Programming CV
Projects
Show Reels
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phone: +1 (310) 739 3299
email: hfreni@hfreni.com
Lighting Designer
Don Holder
Associate Lighting Designer
Jane Chan
Celia Chen (Substitute)
Neil Qiu (Substitute)
Assistant Lighting Designer
Sarah Woods
Design Team Swing
Zaid Dawsari
Production Electrician
Ron Schweir
Production Translators
Melody Lo & Diana Chiu
About the Project:The Great Qin is a new cultural tourism project in Xi’an, China. It depicts the story of Emperor Qin’s unification of the seven states of China in 221 BC over the course of six acts. The physical space of the production occupies a 600 foot long, by 100 foot wide venue with 38 overstage electrics, six lighting ladders that track the entire distance of the space (US/DS), and an audience riser that rolls from one end of the space to the other.
The Lighting:The lighting rig consists of 580 moving lights and thousands of conventional channels totaling over 44,000 parameters; this was all controlled by an ETC Eos system comprising of two Apex RPUs and two Apex 10 control consoles. We utilized Blacktrax for two of the six acts, mostly to be able to track the complex flight choreography. All show lighting was controlled by the Eos console system, programmed by me. Due to the size of the show, we utilized Augment3D and added all ladder positions in 3D space in order to be able to quickly recall lights into place.
Takeaways:This project had a lot of technology at play, a lot of quirks, and a lot of “hurry up and wait” moments. Sarah and myself spent a total of six months on site in Xi’an. There were many delays; originally tech was meant to start on January 15th, but ultimately it began on March 30th -- during the very extended load-in period, we were able to learn about the similarities and differences of production practices between the US and China, of which there are many. Notably, not having a local point-person to troubleshoot issues as they arose was really tough, fighting against build quality issues which ultimately compromised certain ideas, and trying to tech a show on an active construction site definitely wasn’t easy. Despite all of this, I do believe that the project came together in the end and that we created something really quite amazing!
The Great Qin Lighting Team