All posts by lscjonathan

UNLV Presidential Debates TV Lighting Politics

The Third Presidential Debate

The final debate of the 2016 United States presidential election debates sent the team at The Lighting & Sound Co to Las Vegas, Nevada, to set up stage lighting for TV interviews. The final presidential debate took place at the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s Thomas and Mack Center. This arena holds nearly 17,000 people, and we saw close to that many lighting technicians, stagehands, and riggers working on setup for the debate in the days beforehand.

Sunrise from ~30,000 feet

Lighting the interview stage went very similar to the TV stage lighting we did for the Vice Presidential Debates in Farmville, VA. However, we needed to source as much of the equipment as possible locally in Las Vegas rather than shipping it from our home base in Richmond, VA. Our friends at 4Wall Entertainment Lighting were great at helping us with this. Still, the Kino Flo Celeb TV stage lights required were unavailable in Las Vegas, so some came from 4Wall’s Los Angeles office, where they have plenty of film lighting gear, while we did send a pallet of equipment and stage lighting from Richmond VA as well.

Again we used Kino Flo Celeb 400Q film lighting fixtures for key lighting, with ETC Source Four Lekos as fill lighting. Control was the Martin Professional Maxxyz software running on M-PC with M-Touch for physical control

PAR64 Lighting VCU basketball richmond hype video

VCU Men’s Basketball Promo Video

The VCU Men’s Basketball team recently filmed a promotional video that introduces the players before each game. V2 Content, a talented video production company based in Lincoln, Nebraska, brought us in to help with the lighting. The Lighting & Sound Co was on location at the Stuart C. Siegel Center, providing film lighting and making sure the players looked great.

From render to reality, the VCU Basketball rig featured 36 1000W Par cans- that’s a lot of firepower!

We provided a giant wall of light using classic PAR64s in pre-rigged truss. With 36 individually controllable units adjacent to each other, it was easy to achieve many different patterns and effects. A handful of moving head profiles provided additional air light effects. Of course, the video wouldn’t have looked nearly as awesome without a fine haze to show the beams of light. Our favorite hazer, the Look Solutions Unique 2.1, filled the entire gym within a few minutes.

Lighting Designer Martin MPC VCU Basketball

LSC Lighting Designer Chris Hill pushes the rig to full for a dramatic shot.

This lighting required about 37,000 watts of electrical power, which is more the amount of power that your entire house needs. While that much power is available in the main Siegel Center arena, the shoot was taking place on the opposite end of the facility about 600 feet away. Running long feeder cable to get the power where it was needed wasn’t feasible, but fortunately our friends at Temp-Power provided a generator perfectly suited for the job that could be placed much closer.

Temp Power generator temporary vcu basketball rva richmond virginia

Temp Power delivers a 45 KVa generator to power the 36kw rig.

Gear list:

36x PAR64 1000W NSP, on lamp bars
3x Applied Electronics PRT Pre-Rig Truss
48-ch ETC Sensor+ Touring Dimmer Rack
6x Robe Robin Pointe beam/spot/wash moving head
Look Solutions Unique 2.1 Hazer
Martin M-PC Lighting Console with M-Touch
45 KVa three-phase portable generator from Temp-Power

The Vice Presidential Debates

We joined the political madness for a week as we prepared to do some television lighting for a TV stage at the Vice Presidential debates in Farmville on Tuesday. We set up in Longwood University’s Health and Fitness Center, which is rated as one of the top 20 recreational centers at small colleges; at 74,683 gross square feet, it’s a pretty impressive space, topped off by a large rock climbing wall and LEED Gold certification. Longwood’s gym boasts of over 60 pieces of weight training and cardio equipment, but none of them were anywhere to be seen when we arrived. Instead, they had been replaced with a full media cafe, red carpets throughout, press boxes, stages, temporary power, communication rooms and Secret Service agents.

We headed out to Farmville, Virginia on Sunday to set up: Our TV stage was built on a 16′ x 16′ riser, and was an interview spot for before and after the debate. For events like these, every person on the crew needs to have Secret Service clearance, and has to have a number of credentials on them at all times.

We used Kino Flo Celeb 400s for front light, with Source Four Lekos as fill, and Celeb 400Qs as back light.

Richmond Weddings Expo Fashion Show Lighting

Richmond Wedding Expo Fashion Show

Richmond Weddings just released this amazing video from the Richmond Weddings Expo Fashion Show we provided production for back in July. If you’re getting married in Richmond, you need to be familiar with these folks.

