From The Horse's Mouth

The February Promotion is creating some buzz with our customers. It is a BOGO (Buy One Get One Free) deal on the D1000 Cyc Lights! Contact our sales department for more details.

My 17 year old son’s rock band performed at a high school “Rock Off” at the Cleveland House of Blues recently. I was standing behind the sound and light boards as that is usually the best spot for sound. The light board op had a list of cues for each group’s set when they came on. Imagine my surprise when he brought up the cue list for the lighting that my son wrote (shown below). “Red stuff? Yellow? Blue/Purple things?” Wow, now this is a kid that sat at the kitchen table, eating his Fruit Loops watching me look at and analyze gel colors for the Apollo swatchbook. He has looked at every gel color in most color filter systems as I have them all over the place from answering color recommendation questions.

We may be driving somewhere and I will ask the sons ( there are three), to tell me what colors they see in a sunset or moonrise. These conversations date back to when I taught lighting design and I wanted to push the students to open their eyes and remember details (push the record button) so that they can recreate them as designers someday. I was surprised at his simple lighting request. As I thought about this, I realized that it was very admirable. My son is a bass guitar player. His main function was to play the music (and have a good time). He kept the lighting simple and trusted the board op to do whatever. As long as the crowd could see them and the lighting somewhat matched the music, he was happy. Sometimes I think we need to step back from the complex technology, simplify the cues and not give in to the impulse to strobe, flash, fog, or visually overdrive the background visuals. Yes, music can sometimes be a bit visually boring but running the lights “unplugged” will bring the audiences attention back to what they really came to experience, the music and the artist.

This video hits a little close to home … he is my step-brother and our Accounts Payable, Lisa Reader’s son. Decided we would enjoy a little music today. Enjoy.

This week my wife and I are exhibiting at Macworld in San Francisco, California at Booth 312. If you are attending, please visit with us – you won’t be disappointed. You might wonder what product are we displaying at Macworld?

If you have followed Apollo, you will have noticed a few changes over the last three years. We have started a few additional companies and several departments at Apollo and Blue Pony have all contributed in launching these companies. We now have four companies that are somewhat interrelated, as they use a lot of shared resources. To many this might seem a little confusing. To me this is a wonderful creative formula that feeds off each other. We can mix and match ideas based on each company’s needs. We can test ideas in one area and apply them in another. Since Apollo is a 20 year old company there is a little more resistance for big changes but changes tested and proven with a startup is low risk.

An example of this is a classifieds site we started, jasperdaily.com. I was always disappointed by Craigslist in the graphic layout and user interface. We decided to test overseas programmers, (continue reading…)

Todays video is showing a little what goes on at Apollo as far as testing equipment. Joel was walking around and shot this quick video. Enjoy your weekend!

 Check out all our lovely gobos that would look great for your Valentine events. Pair them up with our romantic gel colors to enhance the atmosphere. Click here to view our Valentine’s Day Flyer!

For all you Star Wars fans, here is a great video!

By now, you know that we are adding more and more LED source fixtures. We feel that it is the future (and the present) in entertainment lighting. Here is a very interesting article asking leading designers from various fields about their opinions on where lighting is going. Take some time and read it.
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20111215/leading-luminaries

I found this playing around on YouTube. Thank you to the individual who was playing around with our gobos and posting a video of it. Have a great weekend!

Our sister company, Blue Pony Digital, has just won a DIGI Award! They won a DIGI for Best Ambient Content for their 9/11 10th Anniversary Tribute, a moving video honoring the lives lost and families effected by the tragic day in American history.

The DIGI Awards are put on by Digital Signage Magazine together with The Digital Signage Group. The DIGI Awards is an industry award program that recognizes the outstanding integrators, content providers and product manufacturers focusing on digital signage.