reFRACTion Blog

Panorama - La Jolla

2008-11-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

We just wanted to post a panorama shot taken by our Lighting Designer - Mark Jones. This event was produced by Sillapere Events from San Francisco. We were asked to provide all audio & lighting services for a private event in La Jolla, CA. that they produced. We used local lighting & audio companies Peterson Lighting who provided us with the Micro W LED fixtures, low voltage lighting, and Martin Entour moving lights & Special Event Audio Services who provided superior sound for the entertainment and a Nexo system for dinner. I would recommend Larry Peterson and Mitch Grant to ANYONE!

Mid Summers Night Dream

2008-08-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we designed the lighting and audio for a wedding in Guerneville at a place called Dawn Ranch Resort. The property is fairly large so there was a lot of area to cover. The wedding was produced by Alison Events of San Francisco. Zephyr Tenting provided amazing custom tents. The pictures here are of the orchard.

Steampunk Treehouse

2008-06-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

Our friends who built the Steampunk Treehouse were at the Coachella Music Festival this year and we helped them come up with a lighting concept and loaned them the fixtures to light the treehouse. They put about 2 dozen PAR 20 fixtures in the branches and lit the inside of the trunk. I love the Syncrolites in the background. I just had to post the picture. Nice job guys! Go Sean & David!!

The Crucible - Fire Ballet [Firebird]

2008-04-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight is closing night to this year's Fire Ballet of Stravinsky's Firebird. Crucible Style. We've had good press and sold out shows almost every night. The lighting was about 1/2 conventional fixtures and about 1/2 LEDs. The photo is from my cell phone. More images can be found on Flickr. Here & Here.

Emma Mae Jacob

2008-04-03T15:21:00.001-07:00

I recently returned from Nashville, TN, mixing front of house for rising country singer, Emma Mae Jacob , as part of the 39th Country Radio Seminar . Emma Mae performed her single, "Say A Prayer" for the opening ceremonies of CRS39 and burned down the house...... literally.

We had the luxury of a relaxed soundcheck the day before. Emma Mae was only peforming one song so it was critical that we nail it right out of the gates. The PA system was provided by Sound Image and was honored to have Earl Neal as my System Tech. Earl owns In-Ear Systems and develops Live Wires
which I'm really excited to try and possibly get The Decemberists on them as spare sets to their Sensaphonics 2X-S in-ear monitors. Earl provided me with a Digico D5 digital console which I prefer over the Yamaha PM5D-RH anyday of the week. The D5 is intuitive, quick and sounds incredible.... more than I can say for the PM5D. The D5 was such a pleasure to mix on sans one isssue: the recall functions did not save my mix completely, which forced me to scramble during the song, to say the least.

So, during the song I noticed a little smoke in the audience as Emma jumped off stage to work the crowd. I thought it was a feeble and attempt at producing haze or fog in the audience, shaking my head at the Spinal Tap moment. Earl ran over to the house-right stack to see what was going on..... it definitely was not a fog/haze machine. By this time the crowd and the band kicked it up a few notches bringing the climax to rock and roll proportions. Come to find out, as I ran backstage, that the sound system had caught on fire due to a DC overload and that the crew blasted it with fire extinguishers during the song! I couldn't believe it, I finally burned down a sound system. Check that one off the list. Sorry Earl.

It turned out to be a great piece of publicity for Emma Mae, making the evening news that night and the news that Emma had burned down the house spread around CRS39 like wildfire. I wish her the best of luck, she really is a pleasure to work with as well as everyone involved: Paula Kay, her band and her family. Keep an eye out for this rising star!

New Tour!

2008-04-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've been hired as the Front of House Engineer for The Breeders U. S. summer tour.

I will join the tour at The Coachella Music Festival in Indio, CA and continue until June 13th. I'm excited to be back at the FOH helm after spending the last 3 years doing In-Ear Monitors for The Decemberists . Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy working with The Decemberists and we have a great relationship but it will be great to get back to what I enjoy doing most: mixing front of house for rock bands

Coachella and the other summer U.S. festivals are great for catching up with old friends and seeing some great live performances. A homecoming, of sorts, for not only the production and musician scene but the artist community as well. Our friend Sean Orlando will be down there again with the Steampunk Treehouse . Truly an amazing work of art! I hope to catch up with my friends Autolux , Metric and catch their sets too.

