ABSTRACT
As you may have noticed, the motion picture industry perpetually borrows technologies that
have evolved in other areas of entertainment, photography, the arts, and industry. The art of theater
lighting gave us: a bazillion gel colors, ellipsoidal spotlights, centralized dimming, and computer-
based lighting control consoles. Rock-and-roll gave us: truss, portable power, dimming and data dis-
tribution, socopex cable, par cans, moving lights, and even more complex computer-based lighting
consoles. In more recent years, the convergence of computer-based media manipulation with projec-
tor technology and moving light control has given us the ability to use moving image projections as
lighting devices, running from a media server and controlled by an even more complex
computer-based lighting console. A media server or console can also map pixels, graphics, or media
files and display them as patterns on an LED wall or display, or map them into arrays of lights. It’s
great razzle-dazzle for a rock concert or trade show, but motion-picture lighting technicians have
co-opted the technology to suit our own purposes. When we create lighting for alien spaceships,
explosions, psychedelic mind trips, discos, helicopter spotlights, flickering fluorescent lamps, water
effects, and so on, control consoles and advanced lighting/imaging devices can create unique
dynamic effects that are highly adjustable, but at the same time consistent and repeatable.
