Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So this past weekend I ventured out
Speaker 1: of my home in order to go to a show.
Speaker 1: And really it was a show that was tailor made
Speaker 1: for old people like me because the English Beat and
Speaker 1: adam Ant were sharing the bill. So as I filed
Speaker 1: into the venue with many of my fellow gen xers
Speaker 1: and y'all, it looked like it was a college reunion
Speaker 1: in my case, not that I recognize people, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's rare that I'm out with a group of people
Speaker 1: who are in the same age range as I am. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I started to do what I often do when I
Speaker 1: go out to stuff. I started to think, how can
Speaker 1: I mine this experience I'm having for an episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, Which was tricky because I've already done episodes
Speaker 1: about electric guitars. We played a classic one on Monday
Speaker 1: if you miss that, that was the episode that originally
Speaker 1: aired back in two thousand and nine. Now I've done
Speaker 1: episodes about microphones, I've done episodes about loud speakers. I've
Speaker 1: done episodes about synthesizers. I might do an episode on
Speaker 1: knee or hip replacements, because, again, based on the average
Speaker 1: age of the folks who were in that building, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that would have been a relevant thing to
Speaker 1: my experience that night. And yes, I am joking around,
Speaker 1: but this is to remind you also I am in
Speaker 1: that age group. I am joking about myself. But there
Speaker 1: was a point in the show where one of the
Speaker 1: young folks on stage, appearing with the acts, invited us
Speaker 1: to jump to the music. About five percent of the
Speaker 1: crowd actually made a half hearted effort to do so,
Speaker 1: and everyone else was like, you know what, no gravity
Speaker 1: and I have reached an understanding we're not going to
Speaker 1: potentially invite disaster with blowing out a knee or a
Speaker 1: hip or something. So that was a real thing. But
Speaker 1: while the show was going on, one thing that did
Speaker 1: spring to mind was the lighting there. The venue we
Speaker 1: were in was a pretty decent size here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: it's called the Eastern It's not a huge venue, but
Speaker 1: it is significantly larger than the tiny little clubs I
Speaker 1: would go to when I was in college in Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, everybody was in a band. Everybody
Speaker 1: would get signed at some point to play one of
Speaker 1: these small venues, and so I went to them a lot,
Speaker 1: and it was clear that this venue, the Eastern, had
Speaker 1: a really good setup for groups coming in to rig
Speaker 1: up their lighting and everything, and the acts had really
Speaker 1: sophisticated systems controlling those lights and creating really cool effects.
Speaker 1: And you know, again, this isn't like a huge arena show.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know, Van Halen in the late
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties. But it was really impressive. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I did do an episode about the
Speaker 1: history of stage lighting, but I haven't really explored the
Speaker 1: history of computerized lighting rigs. So that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. It is like moving lights,
Speaker 1: not just what lights were used to illuminate the stage,
Speaker 1: but how are they controlled and manipulated. What's the evolution
Speaker 1: of the concert or show lighting rig and how do
Speaker 1: they work. Now, clearly there's going to be overlap with
Speaker 1: my older episodes on stage lighting. If you're curious and
Speaker 1: you want to hear those older episodes. They include an
Speaker 1: episode titled Lights Tech Stuff Action that published on June seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And then there was tech stuff Steps Out
Speaker 1: of the Lime Light that published on June twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, but really more interested in the systems that
Speaker 1: activate the lights and control brightness and move lights around
Speaker 1: rather than the lights themselves. In this case, we will
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about lights because it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard not to, but that it's not really the pun
Speaker 1: intended focus of this episode. So let's consider the evolution
Speaker 1: of theater briefly, just to kind of get our minds
Speaker 1: in the right place. If you go back just a
Speaker 1: few centuries, as we all do on occasion, many theaters
Speaker 1: were outdoor venues, so all of your lighting was natural
Speaker 1: in that case, right, you had no control over it.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, you put up shades or whatever to kind
Speaker 1: of shape the lighting a bit, but other than that,
Speaker 1: this was beyond your control, and no one really thought
Speaker 1: too much about lighting effects. You just told your story
Speaker 1: and entertained your audience, or at least you tried to
Speaker 1: entertain them. Your success rate largely dependent upon the circumstances
Speaker 1: at the time and the people you were playing to.
Speaker 1: But when theatrical productions began to move into buildings, which
Speaker 1: happened throughout history at different times, but there were challenges
Speaker 1: that you had to overcome. So how do you light
Speaker 1: a scene so that people can see it, because before
Speaker 1: the era of electricity, light would have to come from
Speaker 1: sources like lanterns and torches and candles. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: the era of indoor theater itself has a lot of
Speaker 1: overlap with outdoor theater. It's not like everything was outdoors
Speaker 1: and then one day everybody said, you know, let's pound
Speaker 1: sand and go indoors. In Shakespeare's time, for example, there
Speaker 1: were both kinds of theatrical houses. So the Globe, one
Speaker 1: of the most famous theaters in Shakespeare's time, had a
Speaker 1: large stage exposed to the elements, and then you had
Speaker 1: smaller theatrical houses that were indoors, like the Blackfriars that
Speaker 1: was an indoor house. Interestingly, in Elizabethan times, at any rate,
Speaker 1: the indoor theater houses were seen as places for younger
Speaker 1: theatrical troops. By that, I mean like the actors were
Speaker 1: often boys or very young men, often school boys. So
Speaker 1: the adult actors would perform on the much larger outdoor
Speaker 1: stages generally, and the indoor stages were used for people
Speaker 1: who were still learning their craft. The difference in stage
Speaker 1: size also meant the subject matter and indoor venues was
Speaker 1: often far less action oriented. They were more talky, in
Speaker 1: other words, a lot more talking than acting, like in
Speaker 1: big fight sequences, So you just didn't have the room
Speaker 1: to do something like a big battle scene that you
Speaker 1: would find and say Richard the third or Henry the fifth.
