Huh, I Guess It Was A Big Deal.

What do, Mission Impossible 3, Elizabethtown, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, Pretty In Pink, Foul Play, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and Vertigo all have in common?

Besides all being movies, they were all shot on Stage 16 at the Paramount Pictures Lot in Hollywood. The same stage where MTV's Video Music Awards was filmed. The same stage I've been at for the last 12 days.

I'm glad it's finally over. Those were a long 12 days. Lots of waiting finished by 12 hours of panic trying to make a live show happen.

I was able to post one blog while sitting around, waiting, and now that it's over, I could write a little bit longer blog about it. But instead, I'll just post some pictures and go back to bed.

Here's what the show looked like when the doors opened. Lot's of lighting fixtures in the room, over 400 moving lights and just as many conventional fixtures. For those of you who did watch, I controlled most (but not all) of the lighting on the audience, and most of the conventionals.

Here's my view of the VMA's. There was a large set piece hung in my way so I all I could see was the black painted backside of it. If you were watching, I was behind one of the large lit MTV signs. If I turned my head, I could see this:

Just about half of the lighting rig I was controlling. Not a big deal, I wasn't doing as much as the other programmer. I just listened for the scream on headset, "More light on the audience!!!" or "Less light on the audience, down down down down!!!" The LD was a bit of a panic bunny you see.

Grand MA lighting console anyone? It was probably one of the bigger shows I've worked on. We had 4 lighting consoles, two active and two spare, 24 universes of DMX and 12 network processors. That's a lot of toys. As an example, on most shows, like Blue Man Group, I have two consoles, one active and one spare, 5 universes of DMX and 3 network processors.

If you haven't seen the VMA's yet, go watch, MTV will be playing them over and over all week long. I'm going back to bed, I got up to early this morning. Force of habit when having work calls at 7AM.

...