Looks like an exciting summer is starting to take shape. Ben just loaded in at The Crucible for the benefit fire ballet but I'll let him tell you all about that.
We're also gearing up for the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival
Check back here for updates on the tour !

The Crucible

2008-02-23T15:52:00.000-08:00

We have been working a lot lately with an Industrial Arts School in Oakland, CA. called The Crucible. For the last couple of years we have done the Fire Arts Festival in July. We did a Fire Ballet in Jan. 07 and this April 9th. - 12th. & 16th. - 19th. The Crucible is producing Firebird “L'oiseau de feu”. This years ballet. We have been producing all the sound and lighting for their events since 2006. They are an awesome bunch of people. The creativity that comes from that place is unparelleled.

pic : Hot Couture Fashion Show

Happy New Year 2008!

2007-12-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year from everyone here at reFRACTion. Thank you for your support, interest, and checking out our blog. Lots of neat projects are already in the works for 2008. Stay Tuned.

the,
reFRACTion guys

SF MOMA - Olafur Eliasson Opening w/Halou

2007-09-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Last night was the SF MOMA Opening of Olafur Eliasson's : Take your time. reFRACTion provided audio, lighting, and video for Halou while they performed in the Schwab Room. We also provided simple ambient pattern washes and lit the tops of the bars in the Atrium. It was a nice place to be on a Wednesday night. There was this really cool fan they rigged up in the ceiling and it spun about 2' above people's heads on a tethered cord. There were times that it looked like it would come right at you. No picks of that though. These are off my cell phone so check back at some point and look at our portfolio. We took some photos with another camera. Much better quality!

Nearing Completion

2007-04-23T16:51:00.001-07:00

We are finally on the home stretch, completing the construction of our offices. I just finished installing the LED flexi strips and making the wiring dissapear on our staircase.

We have lots of great projects in the works for this year. I just finished posting new shows and projects to our portfolio. I also added a 'Press' link and a cut-sheet for our Mobil Light Studio to our website. You can click here for specs on the Mobil Light Studio.

Gorgeous & Green - Global Green USA

2006-12-20T01:05:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 12th., Global Green USA, along with various celebrities and green innovators we took part of the Gorgeous & Green Event at the Bently Reserve (Old Fed Building) in San Francisco, CA. Sillapere Events from San Francisco focuses on sustainable events. They use green friendly and sustainable solutions to their innovative design. Working with Sillapere and their staff in the past on various projects we were delighted to be asked to work with them again. We provided our various supply of LEDs with other energy efficient lighting and Eileen Reo from IO Lighting supplied (12) 3' x 5° LED strips from the 'line 2.0 series'. We used (10) white (3000° K) for cove backlighting and (2) Green line strips for wall washers. I thought I'd share a link from the footage that was shot for 'View from the Bay' on ABC 7. The site says the video footage will be available for about 90days. Pictures won't be available for a little while on our site, but there is some nice information out there about the event, the amazing fashion show, and Global Green on Google. We kept to a really simple design and used highlights to bring out various portions of the elements. The Tactile Zone featuring various living designs had a nice dim light glow. It wasn't so pleasing for somes cameras, (especially cell cameras) but for the eye, it was relaxing and we accomplished more by doing so. By working more LEDs into our design we hope to achieve a much more sustainable approach to green lighting design. We used conventional lighting, but again we kept it to a minimum and created a nice ambiance for a lounge, fashion show runway, vip lounge, silent auction, and even the new 'Tesla Car' out side. While any event is meaningful in its own way, sustainable events and projects, green building and energy. We're excited to be part in any capacity.

Fire Arts Festival

2006-07-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was a very memorable event. reFRACTion provided lighting & audio for the main stage at the annual Fire Arts Festival for The Crucible. They are a non-profit educational facility in Oakland, CA. Focusing on a wide range of eccletic art. Welding, Kinetics, Neon, Forging, Jewelry Making, Glass, & Etc. We were asked to design the whole interior of the VIP tent. Lighting, Audio, & the Environment. We also unveiled our Mobil Light Studio using ESP Vision 2.0 and the newly released Hog III PC Software. Everything went without a glitch and worked seamlessly. (Other than the Tesla coils interrupting the DMX Signal.... However we were prepared for that and had a plan B that worked seamlessly). The shots are from the studio during pre-visualization and then the live performance.

