LiveBlog

I have been working non-stop lately. It has just been one thing to the next thing for the past few weeks, but that is the life of a lighting designer. Things started off with spring break in the middle of March. The break really meant about 2 days off, 2 days of travel and 3 solid days of work. It was more of a time to catch up on everything that is happening at school. I did manage to fly back home to the East Coast for the week. I worked a lot on laying out some ideas for the Opera I’m designing (the preliminary plot is due tomorrow, yikes!)

I also got into NYC for the day and met up with a few CalArts designers. And I was incredibly fortunate to obtain a seat to see the revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center. It was an excellent production, but if you want to see it try and find any remaining tickets now, the run looks like it is going to be sold out for a while. It was a really nice experience, because we have been working on individual scenes from the musical in our light lab class for the past few weeks. It was refreshing to see the similarities and differences from our projects to the actual show.

I also had a final paper project due for Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry, which I hope to post at some point in the future, and various light rigs and focuses at school. This past week I have spent most of my time around Orange County assisting at the South Coast Repertory theatre. The current show is a new work called ‘What They Have’, as part of this Pacific Playwrights Festival. I think the play is an incredibly funny, interesting, and a very modern style piece. I think it will do well over the course of the run. There are a surprising number of CalArts alum and faculty working on the show too. It has been a very comfortable show to work on. Previews started the other day, and the show opens next week, so things are calming down a bit, but not that much. Overall, it has been great working with the LD on the show. The coolest thing in the show by far is this mobile fish tank that has LED I-Cove units and a wireless dimmer to light up the fish tank. It’s pretty sweet, especially when it changes colors.

In other news, Kevin Adams going to be in town on Monday and is guest lecturing at school. Additionally, he’s a CalArts alum. Seriously, alums are everywhere; I really don’t try and find them. Regardless, I’m excited to hear his lecture and have class with him. A few of my design elements in the Opera are right up his alley, and I’m interested in hearing anything he has to offer about them. I was really tempted to go see Passing Strange when I was in NYC, but I’m planning on going to BLMC in May, so I figured I’d wait since the master classes are going to see it.

I think that covers just about everything that has been going on in the past 3 weeks. I have really been meaning to put up a lot of images about the Opera at school, so below are a few shots from the set model. Let me just explain how detailed this model is. Not only are there plastic lighting instruments hanging in the grid, they each have an individual fiber optic source in them to make them glow. They are not practical at all to actually light the model, but they look cool. I also have some metal bulb guards that are over some A-lamp foot lights, which were even soldered and made to scale. It’s pretty crazy; the photos barely do the set any justice. So here is to a full day of working in Vectorworks and making my light plot look nice and neat. Cheers!

photos and sketches courtesy from my set designer Kit Stolen

Summer’s coming on fast, ushering in the festival season and a host of amazing events along with it. For 4+ months huge crowds will gather to ride the warm wave of electronic music across the country. I’m looking forward to riding that wave, taking time off from touring to VJ at some of these events. This year my plan is to take 3 months and play 4 festivals, Transformus, Boom Festival, Earth Dance, and Burning Man.

Transformus is held at a venue called Deerfields deep in the Appalachians near a city called Asheville. The festival takes place in an orchard with 2 lakes for swimming, thick trees for shade, and huge peaks rising up behind you. Well-maintained stages sit along the banks with a larger main stage positioned between the two lakes. In September of last year I applied for an art grant from the Transformus LLC. My proposal was to build a video system for the main stage, a 30×60 foot log-platform with shed built to resemble a cabin with an open front. I wanted to design a system that would work with the vibe of the event and compliment the natural beauty of the land. The layout calls for two screens on either side of the stage shaped like giant quartz crystal clusters. Video will be projected onto the sculptures and masked in software to match the crystal’s silhouette. Center stage, hanging directly above the artist, will hang a trio of globes. Two small 4ft diameter globes will join a large 8ft diameter globe to form the shape of a water molecule. Video from a second source will be projected onto this screen.

My partner in this project, Dallas Swindle, is a master of the mechanical. He designs crazy tents and enclosures for a company called Artful Shelters in Asheville. Dallas has come up with an ingenious way to create frames for the crystals, which would be lightweight and fold down for shipping. We’ll build the aluminum frames in Artful Shelter’s machine shop and its fabrication department will help us create the skins that will cover the frames. It turns out that making custom tents is pretty similar to making custom projection screens.

