The Vetri Great Chefs Event in Philadelphia

Last week at work I was on the setup, operation, and strike of the Vetri Great Chefs Event benefitting Alex's Lemonade Stand in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  This was a super cool event for a great cause and originally I was not going to operate it, but the week prior that aspect of the event was given to me as an opportunity to become more acquainted with the Jands Vista boards we use at Advanced Staging.

Lets look at what the event looked like and what went into it!

One of the buildings in the Navy Yard.

The event took place in one of the Urban Outfitters buildings in the yard.

The stage before the event began.

The stage before the event began.

For the stage setup, we used Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast LED units to uplight the drape behind the stage, and used an array of four Martin MAC Aura units as a stage wash (overkill for a stage wash? Maybe. But easier to run power between and focus? Absolutely).

The Colorblasts uplighting the drape, this is before I focused them so they're all a bit messy and the cabling is pretty ugly.  We only used one "brain" and ran all the units to it in the center.  Less DMX daisy chaining had to be done this way.

The MAC Aura stage wash.

The MAC Auras were all hung from a 10ft aluminum pipe which was rigged to a jib arm in the building's architecture using 6' gak slings and shackles.  I set the color of the unit's beam to be balanced as close to 5600K as possible for the convenience of our cameras, which proved to be a challenge as the Auras are slightly lavender when at their "home" color.  I also set the "aura" backing light of the unit to be a bright yellow so when the units were not actively lighting the stage, they would still be proudly showing off the Alex's Lemonade colors!

One of the side areas of the event, here you can see the uplighting on the wall, which was achieved with City Theatrical QolorPoint lights.

The final element of the setup was uplighting along all of the walls in one of the side spaces of the event.  This look was created using City Theatrical QolorPoint LED lights controlled using wireless DMX Showbabys.  As the units have a tendency to operate with a delay from the board, I set them to an alternating yellow and orange pattern (for Alex's Lemonade of course!) and let them sit without adjustment through the event.

The obligatory console photo.

The event was all operated via a PC running the Jands Vista software, controlled by an S1 surface.  I'm still fairly new to these consoles, so it was nice having a pretty basic show as my first true foray into programming it.  I chose to use two cuelists with one cue each, one list for the uplights around the venue, behind the stage, and the yellow Aura backlights, and one for the MAC Aura stage wash.  With these lists written, I could just use the corresponding faders on the S1 to adjust intensities as needed as the event progressed.


That's all for now, the summer is a somewhat slow time for events, so posts to this blog regarding Advanced Staging may be few and far between for now.  But that doesn't mean I don't have other projects to talk about, so be sure to check back periodically to see what I'm up to!

What has Andy been up to with Advanced Staging Productions?

This summer I started working full time as a lighting tech with Advanced Staging Productions, a company that sells theatrical staging, lighting, and video services to corporate clients.  I thought it would be fun to share some of the jobs and setups I work on with the company and share some photos of the results!

Tent College Event

Last Friday I worked a setup at a school that was holding an event for its alumni.  It was an outdoor event in a massive tent that was air conditioned and had multiple rooms, and we had the responsibility to light all the branches of the tent for the event.  Above is a photo I snapped after we finished most of the setup for the day, it took us several hours of hard work but it was worth it in the end!  One of the notable elements of this setup was the house lights we installed on the tent poles, which are pipes of 6 Source4 PAR units each known as "PAR Bars" that were installed using clamps that hook to the tent poles and allow you to install a pipe (or PAR Bar in this case) to the pole.  Also notable are the 8ft truss towers along the perimeter of the tent, upon which are hung two Source4 Ellipsoidal fixtures to shoot gobo patterns into the ceiling of the tent for some extra flare.  Overall, this was a hard setup, but through the course of it I learned how to drive a lift and how the specific tent clamps worked, which made it plenty of fun in the end!  The whole thing was controlled from a Jands Vista L5 lighting console.

Philly Ballroom Show

For my birthday this past week, I was put in charge of a setup in a lovely room in central Philly.  It was a fairly basic setup but was still exciting to do.  Some of the key elements here were the blue uplights behind the stage and two 14ft truss towers in the back of the room which held the stage wash on them as well as lighting for the auction tables in the back of the room.  The uplighting you can see in the above photo were four PAR 56 units on base plates powered by a Leprecon dimmer pack.

The truss towers (one shown here) were 16" black truss on a base plate with aluminum pipe installed on top, upon which we hung our fixtures.  PAR 56 units were used to light the auction tables behind the towers while two Source4 Ellipsoidals on each side were used as a stage wash.  The whole tower is controlled using another Leprecon dimmer pack at its base with a multi breakin running from it up to a breakout at the top, which powered all the units.  As the show utilized relatively basic fixtures, it was all controlled by an ETC SmartFade console, with plenty of DMX cable running all over the room to reach all the dimmer packs.  Definitely a fun foray into being in charge of a setup for the company!


That's all for my first few weeks of major setups!  Next week I'm operating a fairly large event using a Jands Vista S1, and I'll be sure to take plenty of photos for this blog!  Hopefully this was interesting for some of you, I'll try to keep this blog updated with the more interesting things I'm doing professionally!

Welcome to my Blog!

Right now there isn't much here, and this post is really more of a placeholder than anything, but I intend to use this page of my website to share what I'm up to!  On this blog I'll be posting updates on new film and video projects as I work on or complete them, about new equipment that I acquire and my thoughts on the matter, what I'm doing at work if it's anything of particular interest, and anything else really!  Stay tuned to see what I'm up to!