LED & Techno Harlan

2006-05-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

So with Harlan's help, we figured out how to put 4ch. LED fixtures on the Hog. Pretty easy actually. Using a typical 3ch. LED profile with the remaining 4th. channel patched as a dimmer. I had a show with Artemis the next night in Santa Cruz so we tested everything by pre-visualizing the show. "Lighting Guy" the game is quite fun!!!

Watermark Tower

2006-04-06T22:26:00.001-07:00

I wanted to post a pic of the job we recently did for the Grand Opening of the Watermark Tower Building in San Francisco. This is the first building you see from the Bay Bridge as you enter SF on the left. The event was supposed to be on the 4th Floor Terrace in a clear topped tent, however due to downpour and high wind advisory we had to move the party into the parking garage. The guests were amazed!

Good things come in small packages!!!

2006-03-20T18:17:00.000-08:00

We received our delivery of wood today. 95% of our building plans should be framed out by the end of the month. Plywood for the loft/office floor and the 20' beam the structural engineer suggested we install. Plenty of other fixings to shape this place up. I think the beginning of the summer we'll have the open house and celebrate.

Sustainable Events

2006-02-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

reFRACTion was welcomed to participate in a morning event that explored creating "Sustainable Events". This was produced by Sillapere Events of San Francisco, Feb. 9th. at Big House Studios. Topics ranged from Decor Elements, Local Farmers, LED Lighting, Green Power, Green Certs., Re-Use & Bio-Degradable materials. We used a couple of LED fixtures to enhance an entry hallway to showcase emerging technologies. As we soon realized we all had a lot of common ideas on creating beautiful events and working with alternative energy sources and solutions. I was asked to speak for a few minutes on alternative energy ideas and concepts. Small solar-powered sound systems, bio-diesel generators, LED stage lighting. I thought it would be important to discuss what is right around the bend if there is interest for it. It was very inspiring nonetheless. Thanks to Sara & Nicole for putting it together!

SAG Awards 2006

2006-01-27T23:20:00.000-08:00

This is the 3rd. year reFRACTion has been asked to design the lighting for the SAG After Party. Held in numerous tents in the backstage lot of the Shrine Auditorium in LA. Believe it or not it is mostly a 'white' show. Even though it is white it is very impressive and quite beautiful. Hopefully we'll post some pics in the near future in our 'Portfollio' under the 'Tents' section of the website. 7 full days of setup and 1 day for strike. I will be ready for that hot tub appt. I made when I get home on Tuesday.

Round One

2006-01-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be cool to post a little rendering of the new space. We just installed the staircase and are now working in the upstairs office. There is plenty more work to do. More posings soon!

getting ready for a new year

2005-11-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

We had a great year this year. Thank you to all that contributed to our fun and success! This next year marks a milestone in reFRACTion's history. After having a shop for the last 3 years we found an ideal location to include office, design space, as well as shop space. More room to create and spread out. We are looking forward to new opportunities especially with us all working under the same roof (literally) after 6 years!

I think the biggest news this year is the addition of Julian into the reFRACTion family. Born to Marcel and Stephanie in April. We hope that everyone enjoys the rest of the year! We'll keep you posted on our progress with the new space.

New Digs

2005-11-14T23:33:00.000-08:00

We are very excited as we have just secured a 3 year lease on our new home. Stay tuned to find out what we are planning to do. Photos and updates will come.

Live! From Covent Garden - London

2005-11-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

Magnatune.com hosts : Live from Covent Garden. A small dinner party with select guests featuring Magnatune Artists : Artemis, Mijo, & Daniel Berkman. Visit Jan's Blog to read more about the house concert and Magnatune.com. My favorite pics from the night! It is amazing how quality HiFi Home Theater speakers sound when EQ'd properly. The shows audio was mixed via a lap-top using BSS Soundweb. LED light fixtures, a Hog PC w/wings, and flat touch screen were used for lighting & control.

Welcome!

2005-11-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

Thanks for visiting our reFRACTion Blog. After returning home from 5 weeks traveling and 12 of those days on tour with Artemis, I thought this would be fun for us to post our interests.