#241 - Michael Nevitt, Crossfade Design

0:00 Thanks for joining Geese of Gear episode number 241. This episode is brought to you by Rowe Visual. Rowe is the leading LED creative display manufacturer in the industry with adaptive LED platforms for every project. They're committed to going the extra mile for any creative vision. Carefully selected high -end components, the latest technology, in -depth knowledge, and a ton of passion go into every product that bears the Rowe name. Being familiar with the challenges of their market, Rowe offers only the most intuitive solutions for creatives, designers, and technicians who must rely on their LED products to deliver a flawless performance every time. This quality standard is the reason Rowe has quickly become the industry standard, making its way onto stages and the big screen worldwide. Visit RoweVisual .com. This episode is also brought to you by Stratum Productions.

1:07 Stratum Productions is rooted in the Midwest and is committed to setting themselves apart. They are not just in the audio visual industry to meet expectations, they're here to exceed them. As they work towards becoming true partners in the AV world, they bring expertise, creativity, and a passion for turning visions into reality. To learn more about Stratum Productions and what they offer, please visit StratumPro .com. Hello, and welcome back to episode number 241. I'm maybe looking a little weirder than normal on today's podcast. Part of the reason is because I'm a little nervous. I'm hitting buttons that I'm not used to and stuff. We have completely changed platforms for our podcast again. We did this first, I think, well, maybe not first, but

2:40 the last time we did it was close to a year ago. It was last summer and we had been using a platform called Ecamm Live. Ecamm is not really made specifically for podcasting. It's a video, really cool video platform. It's very good. There's nothing wrong with it except that it was crashing during podcasts. It was basically, it would freeze up, but you wouldn't know that it was freezing up. But just unless you happen to be looking at the counter and that would show you that it was frozen. We almost lost the Glenn Rogerman podcast. We had to work many, many hours to recover that podcast. We were able to recover it and play it and you have access to it. It's a great podcast. But that was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back, as they say. And so what we did is we kind of went with the crowd. A lot of the biggest, greatest podcasters and vodcasters or whatever you call video guys are using something called Riverside.

3:47 And I had actually tried Riverside last summer prior to settling on Ecamm. And there was a technical problem with Riverside. We had recorded a couple of podcasts that were problematic where the audio and the video didn't perfectly sync up. And part of that, and I'm going to go into the weeds here a little bit. But the reason behind that is one of the great things about Riverside is that it bypasses a lot of the problems that happen in remote podcasts. And all of my podcasts are remote. And so what tends to happen is somebody on one side or the other gets bad internet and it starts glitching or the audio goes bad or weird things happen. And it screws up the recording. And maybe there's parts where you can't see or where the sound gets terrible. And so what Riverside has done is they've created an ingenious model where it records on your machine on both sides or multiple sides of that podcast. So it records a local copy on the machine while it's displaying sort of the live copy that's over the internet. So even if you see glitches while you're recording, you don't see those in the final result because what happens is while it's recording, it's uploading those files to the cloud and where I can access them later and then do editing and everything else.

5:13 So the end result is that you have very clean podcasts recorded and uploaded on both sides or multiple sides of that podcast recording. And it gets around any internet. You could literally lose internet. And although I wouldn't be seeing that I'm still talking to someone, I could keep talking and it would keep recording it. And so it's really, really a cool platform. And so today is our first sort of guinea pig test on Riverside. We've been doing a bunch of testing in the background. As I said, I used it last summer, so I was pretty familiar with it. But now we're going headfirst into the deep end. And so, yeah, welcome the new Geysers of Gear on Riverside. And from a recording standpoint for the guest, it's a much better experience. It's easier. It's cleaner, simpler. And to all of you, the people listening, you will get better audio quality. You'll get better video quality. Hopefully we'll never lose another podcast due to, you know, glitches and problems on either side. And so, yeah, thought I should share that with you. And, you know, the goal here isn't to save money or to make my life easier or anything like that. It's to produce the best product that we can and to give you the best interview, the best discussion, the best stories that we possibly can. So, and the other thing that is cool about Riverside is it allows Sarah, our producer, to actually do

6:45 some producing. So she will be on all of our recordings in the background. She can click buttons and do things and send messages to guests and all kinds of things. And she is also taking part in the editing now as well. So, and I say taking part, it's kind of a funny statement because I barely did any editing. So those of you who know anything about video or audio podcasts or whatever, you can listen to it and realize that I've done no editing. So we will actually be doing some more editing now, which is a good thing. So my other, my favorite topic of many recent weeks and we'll continue forward is AI. I look for things that are AI related to our industry, but not too many people out there are willing to talk about that. You know, especially manufacturers, they're not putting out a lot of information about the AI projects they're working on, even though I know they are. And, you know, I've spoken to engineers. I know some products that are going to come out in the near future that will be heavily reliant upon AI technologies. But in our industry, that's been pretty hush hush. A lot of people scared to talk about it, I guess. But I think we can predict the future where, you know, lights program themselves, consoles program themselves, you know, audio tunes itself, like just lots of things like that that are going to be happening. A couple of funny stories or interesting stories I read, not so funny, I guess, but the U .S. Air Force has been testing AI and actually an AI

8:20 supported, not even supported an AI controlled dogfight. So they basically had a dogfight between a simulated dogfight, like they're not using real bullets or anything, but a jet that was AI controlled and a jet that was human controlled. And the AI jet one. And so that was an interesting story that tells you how far that they've gotten already. So an AI jet is able to beat a human jet in a dogfight. And so the interesting part about that is I think a really terrible use of AI is related to the, sorry, somebody tried to come in the room while I'm recording. A terrible use of AI is actually when you have like drones, for example, wars that are just completely done by drone where there's no human life involved and therefore there's no caution. So basically, instead of using common sense and caution, we've got people flying AI controlled jets at each other, killing thousands of people. But because you're not a human and you're not there and you're not present, you don't get to see all those dead people. And therefore it's no big deal.

9:34 Right. That I see as a problem. So, you know, I hope we don't continue down that road. Like I'd like to see AI airline captains, you know, we've been talking recently about things like surgeons, you know, getting AI surgery done or robotic surgery. To me, that's a great use of AI. We talked about cooking food versus prepping food. I don't mind AI prepping the food or robots prepping the food. But I'd like to have a chef who has, you know, special skills and can create nuance and stuff like that. But also, you know, flying airplanes, like, you know, take away the human error altogether and have robots and AI flying airplanes, I think is a good thing and navigating those airplanes. So, lastly on AI is Elon. Elon Musk, of course, the owner of, or not owner, but the CEO of Tesla claiming to be selling fully sentient robots under their Optimus brand by the end of next year and actually have them working in the factory in the Tesla factory by the end of this year. And he's talking about sentient robots. So these are robots that can think and feel and have emotions and things like that. These aren't like your typical machine robots. These are humanoid robots that are sentient. So this is interesting if he

11:06 thinks that he's got that coming that quickly. Also from Elon, because he did his financial report Q1 financial report yesterday or their earnings call, I guess. He's pushing hard on on FSD or full self driving claiming that he will have it expanded into commercial use this year. I think he's talking about launching Robo cab or Robo taxi or something by August. But also selling their FSD technology to other manufacturers to really push that forward. And, you know, I was having this conversation with somebody recently where I don't think we're that far off from a world. It's not going to be like the Jetsons where you have little flying spaceships everywhere, maybe someday, but I don't think that's in the next 10 years. But I do believe in the next 10 years, the majority of cars on the street are going to be self driving. And this should technically eliminate accidents or at least for the most part, you know, because I don't know at what point they'll outlaw or ban human drivers. But, you know, it should eliminate or let's call it drastically reduce accidents and things like that, reduce pollution reduce, because they can do extremely efficient mapping and trip plans and all of that kind of stuff. It'll reduce, you know, just use of rubber use of roads traffic in general. So I'm actually for that as

12:40 much as I like driving, I can envision a world where I don't drive anymore, except maybe on a racetrack or something like maybe they'll still keep facilities out in the country where you can go take your, your normal car and you can go drive around but on regular roads, you don't drive around. Who knows, like maybe I'm just talking nonsense to. And lastly, before we get into today's episode, there is a large company, a certain large company in our industry who've been gearing up to sell for probably about a year now. And I'm not going to mention any names here, but there's been a lot of rumors out there about their conversations with buyers about their positioning the company to be acquired, etc. And now there are pretty significant rumors of a particular strategic buyer, meaning a buyer within our industry, not necessarily another, you know, big bank or a financial institute, private equity company, whatever. But that particular strategic is strategic buyer has also been quietly raising a pretty large amount of cash. So more to come, you know, I don't want to say more than I really know and I don't even want to say what I do know, but I believe that there's going to be a pretty impactful and significant sale that should happen within the next couple of months. And

14:10 we'll see more to come. So today's guest is another pretty cool guy, Michael Nevitt. Michael has spent 30 plus years in the entertainment industry, first as a freelancer then in 2011 Michael joined forces with other designers to create Crossfade Design LLC. During that time Michael has created designs for small, medium and large scale events worldwide. Michael is the president and senior designer at Crossfade and guides its overall business operations. Michael has also been the resident lighting designer for 13 seasons at the Hope Summer Repertory Theater in Holland, Michigan. He designed scenery and or lighting for over 40 theatrical productions there. Michael has been involved with hundreds more theater productions, concert tours, television and live event productions, including events like the Salt Lake Olympics Super Bowl halftime show, which I believe we'll talk about because I think that's the one. The disaster that Martin got involved in in the 90s.

