#306 - Steve Terry - Be someone people want to work with. - Geezers of Gear

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Be someone that people want to work with.
Like when you go to be an assistant to a Broadway lighting
designer, it's kind of assumed that you know the technical
aspects of the job. And I'm not talking about adopt
an obsequious approach here. I'm saying be somebody that
people enjoy working with. And at the end of the day, on

(00:21):
the meal break, you get invited to come and have dinner with us.
Right. That, yeah, I love that that.
Is the connections that is goingto make your career, the network
that you're going to build. If you're the greatest genius in
in in some aspect of, for instance, video mapping, but
you're a real asshole, no one's going to want to work with you.

(00:45):
So, so don't be don't be too farout there in terms of self
promotion. It'll come to you.
You don't have to make it happenin that way, right?

(01:26):
Hello, and thanks again for joining me today.
And so I don't really want to doa long intro here because I just
want to get straight to Mr. Steve Terry, who I remember in
the early 90s, I made an appointment to visit one of the
biggest names in lighting, whichwas a company called Production
Arts. And at the time I was with
Martin and probably had nothing at all if if maybe a little bit

(01:49):
to offer Production Arts, but I wanted to try.
And I was actually a bit intimidated, but welcomed by
both John McGraw and Steve Terry, who I went on to meet
with following a quick tour of their shop later on working with
High End. I worked closely with Steve on a
lot of projects and I was also there during the sale to PRG.

(02:12):
And so I've always had a high degree of respect for this man
and also for Production Arts. And so I'm thrilled to have him
on the on the show today. So although a bio probably isn't
necessary, I'll share one anyways.
With more than 50 years in the industry, Steve Terry has been a
driving force in entertainment, lighting, technology and also
standards. As Director of Standards and

(02:34):
Industry Relations at ETC, he's helped shape global protocols
like DMX 512, RDM, and ACN and contributed to the National
Electrical Code NEC panel since 1994.
Previously, Steve LED productionarts lighting engineering major

(02:54):
project projects on Broadway, NBC Studios, Disney, and top Las
Vegas resorts. USITT Fellow and ETCP Certified
Electrician Steve continues to innovate and influence the
future of lighting. So let's welcome Steve Terry to
the podcast. Hi Marcel.

(03:15):
Thanks for inviting me. Thank you for coming.
It's it's certainly an honour tohave you on here.
You're, you know, as I was saying in the intro, I started
sort of late compared to you, I guess in the industry.
I kind of started in 1991, fell into Martin with no real

(03:35):
background other than I had beenworking for a dealer in Canada
selling lighting and sound systems into installs.
But I certainly wasn't a very technical guy.
I was just a sales guy, guitar player kind of guy who who fell
into the lighting business somehow.
And so when I eventually got an opportunity to go into

(03:55):
production arts, it was like, you know, you know, the heavens.
And it was like this music played and stuff in my head
anyway. And and, you know, and I walk
and I, I meet you and, and I think John at the same time.
And honestly, the experience wasas great as I expected.
You know, just a beautiful shop,you know, the cleanest shop I

(04:18):
think to this day I've ever beenin.
Still systems like crazy. Everything had a process and a
system. Everything was very regimented
and which shocked me when you sold to PRG and you know, just a
really, really super smooth, well run company that had a
great reputation for a reason. Like you guys were the gold

(04:40):
standard. Hello and thanks for joining me
again today for Geezers of Gear.Two Days Podcast is proudly
brought to you by ETC. For 50 years, ETC has made a
name for itself in much more than the theatre world.
ETC. Lighting, rigging and control

(05:00):
technology has scaled not only across the entire globe, but
also to nearly any building sizeand type you could.
Possibly imagine. Broadway shows, rock concerts,
sports stadiums, outdoor parks, TV studios, convention centers,
you name it have all trusted ETC.
To make their design beautiful and their spaces safe.

(05:23):
A big part of that trust comes from ET CS renowned customer
support. The global 24/7 tech support
team stands behind every ETC product, whether you're in the
middle of tech on a high school theater production or scheduling
a light show on the facade of aniconic building.
ET CS Support has always been incredibly responsive and

(05:47):
helpful. But now employees have even more
of a personal stake in maintaining that reputation.
Company has become 100% employeeowned.
Each person building the fixtures, developing the control
software and picking up support calls is an owner at ETC.
Outstanding support, reliable products, innovative technology.

(06:11):
This is the foundation of excellence that ETC.
Has built over the past. 50 years.
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it
was important to us to both Johnand myself to you know, have a
few basic tenants about running the company, which was, you

(06:33):
know, provide the, the, the right gear at a fair price,
treat our employees well and support our customers of where
we need to. And, and that kind of was the
foundation of the company. Yeah, you know, and it well, it
just seemed like especially in integration at the time, I'm
sure rentals was the same, but but I was more I guess involved

(06:55):
in the early days with, with high end and stuff in on the
integration side. And the way you guys ran a job
was just it seemed so much better than how everybody else
was doing it. It was so organized and
everything had the right color of Thai wrap and everything had
the perfect this or perfect that.
It just didn't seem like many mistakes happened because it was

(07:17):
so well planned, you know? We tried to do that, but you
know, I mean, one of the, the things that let us do that was
that in the systems installationbusiness, we weren't in the
rough and tumble of public bidding in general.
Most of the work that we did wasnegotiated contracts, right,

(07:37):
where people wanted our particular level of expertise.
Let's not forget back in those early days, you know, DMX 512
was black magic, right? That was new stuff.
So it, it offered us the opportunity and we had a good
team doing it to, to, you know, to apply some real good project

(08:01):
management, some innovative technology, build enough money
into the job that we could afford to do it the correct way
and we wouldn't have to take shortcuts.
And that let us work on some, you know, leading edge projects
that were indeed very difficult and high risk, you know, The

(08:23):
Mirage volcano in Las Vegas. Being remember it Well, yeah,
yeah. So, so, so we were not, we were
not duking it out for the last 2% of margin in the job and and
that that that kind of helped create our reputation as a
company that that could get it done in a timely fashion.

(08:47):
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And let's make memories happen. You know, over the years,
there's been so many companies who have forgotten that really
important thing that you just said, you know, that the margin
that you were managed to hold onto in those jobs enabled you to

(09:56):
provide that level level of service.
And it's, it's so easy to give away margin and, and you know,
there've been some notorious people in our industry who've
done it so well. And, but at the end of the day,
who suffers is the person who's buying it cheaper really,
because you're not able to spendmore than you made on the job to

(10:17):
support the job. I mean, and some of us, some of
us have done it for a short period of time, but you don't
typically survive if you're doing that right.
Yeah. And that's especially the case
where you could call the job a science experiment to begin
with, right? You know, when you're doing
stuff that's never been done before, you can try to plan it

(10:37):
as well as you can, but inevitably there's going to be
the unexpected. I mean, that, you know, that
was. That's a great story actually
about The Mirage volcano, which I'll share with you.
Guys, please. Yeah.
You know that had that had 1000 more than 1000 circuits of

(10:59):
outdoor dimmed GFCI protected circuits to to the lighting on
the volcano, some of it in waterzones, but all of it GFCI
protected. We turned that on and not one,
not one of those thousand circuits stayed on.

