Monthly Archives: December 2023

Lighting, New Orleans

Live Stream in a Time of Pandemic

What started as a phone call about renting a USB to DMX interface ended up being a years worth of livestream shows in a Mardi Gras float den and a little grocery money.

Spent one night a week making the lights flash and wiggle and began to learn you can do a lot with some pretty cheap lighting fixtures if you pay attention.

It was like concert plus video lighting and I took over from some very capable LDs who initiated this project.

Still it was a good way to get myself out of the house and keep the skills sharp (or at least not deteriorating)

We started on Hog for PC and finished the run on Chamsys which I eventually ended up teaching to the intern when shows returned in 2021

Catch some great performance by New Orleans musicians and see what happens with a handful of $100 movers.

https://thefunkyuncle.live/

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Lighting

On the Exhibit Floor

Booth Rig Set up

One type of job I’m just getting into is building and focusing booth lighting rigs. It’s a different world when the plot comes from a room somewhere and is clearly the product of hours of phone calls between the booth client, the scenic company building the booth and the in-house lighting design team of a big lighting company. It’s a different way of working that requires you work thoughtfully, collaborate with the scenic team and exercise patience as the elements of the build spring up over the hours it takes to implement a design.

Then it’s time to focus and make the lights work as the designer intended and make the appropriate and necessary changes on the ground.

And then the people come and you do the day to day maintenance of the rig.

I didn’t think I would like doing booths. But they have become a good distraction from the usual General Session days.

Lighting

Big Canvases

Gaylord Palms Ballroom textured with lighting

Every once in a while I have a client who LOVES to have floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall patterns for their shows. I really love the look here. And what you don’t see is the subtle movement that I did as the audience arrived. Of course I stopped it once the show started so it wouldn’t draw too much focus.

And here’s another picture from that show.

Muncipal Policy, New Orleans

New Orleans

Like a lot of New Orleanians, 2005 with Katrina, the flood and the subsequent years of rebuilding changed my perspective on the city of New Orleans. Primarily it lead me to change my focus from activities like writing plays and screenplays to thinking about the municipal policies to keep New Orleans surviving and thriving for the next 300 years.

The short answer take away: New Orleans needs more population with good jobs through economic development, and much of the policy at City Hall needs to be focused on that. We need policies that encourage business development and in-migration and housing policy that spurs on more investment and building of a modern housing stock.

I lay out many of these ideas in 3 websites. Some of them need updating. I’ve moved on from some of these positions but I think that keeping them up with the dates are important as a way to show the ways in which my thinking has changed on them.

They are

Alive New Orleans http://http;//aliveneworleans.com

AliveNewOrleans.com logo

Alive New Orleans lays out the overarching theme of population through good jobs and economic development by having a more permissive zoning code but, right now, as I write this the themes aren’t fully fleshed out. But this will probably help me work more on this site.

8 Principles for New Orleans http://progress.8principlesforneworleans.com

This was a project I worked on in the first 5 years after the storm. It was largely a disaster recovery project that tried to address policy failures I saw in the post-disaster planning era. It has some civic media designs that I considered akin to something like 30 s and 40s era posters encouraging citizens to do their part for the effort. It also lays out my opposition to the city’s “Master Plan” which I considered, and still consider a mistake that unhelpfully empowered those opposed to economic development

The Corner Store Initiative http://cornerstoreinitiative.com/

The Corner Store Initiative was designed to highlight the ways in which the current zoning code led to blighted buildings and reduced economic opportunities for neighborhoods by making it difficult or impossible for businesses to occupy former corner store sites that dot our neighborhoods.

These are just a sample of some of the thinking I’ve done about municipal policy in New Orleans. There are also PowerPoint decks and an unfinished album which I describe as “making the zoning code danceable”. Because I love my city and want to see it and its people survive and thrive.

Lighting

What I Do and How It Works

I like to say I make the magic happen.
But it’s really the lighting.

The majority of my work is in Convention Center General sessions.
I work closely with the camera team to ensure that they can do what they need to do.
With modern lighting LED lights and consoles it’s easy to tie in a convention’s color scheme into the lighting looks.
I’m resourceful and have made the proverbial silk purse out of the sows ear.

I started out in theatre so I can inject some lighting drama if necessary.
I worked in educational films for a while, so I am aware that sometime the record takes priority.
I can also take a plot drawn up in a room somewhere and build it out and artfully focus it, like I have for booths on exhibit floors.
I’ve been involved in a lot of projects and shows over the years.

Most of the time the console is the one that comes off the truck:
But my preferences run in order:
Hog, Chamsys, GrandMA,
Onyx, AVO (if we must)
Leave the ETC Eos and Ion back at the shop please.

Hope we can work together soon.

Lighting

Camex – Houston 2006

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Camex Houston 2006

This was a fun show early in 2006 in the Ballroom upstairs at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
How old is this picture?
All that beautiful color are scrollers. There are a couple of older movers, perhaps Martin Mac250s or early Robe Spots but that color. those are scrollers. And the board was probably a Jands Hog Echelon or 500.

With LEDS and pixelmapping consoles, we are living in the future.