Sequencing
Sequencing lights to make them flash to the music
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Channel explosion in sequencing
Every year is the same. You’ve picked out all the new pieces for your display, performed the power calculations, assembled all the new elements into a great design, know exactly how many control channels are being used and then it’s time to sit down and stare at – that big, empty Grid. You know what I’m talking about. It’s where the magic happens of linking the music to the lights. That magic is far from easy. You’ve got hundreds of control channels and points in time during the music where the lights change. That can translate to hundreds of thousands…
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95 foor Christmas tree in shopping mall
In last month’s PlanetChristmas magazine, I shared some tips on how to get started with a large scale Christmas display at your home. It’s time to follow up with examples of how important planning is in the world of commercial decorating. Perhaps the most common object associated with the holiday season is the Christmas tree. Add animation and musical synchronization to that tree and you have an incredible crowd pleaser. Many shopping centers realize this and are starting to install giant trees within their venues. Unfortunately, most don’t realize the amount of planning that goes into a successful display. It’s…
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Sequencing for a living
It’s finally November. For many lighting enthusiasts we’ve been planning our over-the-top displays for months and are now ready to begin putting up the lights. I know quite a few of the larger displays have already started the outside work. This is the time of year when many newcomers join the decorating community and are dazzled by the elaborate displays. Many do not realize the amount of planning, time and effort that goes into these works of art. There’s another component of our displays some would rather not discuss and that’s the cost. Like many hobbies today, this can get…
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Living Christmas Tree
Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose father worked on a farm with hardly a tree in sight and about twelve miles from the middle of nowhere. Her family was poor and lived in the farmer’s basement. One Christmas they could not afford a tree, so the father made a board to hold one string of Christmas lights and displayed it on the farmer’s mantle. The little girl and her brother were allowed to go upstairs to the farmer’s living room to sit on the couch and look at the lights as long as they were very,…
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Think like your cellphone
My first year to install an extreme Christmas light display at my home was in 2005. I had to buy all the products, learn a new software program, stumble through installation procedures, install an electrical sub-panel in my garage and make about a hundred trips to Home Depot for electrical supplies. The display was fairly simple and included 45,000 lights, 80 channels of computer control and very few props or tricks. I programmed about eight unedited songs, one after the next much like a collection of songs on any given album. I thought it was really cool and I had…
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Sequencing for a living
In the September issue of PlanetChristmas magazine, you heard from industry experts giving great advice on “Going Pro” with a Christmas lighting business. I’ve been fortunate to meet with many of these people and have learned a great deal from them. Following in those footsteps, I would like to share my industry experiences with you. While there are many aspects of a lighting business, I’d like to focus on sequencing a display that is not your own. Of the many services available the most popular is custom programming of light displays. In my many years of working with synchronized displays,…
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Sequencing >1000 channels
I’ve been running around the world the last few months so I didn’t get to write this column in the last edition. Luckily I was able to tell the story about the video of my home Christmas display going viral on the Internet at re-PLUS thanks to Chuck Smith and his generosity, passion and willingness to bring together the serious Christmas decorators. This month I want to go over some of my ideas and issues with starting to program and sequence a 1,000+ channel show required for professional installations. I have been working on several large shows for the 2009…
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Is it time to blink those lights?
You’ve taken the big step away from static Christmas displays and decided to blink those lights. For starters your electric bill will be cut in half (and probably much more since the lights will no longer be all on all the time.) People who used to spend a few seconds looking at your display will now not want to leave and you’ll have to start thinking about how to handle traffic. Best of all, you now have the power of tapping into people’s emotions by matching the right music with just the right lighting effects. You’re able to tell a…
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