(11:23):
What? Why?
Yeah, First of all, why? Well, the average run between
the dimmer rack and the load wasabout 800 feet.
And what happened was that the, the the capacitance of those

(11:44):
circuits, those dim circuits over those 800 foot runs was
enough to cause the GFC is whichwere in the dimmer rack to start
out with to trip. And so now you can imagine this
conversation between myself and the owner, which was, you know,

(12:06):
the Steve Wynn organization saying, guys, I have bad news
and bad news. We just turned on the system and
not one of the circuits is functional.
And, you know, this was a momentat which production arts could
easily been out of business the next day.
Jesus. Right.
If they had said, OK, it's your fault, fix it and it's going,

(12:29):
it's on you to make it happen. You know they said, OK, what do
we have to do to fix it? And the answer was take every
one of those 1000 GFCI Breakers and move them to within 50 feet
of the load in outdoor enclosures on the volcano, out

(12:50):
of the gym. Exactly.
And it was in the days when theywere, you know, they realized
that they were developing new stuff and that there was risk
involved. Yeah.
OK. You know, they hired the best
people they could. Thankfully, we were one of them.

(13:11):
I'm glad we were, but you know when it went upside down, we
were all learning something and they didn't turn around and say
this is your fault and you're going to pay.
Yeah, You know, this was our science experiment and we're
going to together make it right.That's that's an unheard of
situation. It really is Never happened, you

(13:32):
know? Yeah.
So, I mean, did that cause an intense couple of days, though,
where you and John sat in an office and went, what are we
going to do if they come back tous and blame us for this?
We're screwed. To be honest with you, it never
came up. It was so they were so focused
on getting the thing done and not they were not focused on

(13:52):
retribution to the vendors. That was secondary to we have a
lot of money on the line, we gotto make this thing work.
What do we have to do? Did that Did that delay the
opening or anything though? No, it no, I mean, you know,
they're just fantastic electrical contracting resources
on the job. It just happened, you know, and,

(14:16):
and, and you know another thing,you know, when that project was
constructed, you know, there wasno show control system on the
project. So at one point in a, in a, in a
meeting, I said, guys, let me understand something.
How's this thing going to work? We're going to do a show like

(14:37):
twice an hour. What's going to start the show,
What's going to tell the lighting to go?
What's going to put the steam online and what's going to
handle the fireworks? And everybody kind of looks at
their shoes and said, well, we don't know.
So we sat in the room. I, I remember standing in front

(14:57):
of a whiteboard and drawing out the elements of the show control
system and saying, OK, the lighting console can do these 12
functions, so we'll take those on.
Well, you know, we'll runtime code at the lighting system and
we'll decide when these things are going to happen.

(15:18):
But you know, this was before, you know, a show control vendor
would have been a sort of a standard part of the project.
The project just kind of randomly came together and it's
just amazing that it was as successful.
But you were. It sounds like you were building
the plane in the air too, You know, You absolutely were.

(15:39):
That's wild. And you know, the, and I guess
1, you know, one of the reasons that that we maintained a very
long and very good relationship with the Wynn organization
subsequent to that project was that, you know, we were kind of
the people that stood up in the room and said, hey, guys, we got

(16:03):
a problem here, this and this and this are missing.
And I think we can solve it. Let's sit in the room and work
it out. And here's how we can make it
happen. And that led to a lot of other
projects starting after, after the, the volcano moving on to

(16:27):
the Fremont Street Experience. Yeah.
And, and to Bellagio. And you know, so this is was
many, many years and millions ofdollars worth you guys.
Opened an office in Vegas, didn't you?
We never did. Oh, OK, we did.
We had. An office.
We had an office in California and never and in London but

(16:50):
never in Las. Vegas, right, Right. 2020
Hindsight probably we should have.
Done that, yeah. It might have been easier.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
Well, I mean, people, you know, now with remote companies and
stuff, people don't really thinkthat, you know, we need an
office in Vegas or whatever. But when you're doing jobs of
that size and like you said, you're designing them while

(17:11):
while they're happening, you know, it's funny because what
the story you just told me and stuff reminds me of the of the
Tyson quote where he said, yeah,everybody's got a plan until you
get punched in the face. And it's true.
It's so true. And, and to be honest with you,
a lot of the success of the projects and the the fact that

(17:34):
the, the reason we got subsequent projects was I spent
a lot of time out there developing relationships with
the people, you know, Yeah, in the contracting world and in the
owner world. Yeah, yeah, it.
Was a very it was a very, very good time for production arts.
Yeah, No, I remember it just seemed like every job you did

(17:55):
was enormous, and then the next one was even bigger.
You know, it was just like thesecrazy projects, one after the
other. Yeah.
And. And again, all of them getting
done beautifully and, and I'm sure there were problems behind
the scenes because as you said, things were complicated back
then, you know? Absolutely.
I mean, and, and you know what it it, it was solving problems

(18:17):
that you never thought you wouldhave to do.
For instance, you know, we did aproject in Anaheim, you can
guess where and, and oh by the way, we need a submersible DMX
512 data cable. It's going to go underwater and
it's going to work for 10 years where we're going to get that.

(18:42):
So those kinds of, you know, discovery and then solution
providing along the way kind of what we did as a company.
But some of those things, would they be solved by software that
has still or that has since comeabout, like for example the

(19:02):
electrical problem at Mirage. Would that not be an issue today
based on design software that wehave now?
No, it still would when. You're dealing with power and
capacitance and circuit length. You still got to have the GFCI
be close to the load. Yeah, right.
There are certain kind of laws of physics, right?

(19:24):
It would be easier now because we don't have dimmers driving
the. Load we have.
Dimmers in. The fixtures, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why was it designed with the
the so far away? Well.
Because we never thought, you know, nobody ever nobody, nobody
had a GFCI dimmer. So phase control dimmer with the

(19:49):
GFCI built into it was a new thing.
We turned to. Our friends at Lighting Methods
and said we'd like you to build this a GFCI dimmer and they said
well OK we'll just put it a GFCIbreaker in the dimmer and off we
go. Yeah, yeah.
Then it got complicated, yeah. Then evolution of that problem

(20:12):
when we when we when we did Bellagio, same thing occurred
because not the same failure, but the same requirement.
And the consultant on the job, Bob Barbagallo designed a very
beautiful solution to this GFCI circuit length problem using

(20:33):
shielded twisted pair cable on the branch circuit wiring to
reduce leakage current. So these things evolved, but at
the time of the Volcano project,nobody had ever done a GFCI
dimmer. Interesting.
So, you know, you've been doing this a while.

