[Bob Bonniol]

There are several ways this happens. It is possible, though difficult, to ‘come up’ with a new band, be lighting their club gigs, they go big, and off you go too… This is rare, but not unheard of. Chris Corruda, LD for Phish, became big this way I think.

It is not impossible to get gigs with established artists by meeting the band and hitting it off well, either socially, or somehow in context of a gig. For instance, I doubt extremely that Gordon Lightfoot was carrying any production at all… Probably he was using whatever the venue/event provided him, which was most likely ‘designed’ by the venue’s head electrician or a local rental company. Under those cirsumstances, it’s possible to meet and make a good impression on an artist, giving them reason to specify you at a later date when circumstances and budget allows. Alot of bands have little say about this though…

The single best way to score design work with established bands is to make contact with, and impress their tour manager. All of the established bands we work with now have happened because the bands Tour Manager or Road Manager ok’d it. Sometimes we come recommended by another designer already on the gig, or some other person associated (a monitor engineer, or a stage manager, or the lighting package vendor), but it seems like almost always the Tour Manager has final say.

Cheers,
Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

First and foremost, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, get the gel out of the extra lights… Are they an incandescent source ? If so, go without Gel… they’ll warm up faces just fine without them. Especially if you can dim them.

Third, if in focussing them they could be more spread across the stage, as opposed to all pointed at the podium, that would help to ‘warm up’ the whole platform as opposed to having the sharp point of lighting differentiation at center. Ideally I might have a full stage Par can wash, with 2 to 4 lekos (profile instruments) pointed at the center podium/handoff in order to pull focus to there. I would likely use wither no color, or very light saturations… say R04 (bast amber), or R33 (No Color Pink), or L201 (No Color Blu).

You can also try turning off the vapor lights that are on the peripery to reduce the overall ambient green, if you have enough theatrical fixtures to light the entire platform adequately, I’d try to turn off the vapor units over stage if possible…

Good luck,
Bo Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

Wow, not even in the top 15… Our whole studio has been Firefox for at least 3 months now, I know a bunch of others who have rolled too… It’s wild that we’re so few.

I LOVE Firefox.

So there’;s just no equivallent Javascript now ? I remember when you made that call Boomie (at the time I was on PC, and I remember it was early days for the cow). There’s no way to get something like that going ?

Here’s irony for ya… I just realized I’m typing this in Safari ! Ha ! ooppss…

-Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

I’ll give you that Tim (BTW missed you at NAB… Cruised by the Canopus booth a bunch… you still with them ?)… But this whole 64bit question seems academic in a discussion about laptop editing. Is anybody making laptops with 64bit opterons ? Now that will be one toasty laptop.

Regarding thermal issues, we have the same warm lap syndrome with our One Beyond and DVLine laptops (which I think are all the same chassis made in Taipei when you get right down to it).

Cheers,

BB

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

Well, all I can say after rolling out Tiger across alot of studio’s machines (we’re a mixed mac/window house… about 10 of each), is that the only hardware problem we’ve had is with our Cinewave (something we expected with Avid’s purchase of Pinnacle), and we’ve experienced no software conflicts, and have seen a modest speed bump with some apps. I think any time a new OS revision comes out wome will have problems and others will not. I don’t see this as widespread, unless I’ve missed something.

Regarding some of the other talk about disappointment in Apple’s 64bit performance vs some of the chipsets on the windows side, up to now OS-X has not taken advantage of most 64 bit functionality, and virtually no apps (that I know of) are natively using the 64bit architecture (except, possibly, Motion or FCP… and I don’t know that for sure). So until we see full implementation of this, I don’t think it’s a comparison you can make.

We recently moved our laptop editing setups off of the One Beyond platform (which was amazing, but which weigh’s about 500 pounds… or so it seems) to FCP equipped laptops. The G4’s have proved to be totally up to the task, and better to travel with to boot (which is the point, right ?). I know that One Beyond (and others… Alienware jumps to mind) have slimmer, lighter weight options, but we hadn’t tried those out. With our main suite’s shifting from PPro to FCP with Cinewave and Kona2, that’s how our pipeline went. We still do alot of compositing, and all of our 3D work on windows machines (by BOXX… Mmmmmm Good).

Cheers,

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader