Category: Live Entertainment

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Passions And Alignment

It’s funny how life works. The highs and lows, ebb and flows are what makes life interesting.

My first career was in live production. Lighting, Sound, Rigging. Doing concerts, theater and conventions. I honestly very much loved that career. I spent the last five years of that career as the Technical Director for a fairly large theater, with a mid-sized events arena, located in a smaller market.

The problem was, being in a smaller market, there was a fairly low cap to my income potential. Eventually, my wife and I realized that in order to make the income I had projected for myself required a change, either moving to a larger market, or changing careers. The biggest downside to moving to a larger market was I would inevitably end up working on the road, which isn’t a great environment for a family, plus my wife prefers the size of community we live in.

Since I had been involved with programming since the third grade, furthering my education in this area was a natural fit. The college I ended up attending required at the time a minor for all students going after a Bachelors degree. While many of my Computer Science compatriots chose a Math minor (which only required a handful of extra classes), I viewed my degree from an investment standpoint. I figured if I was having an issue getting a job as a Software Engineer, there was very little chance of getting a job as a Mathematician, especially with a Math minor. So, I did a minor in Network Administration, figuring there would always be someone needing a computer fixed.

This choice ended up being a wise one. I finished my degree two months after the dot com bubble burst, pretty much killing the software industry in the Unites States. Between 2002 and 2009, I worked as a Software Engineer for about two and a half years. The rest of the time was as a Network Administrator (a few times working as a Software Engineer who also did Network Administration for the companies I worked for).

In 2009, I was asked to help build a pirate themed restaurant. At the end of my live entertainment career, I was able to help build a theme park that was installed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I worked on two contracts for that park. The first was doing lighting, audio, video integration and show control for a “haunted mine ride”. I received a second contract doing lighting, audio and show control throughout all the walkways of the park, and a few specific themed areas.

With that experience, I was able to design the show segments, lighting, audio, special effects and show control for the restaurant. Several of the special effects I build were using small, discrete controllers, based off of the Basic Stamp processor. I had never done this before, and was an enjoyable learning experience.

After a few years working with the themed restaurant, thing started to slow down, and I needed to find other work. I did some contract mobile programming in the interim, but finally went after a full time development job. I ended up getting hired by an airline as a C# developer.

After working here a few years, I ended up transitioning to another company as a PHP Software Engineer. Through some individuals I had worked with previously, I ended up, on the side, starting to build displays for a local Children’s Museum. The museum has a great staff that builds and conceived most of the displays. They use me to add electronics, or build really odd projects. As part of this, I learned how to build interactivity with devices like Arduino’s and Raspberry Pi’s.

In the last six months, the company I was working for and I split ways. I used my side contracts to bring in income during this period (plus a descent severance package), but eventually, my wife insisted I get a regular job again (at some point I’ll do a post on the contracting mindset vs the employee mindset). I ended up as the I.T. Lead Instructor and I.T. Manager for a tech college.

A month and a half after I took this job, the corporation that owns the college (and several others) made a shift in their approach. In short, they decided to no longer take on any more on-ground students, and moving all new students to the online university that is part of their portfolio. They made the commitment to support all current students through graduation, which game my position a specific timeline.

During this time, I’ve been waiting for another project I’ve been helping to design to officially start-up. That project is still coming, but there is no specific timeline yet, and my job here ends in a little over two months. Once again, my wife was becoming very uncomfortable with the unknowns coming up.

Here’s where the stars aligned. My mother, who is also a Software Engineer, has been working for a trucking company for many years, helping with devices to reprogram the vehicle computer (modern version of chipping a vehicle). Several years ago, they came out with a device not intended for deals, but for end users. As part of the project, I was able to design and build a web platform to allow updating of the devices.

After the project, a discussion was had on the possibility of bringing me on full time. My mother was told due to history in the company, they did not like to hire family members. Bummer. I really like the project, and the people I worked with.

Flash forward, and a few weeks ago, they ended up letting go one of their developers. A few days ago, my mothers manager had a discussion with her on finding someone that would be able to program on these custom chip devices. She reminded them I could pick it up pretty quick, but they had said no before. Due to my background, my history with the company, timing, and just plain dumb luck, within a day I was brought in for an interview, and offered a job.

As one of my friends put it, part of it was odd skills they needed, but also was the connection to get me in the door. There’s a lot to be said for that. This is where networking is so important. Don’t pass up networking opportunities, because it is much easier to find a job or a project when you already have relationships.

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Entertainment Technology Convergence

For those who came to this blog from the I.T. industry, the focus on the entertainment industry may seem a bit odd. What most people that don’t work behind the scene’s in the Live Entertainment industry is that the technologies used have become more and more tightly integrated with an I.T. based backbone.

When the Disney Corporation built Disney’s Animal Kingdom park in the late 90’s, they used a new technology (at the time) by the company Digigram called CobraNet. For the uninitiated, CobraNet was an early Audio Over IP technology that allowed up to 64 audio channels to run over computer network segment.

A few years later, when Disney built Tokyo DisneySeas, they put in a gigabit backplane throughout the park, specifically to handle the standard data as well as CobraNet traffic. This allows Disney to have a central control room, and push out all the audio to speakers from there. The way the technology works, there is a specific few millisecond of latency added at each router, so they are able to calculate the timing to keep everything synchronized to the frame.

Over the years, CobraNet was replaced with CobraNet 2. That technology has lost market share to Dante, as well as several other Audio Over IP technologies.

Around the same time that Audio Over IP was making headway, work was being made in the lighting industry for controlling concert lighting over IP networks. Leading up to the mid-80’s, just about every company that made theatrical dimmers used their own proprietary control system. In the mid 80’s, industry leaders finally got together to define common protocols, so equipment would be interchangeable (and much easier to cable).

Two protocols came out of that first consolidation: AMX192 and DMX512. Obviously, AMX is an Analog based protocol, and DMX is a digital based protocol. Eventually, almost all the theatrical control systems moved over to DMX (especially as programmable moving lights became prevalent in the industry).

Fairly quickly, DMX was being stretched to the limits of its capabilities. In response, companies started coming out with proprietary protocols for running DMX over IP. With time, a handful of protocols started to dominate the industry. Eventually, again, industry leaders came together to define public protocols, in attempt to standardize the industry.

Currently, the leading proprietary protocols are ShowNet, Pathport and Sandnet. The public protocols are ACN, ArtNet and ESP Net. All of these run over IP networks, and can exist over the same fiber connections as the Audio Over IP devices (running on separate VLAN’s).

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Imitation, The Highest Form…

As a child, growing up in Southern California, we would go to Disneyland with a certain degree of regularity (being only about an hour away). Even with the somewhat regular schedule of attendance, when I knew I was going to the next morning, I would have great difficulty falling asleep the night before (almost as bad as trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve).

As I expanded my knowledge of technology, through my adolescence, I began to view the rides, both the new creations, and ones I had been on hundreds of time, with a view of how these creations were created, how the technologies were harnessed to tell the varied stories. It didn’t help that I had a leg up on the basis, being raised in the Movie industry by a Father who did Special Effects professionally (I was introduced to the “Anarchist Cookbook” at an early age – the original – to assist in building explosives for use in a movie).

Between this odd background, and the many years I spent studying music, eventually led me into the live entertainment industry – specifically, lighting, sound, video and rigging for concerts, conventions and special events. In the late nineties, my Father was contracted to add Special Effects to “The Hidden Mine Ride” at a new theme park, “Jungle Land at Mersal Village” in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (renamed the “Lost Mine”). I ended up being contracted to do the lighting, sound, video integration and show control. Later, I was asked to do lighting, sound and show control throughout the park walkways and a few special features. I’ll probably do a series of posts about this project later.

Several years after completing the installation of Jungle Land, I was hired to design and install theming for a Pirate themed restaurant, “Pirate Island Pizza” in St. George, Utah. I also designed the theming for the second location, though another group was hired to do the A/V installation. Later, when the corporation bought the store back, I had to maintain the cheap, hacked home automation system with cheap Chinese theatrical lighting (the equipment I used was all theatrical and industrial level systems, meant to last for years).

During the design phase of the project, I did many visits to Disneyland, specifically, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. Specifically, I would look to see the lighting and audio techniques the Imagineers used (if you get a chance to go, look back every few minutes, especially if you’re sitting in the front of the book. Pretty soon, everyone will be looking back when you look, to see what you’re looking at!).

I also “borrowed” the concept of the thunderstorm the “Rainforest, Cafe”. I do believe mine read better though. With the audio controller I used, and with my lighting design, I would have the storm start back corner of the restaurant, and roll through to the front. We also created a canon fight between our faux ship, and a “fort” we built.

Unfortunately, neither of the pirate themed restaurants exist any more. They were a lot of fun to design and build (and stretched me quite a bit. I was sitting down with the founder of the Pirate restaurants today, and he showed me a video of a pirate themed restaurant in France that “borrowed” a lot of our design for their restaurant. Their ship wasn’t as tall as ours (forcing the cannon heads to be aimed up, so as not to blast the patrons in the face with smoke), and their lighting design was very rudimentary (some of the lighting looked good, and some quite bad). And the dialog for the pirates is just annoying.

They even used the skull cave entrance to the arcade. It opened up about two years after we opened our first restaurant (and we just found out about it). Well, they do say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. And I do give them credit for integrating live actors with zip lines. It’s just hard to see someone take my artwork. While I was taking someone else’s. Ya, it’s a hypocritical loop. Oh well, just got move on.