(20:54):
How what, what inspired you? How did you get started in this
business? I believe it was back in
probably the 70s, right? Early 70s.
Well, my first job was as the production electrician for the
Dance Theatre of Harlem. And interestingly enough, Gary
fails and I, who was, oh wow, myoldest colleague in this

(21:18):
business, we've worked together for 54 years, right?
And Gary's retired now, right? Because I know he's sold.
I know he's sold City Theatrical.
Sold. Yeah, about a year ago, sold
City Theatrical. And I was happy to, at USITT
this year present him with the ESTA Lifetime technical.

(21:39):
Oh, that's awesome. That's great.
Fantastic. Yeah.
Well deserved. Well deserved.
That guy. Brilliant guy.
Yeah. So we, you know, in 1971, you
know, we were on tour together, doing everything, driving the
truck, building the Power Distribution.
Oh, we need a projection dissolve system.

(22:00):
Let's build 1 because we were too inexperienced to know that
you didn't do certain things right.
Yeah. We were effectively young kids.
You know, we were in our teens at that point.
You. Know had you gone to school
though for this? No, I, I, I, I, I had, I had
been involved with it, with electronics since my father at

(22:23):
five years old said to me, I betyou'd like to learn how to use a
soldering iron. So there was kind of a, you
know, a long, a long background of.
Of. Of working with electronic
systems but now we were touring you know around the world and
that that went on from for me from 1971 to 1970 five.

(22:52):
And then I, I went to my first and only semester of college at
City University in New York and met Peter Forward, my professor.
I, I said, oh, look, a stagecraft class.
I bet I could get 3 easy creditsfor that.
And, and the professor, it was Peter Forward and John Mcgraw's

(23:17):
partner in production arts lighting.
So I went, I left Dance Theater of Harlem in 1975 and went to
work for Production arts. And we were just moving into
electronic dimming and control. And that, that was kind of my,

(23:39):
my, my next step into the business.
And I, I, I kind of got my firstjob on Broadway in a strange
way, because I had a, an acquaintance named Gary
Chevette, who was a local 1 electrician and he had been

(23:59):
working on a, a season that the Dance Theatre of Harlem did on
Broadway at the amphitheater as a local stagehand.
And he was a production electrician on this wonderful
new show called a chorus line atthe Schubert Theatre.
And so I heard kind of through the Grapevine, wow, there's a,

(24:19):
there's a new lighting system, new computer controlled lighting
system on a chorus line. And I said, well, I got to go
take a look at this, right? So I, I went to the theater to
see Gary's, find him and find out what was going on with this
thing, which was the first ever computer controlled system on

(24:44):
Broadway. And this was a product called
the LS 8 designed by Gordon Pearlman and manufactured by
Electronics Diversified. So the day I go to visit Gary at

(25:06):
the theater to look at this system, a big problem has
occurred. Someone servicing the system
applied 110 Volt circuit to the control common between the
dimmer and the dimmer rack and the and the console and blew up
most of the console and there was only one.

(25:29):
There was only one God anywhere.Not just in the not just in the
theater, right? There was just only one.
I mean the the the the incredible audacity of putting
on a Broadway show with a prototype level product.
With no backup whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible.

(25:52):
When? You think about this, a 2 scene
preset for 96 shimmers. And so it was so the night I was
there looking at the at, at thissystem, they actually ran the
show for the first time on the backup system.

(26:14):
And I remember sitting outside the control booth at the
Schubert Theatre watching A Chorus Line for the first time.
And then they said, oh, now whatare we going to do to fix this?
And I said, well, maybe I can help because I have some
equipment that we might be needing like a vacuum powered
solder sucker to get all those blown up ICS out of the out of

(26:40):
the the the system and to repairnext couple of weeks.
I was on the team fixing that product, which led to my getting
a job on the show as an assistant electrician and making
that system be happy for the next, you know, 5 or 6 years.

(27:03):
Wow. I subsequently and I met Baron
Musser, the designer of the show, as a result of that.
I've only I've never met her butI've only heard like pretty wild
past humans. By the way.
She yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say not. I would say.
Not wild, but tough or something.

(27:24):
I don't know what you would. Yeah, that.
Two things, right? One of the most competent people
you've ever seen in, in terms ofmaking art in the theater.
Yeah, just brilliant. And also, you know, took nothing
from anybody that she couldn't deliver herself in terms of

(27:47):
protecting her, her position. But incredibly loyal, incredibly
loyal. Many years later, not well, I
would say five years later, whenthe bus and truck tour of A
Chorus Line was going on the road and it was produced by Tom

(28:07):
Mallow, who was a big customer of production arts.
We had done many, many tours forfor him.
And we had developed a sort of aquick deployment system of pre
hung electric pipes, multi cable, all kinds of stuff that
was totally unheard of in the theater industry, becoming

(28:31):
common in the concert lighting industry.
And so I, I remember going to a meeting with Michael Bennett,
the the general manager of the show, Aaron Musser, a bunch of
other people and presenting thissystem, fully expecting to have
them say, well, thank you. Now we're going to have our

(28:52):
lighting company, which of course was four-star stage
lighting in new. York.
We're going to have them do thatsame thing.
And I remember Theron Musser turned to Michael Bennett and
said, what do you think we should do here, Michael?
And and then Michael said, well,Faron, what do you think we

(29:13):
should do? And Faron said we should give
this show to production arts, which was completely unheard of
because we were a non union shop, you know, so this.
Was. You know, just a a complete
departure. And this was the loyalty of
Faron Moser in full view. Wow.
You know, we, we had a friendship that lasted from the

(29:35):
day I took, you know, my Sodom and iron to fix the LS 8 at at
at the Hubert Theater till she passed away many, many years.
I didn't hear that part. You actually got the console
working. Yes, we did.
Yeah. Oh, wow.
Yeah. Interesting.
Gordon Pearlman and Steve Carlson flew in.
And we, we spent, you know, a long time.

(29:59):
Rebuilding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, Theron,
didn't she? She ended up with Alzheimer's or
something, right? I think late in her life.
Yeah, some, you know, dementia, yeah, but she was pretty much
going strong till very, very near the end.
I did AI did a session as part of the Broadway lighting master

(30:20):
classes at Fordham University one, one year.
I think it was the last public presentation or that Theron did
put together the original team of A Chorus Line, Gary Chevette,
the Abe Jacob, the sound designer by Orc Lee, the the

(30:42):
dance captain and choreographer.And, you know, we, we talked
about how that show came together and it was a, it was a
special. That's very cool, Very cool.
Incidentally or not so incidentally, I'm my wife was in
the show if we met on the show. And oh, wow, I didn't know that.