15:19 Deal or no deal, the man show and the Ryder Cup opening ceremonies. His motion picture production highlights include the Grinch, Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Miss Congeniality, J .N. Silent Bob Strike Back, Batman and Robin and Danny Collins. Michael is one of the foremost designers in combat sports television, having served as lighting director for 100 plus HBO boxing broadcasts. Some of his proudest moments have occurred outside the bright lights instead serving as a mentor and designer for productions with his children Connor and Cassidy. So here we go. Let's bring on Mr. Michael Nevin. Michael, how are you? I'm good. Glad to be here. Cool. Yeah, I'm glad to have you here. I can't even remember the last time I talked to you. I'm sure it was at an LDI show or something. We bumped into each other, but it's been a while. Yeah, no, Martin days. Well, you were actually at Martin, I think, before me. I was at Martin before everyone. So the only person who was at Martin before me was a guy named Paul Reiner, who you probably don't know or never knew. He's been out of the business for 20 years probably. And there was a Russian guy named Alex. And this was the guy who was sort of the anti sales guy at Trackerman who everyone

16:53 hated. Like this guy, he would just brutalize you into buying smoke machines or whatever. Right? You buy now. And so I didn't have very big shoes to fill really. It was quite easy to sort of get over that bar that was left for me. But yeah, I was pretty early at Martin. But I recall something and I was thinking about this leading up to this podcast and you can tell me whether it's true or not. But weren't you on the Super Bowl where we had those RoboScan 1220s that failed so miserably on the halftime show? Yeah, Jason Robinson and I. Yes, correct. And we were, you know, young. I was working for Moody Rabbits then. I remember. Jeff was the LD and I was the gaffer and Jason, I think, was brought in by Bandit to run one of the mini consoles that we had.

17:44 Right. Yeah, the 1220 showed up totally inadequate to do what we were doing, which was put them on the balcony of the, you know, Dauphin Stadium or Joe Robbie or whatever it was called back then. And they showed up in boxes from Denmark with no plugs. No plugs. I remember it so well. Wearing them up and three pens that needed them have reversed on it to work with the hodds. It wasn't even painful to listen to. I know Nils reminded me of that too. Programming hog ones. Yeah, it was a nightmare. I mean, I don't know that I slept that whole week because between dealing with Finn Kalistrup in Denmark, the engineer and Tex on our side, I think Mike Ravenhill might have even been there. Come in to help us as a tech.

18:38 But and it might have been Noel. I think was it Noel or was that that might have been too early for Noel. But yeah, I mean, we just it was such a nightmare. And I remember there were also some in some carts that they made to drag out to the field. And at one point you guys were programming and they turned on the sprinklers just like out of the blue. And you know, these Robo scans were hating life enough before getting hit by water. Yeah. So I had some on some scissor lifts, too, that we had mega scrollers on. Yeah. I get it. Scrollers if you know those. Yeah. And they didn't like the wind too much, but they live about a third of the stadium with one out. Yeah, I know they were crazy. You know, that was the first Super Bowl that they actually allow us to allow people to turn off the house lights full. Right. It was a Disney event. It was promoting that Indiana Jones ride and they they allowed the stadium lights to be turned off because they were always afraid. Well, what would happen to the stadium lights and come back on? Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember that. Yeah, that was crazy. But I also learned that week how like, you know, you do not touch the grass like whoever is responsible for that grass is God. And so when they turned on the sprinklers and we went to try and talk tough to them, they were like, excuse me. And then, you know, what they did the day before the game is they went and they painted the grass green

20:08 with like sprayers because they're like, well, look brown on television. And then the next day after the game, they bulldozed the entire field. Oh my God. It's crazy, isn't it? It is really crazy how how it's sacred ground, literally. But but I remember we had a massive data problem with those Robo scans and like they would just lose their minds and start going in weird directions and stuff. And Finn, the engineer from Martin didn't believe this was happening. And so I believe we actually made him come over and like he was in the rain and and out there trying to figure out what was going on and it was the most nightmare gate. And then he was like, oh, I'm going to take pictures back then. Right. You just haul them over there and hope they put a piece of plastic trash bag over it. Yeah. I mean, it's a miracle that Martin turned out to do they were given the early products with the start. The pal member of the pal. Do I remember the pal? I remember the pal. Another good story there was I think it was there was a gigantic tall as a moving head, but it's really tall. Mac Mac 1200. Yeah, it was the Mac 1200.

21:25 Montero calls me up before I work for Martin said, I want to want you to look at this new light and he sends me a cut sheet and it looked like a nice little bear light size light. Little thing is like as tall as me. And that's funny, Frank. Where's the real light? Yeah. This is it. I'm like, I can't aim that on a truss. Did you do the did you go to the demo we did in Vegas with Michael Desma designed it for us? No, thanks. So yeah, it was it was hilarious because basically we went to Peter Johansson and said, I think I don't remember what we were asking for at the time a studio color. I think, you know, like we want a studio color and moving head wash light to compete with the VL five and high end has this cool studio color thing. He ships us this Mac 1200 and we went, whoa, it's not quite what we were looking for. We can stop for three hours just on the Martin stories. I'm sure. Oh, absolutely. No, I mean the early days as as terrible as some of that stuff was and some of it really was terrible. It was the Wild West back then, you know, it was there was no technology. There was no path to follow. And all that, you know, I will never slam Peter Johansson for trying because all he was trying to do was take stuff that other companies were doing and then sort of change or value engineer

22:56 it basically. He was trying to value engineer very lights or golden scans or whatever and make it less expensive and more accessible to the masses and reliability came later. Let's just say. Yeah. I mean, it was great time to be getting into the business on the house coming out of school right at that time. You know, nobody knew how to run any of these stuff. Oh, yeah. And animators and and you know, it was a great opportunity for a kid coming out to just jump in there. Oh, yeah. You guys were all still saying, oh, we hate this is not going to work. We want like bear lights and moving lights and so forth. And you know, so it was a great break for me to be coming out at that time.

23:41 Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was interesting, but I don't know why I remembered that you were on that show, but I remember that you were like, I only ever got involved with Martin anyways on that one halftime show. And I mean, there were some good things to it, like as bad as it was and the fact that I didn't sleep all week and stuff. My my ex -wife, her dad was a huge Tony Bennett guy like huge Chicago, you know, goes to Vegas once a month. He was, you know, the epitome of a Tony Bennett fan. And so I took him to one of the rehearsals and I just remember him standing there like, like he was looking at God, you know, like he just so there was one point where Tony was on a golf cart sitting in one of the bombs and and my father -in -law Tom, he's smacking me on the arm. Marcel, Marcel, Marcel, and I was talking to, you know, Nils or somebody and I'm like, yeah, what? And he goes, that's Mr. Bennett right there on the golf cart. And I said, well, go say hello to him. And he goes, what? And I said, go say hello to him. He ends up talking to him for like an hour just and Tony appeared to be liking it too. You know, he wasn't annoyed by it. So it was pretty fun. That was cool. That was a cool experience. The rest of it was pretty bad.

25:06 Most of it. So tell me, because I like to do this on this podcast. How did you get started? How do you fall into this wacky industry of ours? Well, I'm a theater guy and I started, but it was interesting because when I was a kid, I was a sports kid, you know, baseball wrestling that kind of thing. And then when I was in seventh grade, it really is funny because I'm one of the few people that found out what they wanted to do in seventh grade and have done nothing. And that's really my story. My buddy was tried out for the school play. We were doing Tom Sawyer in the cafeteria, you know, scenario and he got cast as Tom Sawyer and he's like, well, you should try out. I'm like, I'm not going to do that acting thing. But I decided to help sign up for the light crew. And it was literally at that time, you know, practically, Payt cans are old for now. Well, we'll re -estat forward and I just got hooked on it.

26:05 And then I was fortunate. My eighth grade year in the high school opened a brand new theater. And that was whatever early 80s, right? Modern technology, a two -scene preset major lightboard with a slide patcher and a whole bunch of, you know, lecos and fresneles. I mean, a lot of more majors. Have you never made these cardio black cast iron things? And, you know, that theater at the high school, which is a public high school, turned out to be, you know, really good and it ruined to it like a national program where it was recognized national through the, you know, international thespian thing. And we took shows to the national convention date.

