Professional Lighting & Production - Fall 2017 | Page 33

happy with it. Being able to control video from the
lighting desk is essential for me so that the video can
be incorporated into the lighting cues. Video can often
overtake the show, so the fact that I can have control
of all the visuals from one source I believe makes for a
more harmonious look between lighting and video.”
Beecher, while not a video designer, is obviously
well versed in designing around it. “The most successful
shows, in my opinion, are the ones where … the video is
really well integrated into the concept of the design. If I
am working on a big video show, it is important at times
to step back and let the video shine or integrate the
lighting so that it works hand in hand. Colour, space, and
concept have to come together with video and light.”
There are still large-scale tours simply not carrying
video, Hendrickson notes. “The cost of many products
has come down over the past couple of years. The chal-
lenge is keeping up with the change in product over a
one-year period. Many rental houses lack the where-
withal to finance a purchase that would cover all their
needs throughout the year, so strategic alliances have to
be created in order to make this work.”
SPECS & SPECULATION
As for game-changing innovations our panel believes
are coming down the pipeline, or that they hope to see
in the future, Schick offers: “I think we will see more LED
fixtures and technology at a lower price. Also I think
we wil l see the cloth cyc replaced by one large LED
panel and may see the use of video projectors as stage
lighting fixtures.”
Paquette believes more immersive types of inno-
vations, like the audience becoming part of the show
with lighting information being sent directly to people’s
smartphones, will also become more common.
“In the end, we are in ‘show’ business, and that’s
what I’ve always loved, the show,” Paquette adds. “There
was an interview with Alice Cooper where he said some-
thing like, ‘People pay good money to come see your
show, so do something.’ There is a common audio engi-
neer joke that, ‘No one goes home humming the lights,’
but I like to counter with the fact that no one wakes up
the next day and says, ‘Wow, I went and heard a great
show last night.’”
UFC 152
LOOKING
BACK…
Shania
Twain’s
Up! Tour
Winter 2003
She’s one of the most suc-
cessful and significant Ca-
nadian artists of all time,
and between 2003 and
2004, Shania Twain toured
the globe for her Up! Tour,
promoting her fourth
studio album of the same
name. The tour reportedly
grossed close to $90
million from its 96 dates in
Canada, the U.S., the U.K.,
and mainland Europe,
and featured a visual feast
for the eyes that wowed
both live audiences and
viewers of the Up! Live in
Chicago special, recorded
in the city’s Grant Park,
broadcast on NBC and
CBC, and then released as
a DVD that was certified
platinum by the RIAA.
UFC 152 rolled into Toronto’s Air Canada
Centre on September 22, 2012 and was
met by a rowdy crowd over 16,800 strong,
with the main fight featuring Jon “Bones” Jones and Vitor
Belfort battling for the Light Heavyweight Championship.
In addition to those gathered at the arena, millions watched
around the globe via an estimated 450,000 pay-per-view
Winter 2012
One point Ungerleider makes is that just because
there are more tools available to designers and operators
today, it doesn’t necessarily result in a better show. “Really,
less is more,” he says. “One of the things to really think
about is that space creates drama and emotion, and so
does darkness. Darkness is, I would think, the most effec-
tive cue you could ever come up with.”
When it does come to specific game-changing tech-
nology that’s been developed in recent years, Ungerleider
points to the RSC Lightlock, which helps stabilize moving
equipment. “So let’s say you have a projector in the
audience that’s moving around because of airflow; you
slap one of these on it and it stabilizes it. With Rush, when
I wanted to have trusses come down on a couple points
with lights hanging all over the place, well, if you didn’t
have the Lightlock on there stabilizing it, those trusses
would be turning all over the place.”
Additionally, he says media servers “changed
everything with lighting. When the Catalyst system first
came out and it was the only system that was a media
server that would reference frames per second as frames
per second, I enjoyed using that because it would keep
things in sync.”
Down the line, Ungerleider says: “One area I see
great strides in is rigging technology to support many of
these massive lighting rigs with a safe working process.
Safety in rigging is paramount on these shows. Gone
are the days of, ‘My friend is not afraid of heights and
will climb up there and hang that.’ The other is universal
input voltage on many of today’s lighting and video
products that make power distribution systems more
logical – another big safety concern.”
Ultimately, the game-changers are hard to predict.
“If I knew what they were going to be, I’d be working on
them now,” Christie says.
Still, Pegg puts in: “I think that some of the innova-
tions will be tied to things from outside our theatrical
and film world – control via phones and pads, fixtures
being created or modified by 3D printing… I can’t imag-
ine what the changes will be, but every day I see people
working with new materials in different ways.”
Kevin Young is a Toronto-based musician
and freelance writer.
screenings. PL&P was on-hand on fight day to gain insight into
a lighting system and design that needed to simultaneously
appease broadcasters with a look suited for television while
entertaining the thousands in attendance with a first-class live
sporting experience. In the no-holds-barred spirit of the sport,
we decided to serve it straight up with Q&A-style interviews
with the event’s lighting designer and production manager.
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