In order to make the video fit onto the screens we need to mask and warp it in software. To do this we’ll be using Modul8 on an octocore Mac Tower fitted with multiple video cards. Modul8 will allow us to address each screen (Left, Right, & Center) independent of each other. We’ll use masks with transparency to fit the video to the screens. Because the screens have been accurately modeled in CAD we can render images of the crystal screens from the point of view of the projectors (by placing the virtual cameras in the CAD package in the exact position the projectors will occupy). These renders will be imported into Illustrator where we can tweak the shape of the silhouette to match the screens at the venue. For the globe screens we will use an inverse spherize effect within Modul8 in conjunction with circular masks to ensure the video appears undistorted.

I’m excited to take these screens to some of the other festivals I’ll be playing. Already I’ve gotten the organizers of Earthdance and the Boom festival interested in having the screens shipped in for their festivals. Sculptural video surfaces are great for outdoor festivals because you never see squares in nature and a 4×3 video screen looks terribly out of place in the forest, mountains, or desert. I’d like to take this further and design other surfaces to project onto. We’ll see what happens next year. I’ll keep you posted!

After several days of walking the show floor in Frankfurt, missing a flight, and being delayed in Germany three (yes, three) additional days (how do you say in German “restricted ticket”), while most folks are breaking down booths or already home, I am still here. But that’s okay. It gave me an extra day on the show floor, since I was planning to leave Friday morning, and I had the opportunity to experience an outdoor carnival yesterday, complete with a ride on a roller coaster and some really exhilarating, whirly, flying ride thing. Who knew having the biggest travel screw up of my life would end up in a day at the fair?

The Lighting Hall (Source: Messe Frankfurt Exhibition GmbH/ Petra Welzel)

Anyway, down to business. More new products launched at the show:

Robe launched several new products, including two moving light projectors, DigitalSpot 3000 DT and DigitalSpot 7000 DT, the DreamBox multifuncional tool box with two DMX ports and one USB port, and several LED products using RED (Robe Emitting Diode) technology: REDWash 3-192, REDPar 3-84, and REDLine 3-48. New power and control products accompany the new RED family of products.

Two new Edirol video products were introduced: the V-8, eight-channel video mixer and the P-10 visual presenter, both targeted to houses of worship, schools, small corporate AV companies, and VJ/nightclub applications. The US debut of these products will take place at the REMIX Hotel in Miami, March 27 to 30.

Meyer Sound released the self-powered UPQ-1P wide coverage loudspeaker, an addition to the UltraSeries™ family, for theatrical, nightclub, house of worship, and corporate AV applications.

Clay Paky launched Alpha Beam 300, an alternative to a PAR 64 ACL, with a concentrated beam and designed especially for long throw applications, such as concerts.

The Pro Stage at Pro Light + Sound (Source: Messe Frankfurt Exhibition/Jochen Günther)

Enfis showed its recently launched Quatrro Mini high-power LED multi-watt, plug-and-play light engine. The spot source packs up to160W of power into a 2×2cm array.

Nexo showed the GEO S1230 and GEO S1210, the newest additions to the GEO S Series of tangent-array loudspeakers, designed for fixed and portable installations. The company also released NXAMP powered TDcontrollers for high-powered amplification in fixed and mobile applications, as well as the RS 15 (the first in the patent-pending RS–RAY SUB–Series), a low-profile high-output, modular, scalable bass cabinet that can operate in both omni-directional and cardioid modes.

Visual Productions showed its VisualDMX lighting control software and a new version of VisualTouch touchscreen user interface, as well as introduced a new series of DIN Rail products, including GPI (General Purpose Input), GPO (General Purpose Output), and a DMX splitter. Also new is Frontier, a 19″ rack-mountable interface and standalone replay unit for preprogrammed lighting sequences in fixed installations. The company’s Canvix dedicated matrix controller was also on display with new features.

d&b audiotechnik exhibited its E-Series of loudspeakers, the E8, E12 and E12-D, designed for use as standalone full-range loudspeakers that can also be integrated into larger systems.

High End Systems gave away a Road Hog Full Boar and Playback Wing, drawing the winning name, Denis Hessberger with tech support at German Light Products, live at the High End/Arcus booth. Hessberger admits he “almost didn’t fill out the form, since I’ve never won anything in my life, but my friend told me I might just get lucky this time.” It was the day before his 21st birthday.

Winner Denis Hessberger at the High End Booth.

Chauvet presented its LED-Fitted MiN™ Spot & Wash products, launched at LDI last year, for the first time to the European community, as well as its full range of lighting and control products.