Speaker 1: But that indoor lighting, while initially a challenge, also presented
Speaker 1: opportunities because a clever theatrical company could come up with
Speaker 1: new ways to light a scene in order to add
Speaker 1: to the effect that scene would have on the audience,
Speaker 1: or at least they might try to do that. As
Speaker 1: it stood, you often had to pause between scenes so
Speaker 1: that members of the company could do things like trim
Speaker 1: back the wicks of lanterns or replace burnt out candles,
Speaker 1: because you know they would be consumed over time. So
Speaker 1: sometimes it just meant that the show would kind of
Speaker 1: come to a brief stop, not like a full intermission
Speaker 1: like you would have in a modern show, but it
Speaker 1: would stop for a minute or two while people would
Speaker 1: change out light. One early proposed design for an indoor
Speaker 1: lighting system that could be done while a scene is
Speaker 1: in play, so sort of a dynamic system where you
Speaker 1: could adjust the light. Was this concept of a pulley
Speaker 1: where you would feed a line through the pulley and
Speaker 1: you'd hold one end of the line. The other end
Speaker 1: would hold up one or more cans, and the can
Speaker 1: would have its opening facing downward, and you would position
Speaker 1: this over a candle so the candles lit, and then
Speaker 1: you could lower the rope or lower this can down
Speaker 1: by using the pulley, and you would allow the can
Speaker 1: to lower down and cover or partially cover the candle.
Speaker 1: This would allow you to dim the scene. Obviously, you
Speaker 1: couldn't go too far down or you would extinguish the candle,
Speaker 1: as the candle would burn out all the available oxygen
Speaker 1: inside the can and then just sort of sputter out.
Speaker 1: But yes, you could do this to actually dim the scene.
Speaker 1: At least that the concept. It wasn't exactly high tech.
Speaker 1: It was literally a rope holding a canister that could
Speaker 1: be lowered over a candle. And I didn't see any
Speaker 1: indication that such a thing was ever actually used. It
Speaker 1: was proposed. There are sketches that show this, obviously no
Speaker 1: photographs or anything. I mean we're talking about like the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds here, but it showed that people were thinking
Speaker 1: about this about ways to affect the lighting while a
Speaker 1: performance is underway in order to convey a mood or
Speaker 1: emotion to an audience. But it would take some time,
Speaker 1: quite some time for this concept to really become practical,
Speaker 1: and honestly, we have to jump way, way way ahead
Speaker 1: beyond the discovery of electricity and our ability to harness
Speaker 1: electricity and the creation of electrical lighting. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say that people in theater did an experiment with
Speaker 1: different methods for lighting and getting across a certain feeling
Speaker 1: through lighting effects. They did try lots of different stuff,
Speaker 1: but some of those were really gimmicky or they were
Speaker 1: one offs and not indicative of a larger movement, nor
Speaker 1: did they really build toward the technologies that ultimately would
Speaker 1: replace them. So we're just gonna skip them instead. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some early attempts to motorize and
Speaker 1: then automate lighting controls for stage work. So one patent
Speaker 1: filed way back in nineteen twenty five and awarded in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight was something that a guy named H. F.
Speaker 1: King filed for, and it was he just called his
Speaker 1: invention a light projector. In the description of the invention, HF.
Speaker 1: King writes, quote, the principal object of the invention is
Speaker 1: to produce a light projector which may be moved automatically
Speaker 1: to cause the stream of light beams to move through
Speaker 1: a predetermined path and spot successively a plurality of objects,
Speaker 1: and hold the spot for an interval on at least
Speaker 1: one of said objects. End quote. Okay, let's break that down,
Speaker 1: make it plane English. Essentially, what HF. King is saying
Speaker 1: is that the invention he proposed is for a light
Speaker 1: that on its own could move through a predetermined path
Speaker 1: and then it could stop on one or more spots
Speaker 1: for however long it was that you had programmed the
Speaker 1: light to do. This. Programming is being used not in
Speaker 1: the computer sense in this case. It's more like setting,
Speaker 1: like making a setting where the light will hold on
Speaker 1: this position for whatever given amount of time you need.
Speaker 1: The illustrations accompanying the patent really helped me understand King's invention.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of patents, the language gets to be
Speaker 1: pretty like obtuse, but the illustrations help a lot, and
Speaker 1: he illustrated electric lamps mounted on a housing that could
Speaker 1: pivot either vertically or horizontally, so they could tilt or
Speaker 1: pan essentially or vertical motion. The tilting, an electric motor
Speaker 1: would connect to a gear and this gear, in turn
Speaker 1: would connect to a second gear attached to the yoke
Speaker 1: the housing for the light itself. So you had an
Speaker 1: electric motor turning a gear and it would be connected
Speaker 1: to the second gear via a chain. So it's a
Speaker 1: chain drive kind of like what you would see in
Speaker 1: a bicycle, right, So the gear would engage the chain
Speaker 1: and that would in turn move the other gear to
Speaker 1: adjust the tilting of the light. So turning the motor
Speaker 1: in one direction would allow you to tilt the light upward.
Speaker 1: Turning the motor and the other direction would have you
Speaker 1: tilt the light downward, and very clever and I thought
Speaker 1: it was a really neat kind of of concept. Now,
Speaker 1: horizontal movement, the panning, so panning left or right was
Speaker 1: using just a simple gear system. There was no chain
Speaker 1: drive for this. It was a gear system connected to
Speaker 1: the overall mount for the lamp. So again you would
Speaker 1: have like the teeth of these gears engage and turn
Speaker 1: the lamp either to the left or to the right,
Speaker 1: and it just be connected to the larger motor for
Speaker 1: the overall lamp. So Kings patent describes a potential use
Speaker 1: case for his invention that brings in the automatic part
Speaker 1: of this concept, because so far you're talking about these
Speaker 1: gears and motors. You could just rig up a control
Speaker 1: system that allowed you to manually adjust where this light
Speaker 1: was pointed. Right. Maybe you have like a dial, for example,
Speaker 1: to control panning, and maybe a second deal to control tilt.