26:55 And, you know, my high school, you know, teacher really got me hooked. And I, you know, lived in the theater department. You know, I built the sets. I hung the lights, I, you know, in whatever. And I mean, I, you know, and the sports just went away and I was like, oh, this is so much fun. You just completely ditched the all the team stuff, the sports stuff. It wasn't that great anyway. So it was, yeah, that was a small kid. I wasn't going to, you know, be a major league baseball player as much as I loved it. And, you know, so similar to me, like I music going the music route because I be same thing. I became a musician though. But going that route was quite an easy decision for me because I pretty much sucked it. Everything else, you know, I was terrible at sports for the most part. So, you know, I just lived it and loved it. And then, you know, I started thinking, oh, you know, you know, you get to high school and you're a junior. And you're like, what are you going to do with your career son? And I'm like, I think I want to go to college and do a theater. And my dad looked at me like, uh, you're, what? That's not a thing. You know, my dad was an engineer and I come a family of engineers and machine is so very practical people. And, and, but they were supportive. And I went down to University of Evansville, which was about an hour and a half from my house. Which, I, of course, is a small school, but it's produced a lot of great talent and, you know, got hooked down

28:28 there, loved it, kept doing it. But all along I was doing both, you know, TD work and building sets and engineering stuff and doing lighting and then, you know, to connect it to my career. And when I graduated or getting here gradually, I'm like, what am I going to do? I'm just a kid that grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and I'm in school in Indiana. I don't know a soul in the business. No, my family wasn't connected at all. And I knew one guy in LA that had went to school and then went out there to be a crotch guy and he was doing special effects on the work. He's like, hey, you can sleep on my couch until you find a place. So when I decided, well, I need some little firmer than that. So I said, well, I go to grad school. So I applied to UCLA and Yale and got into both of them. And then I was like, okay, what do I do here? Because my dream was always to do Broadway. So I should go to Yale because, you know, it's Yale and do the Broadway route. And I started thinking, well, you know, there's, well, 10 people that do Broadway successfully and make a living at it. And, you know, I was thinking, well, I'll go to LA. So I went to UCLA and got my master's degree. And, you know, education is really important to me. I think it's a really important thing to do. It's not necessary in our business, of course, but it taught me a lot. I learned in undergraduate school from a professor named Joe Flado, who was a really more scenic designer.

30:02 I don't think he's going to be mad at me for saying that. But he really did do what you would say paint with light. He taught me, and I was just a technique telling how to skyline, do everything there was. I know about Lito's and Fresnel's, Sixpike, Twelves and so forth. I could name every piece of gel in the gel book. And then he was like, oh, that's important. You know, we've got to paint with light. And he taught me how to use color. He taught me how to use, you know, highlights and shadows and do all of this design stuff. And what that part, I'm really a technical person. So that's where when I went to UCLA, I, you know, I started getting interested in moving lights, this verilights with a new thing. And I caught a break in that Jim Moody called out to UCLA because he was a graduate of UCLA. And today we're looking for somebody to draw an auto -gap. Now, this was 1990, right?

31:01 AutoCAD 10 was, we had a professor named Lee Rose who literally wrote a book on AutoCAD on stage. Wow. And we helped him build symbols. And, you know, this was just standard AutoCAD. There was no lighting to it. So we made our own symbols and stuff. And then I went to work for Jim Moody and Jeff Ravitz at their company, Moody Ravitz. And, you know, that was a big break for me, really. No kidding. Because I got to Jim, I mean, you know, people who don't know Jim, well, Jim is with Sundance Lighting and he just recently passed away a couple of years ago, just a great gentleman, so knowledgeable. And, you know, he started rock and roll at a time when you didn't go buy parkans and trust you, built parkans and trust, right?

31:44 And Sundance Lighting. And then he ended up being sort of a legend in TV lighting. I learned a lot about Daphne and TV lighting from him. And then, and I also got an opportunity to work for Jeff Ravitz. And, you know, Jeff is also a legend. I remember the very first week I was working for those guys being a kid from, you know, Louisville, Kentucky. Jeff said, I need to go to Limmons in Indiana. We're doing John Mellon, Cap, Thompson at the football stadium. I'm like, perfect. I called everybody I knew. Hey, you know, I grew up in that area. John Mellon camp was a legend. Yeah, that's cool. So was that your first like rock and roll gig? Like your first literally that was my first rock and roll gig. I mean, I pulled around with Bear Lights a little bit.

32:30 I wasn't, you know, I wasn't in a band. I wasn't a musician. Yeah. It wasn't that. I was a theater kid. Yeah. And, you know, found out that, wow, you know, this is kind of fun. Now, ironically, my first concert I went to was a sticks concert in around 1983 when I was in high school. And they were, I believe the second show to have the ones on. And was rabbits designing it? Rabbits was the design. But that's, it's funny how that all ties together. Right. So I went to that concert and I saw these Bear Lights and they were like, oh, my God. All these lights start coming down. I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. This is what I, you know, this is what I want to do. That's awesome. You know, I didn't at that time have any hope of going to work for Bear Lights. Yeah. I didn't know anybody in the business. So yeah, like to wrap that up. I graduated from UCLA in 1993 and I was just, you know, I was doing, you know, gaffy and crew work and I worked on a couple of feature films by that time and, you know, just doing crew stuff. And I got a call again, a guy called UCLA looking for somebody that might be interested. I'm like, professor passed it on to me because he knew that, you know, I had done the internship with those guys and new moving lights.

33:47 And the guy was Neil Storgerson. Oh, geez. Funny how it all connects. I was listening to Matias doing his podcast and he was talking about how, you know, I got connected with him when I was teaching the Automated Lighting Academy. And, you know, bunch of great people. That's a whole other story that he went into a little bit. But, you know, Neil's called up and I went and interviewed with Nils and he was like, yeah, we got this new company called Flying Page Systems. And I was like, that's a funny thing. We got the board. So did all of us. All of us thought that. Yeah. And I was literally the first flying big employee other than the three guys, Nils, Tom and Nick. I didn't know that. I never knew that. I knew you were there early, but I didn't know that you were the first employee. That's why I wasn't there when they developed the Hog One, but I was there when they launched it. And we had a little office and Nils lived in a house in Malibu, California, and we got a little storefront on the PCH in Malibu, set up a console and, you know, I do training there. And Nils was gone doing his thing. So, you know, every day I would kind of pack my lunch, go across the PCH, sit on the beach, watch, you know, watch the waves and eat my lunch. And the funny thing is, is after about a year, I caught everybody that had a Hog One. There was only like a dozen in the U .S. It was Nook and Marty Whitman and, you know, all these guys that were Hog One guys. And there really wasn't that

35:21 much for me to do. So I thought, little did you know? Little did you know it was about to go nuts? Yeah. So what happened was is we were at Plaza one year and it's a cliche story, but it is true. Literally in a pub, you know, I sat there and I was just a bystander really, but, you know, Nick and Tom and Nils are like, oh, we're going to build a new console and it's going to be touchscreen. And everyone's like, oh, no, that'll never last on the road. And I remember like it was yesterday, Nils going over and looking at the screen that the waitress was talking to, right? And they said, we're going to use that screen because this may not have it how it actually turned out, but that was how the conversation went. And they were like, well, it survives beer and all this stuff. So that's some really good logic, actually, you know, that really is good logic. I never knew that story and that's incredible. Yeah, I don't think I'm giving away a trade secret or anything here, but they were sketching it out on an act and you know, two screens and it's 10 faders and oh, we need a keypad. Well, let's just copy to keep that off the light pad because that's what everybody knows. So if you look at a keypad on a haul, it's the same or angels and keep that on a light pad. Interesting.

36:41 Just little things like that. And then I said, well, you know, you guys are going to take a while to develop this. I'm going to go out freelance and do some stuff and, and you know, call me up when you know, you're launching this console and they did. And well, at the time they decided to give the distribution to AC lighting. But how, how, what was the distance of time between when you said, okay, guys, that looks like a great idea. Call me when it's done. How long did that take? That's probably a year, nine months or so. Wow. And, you know, so I stopped working for Flying Pig, but I think on good terms, nose would say. And then when AC lighting took over distribution, Bob Gordon calls me up and says, hey, you need a support guy for this new console. And I'm like, great, love it.

37:34 I'll take the job. So he was in the Gorac Hills, California. I was already living in LA. So that worked. So we launched this new hog too. And I remember the very first hog too that landed in America. Bob was like, the hog is too, it's shown up today. I want you to take it down to Disneyland and you're going to do, you're going to like the castle for Halloween for Brian Day. Geez. No pressure. No pressure. Oh my God. I mean, but it was a hog, right? So I figured I'm one of two. Yeah. So we'll get this console out there. What program in the way? Vines. You know, I think we had IntelliBeam's maybe Cyber Lights. I don't remember Vines crawling up the castle. Everything was great. Brian says, okay, can you go back and change this queue? And I'm like, okay, so I start changing queues and he starts screwing up. And I'm like, what's going on?

38:29 And if you're a programmer, you kind of follow my logic here. If you're not, you might not understand this, but I called up Tom Thorn and I said, what's going on? Because what's a tracking console me? And I'm like, oh, so I only dealt with the inter tracking consoles, which I don't, you know, without worrying you too much is you, you replace the hard values after every queue. Right. So if the lights in blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, and you change it to red, it'll change the values to red, red, red, red, red down the queue list. Right. A hog was a transparent tracking console. So it said being blue and then had no values. So if you change it to red, it would just track red without changing the queues. Does that make sense? It does. It does. So what was happening with me is because I had no manual and didn't understand the tracking console because I just started like day before is it screwed up all my queues every time I would make a little after Tom told me that.

39:28 Fortunately, it was the middle of the night in California and he was in the office the next day. So that worked out. So then, you know, there was hog hog hog hog. So and of course I guess my most people know me as sort of the original hog training guy because I, you know, for ever long I worked for a while for years or whatever. And, you know, they would like it in those guys in the UK. And that was a lot of consoles, you know, like Bob was selling those things like popcorn. Crazy. Crazy. I mean, I remember the LDI shows were just like, just mayhem, like just crowds of people looking to get on that console. Right.

