Monday, August 11, 2008

By Request of CH

So this week, I'm going to begin every blog with a Beijing side-note in honor of the Olympics, which I'm basically watching non-stop except for a short Venture Brothers break last night -- you gotta make time for the Venture Bros. Go Team Venture!


Anyway...

As many of you know, CH held the Olympic opening ceremony hostage from me, b/c he was working til late on a Friday-Saturday gig, and refused to give the Opening Ceremony anything less than his full and completely intense attention -- he was on the Salt Lake City and Athens lighting team, so he takes these things much more seriously than say, anybody else I know.

Unfortunately, this meant that I, the (self-anointed) queen of pop culture, was forced to say no, time after time, as people asked me if I had seen the apparently spec-frickin-tacular opening ceremonies.

In all fairness to CH, he did tell me that I could watch it alone, but as all people who are partnered up with a lighting designer can tell you, that's not the same.

So, I had to wait til Sunday, to see the opening ceremonies. But man oh man, was it worth the wait. I've never seen anything like it, and though I've never really desired to go back to Beijing, I have never wished more that I could witness an event in person.

It was also good that I waited for CH, b/c I kept asking how all the super-clever light effects worked, and apparently it was all stuff he had seen before, only on a much, much, much bigger scale and done with a ton more human labor.

I found the whole spectacle very inspiring and the next time I have a few million to spare, I'm going to do up our entire house in LED screens. Wait for it...

On another CH note, he requested that I update last week's music blog re: European lighting. Basically, I posted the new(ish) Yelle vid and said it was a great example of how CH says that Europeans do lighting differently, and he says that's not what he meant. Here's the update that I attached to the original blog out of context:

UPDATE: Have been informed by CH that this is not what he meant when he was talking about Europeans and lighting. Apparently, one company owns the patent rights to LED technology here in The States, which makes it prohibitively expensive for our event shows to go all out lighting-wise. Europe doesn't have that patent-problem, so it's relatively cheap for them to go really big. But apparently, the face of American award shows and the like will change as we know it, when the patent runs out in 2010. So wait for it...

Meanwhile here's an example of what CH is talking about when he says the Europeans go there with their lights:


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