Speaker 1: And by adjusting the values, you could engage the motors
Speaker 1: and turn the lamp to point to wherever you needed.
Speaker 1: But he wanted an automated system. He describes a store
Speaker 1: window behind which you might have several items that the
Speaker 1: store wants to highlight to the window shopper, one after
Speaker 1: the other. So just imagine that you've got this display,
Speaker 1: but it's in the dark, it's behind a shop window,
Speaker 1: you're on the street, you're looking in, and then a
Speaker 1: spotlight turns on and it shines on let's say, let's chair,
Speaker 1: and then the light suddenly swivels and moves to highlight
Speaker 1: a cl and then it moves again to show a
Speaker 1: radio and so on. Now, eventually the light finishes its
Speaker 1: tour of consumer goods. And goes back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the sequence. So King explains that his idea was
Speaker 1: to create this gadget that can focus on any specific
Speaker 1: spot within a physical space for a given amount of time,
Speaker 1: and you would essentially program the lamp to shine on
Speaker 1: a point for let's say five seconds before moving to
Speaker 1: a separate specific point and then staying there for like
Speaker 1: ten seconds and so on. So how did King handle
Speaker 1: the timing? Well, again, you know, this is in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenties, mid nineteen twenties, So he used mechanical
Speaker 1: action with a series of gears that could be set
Speaker 1: so that the light would stay at any particular spot
Speaker 1: for a particular amount of time, and the electric motor
Speaker 1: would provide the power for the system, and the gears
Speaker 1: and the chain drives and all that stuff would do
Speaker 1: all the mechanical work. And it was very clever, but
Speaker 1: obviously something that was best suited for a static display,
Speaker 1: not for a stage play. You know, you couldn't theory
Speaker 1: design a performance round this kind of technology. But think
Speaker 1: about that, the light would be pre set to go
Speaker 1: through this sequence, which means your performance would have to
Speaker 1: match the timing that was pre set on this Because
Speaker 1: you couldn't adjust the lighting on the fly. It was
Speaker 1: going to do what it was going to do because
Speaker 1: that's what the gears had been set to. So there
Speaker 1: was no real room for artistic improvisation. So this lighting
Speaker 1: system would not be ideal for a live performance. Instead,
Speaker 1: you would just probably end up missing your cue or
Speaker 1: being in the dark or whatever. But the ideas that
Speaker 1: King suggested would evolve to find their way into stage
Speaker 1: systems down the line. We'll talk more about those in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So the physical
Speaker 1: components that would move lights, clearly, they would evolve. But
Speaker 1: what about controlling banks of lights? Right, so we're stepping
Speaker 1: away from the system that would actually make the lights
Speaker 1: pan and tilt. Let's talk about the larger aspect. Instead
Speaker 1: of an individual light, you have to control a whole
Speaker 1: series of lights and make them do what you need
Speaker 1: them to do. How do you do that? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to have a light capable of changing
Speaker 1: direction or dimming or brightening or whatever, but it's another
Speaker 1: thing to just have a whole mess of these lights. Now, fortunately,
Speaker 1: there was another technology that was evolving around the same
Speaker 1: time as the tech that would allow us to make
Speaker 1: a lamp move physically, and that would be the control
Speaker 1: console or the electrical switchboard. And these switchboards were essentially
Speaker 1: circuit managers, with the early ones were just using resistance dimmers.
Speaker 1: So resistance refers to the tendency of a particular material
Speaker 1: or component to resist the flow of electricity through it.
Speaker 1: Either current or voltage just depends upon the nature of
Speaker 1: the resistor. Some materials have very little electrical resistance. They
Speaker 1: are good conductors. In other words, they very much allow
Speaker 1: facilitate electricity to flow through them. Some materials have very
Speaker 1: very high resistance. They serve as good insulators. Some materials
Speaker 1: or some components have variable resistance, which changes under certain conditions.
Speaker 1: I might have to do a full episode about variable
Speaker 1: resistors in the future because that does require a lot
Speaker 1: more explanation and would get us way off track. But
Speaker 1: the important thing to remember is that if you increase
Speaker 1: the resistance on a circuit, you can change the value
Speaker 1: of the current or voltage of that circuit. And with
Speaker 1: the case of resistance stemmers, we're really talking about the current.
Speaker 1: So the switchboard would allow an operator to manually switch
Speaker 1: a light circuit so that the circuit flowed through a resistor,
Speaker 1: and that meant the output would be reduced. The amount
Speaker 1: of current output by the circuit would reduce, which meant
Speaker 1: the electrically powered light the load on the circuit would
Speaker 1: mean that the lights would produce less light. They would
Speaker 1: dim in other words, so essentially the operator was denying
Speaker 1: the lamp the juice it needed to shine on like
Speaker 1: a crazy diamond. So resistance dimmers they're obsolete now, we
Speaker 1: don't use these anymore. They were used on Broadway Way
Speaker 1: Way longer than they were used in other parts of
Speaker 1: the theatrical world because Broadway was really stuck in its
Speaker 1: ways for a very long time. And also, like you
Speaker 1: had people who had spent a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: establishing these theaters, and they weren't super keen on the
Speaker 1: idea of having to rip out the systems that were
Speaker 1: working okay, just to upgrade them to something better, because
Speaker 1: that's money that they could use to I don't know,
Speaker 1: wlpe their cigars or whatever. I've got this weird idea
Speaker 1: of what theater owners are like. I don't know any personally,
Speaker 1: so it's all just based off the stereotypes scene in
Speaker 1: media anyway, they were a very early means of giving
Speaker 1: theatrical light operators some control over the lighting of scenes
Speaker 1: beyond just switching lights on or off. They could now
Speaker 1: dim the lights by using these resistance dimmers. And they
Speaker 1: date all the way back to the eighteen hundreds actually,
Speaker 1: but they would be used in Broadway really up to
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Kind of crazy that Broadway would rely
Speaker 1: on this old technology for so long while other theaters
Speaker 1: would upgrade much faster. Michael Mell, president of a company
Speaker 1: called Theater Design, has an article about lighting equipment in
Speaker 1: which he reveals that the dimmer switchboards on Broadway got
Speaker 1: the name piano boards because the actual board that housed
Speaker 1: these resistance stemmers kind of looked a little bit like
Speaker 1: an upright piano. So, as he writes, quote, running on
Speaker 1: DC current, each six kilowatt or three kilowatt quote unquote
Speaker 1: plate introduced resistance into the circuit. To dim the lights,
Speaker 1: a Broadway musical might use six PM boards, eighty two
Speaker 1: dimmers controlling a total of two hundred eighty two kilowatts
Speaker 1: of light, and five fourteen slash three kilowat boards, typically
Speaker 1: one stage hand operated two piano boards end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: as I said, control consoles would evolve over time, and
Speaker 1: by the mid twentieth century, at least outside of Broadway,
Speaker 1: you were looking at boards that would have dozens or
Speaker 1: even more than one hundred channels. So channels in this case,
Speaker 1: essentially it refers to separate dedicated circuit pathways. You can
Speaker 1: think of these as like alternate paths that electricity can
Speaker 1: take in order to do whatever it is needs to do. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously keeping all the channels organized is important. You know,
Speaker 1: knowing that channel one controls a specific light or bank
Speaker 1: of lights versus channel five. That's the difference between a
Speaker 1: scene being bathed in light appropriately or a scene being
Speaker 1: performed in darkness while an empty part of the stage
Speaker 1: is really well lit. You don't want that second thing
Speaker 1: happening unless it's meant for, like a comedy, like the
Speaker 1: Play that Goes Wrong or something. As early as nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, the Royal Opera House in London was using
Speaker 1: a Grand Master board, which had one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: channels that in turn could connect to up to one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five dimers. Obviously, some demers would share
Speaker 1: a single channel. By the nineteen fifties, lighting systems were
Speaker 1: making use of magnetic amplifiers rather than the old demer
Speaker 1: resistance method. Again assuming you weren't on Broadway. So now
Speaker 1: instead of putting a load on an electronic circuit to
Speaker 1: reduce current outflow, you could use an amplifier, and you
Speaker 1: would use an amplifier to boost a signal. If you
Speaker 1: boost a signal, then you'd get brighter lights, or you
Speaker 1: could ease off on the amplifier to allow a weaker
Speaker 1: signal to go for demmer lights. And one big advantage
Speaker 1: of this approach is that the board didn't have to
Speaker 1: be super close to the load. So the old resistance
Speaker 1: demers the ones that would control lights like on Broadway
Speaker 1: or whatever, typically these had to be fairly close to
Speaker 1: the lights that they controlled. So that meant that, you know,
Speaker 1: you had to have operators at various points around the
Speaker 1: stage to control that specific group of lights and to
Speaker 1: allow them to dim or brighten, and you couldn't have
Speaker 1: like one centralized light operator station. And it was a
Speaker 1: very collaborative effort in order to be able to control
Speaker 1: lights appropriately for performance. Now back to moving lights. A
Speaker 1: European company called Pani built a moving lighting system in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Some of the references I saw said
Speaker 1: it was Austrian company, some said German. And I tried
Speaker 1: to find more information about this, to get actual details
Speaker 1: about how did the system work, how is it invented?
Speaker 1: And I could find a lot of presentations and articles
Speaker 1: that mentioned Pani and mentioned the moving lights, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have a whole lot of details, Like I couldn't
Speaker 1: really follow that up with information about who was responsible
Speaker 1: for creating the system and how did it work, you know,
Speaker 1: or how a controller could provide input that would control
Speaker 1: the movement of the connected theatrical lights. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: that we're talking about the nineteen fifties here, where maybe
Speaker 1: you would have like an electronic panel in front of
Speaker 1: you with dials and faders and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and that by changing these controls you could you manipulate
Speaker 1: these lights without having to actually set your hands on
Speaker 1: the lights themselves. But you know, we're also still talking
Speaker 1: about an era where computerized controllers are still a couple
Speaker 1: of decades off, because in the nineteen fifties, you weren't
Speaker 1: using computerized systems. Computers in the nineteen fifties, were these
Speaker 1: these systems that took up entire floors of buildings. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't have one just to use for a stage production. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if the Ponte lights had any automated
Speaker 1: aspects to them, or if truly it was just electronic
Speaker 1: movement systems, but a human operator had to manually change
Speaker 1: everything around, Like I don't know if there were any
Speaker 1: preset from those eras. I mean, later Ponti lights definitely
Speaker 1: have precas, but at that time I just don't know.
Speaker 1: So it did, provide, however, a lot more flexibility and
Speaker 1: nuance for lighting technicians in either case. So we've gone
Speaker 1: from being able to control a very simple process like
Speaker 1: brightening or dimming a light, to being able to move
Speaker 1: lights to shine on specific parts of the stage, all
Speaker 1: from a control system, rather than having to have someone
Speaker 1: stationed at each individual light. In nineteen fifty five, a
Speaker 1: fellow named George Charles Eisenower. That's iz noo r, and
Speaker 1: it's pronounced eisen Hour. From what I understand, he founded
Speaker 1: a consulting company for theater design. So he also had
Speaker 1: a prestigious career as a professor at Yale, where he
Speaker 1: taught things like lighting and theater design. And he worked
Speaker 1: on innovating in that field. He designed electronic dimming systems
Speaker 1: for theaters. He patented a lot of different technologies over
Speaker 1: his time, and his control system would simplify operations so
Speaker 1: that a single lighting operator could control all the lighting
Speaker 1: in a theatrical house, thus eliminating the need for having
Speaker 1: all these individual stations where you would have an operator
Speaker 1: handling two banks of resistant stemmers. So a huge, huge
Speaker 1: leap forward. Also, from what I understand, Eisenhower was ken
Speaker 1: tankeris is probably the wrong word. He had very exacting standards,
Speaker 1: and apparently some people found him incredibly useful and helpful
Speaker 1: to work with, and other folks really clashed with him.
Speaker 1: So he's kind of a love or hate kind of guy.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, I never met him. As a professor,
Speaker 1: Eisenhower oversaw countless efforts to create better and more versatile
Speaker 1: moving lights. And these stage lights could again pan and tilt,
Speaker 1: and they use electric motors servos essentially to do the
Speaker 1: work of turning the light or tilting the light in
Speaker 1: specific directions according to the control inputs. Now back to
Speaker 1: the control board. One thing that engineers figured out how
Speaker 1: to do is to make preset boards, So we have
Speaker 1: to think of the whole control schema in order for
Speaker 1: this to make sense. At the top, you've got the
Speaker 1: master control board, right, This is the board that determines
Speaker 1: which pathway the various circuits form in order to get
Speaker 1: a specific result. But subject to the master control board
Speaker 1: could be these preset boards. And as the name suggests,
Speaker 1: a preset board could be pre set to specific values
Speaker 1: so that when the master control board switched power to
Speaker 1: that specific preset, you would get the effect that was
Speaker 1: programmed on that preset. So let's say you're doing a
Speaker 1: theatrical production, and let's say that you know you've got
Speaker 1: your script and you see then the script, there's a
Speaker 1: scene that's going to be set in a darkened bedroom.
Speaker 1: That the rest of this show is going to be
Speaker 1: very bright and colorful, but you're going to have one
Speaker 1: sequence in a bedroom where it's supposed to be dim. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly you're still going to need lights because you want
Speaker 1: to convey to the audience that it's a dark in bedroom,
Speaker 1: but they still need to see what's going on. You
Speaker 1: can't just have a dark stage. I mean you could,
Speaker 1: but then this discussion doesn't matter. So you want to
Speaker 1: give the feeling that it's a darkened bedroom without it
Speaker 1: actually being so dark that no one can see anything.
Speaker 1: So you spend some time during tech. Tech is the
Speaker 1: period where you are setting up the lights and the
Speaker 1: sound and everything for your play. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most frustrating parts of being an actor. Probably even more
Speaker 1: frustrating for stage managers and directors, but it's frustrating as
Speaker 1: an actor because it means that you are going through
Speaker 1: the play seen by scene, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stopping and starting because the tech crew is trying to
Speaker 1: get the technical aspect, the lighting and everything at just
Speaker 1: the right levels to tell the story that they want
Speaker 1: to tell. And as an actor, you're sitting there like,
Speaker 1: but I just want to say my lines and walk
Speaker 1: to where I need to walk and look pretty. But
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to do that because you got to
Speaker 1: be part of the team. Actors hate being part of
Speaker 1: the team. I'm making a lot of generalizations, but I've
Speaker 1: also been in a lot of productions anyway. So what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're getting your lights set in the
Speaker 1: right position, the right brightness, the right color temperature. You
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the scene is lit the
Speaker 1: way that you really intended. And then once you do that,
Speaker 1: then you have it set to one of these preset boards,
Speaker 1: which essentially saves all those settings. Essentially says, all right, these,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen lights out of fifty are going to
Speaker 1: be active for this scene. They're all going to be
Speaker 1: in these specific directions and brightness, et cetera. And then
Speaker 1: when you use a fader on the master control board,
Speaker 1: you can shift to that preset bank of lights and
Speaker 1: the lighting scheme that you created for that scene will
Speaker 1: come up, and then the other lighting will come down
Speaker 1: and voil a, you've got the transition. So preset boards
Speaker 1: typically would have multiple banks that as collections of settings,
Speaker 1: so you could just designate different banks of lighting settings
Speaker 1: for different scenes, and you can use controls like a
Speaker 1: cross fader to shift from one bank of settings to another,
Speaker 1: typically in a really gradual way, so that the transition
Speaker 1: isn't jarring. Unless that's actually your intent. You could do
Speaker 1: a jarring lighting transition that is specifically meant to draw
Speaker 1: attention to itself. That is a valid way of expressing
Speaker 1: art through light as well, but obviously you have to
Speaker 1: be intentional with it. If it's done by accident, then
Speaker 1: it just kind of detracts from the experience. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to take another quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're going to be talking more
Speaker 1: about the rock and or roll world. Okay, so before
Speaker 1: the break, you know that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: rock and roll. And that's because rock and roll shows
Speaker 1: would take lighting systems and kick them into overdrive. Because
Speaker 1: it's one thing to design these lighting systems for theaters,
Speaker 1: but innovation in theater is a very gradual thing generally speaking,
Speaker 1: like from a technical perspective anyway, but rock and roll
Speaker 1: would really push things much harder because while you did
Speaker 1: have these theatrical houses making big strides and innovation, you know,
Speaker 1: their goal was really to just create specific lighting effects
Speaker 1: for specific scenes, and the lighting operator's job was just
Speaker 1: to switch the lights from scene to scene to get
Speaker 1: the right effect. I don't mean to diminish lighting operators jobs.
