, bigger and brighter. It brings people to the city in the down season.

Over the last 20 years, advances in computer technology have benefited the entertainment industry. In particular, CAD programs have altered—for the better—how designers execute their ideas. But the benefits of digitizing workflows have changed more than just how we approach design. As a result, there’s never been a more exciting time for our industry. And as the growing availability of mature software tools continues to improve our design thinking, idea communication and the installation and execution of design concepts, we’ll continue to benefit by doing it more efficiently and accurately than ever before. When I reflect on this evolution, the journey has been remarkable. I’d like to share my own journey and how I arrived to this point in time today where we finally have at our fingertips the right tools for the job.

Lighting designer Howard Ungerleider felt a momentary rush of stardom — on the artist’s side of the velvet rope, you might say. It was the night before Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. Outside the band’s hotel, fans gathered in wait for Rush’s Geddy Lee, Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson. But those weren’t the names screamed when Ungerleider made it to the glass lobby doors. “Howard!” they shouted.

In my continuing pursuit of figuring out how lighting vendors build their inventory, I have come across three distinctive methods that a few different companies have utilized. A company may buy all their gear based on supply and demand. Or they buy certain pieces of gear and sub-rent the latest expensive fixtures on the market rather than risk they will be outdated. In the past, some companies actually built all their own lights, truss and dimmer racks. I thought that I summed it all up. But then I got to talking to some friends who work for Christie Lites. And it didn’t take long to figure out that there is one other way to build a business, and it seems to be working just fine. If you do it Huntly’s way.