40:09 Yeah. What a fun time it was though. Yeah. I mean, for such a little pathogeny, I still tell people, you know, we got the Grand Amai and all this stuff with a hog had its entire operating system on one floppy disc. I know. Isn't that incredible? You know, and this show, I got tons of things about the hog bite one, one time Arnold Tarrami was doing Neil Diamond and every time that he would save this, the board would crash because the guys who programmed it, I guess, not to throw them under the bus, but they never thought that anybody would be a show big enough to get to a second floppy disc. So when it needed a second, hilarious, big crack. Well, I don't know if I get that. They realized that you had to do it to you for a second flop. But the way Arnold programmed the show was one giant key list and they were a multiple key list kind of mentality. So when it got to the meeting of floppy, it didn't know to ask for a floppy within this key list. I'm sorry I'm being right there, but now it's all good because the key list was so large, it didn't know to split that key list in half and put the first half on a floppy in the second half on the second block. So it would crash. Yeah.

41:27 So, you know, those were the kind of things that not only taught me how to deal with it and for me, it was fun. You know, you go down there at three in the morning, everybody's freaking out and you're calling up them and you know, flying people like, oh, hold on, hold on. Yeah. And they do an update and they upload it, which only took two hours to upload and two hours to download at that time. It's a different time. Yeah, different time. Yeah, you're in a hotel on a dial up going, and you're downloading an update to your dog too. So then I'll finish my career story and then we can talk about something. So then I went back freelancing for a number of years and I was fortunate to work with some people like John Tadesco on Batman and things like that and my career really took off. But then, you know, I got married and decided to have a kid and, you know, things change and and Frank Montero and Eric Lodercogna and said, hey, we're launching this new console for the Maxis and, you know, we need somebody to do support. And I said, sure. So I flew down to Martin, looked at the console and it was basically a case console. And I said, well, you know, I got some suggestions for changes. You know, I wasn't in charge of doing the software or anything and Matthias talked a lot about, you know, aren't the international and all that, how that all happened. But I said, you know, I think we can make this thing really big. So went to work for them and hired Matthias shortly after and, you know, did a lot of, wrote a lot of

43:00 software specifications for the guys in Denmark to do it. Yeah. The guys in Denmark was a guy, Christian Krauser, who was instrumental in launching that console over there. And I thought it was a great console. It had some hiccups, especially in the hard world world, the hardware world, which, you know, kind of caused it to fizzle. But for a while we were ahead of the grand amai, you know. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was almost a little ahead of its time in a sense, you know, with some of the concepts and stuff. But yeah, yeah, it's an interesting story, the whole Max's thing. Yeah, we were trying to do too much dual processors and having the 3D visualizer built in and yeah, it off too much. And, you know, it just didn't work out, but it's still a great software platform now. They got the hardware, new hardware and the Lation took it over. Yeah. I love the M series. It actually, I'm not a programmer anymore. I can't program the grand amai. I'm only an LV. That's wild. This is a man now. That's wild. Good for you. You got better. Right.

44:15 By, you know, I don't want any of my producers with less than that. But yeah, when you could program an LV, people want you to double do you. Yeah. And I prefer being an LV and having a programmer that I can collaborate with. Yeah. You have a couple of corporate events that I do every year that I program myself on my end to go. I'm about to buy an NX and NX to upgrade finally. Cause that is my baby and that's what I program. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny when I think about like the Maxis or, you know, some of the other, the case console, the, what the hell is the Israeli one called that I'm blanking? Compulite.

44:58 Yeah. The animator. When I think about some of those consoles, like how much better could they have been if you could sell them for 75, 80 grand? Like consoles are selling for today. Like a $75 ,000 Maxis. What could it have done? You know what I mean? And if Matias is listening to this, Matias's head is spinning going, oh my God, what I could do with 75 grand to sell a console. So the formula of buying a console and giving free software forever is a hard business model. It is. Yeah. It's tough. That's always been the big problem right now. Random A is selling threes faster than they can possibly make them. Yeah.

45:38 So they've got that revenue coming in. That's always the challenge that people want to buy the console and they want to get all the software updates, infinity for fruit. Yeah. Well, again, I think that's a price thing. Like maybe they could change the business model and say, okay, new consoles are 40 grand, but you pay 9 .95 every time we do a major software release or whatever, right? So I guess it's six or one half dozen is the other one, right? Yeah. And somebody will try that with just subscription date and consoles and it didn't go over too well, but you know, who knows? Well, and then you end up with consoles all over the world that are different versions and stuff and you go to do a show and somebody didn't pay for the upgrade and now, yeah, so that's another problem. But yeah, I totally understand that's the one thing that I guess people don't really talk about when people complain that why isn't MA 380000 dollars? Because I can never answer that. I look at it and go, okay, you got a BMW right there and you got a lighting console over here and they're the same price. I don't get it. You know, something's missing here. Yeah, we are paying for that software development for life in the console. Yeah. That's certainly the missing component in that conversation for sure. And that is no cheat feat is I don't have any idea of MA and how many code writers they have, but yeah, we only had a few on Maxis. They

47:08 probably have dozens and dozens. Yeah. Yeah. Have you paid any attention to the AVO stuff? Like, do you have any thoughts on that D series stuff? You know, you know, it's fine because my first rock and roll console after doing some concerts after leaving the theater was a QM 500. Yeah, everyone. If you're old enough to remember the QM 500, especially in the old one where there was a drawer and you had a pin matrix in there. Yeah. Like that's how you did the sunmasters. It was like a little grid and you put them in the pens. I remember half the type opened them up and they was like so much blow and cocaine in there. That's what I was just going to say. I was going to say, wasn't that a drawer for lines of blow? That's pretty much. That's what I usually saw in them whenever I saw the drawer open. If you were in the drugs, you couldn't just sniff those pin, you know, and got it.

48:04 That was another reason I wasn't really much of a concert guy. I just never been into the drug scene. Yeah. You know, throughout my life, I like doing like television now because it's, you know, a little hate to say this about got a little less sleazy and in the way people go out of course the content business changed a lot. It's very much so. Yeah. So much. But you know, back in the day, I didn't like, you know, oh, I'll tell you later how much I'm going to pay you. What do you mean you don't want to sign a agreement with me for my services? Yeah. Oh, you know, well, and I won't say who, but one concert I did do a few tours and one you can get your per diem and blow if you wanted. Oh my God. Instead of unreal. That's unreal. I'd say, I'd take the cash and you go, oh, you're just going to come back here and buy it from me. So, you know, the production editor. Wow.

48:58 On the floor. Yeah. That's unreal. So that, that one really wasn't my scene. And that was ending by the time I really got into it in the early 90s. But yeah, I'm doing the television stuff now. I do somehow I've become like one of the main guys combat sports with talking about seeing and they did HVL boxing. The gig were loading today. The Peacock Theater is bare knuckle fighting championships. Oh, wow. Which is big up and coming fight league where they don't wear gloves and they just beat each other up to a point. Yeah. Yeah. BKFC. Yeah. It's sort of the, I like to see if UFC is not brutal enough for you. BKFC is. I know it's, it's funny because I'm a huge UFC fan. I have been since the very, very beginning of time when they were only in like Alabama and West Virginia and stuff, you know, and I'm just a massive, it's not in hockey or my two favorite sports and motor sports, of course. And but the BKFC thing is just a little too violent for me. You know, it's just especially girls like when Paige Van Zandt, the beautiful blonde that she is when she went and started doing this BKFC thing. I was like, yeah, it's not sexy. Beautiful on the way and gets pummeled in the face. Come back three months later for a fight and she's beautiful. Get some classic surgeons. Yeah. How's that working? Yeah.

50:26 Yeah. That's so how did that happen? How'd you get, how'd you become known as like the sort of OG of, of combat sports? Yeah. So that story is, it could be Jason Robinson actually. WWE. Jason, I go way back. I don't know. I think we worked together on Farm Aid 5 and I want to say like 1992, two kids. Oh, wow. Jeff Rabbits and, uh, and Jason working for Bandit. Yeah. And, you know, we really became really good friends at that point and stayed friends and worked together over the years and, you know, he, he went to wrestling and, and, um, he got connected up, um, with top right boxing around 2011. And they wanted to upgrade their, their show. Basically boxing was very simple.

51:22 Just light the ring, take four color lights, point your left the camera during the commercial. That was what, yeah. Yeah. For a decade. Um, and top ring was really interesting, evolving the product. So they got in touch with Jason and Jason was doing WWE. So Jason likes very helping them out to upgrade their product and eventually led to them saying, Hey, we just want you guys to take over our show. Wow. So that sort of started Crossfade design more or less. Jason and I had been kicking around for a while starting a design company, you know, just to, just to funnel through the payrolls and the liability and all that stuff. So we did a 2011 him and I started Crossfade design and then shortly after, um, we decided, you know, we got to talk about Eric Wade and Eric joined in and joined the company. He was had his own little company, which we merged together with that. And then we had another friend of his, uh, uh, that John early, that's that's actually a surgeon who came in sort of handle more of the business stuff and so forth financials. And so anyway, top ring boxing, we actually sort of created a company around doing that show since we were able to sign a multi -year deal with them. And very cool. Uh, bought, bought the equipment and we always, oh, we might buy a few consoles or whatever with them. We bought the whole system and, and we've been in with them since 2011. So let's at 13 years. Yeah, good for you. What

52:54 a successful run. Yeah. From them doing, uh, there, some of their own stuff on Latin TV to HBO. We, and we worked with HBO and now we're, uh, top ranks tied in with ESPN. So copyright on ESPN, uh, either on last Saturday nights or on the, on the plus app. Uh, so Jason and I should design the overall look together. He's the production designer. I go out, I handle it on a day to day basis and we provide all the equipment for that. Very cool. That's, that's, and then I like to say that we really, you know, took boxing to more and added more artistic flair to it, you know, uh, brought in a lot, things like Sharpies into the, to the look and nobody really done that before us and started lighting the audience. So it wasn't just a smoky room where it was dark in the background and was lit.