Speaker 1: They're very important, but you know, they had a very
Speaker 1: well defined set of parameters they were working inside rock
Speaker 1: and roll, though, that would really open up new opportunities
Speaker 1: and challenges. So by this time, we're getting up into
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies and rock acts were really starting
Speaker 1: to fill out larger venues. So it's not just clubs
Speaker 1: and bars and smaller theaters that we're talking about. We're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, maybe huge concert halls or really
Speaker 1: we're getting into the sporting arena era of rock and roll,
Speaker 1: like when bands would fill out stadiums and not every
Speaker 1: place would be fitted to provide sound and lighting to
Speaker 1: a big, theatrical rock and roll concert. That's not what
Speaker 1: they were intended for, and so it meant that you
Speaker 1: had to repurpose the space to get the effect you wanted,
Speaker 1: and that opened up the opportunity for engineers to create
Speaker 1: new companies that specifically we're catering to touring music acts,
Speaker 1: because it was such a hassle if you were on
Speaker 1: tour and your production team had to sit there and say, okay,
Speaker 1: well we've just arrived in Dallas, let's find out what
Speaker 1: sort of equipment we can rent in order to get
Speaker 1: the sound and the lights that we need. Then we're
Speaker 1: going to move and go to Houston and we're going
Speaker 1: to do it all over again. Then we're going to
Speaker 1: go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We're going to do it
Speaker 1: all over again, which meant that the shows weren't consistent, right,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't have access to the same equipment, either
Speaker 1: sound or lights, and so you couldn't create a specific
Speaker 1: effect that kind of defined that tour. It gave rise
Speaker 1: to companies that would essentially be hired to provide sound
Speaker 1: and lighting for a band as it went through its
Speaker 1: whole tour. So the whole setup would travel from town
Speaker 1: to town. It wouldn't just be you know, go there,
Speaker 1: find what you can, cobble it together, and then break
Speaker 1: it down and return it. You'd be bringing your gear
Speaker 1: from one show to the next. And this was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge undertaking still is I mean, it's enormous undertaking to
Speaker 1: arrive in town ahead of the band, set everything up,
Speaker 1: test it, make sure it all works, operate it during
Speaker 1: the show, break it down after the show, and then
Speaker 1: do it all over again. And because there was this
Speaker 1: really healthy sense of competition in the rock and roll
Speaker 1: space in particular, artists naturally wanted that their tour to
Speaker 1: be more impressive than say that other band's tour, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're a part of a big band, you want
Speaker 1: your show to really be the one that defines the
Speaker 1: rock and roll experience, not someone else's show. So you
Speaker 1: also wanted to be bigger than your last tour. You
Speaker 1: wanted everything to be built upon the past. So if
Speaker 1: you're in Van Halen, you definitely want your show to
Speaker 1: be bigger and more impressive than the one that Boston
Speaker 1: put on the band Boston that is, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: more than a feeling, so to speak, it is a need.
Speaker 1: But to achieve these lofty goals of rocking the butts
Speaker 1: off your audience with sounds and sites that get positively overwhelming,
Speaker 1: it meant that the tech companies that were setting up
Speaker 1: these systems had to keep pushing for new approaches. Right.
Speaker 1: You had to solve for big problems like you weren't
Speaker 1: in the same space night after night, So you couldn't
Speaker 1: just set it and forget it, right. You couldn't just
Speaker 1: create an experience for a show and then that's good.
Speaker 1: You're done. Your work is you just have to operate
Speaker 1: and now you're finished. So another thing was that relying
Speaker 1: on standard theatrical lights meant that you started to reach
Speaker 1: a physical limitation of the venues themselves, because the rigs
Speaker 1: you would create sooner or later would get too heavy
Speaker 1: to be supported from the venues ceiling. By rigs. That
Speaker 1: means essentially the scaffolding that's holding up all those lights.
Speaker 1: If you're loading up on more and more lights, as
Speaker 1: your systems get far more complicated and you're trying to
Speaker 1: get these incredible concert effects, eventually you reach the limit
Speaker 1: of what the venue itself can physically support and you
Speaker 1: have to start thinking smaller, or at least think lighter. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why weight was such a challenge
Speaker 1: had to do with color of lights. So with some
Speaker 1: lighting systems for theatrical lighting, if you're lighting a theater
Speaker 1: and you need to adjust the color or the temperature
Speaker 1: of a light in order to get a specific effect,
Speaker 1: maybe you want the light to be like natural sunlight. Well,
Speaker 1: the lights put out by certain types of bulbs doesn't
Speaker 1: look like sunlight. So typically you would use a gel,
Speaker 1: or maybe a collection of lights with different gels on them.
Speaker 1: The gel refers to a thin sheet of colored material
Speaker 1: that you mount in front of a light, so the
Speaker 1: light passes through the gel and then hits the stage.
Speaker 1: So back in the nineteen fifties, a lot of the
Speaker 1: gels were made from acetate, but later the industry would
Speaker 1: shift to other like polycarbonates with a higher melting point
Speaker 1: because the lights they were using were really freaking hot,
Speaker 1: and even acetate would melt at the higher temperatures, and
Speaker 1: even with materials that have very high tolerance for heat,
Speaker 1: they would have a limited life span depending upon the
Speaker 1: shade of light they were showing. So some gels that
Speaker 1: were like really heavily saturated, so like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of color in this gel, they often had shorter life spans.
Speaker 1: They would you know, fade or melt after just a
Speaker 1: couple of uses, or maybe even after a single show.
Speaker 1: Light with shorter wavelengths also had this issue, so like
Speaker 1: your blues and purples, for example, and you would have
Speaker 1: to switch these out much more frequently, so you might
Speaker 1: just use a you know, a single gel for a
Speaker 1: single light. So that also meant that if you wanted
Speaker 1: to use lots of different colors in your show, well
Speaker 1: you had to have a dedicated lamp for each color
Speaker 1: for that particular area of your lighting rig. So depending
Speaker 1: on the number of colors you wanted to represent, that
Speaker 1: multiplies the number of lights you need to use, right,
Speaker 1: because you would have certain individual lights dedicated just for
Speaker 1: blue and then others for green and others for orange.