(31:03):
That's very cool. Yeah.
Huh. Interesting.
And so you went straight from working chorus line to to
production arts? No, no, it was I was double
dipping. I had two jobs.
I was working at production artsand working on a chorus.
Line. Oh, very good.

(31:24):
Days and evenings. And I did that for maybe three
years and then production arts was just on a rocket ride in
terms of expansion. And I, I then, you know, said,
OK, this, this Broadway adventure has been fun, but I
got to go, you know, by by this point, I've become a partner in

(31:47):
production arts. And then I did two other
Broadway shows as a, as a replacement.
They're playing I song and then forget the name of the show.
Another insignificant show. Although playing somewhere

(32:11):
there's somewhere there's a producer right now saying
insignificant. What do you mean 1940s Radio
Hour was the show? Oh OK.
And I worked in I. Worked.
By this point I had moved into the sound engineer position on A
Chorus Line and then the other shows I did on Broadway, whereas
the sound engineer. So I worked for Odd Smunderlo,
who for a number of years in that position.

(32:36):
And then, of course, production arts became We were riding the
rocket. Yeah.
You know and. So a couple minutes ago you said
you became a partner and I don'tknow how much you can or or wish
to share, but how did that come about?
Like, was it just obvious one day that, hey, you know, I need
help in the front office here and you look like the right guy

(32:58):
or? No, to the contrary, it was John
and Peter recognizing that we were on the technology, a
technology rocket ship launchingand that I had skills that were
gonna be necessary. Right.
OK, interesting. It my early days of production
arts were as the chief engineer,basically, and so we designed a

(33:23):
lot of products there. Yeah.
Related to touring, yeah. And so.
Yeah. I mean, you guys were getting
into projection and all kinds ofthings way before anybody else
was, it seemed. Yeah, yeah.
We, we had the exclusive distribution rights to.
The Pawnee projection. System.

(33:44):
Film projection system from Vienna, Austria and we designed
and and produced a number of automated slide changers.
For those projectors which were 7 by 7 inch film slides, Yeah, I
remember you giving me a demo ofone of those.

(34:06):
Maybe it wasn't even a demo, just kind of showing me the
inside of one and stuff. And it's so funny when you're
sitting here in 2025 looking at the technology we have for
projection mapping and stuff. And, and you think that back
then that was state-of-the-art, cutting edge visual projection,
right? Yes, It was.
Yeah. Crazy.

(34:27):
Yeah, Yeah. Crazy.
And you could already see video emerging, you know, you could
see sort of the doubling of alumin output on on video
projectors on a pretty regular basis.
Yeah. So you could say, well, this
film stuff isn't going to be with us forever.
And it sure wasn't. Right.
Yeah, Yeah. Well, and those were big

(34:49):
expensive machines, those those pony projectors, Yeah, they were
beautiful. But it's amazing that now like a
little tiny, you know, laser projector or whatever can can do
the same thing and but a heck ofa lot better.
Absolutely. So, yeah, although a heck of a
lot better I think is open to interpretation.
That's true. Some of the projection

(35:10):
designers, the great projection designers of that period, like
Wendell Harrington will tell you.
Well, yeah, video's fine, but itdoesn't touch film for, you
know, some of the things that wewe did back then.
Yeah. Were you doing any kind of pixel
mapping stuff back then or no? Was that due to capabilities or

(35:32):
people just didn't come up with that?
Yeah. No demand yet.
That stuff's so cool. Some of the I I get lost in.
I go down these rabbit holes of projection mapping every once in
a while where you have like, youknow, there's one that was
probably 20 years or 15 years ago now, the H&M store thing in
somewhere in Europe where, you know, the building is like
melting and doing different things and eating itself and

(35:55):
like just crazy stuff, definitely.
There were distortion maps produced to allow incredible
projections on buildings from Pawnee film projectors and, and
you know, a guy in London whose name you may or may not have

(36:16):
heard named Wyatt Hanover. He worked for David Hersey for a
long time. He was the past master at
creating these distortion maps. And basically you would you
would take the projection lens from the projector and use it as
a film camera and take a pictureof the building you were going
to project on using the projection lens.

(36:37):
Interesting. That would build the distortion
needed into the slides. There was a lot of very
interesting technology, but was much more laborious and
difficult and not instant when you wanted an image changed.
You know what? It didn't happen overnight
because you had to make the slide, get it, send it to the

(36:59):
lab, get it back you. Know yeah, yeah and those were
never IP rated either, were they?
Like, didn't you have to? You had to build a building
around the things to use them onan outdoor projection?
That is right. Yeah, wild.
You know, you mentioned earlier and I love the the way you
define some of these jobs in Vegas as being science projects.

(37:22):
And but again, when you use the sort of Wayback Machine and pull
it forward and you look at projects like the sphere, for
example, you know, it's just, it's, it's crazy, you know how
far that's come. You know I have.
I have only I haven't been to the sphere yet.
Me neither, I've only seen pictures and videos.
But I've, I've seen Anne Militello went to the sphere and

(37:46):
was using her iPhone to shoot what was going on and then gave
a bunch of us a little narrationand I, I've never seen anything
like it. I mean it's insane even seeing a
video of it is. Yeah, Incredible.
Yeah. Now it's insane.
It's. And, you know, again, like I
know so much about it because I've had so many people on my

(38:06):
podcast that were either involved in the installation,
involved in the design, involvedin, you know, Jake Berry doing
the first show in there with youtoo.
And. Yeah, yeah, and on and on and on
and, you know, audio just crazy.Yeah, audio and and of course,
you know, video on, on steroids and just nutty things that you

(38:28):
can and think about the risk involved in building that
facility. I mean, you know that that
person $2 billion. Yeah, exactly.
And and how's it going to work and how are we going to make
content? For it, I mean, when you look at
what Willie Williams did for you.
Too in the 1st. Show I mean.
It's just, and then you look at some of the more obvious ones,

(38:52):
you know, like dad and company and fish and you know, those
crazy like you're in the middle of a an acid trip cartoon or
something. You know, not that I've ever
been in an acid trip cartoon, but you know, I've seen a lot of
cartoons. But yeah, I mean, just
incredible things and and a whole new sort of invention

(39:14):
going on in your head on how to create visuals and what to
create on those. But some of the other ones are
even to me more interesting, like UFC going in there, for
example, or the NHL draft. The NHL draft went in there, you
know, and, and just the ways that they're using this 360

(39:35):
massive video screen to project like player statistics all over
the place and stuff, you know, just really, really unique and
interesting. Yeah.
I mean, just a math project though, from a standpoint of
trying to make the thing work financially, economically, you
know, like, I don't know how youdo that on a look, technically,

(39:55):
I mean, yeah, you know. Both from an audio and a visual
point of view. Just an incredible challenge.
I, I was having a conversation, I think it was with Wiseman or
somebody about this just on a long term from a financial sort
of, you know, mapping out or projection standpoint like what,
how is it all going to work? Because again, there's only so

(40:18):
many shows that can really afford to pay top dollar to be
in there. There's only so many advertisers
outside who want their image projected on that, that, you
know, enormous ball. And then also like what happens
when those screens start failing?
I was just going to. Ask the question, what do we
think the shelf life of that of that sphere device is?

