Gaff's LDI 2023 trip report

[gafftaper]

I had a show Saturday night, so I had to fly in Sunday for a show starting Sunday. So, I only had a few hours on day one.

First thing I did was check out the Clay Packy demo show. I'm still in love with their Velowave which I talked about last year. Those are so cool!

Running a school PAC for my day job, quiet movers and movers with shutters always interest me. Clay Packy has a new quiet mover called Rhapsodya. 24,000 lumens at 27 db! That's impressive. It's an RGBAL fixture. Two gobo wheels, animation wheel, color filter wheel, framing shutters and really nice looking optics.

The Chauvet Maverick Silens has been my favorite in this class and this is some strong competition. I would get demos of both if you are looking for a quiet mover. Both fixtures have some cool tricks you can do with altering which part of the light source is on to create cool movement in your gobos. But they are both very different in how this works and the result. Get demos

 

[gafftaper]

Clay Packy also has a new motion tracking system called Buddylight. The performer wears a small transponder and the moving light follows them automatically. Unfortunately in the demo the dancer made a big arm flourish in one direction while moving the other way. The light went the wrong way and for a moment the dancer was fully in the dark. We've seen products like this before and sometimes they make mistakes. It's new and hopefully the software will be improved over time. But as always get demos to see it for yourself!

Edit: Just watched the demo again. The dancer stayed fully lit this time, but I am suspicious she was moving slower. I think it's just a matter of speed of movement and the inability to predict where the performer is going to next. Which is obviously going to be a problem with any automated system.

 

[ship]

I did not get to go this year as normal for... about 22 years ago it was my turn but I was busy with something. That was the last year invited to go with the company in never attending. This year I was busy with something that could have waited.... but the secretaries of bosses, the assistants of etc... are the more important to go every year so I and others doing work were not invited to go.

I did hear from one of my Project Manager's, and Friend what he most saw of use during our normal morning meeting. Crank up stands with locks and safety stops... not just that but also powder coated black - imaginine that amongst other good concepts of that like diagional feet.

PRG had something about data and Soco thru the same cable... My boss didn't learn much about it like I will have.. were I there, but we will get that concept demo'ed. I'm sure three was a lot of new and interesting things like I thought I saw Technilux had an interesting micro Leko before this. Wish I went for amongst other things LED tape technology that I fabricate... but as above secretaries are more important to go.