53:51 We brought a lot of, you know, LED technology in or, you know, LED strings where we start showing graphics and, you know, a lot of the other people have started using the same thing, but we sort of headed that up. I'm wondering too though, like if the rise of wrestling and the rise of, of MMA UFC specifically probably pushed them to become more of an entertainment event, not just like you said, a lighted ring and smoky crowd. Yeah, definitely. I think they saw their boxing been, you know, declining in viewership for a long time. Yeah. I think they saw this in top rank was really, you know, their, their bosses were smart in this way.

54:35 They said, look, we've got to increase our production value. You know, younger viewers, they want to see, you know, flashy, flashy and yeah, the walk -ins and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, what the sports betting thing is, is the whole, another phenomenon of, you know, that's changing our industry with the advertising of all these betting apps and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's cool. That's interesting. I didn't know you guys were that tied in with top rank. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a great relationship with them. They're, they're management, they're producers and their owner, Bobby, I mean, they're just fantastic people. Yeah.

55:20 They understand the value of production. I mean, you know, it's not a massive budget thing. Yeah. Eric's, we're prospering Eric's doing Janet Jackson right now. I'm probably talked about that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, that budget blows us out of the water, but for us, it's consistency. We, we have done a year in, year out. It's like a tour system that never comes apart and we do, you know, 24 fights a year with them. Yeah. So if I can ask you and you can tell me none of my business, but is it a proper company or is it like a collaborative where you're all doing your own outside stuff too? And then occasionally stuff within the collaborative.

56:02 No, no, we're a proper company. We kind of started out more as a collaborative design thing. Let's just share some stuff. But now, you know, we are a company who, you know, we have a lot of equipment. We have two offices, one outside Louisville area and one in Dallas, Eric is based. Yeah. And we've managed to acquire a lot of equipment over the week. I mean, I don't know. We have well over a dozen grand MAs and we have media servers and, you know, a lot of front of house gear is where we started. That's what we really want to be our business model. But as it came along, we would say, Hey, you know, we can buy, you know, two dozen Sharpies and put them on this gig. And after a year, they paid themselves off. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're renting the exact same thing every show for two years or three years or whatever, it makes a heck of a lot of sense. We're two things. One is our business model is that we're not a rental house. That's just really go by a thousand very likes because we hope that we rent them. Yeah.

57:10 No, we don't want to be that even if we had the resources and yeah, you're buying for a specific need. Right. And we are we we number one want to be turnkey as a business. Mm hmm. That makes sense. We want there still enough producers out there who want to come and say design as a show. Here's a check. Provide all the gear. Provide all the crew. All of it. Yeah. And there's still plenty of those people out there and that's what we search out and maybe it's not the biggest tour out there. But that's our business model. And then if we can buy a couple more consoles by that or some new media servers or, you know, I think Eric's being in that big Sarah stuff now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and Eric's also isn't he I don't remember if it's managing or tour managing or something with Janet.

58:03 Yeah, I don't know what he calls himself, but he essentially is producing the whole thing. Yeah. That's wild. The model of the turnkey. And you know, it's interesting because both him and I have spent way too much time being business men now. Yeah. You know, figuring out, you know, how we're going to finance this like so, you know, we just purchased a whole slew of Mac ones. Love those things. Yeah. And again, makes sense for what we need. But you know, helps where you're doing turkey and you're the designer and you can expect what you want. Correct. Yeah. You know, we work that into our designs and yeah, we don't have to, you know, upstage into the world and PRD of the world. They want all the LDs that send their show out the bid.

58:51 They have to provide this and they want the newest latest greatest. Well, we can buy these things for the Janet tour and then use them on, you know, a fight like thing. Yeah. After it makes nothing but sense. It makes nothing but sense. It's I would think that based on the success of your model, we're going to see other other ones pop up. Well, I probably shouldn't have said all this because, you know, I don't want the competition, but you know, yeah, I think flat. I'm talking to you. What are they saying? The tation is flattery or whatever. Yeah. I think that's why we feel a little bit of boxing stuff from the other people. I've started doing what we've done and yeah. And you know, and then we move on and we innovate something else. And that's how we like to do. But yeah, I spend about probably 50 % of my time, you know, being the president, the president, running the business operation. I mean, I got great people working with us. No, you know, it's not just me and Eric. We got a great staff of, you know, bookkeeping people and, you know, great kids. We call kids, you know, in their 20s and 30s, including Eric's two sons of joining. Yeah, I was going to say fantastic. And then your kids aren't involved yet though, right?

1:00:03 My kids are not involved. My son started out is wanting to, you know, he started going into theater, decided it really wasn't his thing. Yeah. And and moved on to a different career and I'm very proud of him and what he's doing. And they had any graduates school and probably be a college professor. So good for him and my daughter is she was most like kids were in the theater act and let my daughter never wanted to be tech. She was a dancer and now she's in free met. So that's for her. I need somebody to support me and my. Yeah. Well, it sounds like Crossfade might do okay in that regard. It's going to take care of you really well. You know, it's been wildly successful, honestly, more than I ever thought. And it's really happened without a lot of conscious effort. We're just like, Hey, we need to get a raise. Let's not let them let's just buy him, you know, by the way, you know, oh, we need, you know, a lunch and movie, I like for this show. Why should we run and then, you know, we'll go out and supplement everything, you know, with trust and motors and whatever we own a certain amount of that stuff too. But, you know, we can't do a tour besides and Janet with our inventory, but we partner with one of the big companies. Yeah, you just tell them we need this, this, this and this, we're going to supply this, this, this and this and it works out. Yeah. And the other thing we got into over the years is some consulting. Where we've done, you know, we did like the scoreboard for Chicago Bulls United Center. They

1:01:35 came to us and came to Eric and said, Hey, we don't want just the normal scoreboard design and something really cool. So we did it all in, you know, 3D animation and they've made it multi -part scoreboard with CO2 and lights and it wasn't just this too, but it dynamically moves in different parts and stuff. That's interesting because there's companies that do just scoreboards like that's their business, their entire business. Yeah. And they can, you know, nothing against them. They tend to be a little stale, right? You know, just the same kind of over and have a little wedge here or whatever. And probably just as expensive. Like you probably weren't that much more money than them and it's just 10 times more exciting. Yeah.

1:02:18 I mean, I like the thing. So we just, you know, we can solve it on that. We didn't get involved in the installation of the LEDs or anything like that. You know, another project that we worked on right with Eric, he had kind of, when he joined the company, he brought this along, which was Little Caesars Arena in Detroit was building. I don't know if you've seen any of the pictures of this. There's really some innovative stuff going on there. They have a 10 by 10 tension grid, a rigging grid in there. So there's 10 by 10 squares. There's like 1000 of them. Wow. And you can rig down through them. And, you know, that fascinated for me being from the theater and, you know, my technical side. But Eric decided, hey, let's put strip lights on the bottom of it. And he went to Loder and they made a custom thing and we underlit the entire grid. So now it's like pixels in a video. Oh, wow. With, and so it's the entire ceiling, except where the scoreboard is, and be mapped and we've done American flag and Chevy.

1:03:24 Well, that's incredible. What a cool idea. Yeah. And then also there we did a, something of the 600 foot wall of metal that was production mapped in the lobby. Oh, so is that open now or? Yeah, that's been open for years. Yeah. Oh, distance play and that red hop. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen anything on that. Yeah. There was a couple articles and PLS and and lighting in South America on it. Interesting. And check it out. It was a pretty cool project and sounds like it for years with all, you know, it's totally network within their building and multiple random days. And it's really cool because you go anywhere in the building. You can say, okay, that's even that 4156 pull up the ID department back to 156 into the lighting network. And then I can plug a console in and program a shot.

1:04:19 Nice. Yeah. That's very nice. Yeah, it's amazing when you get some lighting people involved in the design of a space like that, right? It becomes very practical. Yeah. Well, it's yeah, it's when you go in these places, you get sick of seeing the same mistakes over and over again. Churches are the worst. No offense church. But like they just dusted off the last plan they had. So all the mistakes from the last church they did are now in this church too. Well, aren't theaters pretty similar in that regard? Yeah, you've got years of mistakes just sort of piled on top of each other. Exactly. The same thing over and over. You're still doing some theater stuff, right? Yeah.

1:05:02 I mean, it's not a main part of our business, but when I'll search it out, one thing's come along. I like to do, you know, some theater consulting and it comes back to me. I mean, the new thing is most of stuff we're doing now, we're trying to encourage people to just get away from the demo. You all do that. Yeah. You know, just straight LED, get yourself some relays in there. Boom. You still, I mean, it's for starters, it seems a fortune. Yeah. And, you know, it used to be that the giant company with the three letters dominated that industry and you just had to use them for network. Yeah. For demo. And now, you know, I won't offend anybody. So I don't say that. But, you know, now with other choices like pathway and stuff like that, we can do all kinds of cool stuff.

1:05:45 We're, you know, we have nodes everywhere and you just use your LED, Lick those or moving lights or whatever, plug them in. And it frankly sometimes would make it a little too, too flexible for people. Yeah. And I go back into a theater a year later and they're still using the exact route plot that I laid out because they don't want it readdressing me. Yeah. That's interesting. You know, somebody will come along that will appreciate that flexibility. Yeah. Yeah. I mean theaters really do seem to be becoming a lot more state of the art now, like even, you know, through my company, Gear Source, we, we, uh, every once in a while, we'll get like, you know, the previous version of luster, we'll get 500 of them available because somebody's upgrading to the new luster. And those will go out to a bunch of theaters or whatever who are going from old, you know, lamp based source for us to lusters. And that's a huge jump for them. And I'm just seeing it more and more, you know, along with churches, they're stepping up their game too.

1:06:49 Well, and the less power you need and if theater person that was, you know, trained in theater lighting, it was a tough change from me too. I mean, to go, you know, the source for was a woman fuzzing for me for a long time with the, you know, a Roscoe 23 and a founder effort, you know, and to go away from that. And, you know, we would do that evolution and moving lights too, right? Where you didn't have to think about it as much anymore. You know, people would design a show and they would just put a trust and they would go, you know, wash, wash, you know, profile profile, wash, wash, any crop and then figure it out when they got there. Right.

1:07:30 Yeah. And honestly, I made my living in the early days being the guy that figured it out for them. Yeah. Because I came from the theater. So I was taught to visualize what your show looked like. You didn't just walk in and serve flesh and light. I was a theater guy. I was taught in the way we were taught was you went to the library and you researched an old painting or something and got your idea of what your show is going to look like. And then you brought that with that book with you and you mixed your color palette according to that. So I mean, it's kind of theater, slavery, but, you know, it was a good lesson in the way I was taught. Yeah. You know, like, like everybody, I mean, I have three or four mentors in my life that, you know, changed my life. Yeah.

1:08:15 And with that, when I learned how to paint with light as opposed to being a technician, it changed my career because. I think being a technical person first, I'm not an RTF artsy designer. There's lots of people that are way more creative than me out there. But what made me successful in my career is I was a pretty good technical guy. Yeah. Pretty little, you know, artistic guy and I can make my brain change from the artistic to the programming number crunchy and then go back to the artist. That's an important fact. Yeah. That's a big one. One way or the other. Yeah. And I've known, I've known them both. You know, I know a lot of them both actually lighting designers who are just completely artists and they don't realize that the things they're asking for are practically impossible to do or or technically stupid. Or you have, you know, the other side of the coin.

1:09:14 You know, one of my favorite topics lately has been AI and just. You know, not even just AI in our industry, I get involved in all kinds of conversations about AI related to everything from, you know, your daily life to business to automobiles to whatever space, anything. And I'm just extremely intrigued by it. I'm a little bit knowledgeable about it because I use a lot of it in my own business now and in my own daily life. But what are your thoughts as far as like, you know, there's a lot of concern about lighting designers, programmers being replaced. You know, people who are creative designers being replaced. And I mean, there's some jobs, I think in our industry that are probably kind of tedious and probably you're writing hundreds of lines of code that maybe you won't have to do in the future. And that's probably a benefit, not necessarily something taking your job away because you can spend more time doing something more artistic. But what are your thoughts on it all? Well, this is where I feel like I'm an old guy and I want to say get off my lawn, you know, because. It's not uncommon. I've not embraced it. Yeah, I'm not scared of it either. It's funny because as I was walking to the game this morning, one of those autonomous Ubers drive by with somebody in the back and nobody in the front. And I'm like, you know, what? Yeah,

1:10:48 then, you know, I get it. I had a conversation about a the other day and, you know, it was in reference to my son who is now, you know, creative writer and he wants to write screenplays and novels and so forth. And you know, I think I was I can put them out and, you know, I don't think so. You know, sure things like nightclub lighting. If I was a nightclub lighting guy, I would be very concerned about my job because, you know, it's that kind of stuff. I think in the short term is is easy for a I to do. And I, you know, designed the next lady got out to her and come up with some creative stuff. I don't know, you know, I'm hoping that it won't before I want to retire. Yeah. But, you know, I've seen some cool stuff. I mean, I was working on boxing the other day with one of our creative guys who handles a lot of the branding and stuff. And he was I was like, oh, it'd be kind of cool if we did this sort of a rooble burn, you know, thing with kites and whatever. And he's like, oh, I mean, he gets out his phone. He goes on the A .I. And chance hands me a set design with that. And I was incredible. That's incredible. You know, I mean, it took like 30 seconds and it's like a legit thing. I'm like, yeah, that way. Well, I did the same thing the other day with a friend of mine who he got addicted to this particular brand of bicycle. And

1:12:20 I forget what they're called. They're called like big ass bikes or something like that. And, you know, they're just really cool looking cruiser bicycles and he's electrified them. And so he bought to himself and he put electric motors in both of them and they've become these incredible bikes and he gets stopped on Miami Beach all the time. Saying, hey, where'd you get that bike? Yeah. So he has basically gone out and bought every used one of these that he can find and he's got like 15 of them now and put motors in all of them. And I'm like, what the hell do you need 15 bikes for? And he says, I just love them. And so he decided to start. We're in South Florida. So he decided to start a bike rental company and he came up with a name and it's called Elite Bike Rentals. And so what he's doing is he's tying in with concierge is at hotels and stuff like that and he'll deliver the bikes and he's charging a premium price because they're very sexy bikes and their e -bikes. And so he shows me his Facebook page and I said, you have no logo. And he goes, what do you mean?

1:13:23 And I said, you can have a logo. I mean, you need t -shirts. You need something to put on a brochure in those hotels and stuff. You have to have a logo. Oh, well, where do I get one of those? And I said, hang on a minute and 10 minutes later, I sent him 10 different logos. He fell in love with one of them and said, oh my God, can I have this? And I said, yeah, it's yours done. And he goes, well, who do I owe money? And I'm like, no, I just had it made by. Yeah, because you got to the app or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of stuff is cool. That rudimentary stuff. And again, I think it's got to change our world. But like in my son's case, you know, so I don't think that I'll write the next cool novel with AI that some creative thing that no one's ever done. I mean, you can write a novel, no doubt. And we'll see how it pans out. And, you know, I would tend to disagree with you, Mike, just because the thing is they're becoming sentient and there's different opinions on when and how.

1:14:28 And if AI will become sentient, but it will. And when it becomes and meaning it's thinking, feeling, you know, self expanding and all of those things, then, you know, we're going to see how far this goes. And I think that's where legislation comes in to stop it from going too far. You know, but haven't we seen a lot of movies? I mean, didn't we watch a Terminator? I mean, come on. I know. I know. I've been warned here. No, I know. I don't. I hope it like I said, I'm 55 now. I'm hoping I'm retired in this business before it gets too far. You know, the younger kids in the business that worry about that. You're right. You know, will AI be able to write, you know, Game of Thrones and be great? Or, or will it just copy Game of Thrones? Will it come up with its own great? Maybe you're right. Maybe it will. Well, you could. Here's the cool thing about AI though, Mike, is you could say write Game of Thrones, but act like you are the Flintstones in writing Game of Thrones, you know, and write it like the Flintstones would. And all of a sudden it's this whole different thing, you know, because you can combine different bits and pieces and without actually just copying something about consoles and, you know, copying and knocking off China, knocking off stuff. And I'm like, well, when people stop innovating stuff because you put them all out of business, then I'm with you. 100 % with you on that one. I'm 100 % with you on that one. Totally.

1:16:00 Maybe I am so sophisticated that it will be that. And honestly, I'd rather, you know, not live in that world. They have to, but, you know, yeah. But the thing is, if you look at the, if you look at the upside, so, you know, Richard Kadina, right? Of course. I had him on the podcast recently and we talked about AI and he said one of the applications that I've recently used it for is he writes JavaScript to do certain things and I forget what it is, but he'll write a whole bunch of lines of code and he uses AI for that now. And, you know, he saves himself tens of hours, you know, on writing these scripts, he uses, he uses AI and uses those hours more productively. Right. So it's just like anything else. We have to adapt or die. I mean, you know, the biggest thing I've always seen this mean where it's like if, if Thomas Edison invented a light bulb today, the New York Times would say candlelight the industry threatened. Yeah.

1:17:04 You're totally right. Yeah, you're totally right. Things come and go. I mean, we don't use kerosene lamps in movies. We have electric lamps now in all my friends are like, ah, you know, I never go to the checkout lane at Target or whatever that self -service thing. And I'm like, it's coming people. I mean, you know, you can fight it or you can be the technician that bears that machine with bricks. Yeah. Yeah. You're totally right. And you can't do anything about it. It's more cost effective and it works and whatever. I mean, that is on challenges, but you know, we just have to do that. And we will as a civilization certain jobs go away and maybe my job will go away someday. But you know who said it really well was, you know who Mike Rowe is, right? The dirty jobs guy. I love that guy. Yeah.

