The new Barco DML-1200 digital luminaire and projector, now with an onboard Axon media server.

AUSTIN, TX-Barco has added an Axon media server, complete with the latest software release, to their DML-1200 digital light and DLP-quality projector. One of the brightest digital lights on the market today with 12,000 field lumens, the DML-1200 was originally designed as a dual moving digital luminaire and high-quality video projector, offering unlimited image selection with the ability to seamlessly switch between video projection and light mode, cue by cue. The Axon provides lighting designers with a full complement of digital lighting features, including collage and curved surface support, warping and edge blending, and access to thousands of images. The new luminaire is designed to be a feature-rich, highly versatile tool that empowers lighting designers to produce a truly unique show for every event, client and purpose.

A scene from the second act of La Traviata at University of Oklahoma’s Opera Theatre. With so many costumes, creating clear path of progress through a shop is essential.

How to keep up when your costume shop staff is dwarfed by the number of actors needing costumes

Managing a 100+ costume production, with double-cast leads, chorus and dancers, is a challenge for any costume studio. However, the reality is that few of us are fortunate enough to be managing fully-staffed professional studios, yet most of us are expected to produce these mega-shows. Many of us are tackling multiple roles: supervisor, draper/tailor/cutter, first hand, shopper and even designer or at least design assistant. If we are fortunate, we may have one or two full time staff to assist us, and they also take on multiple roles: stitcher, craftperson, first hand and general assistant. In academia, we add the challenges of these shows with the dual responsibilities of mounting the production and teaching the students who are working in the costume studio. Here are some of the keys to creating a plan for your small studio so that all can not only survive a mega-show, but sustain the quality of your work over an entire season.

Linda Pisano’s costume for the Duke of Vanholt (played by Lea CoCo) in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus at the Utah Shakespearean Fest. The costume was informed by primary research of the jerkin.

Separating factual research from the evocative, and the uses of both

One of the greatest challenges for any practitioner in the performing arts is to create a believable and completely honest “world of the play,” no matter how abstract or obscure it might be to the modern eye. A costumer’s overarching objective is essentially to create forms of clothing that are appropriate to any and every type of character, taking into account not only the obvious variables of nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexual orientation and creed, but also those of geography, climate, occupation, familial and/or marital status, physiology, personality, psychological state, ideology, historical milieu and so forth.

Costumes, wigs, makeup—even underwear

Unless an actor is performing something like Equus, Hair, or The Full Monty, he or she may feel naked on stage even when they aren’t. But the makeup, costumes, jewelry—even underwear—all play a part in getting the actor in character. More importantly, they add to the drama or comedy that’s happening on stage. So where do you find that 1890s riding hat? Makeup that turns silicone prosthetics green? Support for that civil war-era hoop skirt? And what suppliers are especially theatre-friendly? SD did a survey and discovered there’s more to accessories than meets the eye—even if the audience’s eye doesn’t see it.

SyntheFX has released Luminair for iPad, a desktop-class multi-touch DMX lighting control app.

CINCINATI, OH—Synthe FX has released Luminair for iPad, its new desktop-class multi-touch DMX lighting control app for Apple’s iPad. Luminair uses the Art-Net protocol to transmit DMX data over Wi-Fi, giving users wireless control of color- mixable LED fixtures, dimmers, studio lighting, moving lights, media servers, and any other DMX enabled equipment.

A screen shot of Source Four Fixtures in the Source Four Savvy Section Plug-In Object for Vectorworks SpotLight.

BROOKLYN, NY—Joshua Benghiat Lighting Design has released of the Source Four Savvy Section Plug-In Object for Vectorworks SpotLight. The Source Four Savvy Section plug-in object eliminates the need to tweak dimensionally accurate 2D sections of an ETC Source Four or Source Four PAR, including the hanging angle, yoke, angle, clamp type and accessories. With this object, users no longer need to ungroup and rotate section symbols, or look for symbols of various components.

The Audio-Technica AT2021 Cardiod Condenser Mic

STOW, OH—Audio-Technica’s new AT2021 Cardioid Condenser Microphone is a low-profile condenser mic designed to offer an extended frequency response, high maximum SPL and wide dynamic range. The AT2021’s low-mass element is designed to provide excellent transient response. Corrosion-resistant contacts from the microphone’s gold-plated XLRM-type connector, in addition to the mic’s rugged design and construction, ensure consistent, reliable performance and durability for the user. The unit’s cardioid polar pattern rejects pickup of sounds from the sides and rear, improving isolation of the desired sound source.

The Elation Color Tone 50

LOS ANGELES-Elation Professional's Color Tone 50, a DMX-controllable LED color changer for staging, entertainment and architectural applications, utilizes the all-new 50-watt Philips Lexel LED module, a homogenized LED light source. Unlike previous RGB LED fixtures that produced colors by combining red, green and blue beams from different LED lamps, all of the Color Tone 50's color blending is done within its single Philips Lexel module, designed to result in superior colors and a whole spectrum of whites that are perfectly even and consistent in tone. The new technology is designed to eliminate issues than can sometimes occur with RGB mixing, such as uneven output, discoloration, and "halos" or rings around beam edges.

Figure 1 – Light Spectra

Why LEDs render color—and skin tones—the way they do. 

I've no doubt that, by now, everyone reading this article has used an LED (Light Emitting Diode)-based light source on stage. Chances are you will have used them to provide colored light for a backdrop or cyc, or perhaps as effects lighting, or as direct view lights on the edge of steps or flats. It's less likely, although you might have experimented, that you are using them as key lighting or performer lights. Why is that? One obvious reason until recently is that they weren't bright enough, but the pace of development in LED efficiency is so rapid that this is no longer true. I suspect the main reason is that you weren't completely happy with the way the light looks on performers faces, the skin tones don't always look quite right somehow. To understand why this is the case, and what's being done by developers and manufacturers to remedy the situation, we need to delve a little into the details of the light spectrum produced by LEDs and get a feel for both its advantages and disadvantages.