(40:41):
The outside especially, you know, because Las Vegas is not
pleasant on gear, you know I. Mean, you know, so there's going
to be an ongoing, I would, you know, say millions of dollars of
annual expense. To keep it working, right.
Yeah. So, well, and that's the Seiko
relationship I think has changeda little bit, you know, So I

(41:03):
don't know, like, I just wonder what that's going to look like.
I don't know, like long term, itjust feels like you're going to
have to reskin the entire thing.And I don't know if that's
already built into the budgets or whatever, but it just, it
feels like it's going to have tobe reskinned with the latest
greatest, you know? Just because the advances in
technology will be demand, you know, there'll be a demand to

(41:26):
the next resolution and the nextrefresh rate and all that sort.
Of Right well and failures, you know so as it starts failing and
that demand for the new technology and stuff like they
must have planned for something in five years or something where
you just completely reskin in and out.
I would imagine. Yeah, I don't even know what
that cost would be. I mean, it's got to be, you

(41:48):
know, a half a billion dollars or some crazy number.
Yeah. Yeah.
So anyways, it it's cool that wegot to witness it.
It's cool that the technology has come to that point.
It obviously wouldn't make sensein a lot of cities and for a lot
of owners who don't have pocketsquite that deep as it's MGM.

(42:08):
But but I'm I'm glad it exists. You know, I love when someone in
our industry just goes, Oh yeah,hold my beer, you know, watch
this. And you know, I don't know if
you've seen the ABBA experience in London.
Only video and pictures and stuff you.
Know it's the first show I've ever gone to where I looked at

(42:32):
this, what was happening in the visuals on stage, and I said,
how did they do this? Really.
Yeah. I mean, it is if you I, I highly
recommend. Going, Yeah, I want to go.
I I was actually just my girlfriend's British and we were
talking about it just recently that, you know, next time we're
in London, let's go see that thing, yeah.
It's just incredible. Yeah, yeah, I have some friends

(42:55):
and I don't even know if I'm allowed to mention the name of
the band, but it's a, it's a Canadian rock band who this year
is their 50th anniversary and they don't tour anymore.
They've pretty much retired, youknow, they Can't Sing the songs
quite as high as they used to and they have no desire.
They're all successful business people now, but they're doing a

(43:16):
50th anniversary tour and they're using all really great
big name musicians in the band. But the band's going to be
behind a screen and then there'sgoing to be basically, you know,
some form of hologram technologyin front of the screen with the
original members playing along to the music that is coming from

(43:38):
behind the screen. And, you know, it's very
ambitious. It's really cool.
The drummer is is a friend of mine and owns a production
company. And, you know, we've talked
about it extensively. And the designer is a guy who's
done this stuff before for otheracts.
And so it's going to be interesting.
Like, I hope to get to see one of the shows because I love that

(44:00):
kind of stuff. And I think it's coming.
Like, I think we're going to seeMichael Jackson touring for
years, and we're going to see Frank Sinatra and all of those
people. Madonna, if she ever gets old,
you know. If I had not seen this this ABBA
ABBA in London, I would be arguing with you, but having

(44:20):
seen it, I could see that exact thing that you're talking about.
Yeah, it's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen.
And and the crazy thing is it feels like there's a an appetite
out there for it. Like I've I thought that by now
there would be a new version of Kiss touring as KISS, but
apparently KISS is unretiring again and doing another.

(44:41):
I don't know. They're doing at least one show.
I don't know if they're doing another tour or what.
But you know, the 70s is the new40s, I guess for musicians, they
just don't stop. So, so you're at production
arts. Production arts is growing like
crazy. Fast forwarding into the 90s Was

(45:02):
it? And again, you don't have to
share. You can say shut up, Marcel, I
can't talk about this. But when PRG came knocking, was
it time where? Because I know as the industry
has progressed and, and I'm, I digress here, but I know as the
industry has progressed, there'sbeen a greater need and pressure
to utilize outside capital, you know, whether it's private

(45:26):
equity or, or public. Yeah.
I mean, frankly, that was sort of an integral part of the
decision in 98. Yeah.
To because we found ourselves with now competitors with really
deep pockets. Yeah.

(45:47):
And simultaneously, we found thevalue of lighting systems in
rental making a step change upwards as automated lighting
became part of the picture. Right.
What was actually worse than that?
Because rental prices were dropping and purchase prices
were climbing. Like a Cyberlite was 5 grand and

(46:09):
rented for 300 bucks a week. A Mac whatever was 10 grand and
rented for 175 a week. I mean, it's like you.
Know it it it it was bad math yeah, it it was and, you know
and then so that you know then it it became time to to.

(46:30):
Make a move. Make a move and.
We did it with PRG. I, I stayed on at PRG for three
years and then it was that resulted in Terry's first law of
business acquisition. Would you like to hear that?
I'd love to hear it, I can't wait.
There ought to be a law in written in law, not just a an

(46:54):
idea of a good thing to do. There ought to be a business law
that says when a closely held company is acquired, the
previous owners must leave within six months.
That's a fantastic friggin law because you know what it it, you

(47:17):
know, it, it, it was, it was theright thing to do.
But you know, I'm not second guessing the move, but it is
extremely not just production arts.
Any situation where a closely held business, the principals
are still in running the business or working at the
business after an acquisition, it's extraordinarily difficult

(47:42):
because their interests and and the the purchases interests are
not always in alignment. One, it's a battle of egos and
it's all kinds of things like I,I got to sit on the sidelines
for, I would say production artsbeing probably the biggest
example of, of, you know, a PRG acquisition that you could see

(48:04):
some cracks forming. And, but I watched them all and
really learned a valuable lesson.
Several lessons, many, many lessons.
You know, one the first biggest lesson I think I learned was I
think it was whether it was via Marty at Vanco or maybe it was
Don Stern talk to me from Bash or something.

