Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Tuesday, October 09, 2018
PRG's GroundControl Followspot System Wins Engineering Emmy Award
Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Production Resource Group LLC, (PRG), a world provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, announces it won a 2018 Engineering Emmy Award for its PRG GroundControl Followspot System.
4 comments:
Sidney R.
said...
Award shows often brush over the technical awards, but this article explains how deserving these winners truly are. This engineering Emmy Award was presented for Production Resource Group’s (PRG) extremely innovative follow spot. Often times in a production, a designer wishes to light a certain performer, without the beam passing over a border, or masking in general. The placement of follow spots is essential to how well it functions. Yet sometimes you simply cannot place a light in “that inconvenient corner of the catwalk” because the piece is bulky, or the area is unsafe for the crewmember. PRG’s new automated follow spot solves all of those issues. The remote operation (up to 2,000 feet away!) and sleek design set this piece apart from the others. Space is such an important part in the theatre—both onstage and off—that if you can save any, you should. The implementation of this technology makes the fight for space a whole lot easier.
Wow this is amazing. I have so many questions and I’d love to try it out at some point. It seems like this would be amazing for smaller or even experimental theaters, where the space is limited or very difficult to navigate. I wonder how much it costs and if would be feasible for any company, other than corporate, to afford such a system. I’m also curious how accurate/what the lag time is on the monitor and has steep the learning curve is. This could open up so many doors for condensing the amount of space used for a production. It could also streamline people management as I imagine this could help keep more people on the ground and eliminate the need for a complicated spot set up. This technology completely opens up the doors for more digital control of the theater. It’ll be interesting to see how this withstands time and if this affects the whole world of lighting or if it only caters to a few types of productions.
PRG more than deserves to win the Engineering Emmy Award for their GroundControl Followspot System. I believe that ground control has completely changed the game when it comes to follow spot operation. The biggest reason is how small of a footprint in the rigging an intelligent light takes vs. a traditional follow spot. This has always been something difficult to deal with in theater but also in events. When a client requests one or more follow spots for an event I am being hired for, I immediately start thinking about where it might go. With most of the spaces I’m in, there is little to no rigging points. This eliminates being able to hang a spot chair from a truss. My head then goes to being able to put a couple platforms in the house for follow spots and operators. I also have to think about possibly needing more height for them and having to rent scaffolding. This system allows you to only hand a moving light fixture then put the operator up to 2000 feet away. This means I can hang the light and then put the operator in another room of the venue or in a trailer if working outside. While it is very expensive to use for events right now, hopefully, one day it will become more affordable.
It’s extremely exciting that this technology is picking up the traction it deserves. I remember reading about this technology on this blog a either last year or the year before. Not only does it eliminate the space concerns and some of the seat kills, but it decreases the number of spotlight trained people needed, which is especially a problem for small tours where there may not be skilled spot ops at the tours location. Also, it can simplify rigging, making it easier to tour with and giving the designer more creative freedom than they otherwise would have had. As this technology becomes more prevalent in TV and concerts, I wonder if it will start to make a bigger shift into theater. I’m curious to see if this is the prevalent technology for spotlights in the future, or if we will stick to the more traditional version with a spotlight operator.
4 comments:
Award shows often brush over the technical awards, but this article explains how deserving these winners truly are. This engineering Emmy Award was presented for Production Resource Group’s (PRG) extremely innovative follow spot. Often times in a production, a designer wishes to light a certain performer, without the beam passing over a border, or masking in general. The placement of follow spots is essential to how well it functions. Yet sometimes you simply cannot place a light in “that inconvenient corner of the catwalk” because the piece is bulky, or the area is unsafe for the crewmember. PRG’s new automated follow spot solves all of those issues. The remote operation (up to 2,000 feet away!) and sleek design set this piece apart from the others. Space is such an important part in the theatre—both onstage and off—that if you can save any, you should. The implementation of this technology makes the fight for space a whole lot easier.
Wow this is amazing. I have so many questions and I’d love to try it out at some point. It seems like this would be amazing for smaller or even experimental theaters, where the space is limited or very difficult to navigate. I wonder how much it costs and if would be feasible for any company, other than corporate, to afford such a system. I’m also curious how accurate/what the lag time is on the monitor and has steep the learning curve is. This could open up so many doors for condensing the amount of space used for a production. It could also streamline people management as I imagine this could help keep more people on the ground and eliminate the need for a complicated spot set up. This technology completely opens up the doors for more digital control of the theater. It’ll be interesting to see how this withstands time and if this affects the whole world of lighting or if it only caters to a few types of productions.
PRG more than deserves to win the Engineering Emmy Award for their GroundControl Followspot System. I believe that ground control has completely changed the game when it comes to follow spot operation. The biggest reason is how small of a footprint in the rigging an intelligent light takes vs. a traditional follow spot. This has always been something difficult to deal with in theater but also in events. When a client requests one or more follow spots for an event I am being hired for, I immediately start thinking about where it might go. With most of the spaces I’m in, there is little to no rigging points. This eliminates being able to hang a spot chair from a truss. My head then goes to being able to put a couple platforms in the house for follow spots and operators. I also have to think about possibly needing more height for them and having to rent scaffolding. This system allows you to only hand a moving light fixture then put the operator up to 2000 feet away. This means I can hang the light and then put the operator in another room of the venue or in a trailer if working outside. While it is very expensive to use for events right now, hopefully, one day it will become more affordable.
It’s extremely exciting that this technology is picking up the traction it deserves. I remember reading about this technology on this blog a either last year or the year before. Not only does it eliminate the space concerns and some of the seat kills, but it decreases the number of spotlight trained people needed, which is especially a problem for small tours where there may not be skilled spot ops at the tours location. Also, it can simplify rigging, making it easier to tour with and giving the designer more creative freedom than they otherwise would have had. As this technology becomes more prevalent in TV and concerts, I wonder if it will start to make a bigger shift into theater. I’m curious to see if this is the prevalent technology for spotlights in the future, or if we will stick to the more traditional version with a spotlight operator.
Post a Comment