You can check out some photos of the show below!

All photos by Third Eye Studios:

Our beautiful high definition wedding chandelier gobo!

Uplighting gives the stage a great look.

Slide The City Richmond

Summer time is upon us, and Slide The City brought 1000 feet of slick vinyl to brighten the streets of Richmond. Richmonders showed up in droves to take the plunge down the 1000 foot water slide. A water slide longer than three football fields was set up on lovely Byrd Street in downtown RVA. Slide the City is a family & friends slip-and-slide water party event, including live music, food, drinks, water, and of course the biggest slip and slide ever to hit the city. We brought out distributed sound reinforcement to the event to provide tunes to riders on their way down the slide. Live music was provided by Full Spectrum, of the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band, as well as 101.1 The Fam. Check out Slide the City’s video below!

Stephanie & Justin’s Wedding

Got a call from Stephanie on Tuesday for a last minute wedding the coming Sunday. Stephanie needed uplighting for her wedding reception at The Hotel John Marshall here in Richmond. Summer is a busy season for weddings, and while we already had other jobs going on that day, we were easily able to accommodate another event. The next day, Stephanie told us she was also interested in a custom wedding gobo with her and Justin’s names on it. Fortunately, we are no stranger to rush jobs and manufacturing a last minute gobo before the date of her wedding was no trouble. We went through the design process with Stephanie, and had the custom gobo just in time!

Stephanie wanted a warm color for the uplighting on the beautiful walls of the ballroom, we suggested our champagne look, always an amazing look in there!

Aditi & Aditya’s Engagement Party

We had a very eventful (pun intended) Memorial day weekend, with events all over Richmond. Among those was Aditi’s & Aditya’s engagement party, and we were lucky enough to work with the very talented Candace Morgan, who sent over some lovely photos. If you absolutely love what you see, you can check Candace out here.

Aditi wanted the rotunda to be a classy blue and gold, and the Science Museum of Virginia was a wonderful venue to accomplish such a look. We went with thin beamed wedding uplights to accent the museum’s neoclassical columns. The powerful LED uplights reached all the way up the fifty foot ceilings of the Science Museum and made the room look absolutely stunning.

Congratulations to Aditi & Aditya on a beautiful engagement party!

Heartracer: Ice on the Streets live at Hardywood Park

One of the best parts of working in entertainment is the wonderful people you get to meet. Every once in a while, we get to work with a group of truly special performers such as our friends in Heartracer. We put together a small ambient lighting setup for their most recent show at Hardywood Craft Brewery here in Richmond, Virginia. You can check out the awesome video by Dave O’Dell below.

You can find Heartracer on Soundcloud, Facebook, and on the web at Heartracerband.com.

Total Room Transformation

To show the power of event lighting, we set up some of our most popular wedding lighting services in an abandoned basement. This helps to give a better idea of what wedding and event lighting can do to completely transform a room for your wedding reception, ceremony, or any event or party you have at all.

While all the individual pieces that make up the perfect wedding or event are equally important, lighting is the only one that can change how everything is perceived. Lighting can change the look and feel of the entire event, from the mood, to the color the place setting appear to be, make sure you have the right team handling your event. You can learn more by checking out our informational article on wedding and event lighting. Take your event lighting to the next level.

Check out a full display of our services here.

Conditions Pop Punk Lighting at the Canal Club in Richmond, Virginia

Conditions Anniversary Show

Local pop-punk legends Conditions reunited on the 5th anniversary of their album Florescent Youth. Richmond, Virginia locals that are familiar with the band might have attended their disbandment show at the National in Richmond in July of last year, where The Lighting & Sound Co. provided concert lighting, giving the band a proper send-off. We once again coordinated with Conditions, in association with Syke, on their anniversary show to provide a show four times as big.

Check out Brandon Hambright’s awesome photography at the Canal Club in Richmond, Virginia!

Conditions Concert Lighting Design The canal Club

Photography by Brandon Hambright

Conditions custom concert lighting rig:

6 x Elation Platinum Beam 5R
4 x Chauvet Intimidator 350
6 x Elation Design Wash 60
2 x DTS Jack Spot
6 x ADJ MegaFlash
4 x Chauvet Slim Panel 24
2 x ColorTran 1000W Floods
2 x Chauvet Funfetti Confetti Cannons
1 x Chauvet Nimbus Low Fog Machine
1 x Look Solutions Unique 2.1 Hazer

ETC Ion 1000 Control Surface
20x Fader Wing
2 x 19″ ELO Touch Screen