(48:26):
But the infrastructure, the downplaying of infrastructure,
you know, the fact that that as these companies were being
acquired, nobody was thinking ofthe fact that you needed to
somehow match cabling and flightcases and, you know, really
simple, inexpensive things untilyou got to go buy 1000 of them,
you know? My favorite example of that is

(48:48):
dimmer racks. What is the sex of the Cam locks
on the panel mounted in? Wow, yeah, meter in.
That's a big one if your Van Co.It was one if your production
arts. It was another, right?
Yeah. And so that is definitely right
the the integration of multiple rental inventories into a

(49:10):
cohesive package lot, lot of work.
Well, another example, like I was working for High End at the
time when Bash and Van Co were both acquired and I did a show
and I can't remember who was thedesigner, but it was a
television show that was being filmed at one of the, I think it

(49:31):
was at Universal in Orlando. It might have been Rosie
O'Donnell or something like that, but they brought in 200
Studio Colors and they were different colour temperatures,
you know, like very different colour temperatures.
And the designer looked at me and he goes, what's wrong with

(49:51):
your fucking lights? And I just said me, what are you
talking about? I'm not the rental company.
I'm just here to buy you dinner,you know.
And so I had to call the factoryand Bellevue did what Bellevue
does. He put, you know, 200 lamps on
an airplane and got them to me instantly.
And and the next morning all thelamps were changed and they

(50:12):
matched. But good lesson, you know,
great. Lesson And I think that extends
to almost every aspect of, you know, rolling up a bunch of
different companies into the same business.
Right, Yeah, I, I helped AI, helped a group roll up during
COVID and some of those lessons I brought forward and I said

(50:33):
don't forget infrastructure, youknow, cabling in cases and, you
know, even just stock gobos in fixtures, you know, like if
you're using, you know, four different companies fixtures and
everyone's gone to their own stock patterns in those
fixtures, you can have a problem, you know, so.
And and by the way, you know, wetalked about this or we touched

(50:55):
on this a little earlier, but the momentum that a large
inventory owned by a rental company has is tremendous.
Let's so let's let's play a gamehere.
I'm, I, I decide we're going to be in the control business.
You were talking about this and we wrote it down Cluster.

(51:20):
Yeah, Yeah. So we'll dream up a new protocol
and we'll go out and see if we can sell it to some rental
companies. Well, that's what, you know,
unless there's clear innovation or we're going to guarantee the
rental company is going to get more business, the weight and

(51:41):
the momentum of an existing pileof gear which uses Ethernet and
DMX 512, it's hard to minimize that.
Yeah, you can't turn that ship too easily.
Right. Yeah.
You might want to take a look atthat cluster thing, though.
And I'm not smart enough to sit here and talk to you about it.

(52:02):
But yeah, I can connect you to the to the CEO of the company
who's a very, very smart, reallynice guy.
I met him during COVID. I'll connect you in an e-mail.
But it like, as I recall, and again, this is an idiot's
version of what it does, but it basically is a universal
language that kind of takes intoconsideration all the other
languages and then takes controla little bit using, you know,

(52:25):
all sorts of cool stuff, RDM andeverything else where, you know,
it just it, it seemed like it had some legs when he explained
it to me. But, and I know that Ayrton's
just made a move on it. I saw an ad that I think was a
combined cluster Ayrton ad saying, you know, now available

(52:46):
or whatever. So I hope he makes it because
he's a smart guy and it seemed like a good solution when he
explained it to me. Yeah.
I mean, certainly look the idea of a simpler to configure
discoverable system, that's where you have all this
equipment. You can plug it all together, it

(53:06):
discovers itself and it then presents you with choices for
configuration. It's really.
A good idea. And that's what this does, yeah.
You know, you look at look at a large rental system right now
for a Broadway show or for a concert tour, there's a lot of
Labor and energy involved in getting it all to come together

(53:27):
and work right. And it's because, in a way,
we're using protocols that have outstayed their welcome.
Yeah. Why is DMX 512 still with us?
I was going to ask you that. Yeah.
No, no, no. Very simple #1 easy for any

(53:50):
manufacturer pretty much to makeequipment that that'll that'll
work on DMX 512. That's also inexpensive, right?
It's, it's open source. It's it's.
Yeah, yeah, the topology is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Daisy, take a line, Daisy chain it to 32 fixtures, up to 32

(54:14):
fixtures and you're done. Doesn't require a home run for
to to every fixture. So why you know then then RDM
got layered on DMX 512 and provided a back channel and a

(54:34):
configuration method. But it's pretty primitive,
right? Yeah, I mean, when you think
about if every fixture was network connected and you, you,
you know, you could just plug itall together, it would discover
and it would, and, and it would connect.

(54:55):
There's a lot of room for improvement there.
Yeah. So we'll see.
I, I, I certainly when we made DMX 512 happen in 1986, there's
no way I could have predicted what it would turn into.
Yeah. Where we're dealing with

(55:17):
thousands of universes of the driving video, you know, it's,
it's kind of the wrong protocol for that work, right?
But it was so ubiquitous in terms of people's familiarity
with it, the hardware that was available, that it's been pushed
pretty far beyond its original, original intent.

(55:42):
I actually remember back in, youknow, 1986, maybe 87, John
Offord, who is the publisher of,of Lighting and Sound
International, the, the, The Plaza magazine in the UK, called
me up and said, listen, I, I want to publish a copy of DMX
512 in the centerfold of the magazine.

(56:05):
I said, well, really why? He said.
Because automated lighting manufacturers are deciding that
it's going to be the protocol that they're going to use.
You know, so you had you had what it whether it was Clay
Packy or Colmar Colmar or, you know, a wide variety of

(56:29):
manufacturers needed a protocol and they looked at DMX 512 and
they said that's untyped data, 512 bytes.
We can use that, right? So all of a sudden it got sucked
into something that it was neverintended to do, you know, and it
was intended to talk between consoles and dimmers, period,

(56:52):
right? That was it.
So was that was that short sightedness from the from the
protocol, from the console people, from the moving light
people like listen, listen it itserved its purpose.
It was you could dissect the MX512.
You can find out 12 reasons thatit's a shitty protocol.

(57:16):
It doesn't have error checking, it doesn't go fast enough,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There's a list in it's.
It's like here in the evaluate anetwork protocol.
It fails all the tests. Yeah, we've been using it for 40
years. OK.
And why one reason, just one. One reason, Interoperability.

(57:42):
All of a sudden you could take console from manufacturer A,
dimmer from manufacturer B and moving light from manufacturer C
plug them all together and they would work.
Yeah, it's completely agnostic. And this and this is what
created DMX 512. The fact that in the New York
rental market, we were grapplingwith CD80 protocol, zero to 10

(58:09):
Volt analog, various flavors of digital protocol, none of which
talked to each other. We had these involved and
complicated black boxes with microprocessors in them to
translate 1 protocol to another.And this is how we created the
MX. 512 basically said guys, this game is overlook at one

(58:34):
fixture, the Intelibeam. Like, would the Intelibeam
become the runaway success that it did if you had to keep using
those silly? Rack mount controllers, you
know, Yeah, exactly right. I mean, they were great for
eight lights, but they weren't good for 80, you know, and, and,
and the fact that manufacturers when when the when the New York

(58:55):
rental community said the game is up, guys go off in a room and
figure this out. And here's we're going to
propose a protocol. And so we're, I remember this
happened in 1986 at a USITT convention and a bunch of

(59:18):
manufacturers, bunch of rental companies met and we said, OK,
what do you think about this? And everybody said, sounds like
a good idea, Steve Terry, you doit, you chair the committee.
So we got a bunch of people together, myself, Mitch Hefter,
Bill Florak from LMI, Fred Foster from ETC.