Speaker 1: And others for red and others for white. And that
Speaker 1: adds tons of lights to your lighting rig, and that
Speaker 1: means adding a lot of more weight. Now, with all
Speaker 1: these additional lights, you also need increasingly complex control systems
Speaker 1: as well as cooling systems. Like some of these lights
Speaker 1: get super dup or hot, and it can be a
Speaker 1: fire hazard if you don't have ways of keeping things cool.
Speaker 1: It's interesting some companies actually experimented with water cooling their lights,
Speaker 1: but engineers and electricians were like, this might not be
Speaker 1: the best idea to introduce water to electrical systems that
Speaker 1: could potentially short out and then you could even you know,
Speaker 1: actually cause a fire as opposed to prevent one. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that would help with this development early on,
Speaker 1: before the development of multicolor LEDs anyway, was the development
Speaker 1: of dichroic filters. So these filters, they are lenses. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they look like glass lenses, but they have these layers
Speaker 1: inside them that ultimately allow certain wavelengths of light to
Speaker 1: pass through and reflect other wavelengths of light. And that
Speaker 1: means that you get different colors to come through depending
Speaker 1: upon the nature of the filter you're using. And these
Speaker 1: would not fade or melt like glass is far more
Speaker 1: resilient than polycarbonate is. So if you used a motorized
Speaker 1: system that could raise or lower these filters or combine
Speaker 1: the filters, then you could actually change the color of
Speaker 1: lights using a single lamp. Like the lamp itself would be,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the normal color would be. So let's
Speaker 1: just say it's giving out white light. But you could
Speaker 1: have these filters that pop up or or retract down
Speaker 1: through a motorized system to go in front of the
Speaker 1: light and then change the color of light. And that
Speaker 1: means that you could have a single light represent many
Speaker 1: different colors and thus reduced the complexity and the weight
Speaker 1: of the system. Right, it doesn't You don't need all
Speaker 1: these dedicated lights for specific colors. Now. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: innovations and lamp size were helping a lot too. So
Speaker 1: there were like tungsten and halogen lights that led up
Speaker 1: to this, but then after that were much smaller lights
Speaker 1: discharge lights for example, that could still put out a
Speaker 1: pretty decent intensity of light, but they dramatically reduced the
Speaker 1: size that you needed. So the lamps themselves got much smaller,
Speaker 1: and that would allow for more varied lighting effects as well,
Speaker 1: and that was good for the folks who are shredding
Speaker 1: on the stage. I also, you know, if you've been
Speaker 1: listening to tech stuff for a long time, there is
Speaker 1: a word that we used to use a lot more
Speaker 1: frequently on the show, but still plays a part in
Speaker 1: later episodes, which is convergence. Right, this convergence of different
Speaker 1: factors that because of all those different factors, we would
Speaker 1: get this new thing. So in this case, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other advancements that were going on in
Speaker 1: technology that were converging that would help create the modern
Speaker 1: amazing stage lighting system. For one thing, the development of
Speaker 1: the transistor in the nineteen fifties led to solid state
Speaker 1: electronics and integrated circuits. I cannot express how huge that
Speaker 1: is or really how small ironically, because it would lead
Speaker 1: to miniaturization. Right, Suddenly, all this complex circuitry that used
Speaker 1: to require physical components connected to physical wires and you
Speaker 1: would just have like this mass of wires and cables
Speaker 1: and stuff. Now you could have solid state electronics takeover
Speaker 1: a lot of that and reduce the amount of space
Speaker 1: needed dramatically, and that would be a huge help these
Speaker 1: lighting systems. It also meant that computer technology was advancing rapidly.
Speaker 1: Once we got to miniaturization, the brakes were off. That's
Speaker 1: when we start getting into things like Gordon Moore making
Speaker 1: his observation that every two years or so you could
Speaker 1: double the number of components on a square inch of
Speaker 1: silicon chip, and thus effectively you could double your computer
Speaker 1: processing every two years or so. That's where we get
Speaker 1: Moore's law. Well, that same thing meant that the introduction
Speaker 1: of semiconductors and integrated circuits would open up huge new
Speaker 1: opportunities in computerized systems in general, and control systems for
Speaker 1: lights would be one of many ways we would see
Speaker 1: that manifest Now, going back to Michael Mell, who I
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, he says that the first computer light
Speaker 1: board for stagecraft on Broadway. So remember Broadway lagged behind
Speaker 1: the rest of the theatrical industry, but the first one
Speaker 1: that was a computerized system for controlling light was for
Speaker 1: the debut production of A chorus Line, a musical that
Speaker 1: I personally despise but of course line, which debuted in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. The system used was called an EDILS
Speaker 1: eight EDI in this case stands for Electronics Diversified. That
Speaker 1: was the company that made this, and it was created
Speaker 1: by a guy named Gordon Pearlman in North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: it consisted of a computer, a control board, and a
Speaker 1: terminal display and the whole thing was like the size
Speaker 1: of a desk. It had one hundred channels and Melsa's
Speaker 1: ninety six of them were used for a chorus line.
Speaker 1: And it cost a cool one hundred thousand dollars back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. If we adjust that for inflation,
Speaker 1: it means that it would set you back about six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars today, So very expensive system for controlling
Speaker 1: your lights. The EDILS eight incorporated a different computer that
Speaker 1: was created by the Digital Equipment Company or dec Deck,
Speaker 1: and it was the DP eight mini computer. So the
Speaker 1: LS eight was a twelve bit system that probably sounds
Speaker 1: odd to a lot of y'all out there, because often
Speaker 1: we talk about systems that are eight bit or sixteen bit,
Speaker 1: or a thirty two bit or sixty four bit, and
Speaker 1: you see how that pattern goes right eight eight times
Speaker 1: to his sixteen sixteen times to his thirty two, thirty
Speaker 1: two times to his sixty four, et cetera. But this
Speaker 1: was a twelve bit system and it was made back
Speaker 1: in the days before we gravitated toward the whole eight sixteen,
Speaker 1: thirty two, et cetera approach. It also had sixteen whole
Speaker 1: kilobytes of memory. That's very very little memory, being very
Speaker 1: facetious when I say sixteen whole kilobytes, but it was
Speaker 1: sufficient to store the lighting cues for a show. And
Speaker 1: the memory was also non volatile. That's important. It meant
Speaker 1: that when you turn the system off and then you
Speaker 1: turn it back on again, the preset cues that you
Speaker 1: had stored in its memory would still be there. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't be wiped clean. And that's good because apparently it
Speaker 1: took quite some time to get the system up and running.