1:17:48 Yeah. So he was on, uh, I think it was Joe Rogan. I don't even remember or was it might have been Tucker Carlson or something. He was on somebody's podcast recently and I can't believe I don't remember because it was like two weeks ago. And, uh, he was talking about the fact that, you know, it's not going to replace plumbers, but it's going to make plumbers a lot smarter with regard to marketing their business, expanding their business, uh, you know, doing accounting in their business and plumbers might be poets on the side because of AI or whatever. So, you know, that's a great point. We may come full circle that the vocational jobs are the ones that are left and become. Oh, I think we're there. Yeah. I think we're, we're on the verge of that right now. Yeah.

1:18:36 And the snobbery artists and stuff like, you know, where I like to say, oh, I'm a designer and I, you know, I could do much better than AI. You know, I might be out of a job and, and the guy, you're right. Doing the plumbing who uses an AI camera to go down your pipes and figure out exactly what's wrong. Yeah. No, you're, you're, uh, you're right there. Um, I was just going to ask you something and I forget what it was. Uh, anyways, the, um, the other thing I'd like to do is, is talk to you a little bit about gear and, you know, one of the things I like to do on the podcast and I probably should put this into the pre -show notes so that people can think about it for a minute and I don't put you on the spot, but three pieces of gear. Go to pieces of gear that any show you're doing. And I know that different shows you're going to start with a different package, but, uh, what are the three pieces of gear you got to have on every show you do? Like currently or past currently today, your favorites. I mean, I still think a Sharpie or a Lachey five R that being lightest is to get up super. And you got to keep perspective to take the shows. I think when I'm doing a lot of television shows where it's important that they're left background with light or beams or something and that's a cheap way to do it without building a set in the back and so forth.

1:19:52 Well, even rock and roll shows, Mike. I mean, you know, when you got a, a bazillion lumen screen behind you, you know, you're not going to project these pretty gobos in front of it. You're going to put the brightest beams you possibly can. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's tons of variations of that. They're getting bigger, brighter and now LED, which is great, but not calling all the Sharpie. Plenty of people forever called it every moving light of vera light. Yeah. And sort of the Kleenex of beams. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's, that's indispensable for sure. And you know, the guy, the person who thought, Hey, let's reinvent the ACL, which is essentially what a Sharpie is, right? You put four together. You have an ACL. So the younger people watching this probably a little bit of an ACL, but you know, I mean, I did do enough concerts when I was coming up. I fell in love with an ACL when I came out of theater and I discovered an ACL. I was like, Oh, that's a foolish thing. Right. Yeah. I've never seen before. And the other thing would be haze. I would think if you want to say that that's allowable to be anything. Is there a particular machine that you like? Like, is there what's your go to? I mean, honestly, we purchased mostly elation stuff. We have a great relation with a lace stuff, great relationship with the elation. And we tend to, to buy a lot of their stuff. Magnetic, it's called, right? Yeah. Yeah. Magnetic, you know, and, uh, but you know, hey, is there, and foggers and so there's a little bit of an expendable, honestly, we don't, the life of them are, you know, and this is not a same on elation

1:21:23 because they're all the same, but you know, they got fog juice in there and they clog up. And so, you know, the price point is economical. So we just kind of, Oh, that one broke. Let's buy anyone. I'm not going to go to California to be repaired. Yeah. That's worth a, but I mean, there's on the special effects kind where you can, I love low fog and all that stuff. When I can, you know, and you got to do it right. I mean, I can go to the theater where we had a big barrel of hot water and you dropped the basket of dry ice in there and you made the four man's fog. And that's my first band. We did that and we had like a little fricking house fan in front of it. And you know, I mean, one of my first tours, I think was a Sheena Easton tour. We used cookies to do Hayes. Yeah.

1:22:11 We never cook. No, it was a hot plate. And I guarantee you this is cancer, it's for sure. Yeah. And they had this kind of was made of one of the old guys probably son of it. It was just stuff and you like crumbled it on a hot plate backstage and it smoked. And they call it cookies. That was like LSD days, right? Yeah. You know, LSD, the lighting company for the people that don't. Oh, I thought you meant LSD. You did acid and then burn cookies on a hot plate. Like lighting sound design and yeah, I can those days and you would have a hot plate and you would put this stuff on there. It was like a powdery kind of cookie and you put it on there and it's fun. That was before BF 50s, right? And I didn't even know about that one. That's interesting. Yeah. So I'm just sitting there going up a little on it's. You know, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with us. We're fine. Yeah.

1:23:05 You know, we're caused it. So you got you got beams and Hazers and what's what's the third one? You know, I mean, obviously I'm a console. I think is your go to right now. Yeah. I mean, yeah, many consoles are go to but to me that's that's what my guys do. Right. You know, I don't you know, and I said it earlier. I don't really program anymore. I've kind of moved the past that something I can't deal with the technology anymore. Obviously, you know, I'm a console guy. It just that peak my interest anymore to keep up on it. It's like I got about the kids that are whizzes at those things. Yeah. Yeah. And it just kind of gives me an headache that I just want to make pretty pictures and yeah, I get it. You know, I mean, I am at the point in my career where, you know, I, you know, get off my lawn. I want to do what I want to do and I'm very fortunate to feel like I'm in a place where the company's doing good and I'm going to go out and do the gigs I want and then so much of my career. I couldn't do that. I take this gig or that gig or go on this tour, get on a plane at the last minute to, you know, wherever China and like somebody calls me and go, yeah, we want you to go to, you know, Hong Kong to do this show. You're gonna fly me business class. Yeah, I don't blame you. That may sound arrogant, but you know, you've done it a long time. Yeah.

1:24:27 I'm not doing any coach anymore. I'm 55 years old. You better get your flat seat. And you know, you said your lighting budget is $500 ,000 and you won't fly me business class. So yeah, six lights out of your budget and I can be rested when I show up to do your show. Yeah, or I can be there because I'm not going if you don't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, I literally turned out some kids and people go, I can't believe it. I go, you know, but I got some kids that would love to do this. That yeah, because when I was in my twenties, I would have gotten the back of the plane in the smoking middle seat. We're still there. Yeah, one row up from the smoking section. Yeah. I remember it too well. You were so cool. Yeah. Yeah. You know, anyway, that I give you the last I just think, you know, I, I'm like, I'm gonna say this. I wish I still had the VL five as my stern. Huh?

1:25:24 Because I love the VL five. I love the look of it and I know they kind of revamped it and, you know, with some success and we don't have any of those air in for, but I just thought that was the best bike can eat the VL five and the VL two C. The VL two C had the best beam for camera that has ever existed. It was at tiny aperture and it had a in its its source was very small. So you've got a very tight beam and a beautiful beam on camera and nobody's been able to replicate that. And I'm not sure that people understand how perfect that looked on camera. Well, because I think and you'd have to ask Matthias and other people this, but you know, me coming from the moving light side of this business, whenever we had small beams and small apertures, everybody wanted bigger apertures. Everybody wanted 150 mil front lenses or 180 mil front lenses because that's what the icon had and everyone loved the icon or everyone loved the whatever light. And so one thing that I learned a long time ago and I'm older than you and I'm old now. And so I can say this, like if I was designing products, I would design what I wanted to design because the minute you start listening too much to everyone, you're going to get a hundred different versions of every light, you know, because everyone's going to have a different idea of what it needs in it and they're always going to want the one thing you don't have no matter what

1:26:55 you put in it. So experience that when I was at Martin doing some R &D and especially with the Mac three. Yeah, they tried to make it for everybody like just make a, you know, a better and ultimately they made a viper, which was the solution to that. Yeah. Yeah. But the Mac three was like, well, you know, one LV can well this thing's got to zoom this big a range. So now it's become this big on this. I've got to have rotating whatever's and that's bigger. And the thing became this massive thing. You, you tried to please too many people. I mean, yeah, still in the industry of fixtures where specialized, you know, these likes to do this and this like does that. And in every hybrid light that I've seen and I'll probably get some calls of Roe V or some other people that show me their hybrid light. That's great. But it's never been very good at any particular set. Well, you're compromising on something. You have to. You have to compromise on something to have everything, right? So it's just a series of compromises put together in one package. Yeah. Wash light is a wash load.

1:28:00 I, no matter how much you diffuse a profile, it's not going to be the same thing as a wash. So, but you know, it's it's secular. It comes back around, you know, like I said, the ACL came back around became the sharpie and you know, the fat beams kind of went away and then, you know, then now that people are maybe going to go back to, you know, it's just a different look and there's certain lights out there that we've not invested in because they're one trick ponies and you see them on every television show for six months and then they said the back of the shot and and no offense to high end show gun, right? So, yeah, you know, exactly was really cool. And if you're the first couple of people to put that on your show, viewer styling, but then it just got so familiar that you're like, oh, shut in today because I have any budget because they can't get those new cool lights. No, you're you're you're exactly right. And that's the problem with sort of novelty lights, you know, you're calling them one trick ponies and they are, but you know, they're a novelty. They've got one like, you know, there's this wave thing now, which I thought was really cool for a minute. Really cool. Yeah. Really super cool. You know, if you saw it on more than two or three shows, you'd be over it and you'd want regular lights back or whatever, right? So it is interesting, but one of the things you said that I thought was was was interesting was the VL five and that you've invested in Mac ones because when I first saw the Mac one, I went, well, it's a little VL five ish, you know, that thing and I talk about it way too much and I'm not, you know, I

1:29:33 worked for Martin, but that's about it. I'm not by any means, they don't sponsor my podcast or anything, but I think that's the coolest thing that's come out in the last few years because not because it's got this incredible technology, but because it's, it's very utilitarian. It can do a lot of different cool things that you need to do with a little package, small package, lightweight and super cheap, you know, and that to me is a winner, not gonna, and then all the, all the accessories, you know, the four bar thing and all that stuff. It's just a great package, really well done. Yeah. Martin's got a lot of cool things like that to connect together and these little square lights. Yeah. Unfortunately, other than an install, it's hard for me to invest in that stuff.