(59:41):
Not a big group. I called it the gorilla
standards team. And not GORILLA, but gorilla as
in gorillas who fight in the jungle, right?
Yeah. This was like, OK, we're going
to make a standard and it might not be perfect, which it
certainly wasn't because we had to revise it four years later to

(01:00:03):
fix some of the things we did wrong.
But instantly we had consoles and dimmers talking and we had
now slide changers on Pawnee projectors on the same protocol.
We had moving lights in Europe from, you know, all kinds of
different small manufacturers. Interoperability was king.

(01:00:26):
It didn't matter at all about the technical deficiencies of
the standard. Now that's coming around to bite
us in the ass. Yeah, because over the years
we've had to warp and bend and alter the way we use DMX 512 in

(01:00:47):
ways that it should never have been.
Yeah, yeah. And so, well, if you knew then
what you know now, obviously, I mean you know, but you got to be
you got to be fairly proud stillthat, you know, you were in the
room and and that for anything in our industry, the last four
years is pretty incredible. Well, billions of billions of

(01:01:07):
dollars of revenue created by that the by the fact that that
standard worked, right, Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I think the.
Group that was involved, you know, and I didn't do it by my
itself like I say there were others involved and that that we
all look at it and say yeah, good move it worked out, you
know, yeah. The problem is the industry as a

(01:01:30):
whole has just embraced it for too long.
They helped, they have held on to it far beyond its useful
application because of all the complexity that we're now
dealing with. And, and you know, So what do we
need? We need a new protocol.
So the ESTA control protocols working group is working on

(01:01:52):
what's the next protocol going to look like.
We tried that with ACN with ANSIE 1.17 and it, it just, it
didn't go anywhere. And why didn't it go anywhere?
Because one of the big things about DMX 512 interoperability

(01:02:13):
was you got 512 bytes of data ineach frame.
Here's how it gets down the line.
Here's what you do with it. Now ACN came along and we, we,
we did this involved network standard, which ETC was driving
force behind. Spent 10s of thousands of hours

(01:02:34):
and a lot of money behind it. It became part of our our
portfolio of network protocols. But what did the industry miss?
If somebody raised their hand and said I need to use ACN to
drive a remote video display from the console, how shall I do

(01:02:55):
that? Answer from ACN.
Well, here are the 17 ways that you could do it.
It's a structured protocol. We don't want to too clear,
closely define how you would do that function.
Game over. What the industry wanted is if I
have a function and it's using ACNI don't care about the fact

(01:03:19):
that it's a structured protocol and I can do it 12 ways.
Tell me the one way we should doit because I'm a manufacturer X
who wants to talk to an automated light.
Why? I don't want to have to figure
out which way they use the protocol.
Yeah, tell me which way. Right.
Yeah, so. That makes so much sense A.
Lesson learned. And you know, when you look at

(01:03:43):
SACN or streaming ACN, which wasan outcome, a much simpler
outcome of the ACN project, it'sbasically a network version of
DMX 512. And it can can have carry a lot
more data and you know, it, it, it, it, it, it uses all the

(01:04:04):
advantage of of Ethernet, you know, infrastructure, but it's
the same repeated every, every frame approach to control
protocol. So we need the next level of
intelligence. Yeah.
I was going to ask you, does that sound like it's good enough

(01:04:26):
or or you know, we need to go a lot further than that?
Another interim, another interimthing.
We need we, we and I am now far outside this protocol
development, but really, really smart people.
Are working on that, predicting and designing what the next

(01:04:46):
suite of protocols is going to be.
And I think, yeah, but I think it's probably, you know, it's a
huge advantage for them to have you available to the team
because, you know, so history doesn't repeat itself.
Like, you don't want to build something.
Obviously, if you helped create something that lasted 40 years,
if they could create something today that lasts the next 40

(01:05:08):
years, that would be incredible.Yeah.
You know, a lot of the people who are working on that, on that
next level protocol were in the room where ACN failed.
Yeah. To be.
That's good. The.
Next protocol, yeah, they've learned a lot of lessons from
that and I don't think we'll seea repeat of that particular

(01:05:31):
mistake. Yeah, so.
What about, you know, I know you've also been involved with
like the NEC code and so are youstill involved there like?
I'm, I'm, I'm first of all, I represent the USITT on two
National electrical code panels,Code panel 15, which deals with

(01:05:54):
theaters and similar locations, you know, and, and extends into
outdoor use of theater equipmentand all that kind of thing.
And then Code Panel 13, which I really joined to represent the
USITT on issues of emergency lighting control because the

(01:06:15):
code was falling far behind in its ability to deal with that.
And so I did a lot of work, I have done a lot of work on, on
updates to the code for that purpose.
And we're and there is a lot of code activity happening in
combination with ESTA. Even now in the 2026 National

(01:06:40):
Electrical Code, you'll see a new requirement appearing, which
is that when you have a 19 pin soccer PEX outlet female, that
outlet needs to be marked with its pin out configuration type.

(01:07:01):
That means what pin has what signal on it because as we know
we use them differently in NorthAmerica, we use 208 Volt and 120
Volt on the same cable. So we have not only violations
of the NEC, we have potential safety issues.

(01:07:22):
So now the pin out configurationtype will need to be marked and
where will it come from? From a standard developed by
ESTA in record time took less than a year called pin out
configuration types and the E 1.80 and that's going to be that

(01:07:45):
is published now, but you will need to mark your on a piece of
equipment or any place you're going to plug in a 19 pin
connector, you're going to need to mark that configuration type.
That makes way too much sense, Steve.
Well, it's a it's a serious safety problem, Yeah.
Where, where, where do we have asimilar safety problem which

(01:08:07):
we're working on right now? When you take a power con
connector or a power con true 1 connector and you walk up to it
and you're going to plug something into it, you're in
North America. What voltage is on that female?
Yeah, good question. It could be 120.

(01:08:29):
Or it could. BE 208 Yeah.
So Esther is working on a a new standard in conjunction with
Nytrick the the the inventors ofthe power Con connector.
And Nytrick has just placed the mechanical configuration

(01:08:51):
drawings of the Powercon True one connector into the public
domain to be part of this standard.
And Fiesta Standards Group, The task group is working on
developing this right now and this aims to change the whole
way that we mark and use true 1 connectors.

(01:09:15):
But it's just going to be a marking thing though, right?
Like you're not going to have different connectors for two O 8
then OK because that would be scary.
No, it'll be the same connector,but it but it'll be a
requirement that mark, that marking occurs in much the same
way that it occurs with the 19 pin connector after the 2026 NEC

(01:09:36):
is in force, right? Yeah.
And it's also going to resolve aproblem.
Right now these power con 21 connectors are UL recognized as
appliance couplers, not general purpose connectors.