Sennheiser launched the SR 350 IEM G2 twin transmitter for in ear monitoring, with up to 100 mW of power. The company also continues its contest for a new “sound logo,” and while musicians are submitting entries, the judges were announced in Frankfurt: Paul Sandweiss, sound designer from the US; Jon Thornton, head of Sound Technology at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts; Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, chairman of the Supervisory Board; and Susanne Seidel, president of Global Marketing at Sennheiser. A fifth judge will be added as a result of online voting.

Exhibiting under the DMXSoft banner were Sunlite, Lumidesk, and Daslight, all showing the lastest versions of software and interfaces.

ADB Lighting Technologies previewed Eurodim Twin Tech, allowing sine wave dimmer modules to be combined with thyristor dimmer modules in a single cabinet. Also previewed by the company was Mikado, the first in a new series of five lighting consoles for for small to mid-sized stage applications.

Osram exhibited the new Kreios LED module for film and television applications. Other new products featured included Xstage, an short arc lamp for architectural and event lighting, and Lok-it! lamp base and holder system for halogen and high-pressure discharge lamps.

Wireless Solution Sweden AB, exhibited its full line of Generation3 W-DMX™ products, including the debut of W-DMX™ Configurator, with a PC application and a USB interface for access to Wi-FiCompanion modes and other features like output power settings. The product’s US debut will be later this week at USITT in Houston.

For additional products, read my show preview here: http://blog.livedesignonline.com/liveblog/2008/03/10/live-from-frankfurth-pro-light-sound-preview/

To read about my day with MA Lighting during Pro Light + Sound, click here.

Among other great things that happened in the last two weeks (directing/designing/and producing a Journey DVD was a pretty big highlight), Colleen and I have been named heads of a new program at CalArts which makes Video & Projection Design an MFA concentration…

Some of you may know that we’ve been teaching there for the past 3 years. That time and those courses have been spent in an effort to derive a good MFA curriculum for Video & Projection Design in the Theatre Department. The fine folks at California Institute for the Arts have finally given the thumbs up and we are moving ahead.

So now, on to recruiting. If any of you are BFA or BA students, about to graduate, with an interest in getting an MFA at CalArts in Video & Projection Design, we invite you to apply. We’re going to be reaching out to some friends who teach at the undergrad level, to try to get a bead on some promising folks… But we’re also putting the call out broadband style. Come join us in what is going to be a tremendous new program. Students will be taking MFA level lighting classes from Don Holder, Scenic Design from Chris Baracca, Video & Projection from us… As well as opportunities to take interactive courses from the School of Integrated Media at CalArts, classes in the Animation Program, and in the Film School. It’s fantastic cross pollination, and we intend to help create some of the most potent visual designers in live design.

Interested ? Drop either Colleen (colleen@modestudios.com) or me (bob@modestudios.com) an email. We’ll help to get application processes going and financial aid packages rolling.

-Bob Bonniol

It is about that time when everyone is figuring out what they will be doing this summer after school or their season concludes in May. It’s probably a bit late to start looking for a summer stock gig or internship, but if you haven’t started yet, you should! Some excellent resources are www.backstagejobs.com which is free, or make sure to check out Art Search (www.tcg.org/artsearch)which is subscription based. I was lucky enough to be invited back as the Master Electrician again to a very small, but amazing, summer stock theatre in Vermont. It is part of Middlebury College’s summer English program and is very academically based. I get to work with a bunch of great designer from the academic community including both my graduate (CalArts) and undergrad (Bucknell) in addition to the University of Iowa and Brown University. It is an amazing way to spend a summer that is incredibly well funded and really gives back to the community. We produce one amazing show each summer in a small, but suitable converted barn, and open all the performances up to the community for free. We usually produce a Shakespeare work ever other year. This year it is Twelfth Night. It has been one of the best experiences of my life working there, and I look forward to going back year-round. And of course that we are all avid croquet enthusiasts, which is a good example of what summer stock is all about.

I also got another incredible offer to work as a moving light tracker on the Lion King National Tour in August. I’ll be spending just under three weeks in Columbus, Ohio, which is where the tour kicks off. This is going to make the end of my summer ridiculously busy as I have two days between finishing up in Vermont and getting to Ohio. The show also then runs right into the start of the fall semester at CalArts, which means I’ll be flying back to California for classes right away. I am really excited about working on such an iconic show and I am up for any and all the challenges it offers.