Don't you just love "Show Business"? It's a part of my background, but nowadays, the closest I get to Show Biz is to do the staging for company conferences. It can be stressful at times, but it's something I really enjoy. There's a group of real professionals I've worked with for years who handle all the sets, staging, lighting, sound and projection and it's always a pleasure to work with them. By now, they know exactly what I need and just how I work. Every time we do a conference they bring some new "gadget". Sometimes this will be a new vision or sound mixer. We put on such an event last Friday evening, and this year they brought four new LED theatrical lighting units and whole new programmable lighting desk. If you haven't seen LED stage lighting and think (as I did) that LEDs were about as bright as the "on" light on your PC, think again. These were stunning.

The two pictures were taken with the same lighting rig. No coloured gels, no multiple lights to change colour just this bank of four LED units at floor level and infinite and instant colour changes can be done straight from the lighting desk. You can also program sweeping rainbows, flashes of colour and so on. For the business sessions, we had the background almost imperceptibly slowly cycling from cyan through deep blue to purple and back. It looked superb. For the evening, we added a couple of moving lights and a haze generator as well. Great fun - not only for me of course but for the audience as well. If you want to know the company, it's CTF and I can't recommend them highly enough.