1:30:19 Yeah. But I like it and those are the kind of things that we will go to VRG or upstaging or whatever, because those guys have those talent. They can afford to have those things, right? But yeah, the Mac one, I love it and I've never even seen it personally. I missed last year's LBI and all my people went and they all come back and said, Mac one, Mac one. And then Eric was like, yeah, I love that thing. Let's get some. Yeah. Because it's cool. I mean, having some cool little lights, you know, is a nice thing to mix up. You can put them in rows. You can put them in a pod. You can do a lot of, and then the way they nap and stuff is just real. Well, and also from a cost standpoint, you know, like people have become way too accustomed to $10 ,000 moving lights at dealer cost and you know, that thing's under two grand at dealer cost. So it's, it's much more affordable. You can have hundreds instead of 20 of them or whatever, right? Yeah.

1:31:13 So exactly. Yeah. We purchased 152 of them. Yeah. And those are all out on Janet. Those four bars. Yeah. They're all on Janet. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, it will be. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't be giving away Eric's design there, but I think you talked about it too, right? Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. He talked a whole bunch about Janet. Yeah. Yeah. That was a cool, cool discussion. I mean, you guys are killing it. It's, it's great to see. I love it. It's good on you. I'm really fortunate and crossfade and, you know, I, you know, and when I made this, you know, doing that with Jason and then added Eric and I mean, we, we all compliment each other so great. And that's what we formed the company for because like, you know, Eric's more of a rock and roll guy. I'm not really a rock and roll. We have a TV guy and maybe if he has a TV show, I help him out. And if he, he has a, you know, if I land a concert or something and I do occasional ones, I could like, you know, meet a baker last year and stuff like that. You know, he helps me out a little bit. Yeah.

1:32:12 So, and then, you know, we share, we've really gotten into, I don't know if Eric talked about this, we have a couple of previous studios in our Dallas office. He did. Yeah. And we're using the pants on and it's fantastic. I mean, I was involved back in the AC lighting days and flying big guys with WYSIWYG and love WYSIWYG. I mean, you know, they did all my blocks on it. I did the pre -programming on it. And then of course, you know, up through the days with Martin and so forth. But I mean, the pants is just blows it all away. What, what's it called? It's called the, it's called the pants. The pants. I don't know this. It is software. Okay. And, you know, you can do animations and you can make custom people. So, you know, your guitar players strumming along and you, the smoke is not just smoke, but it looks like real smoke. Oh, interesting. Fountains, you know, with water effects and Bellagio type fountain stuff. Sounds expensive. It's really not that bad. I mean, the, the software itself is not that bad. Of course, you've got to invest in some really hot computers to run it. Yeah.

1:33:25 But we've set out to the studios in Dallas where you go in there, pre -program stuff and there's, you know, done all the data taxes stuff and you do a lot of other stuff in there and now we're renting out the other people that come in. And I mean, you know, that's a tricky thing. You know, people over the years have always tried to do previous studios and they've decked them out with, you know, bars and food. Yeah. You know, it's great, you know, but it's, it's a tough business model to make work. Yeah. It's for our own use, but then we'll be rented out. That's a bonus. Yeah. Yeah, but you're not providing a hotel room and catering and stuff. You're, it's just a previous studio. Yeah.

1:34:05 Bring your subway sub. Yeah. Right. Coming into Dallas, we'll call over Eats 40 if you need, you know, you know, you will run out. We'll have one of our guys run out to get you a bottle of bourbon or whatever you need. But, you know, that's, that's another thing that we really got me into. And we've tried to stay focused on certain things. You know, we're not, like I said, try to be out staging and buy hundreds of lights at the health of the lights. Yeah. Love up staging. Love working with those guys up here to, you know, all these different benders. Yeah. I seem to recall Eric said something about rehearsal space too. Like that was something that may or may not happen in the future. We are, we are working on a project. I should bite my lip on how far I go. I mean, I've been a little far on letting that out of the bag. But yes, we're working on something, a large scale project that may, you know, we hope that happens. Well, it's obviously a problem.

1:35:04 It's a huge problem. I mean, the shortage of rehearsal space right now. So, and good. Yeah. Space, you know, with high enough that you can hang a rig in and strong enough bridge to support that. I know that Rockletts, of course, is the main people on the Gateway has built something and say, yeah, and so forth. But yeah, you know, you might hear something about that down the line. Cool. Well, I appreciate you taking the time. What gig are you on right now? You mentioned it earlier, I think. I'm on a bare knuckle fighting championships. VKFC is we're at the Peacock Theater and downtown LA next to well, crypto now. I'll call it Staples Center forever. And when are the fights? The theater and the fights are when tomorrow or Saturday or what? The fight is Saturday night. Of course, by the time, you know, it's a Saturday night. It's a pay it. It's it's an amp that you should subscribe to. Okay. VKFC .com and check it out.

1:36:05 I mean, it's really it's not as brutal as it sounds. Although it's it's a little brutal. I mean, you know, how how far are we from gladiators where we just get each other? It's but you know what though, like people think it's all just so brutal and horrible and everything. But like, again, I'm a big UFC guy and the thing about that sport is there's so much more to it than what you see. Like it's not just brutal violence. There is some of that, but there's a lot of strategy and there's a lot of like, if you focus too much on on headshots, you know, you're going to get kicked in your legs and you're going to end up not being able to walk. And if you focus too much on your stand up game, you're going to get taken down and put into some kind of a hold that's going to, you know, make you tap or whatever. There's just so much is definitely different. This is straight up box. Yeah.

1:37:01 Straight up. Very not boxing with no gloves. Yeah. And some people already let it stay for a way because people get knocked out. Really quick, you know, you don't get like 12 rounds of concussion to your head. Constant head trauma. Because yeah, there's a lot of first round knock out. There's a lot of fights and a lot of men early. The women want so much. They tend to be each other up as they don't have the power. Yeah. But a lot of the guys come out in first 30 seconds. It's a little bit like I was down. And so it's not as bloody, you know, the bloody ones are the ones that go several rounds. Well, at least you're far enough away where you're not getting hit by like blood from the ring. Way clear. I don't know. It's, you know, the no thank you to know. And the funny thing is, is I'm not a LLMTW Fight fan really. Really? I mean, you don't seem like it. Boxing fan. You don't seem like it. I don't watch MMA. I could care less about UFC. Yeah.

1:38:01 Was another client. If they were a client, I'd care a lot about them. Yeah. You know, I do these things and I enjoy the people I work with both these top rank and very enough, they're the producer stuff are fantastic to work with. And that's what I seek out in my old age. Right. Yeah. I want to enjoy what I'm doing. I want to work with people to fun to work with, keep working with those people, maybe add some cool project. I mean, I really talked about one of the greatest things I got to do in my career, honestly, was help out at my high school after I'm because I lived in LA for almost 20 years and then I moved back to Louisville where I grew up and my kids were ready for school and they went to school back there and they were involved in the same theater department that I was involved in went to the same high school and you know, I'd spend hours and hours and hours helping them installing movie lights in their high school. That's cool. Designs and stuff for teaching the kids, you know, and just mentoring those kids and I designed a couple of shows one. So I have to design which is a production and newsies. I don't know if you know that Broadway show or not.

1:39:09 Now I'm the Broadway guy, but my son started it and I did the lighting. Oh, wow. Amazing. And yeah, you and he was also doing lighting. Yeah. And he did some other ones, you know, so it was that was a great time. I mean, honestly, one of the things I really want to start looking for is maybe passing that ability to teach kids stuff or maybe we try to find a busy system. They might as listening and needs a visiting professor for a semester. I don't know that I could give up my career and be a professor full time forever, but man, I would love to be involved in some schools and teaching these kids. That's amazing. I think that I think there's there's so much out there.

1:39:51 A lot of times with theaters for teaching the kids to be Broadway designers. And you know, as I said at the beginning of this broadcast, it's like there's 10 of those. And let's make sure we understand that even though we're teaching them with a theater degree, the chance of you making a decent living doing theater is very small. But you can this you can make a nice living in this industry, bring a programmer or a designer or being out on the road. If you're willing to sacrifice and do, you know, this lifestyle, you can do you can do really well. Yeah. Yeah, you certainly can. Yeah. And that's such an important thing. Like for guys like you who have done it a while and you have such a sort of wide package of knowledge. It's it's so important to be willing and able to go back and mentor kids and our industry has such a need for people. So it's such an important thing. And it's, you know, our industry is so unselfish when it comes to that, like just the willingness to share information and share ideas. And and share knowledge, you know, is amazing. So I like that. Awesome.

1:41:05 Well, Michael, I appreciate you, man. And good luck with the show this weekend. And yeah. Thanks. Been fun. Good talking to you again after a long time. And you as well. All right. Okay. Cheers. Thanks. Yeah.