Speaker 1: For programming, there was a thirty two instruction boot sequence
Speaker 1: for the system, and you would have to load the
Speaker 1: operating system in. You couldn't. It didn't just automatically go
Speaker 1: into boot right. You had to feed the operating system
Speaker 1: into this this system, and that was on paper tape.
Speaker 1: So you would feed paper tape with the operating system
Speaker 1: into this machine and then it would be ready to go.
Speaker 1: And that whole process would take like half an hour.
Speaker 1: So if you think your boot up time is slow
Speaker 1: at least you weren't using the EDILS eight, but the
Speaker 1: system could store all of the course line's lighting cues.
Speaker 1: The actual operation of the show was not automatic, however,
Speaker 1: It's not like the computer was watching and listening to
Speaker 1: the show and then switching lighting at the right time.
Speaker 1: So instead you would have a human operator who would
Speaker 1: mann the console and when appropriate, would initiate the next
Speaker 1: lighting cue using cross faders and other actual manual controls,
Speaker 1: but all the information for those cues would be in
Speaker 1: the system. So essentially, the operator saying all right, I'm
Speaker 1: going to Q number fifty six and the lights would
Speaker 1: all come on for Q fifty six. All the lights
Speaker 1: that are not involved in Q fifty six would come down,
Speaker 1: and the operator wouldn't have to manually adjust all these things.
Speaker 1: They would just go from Q to Q, which still
Speaker 1: is a big job. It's not I don't mean to
Speaker 1: say that it was easy, but it was definitely easier
Speaker 1: than manually controlling everything live every single night. So it's
Speaker 1: still pretty cool that that came out as early as
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, even though again Broadway was lagging. So
Speaker 1: it was this convergence of technologies and trends in technology
Speaker 1: that would allow for the spectacle of moving lights and
Speaker 1: live shows. And with all that tech, you still had artistry, right,
Speaker 1: You still had a designer would have to determine what
Speaker 1: lighting effects the show would need and for what purpose,
Speaker 1: and how to highlight things that were going on on stage.
Speaker 1: They would have to work with engineers to achieve those
Speaker 1: effects and then save the settings presets, and the system
Speaker 1: would store these presets and then handle those transitions from
Speaker 1: one set to the next. Allegedly it was during a
Speaker 1: demonstration with a company called Vera Light, which came out
Speaker 1: of a company called Showco where you know, they specialized
Speaker 1: in doing these lighting rigs for rock and roll shows.
Speaker 1: And supposedly it was during a demonstration where it was
Speaker 1: purely by accident, where they showed a transition where all
Speaker 1: the lights were still on, because typically you would bring
Speaker 1: the lights down, go to a transition where the lights
Speaker 1: would reposition, and then bring the lights back up again
Speaker 1: and so then you would get your new effect, but
Speaker 1: instead the lights were on the whole time when they positioned.
Speaker 1: You reposition from one set to the next, and that
Speaker 1: effect blew everyone away. They were like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: all the lights are still on while they sweep across
Speaker 1: the stage in this dramatic fashion, and so reportedly something
Speaker 1: that happened by accident would end up becoming like a
Speaker 1: best practice's mainstay for concerts moving forward, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: when we get up to a like what I saw
Speaker 1: over this past weekend, as various lights were sweeping across
Speaker 1: the band and the crowd. Now this show's growing long,
Speaker 1: I got a ton of other things I could talk about, Like, obviously,
Speaker 1: we could talk about the development of LEDs, because that
Speaker 1: would make a huge difference in both size and color
Speaker 1: for stage lights. We could talk about mirror lights. Mirror
Speaker 1: lights use a mirror to reflect light from a lamp
Speaker 1: onto a stage. Big advantage of mirror lights is that
Speaker 1: you don't have to move the whole lamp to redirect
Speaker 1: the light. You just have to move the mirror, so
Speaker 1: the mirror can be much smaller than the lamp is,
Speaker 1: which also means you can move it faster, so you
Speaker 1: can get these really quick transitions where a light moves
Speaker 1: from one queue to the next super fast, and it
Speaker 1: can be a really dramatic effect for the audience. Lots
Speaker 1: of these things would play in but I probably would
Speaker 1: need to do a second episode to really get into it.
Speaker 1: So rather than rattling on about lighting and lighting control
Speaker 1: systems for another, you know, forty minutes, let's wrap this
Speaker 1: one up. Maybe we'll revisit and start talking about some
Speaker 1: of these specific technologies in greater detail. But I'm worried
Speaker 1: about narrow casting beyond what I'm already doing, so we're
Speaker 1: going to wrap this up. I hope you're all well.
Speaker 1: If you have the opportunity to go and see a
Speaker 1: rock and roll show, you should take it. Like you know,
Speaker 1: they're fun and seeing the technical display I think is
Speaker 1: really fascinating. You know, even if you're not losing yourself
Speaker 1: in the moment with the music and the crowd and everything.
Speaker 1: The technical aspects are really phenomenal at shows these days,
Speaker 1: at least if you're going to one that's like a
Speaker 1: medium or larger sized venue, check them out. It's really
Speaker 1: interesting way to see how technology can marry with artistry
Speaker 1: to create effects. I think that that's just a fascinating thing.
Speaker 1: And I will talk to you again really soon. Tech
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