(01:09:57):
And right now it requires that those connectors have phase,
neutral and ground. Well, that doesn't work when
you're using them at two O 8 volts in North America because
it's phase, phase and ground. So there are all.
These things that are going to be resolved with marking the
connector itself and marking it in the equipment application.

(01:10:22):
I've got the answer for you, Steve.
Patent this and you'll be 100 error I'm telling you right now.
No, I mean. I've got the answer I'm telling
you. All you got to do is on that
connector. When it's connected to power,
before it gets connected to the fixture, it's glowing in a color
based on the voltage that's going to it.
There's LEDs built into the connector.

(01:10:42):
If it's red it's it's 2O8, if it's green it's 110.
Whatever, right? You, you may indeed see the
market have those solutions or so.
But here's the thing, this is another interoperability problem
where standards come to save theday.
Because when you're plugging together a big rig and somebody

(01:11:03):
makes a mistake, what do you hear?
You hear a lot of cursing and a big bright flash right as you
connect 120 Volt equipment. It's a 2O8 fold equipment.
Now, granted, it's less of a problem with universal power
supply, but this is still a place where the standards
community, led by ESTA in this case, is stepping into the

(01:11:28):
breach to solve an industry problem.
And when anybody asks me, Steve,what's a big deal with the ESTA
technical standards program, youknow, why should I support it?
And my answer is for instances like this, because where are you
going to get standards like this?

(01:11:50):
Someone else is going to make them for you, and then you can't
live with them. If someone with incentives,
yeah, yeah. If some if the industry makes
standards for ourselves, then wecan live with them.
So. It is critical and I and I will
unabashedly say support the ESTAtechnical Standards program in

(01:12:12):
terms of contributions and, and,and putting your people involved
in the standards making process.It can't live without outside
contributions and it has to havethat right.
And there are some big contributors that are, you know,
ETC. For many years contributed a

(01:12:33):
really large amount of money annually to the S to TSP.
Those kinds of big long term contributions, you know, they
don't last forever. So new contributors need to come
into the mix, right? So I I strongly implore you in
the industry to get behind supporting these programs

(01:12:56):
because that's how useful standards that that save money
and get rid of safety problems. This is not altruistic
practical. I, I agree with you and, and you
know, I, I am careful to admit that I'm a Republican, so I
don't love mandates, but to me, a mandate here might even be the

(01:13:19):
answer where, you know, you got to pay to play basically, and
nobody loves that. But when everything's donation
based, as you know, it's very, very difficult.
You know, it's, well, no, I meanthe IT, you know, an ANSI
standards program has its own safeguards built into it for
that kind of. Misuse of of.

(01:13:42):
I mean, every standard undergoespublic review.
Not once, not multiple times, right?
So in order to, ANSI doesn't tell ESTA what to put in the
standards, it just administratesand the requirements as to how
the standards come into being. I see.
Yeah, so. Believe me, for the National

(01:14:03):
Electrical Code to say you must mark this piece of equipment
with the pin out configuration and if you want to see where
what that is go to ESTA and ZE 1.80 that doesn't get in there
just. Without, yeah, that's a big
deal. That's a big deal, really big
deal. So yeah, that's cool.

(01:14:25):
So and, and this other, you know, I think, I think the 19
pin issue and the the power con through 1 issue are really the
same issue in two different guises.
It's a little worse with the 19 pin now because everybody, all
the video guys have all decided,oh, we're going to use 19 pin

(01:14:47):
Sockapex style cables to do all these functions that they were
never intended to do and we'll make up a new pin out right.
Yeah. So what about like, I guess you
could call it an emerging emerging technology wireless
control, like it seems to be another bit of a wild, Wild West

(01:15:09):
right now and. Well, yeah, it is.
Are there standards being created there as well or?
Because you had basically at least two, probably 3
manufacturers trying to kill each other for $0.50 worth of
business, right? I mean, I'm being, you know,

(01:15:29):
I'm, I'm making a joke about it,but the wireless data
transmission method in the entertainment industry, you
know, it's not huge, right? And yeah, we don't have a common
standard, right. So, you know, where whereas DMX,
the common standard created business, the wireless guys feel

(01:15:52):
that, you know, if you said to the three wireless manufacturers
get on one standard, they'd all,you know, tell you, you were
crazy. Yeah, but you do have, you do
have competing standards that don't talk to each other.
Well, what it could potentially end up being is, is similar to

(01:16:12):
the car manufacturers with the the in car entertainment system
being either Google Play or Apple Play or whatever play.
Most car manufacturers have basically just caved in and said
screw it, we'll just include them all.
You know, because we don't want to lose a car sale because
somebody really wants Apple Play.

(01:16:34):
You know, I mean, certainly ETC is facing some of that right now
because we include in a large number of our fixtures
multiverse, which is the the city theatrical wireless system.
And then we have people around the industry saying I don't, we
don't like that we want this other wireless, you know, a

(01:16:57):
protocol. So, you know, we're kind of
grappling with that at the moment.
Yeah, it's a tough one. It's a tough one because you
know, you could obviously move it outside the fixture where
it's an add on thing, but nobodywants that.
So I I do believe it is screaming for standard.

(01:17:19):
Sure seems to be and. And it would be wonderful if
there could be a rational, you know, this is kind of how we got
DMX 512 through through the door, right?
Because we dressed it up as a harmless protocol.
Like we said to the manufacturers, you want to use

(01:17:39):
your protocol, great, keep usingyour protocol, but put DMX 512
in there as an additional connector.
And what happened? Well, the whole world ran
towards DMX 512 because it was so attractive, right?
But a similar thing. I think it would be wonderful if

(01:18:02):
it happened in the in the wireless.
Protocol. Do you see it coming or no?
You know, I just, I see a lot ofhistorical friction between the
wireless manufacturers, you know, so.
And I'm not directly involved with those, with those guys.
You know, I think it would be wonderful if they all got in

(01:18:25):
their room and said, OK, let's have a switch that says our
protocol and the common protocoland every piece of equipment
will, will, will do both. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And then we'll see what happens with the proprietary part.
Yeah, eventually you can just get rid of the switch because

(01:18:47):
everybody's going to use the thestandard, you know, maybe unless
there's some huge benefit to using your proprietary 1 and,
and, and that remains open to judgment.
Yeah, each manufacturer obviously says mine is best and
here's why. Yeah, wireless.
Wireless controls and remote follow spots to me are two of

(01:19:09):
the most annoying things becausethey everyone's got a better
mousetrap, so they think they'reall good.
But you know, the industry wouldbenefit by having things that
are, like you've said, 20 times,interoperable.
So why? So what does that take?
Well, let's rewind to 1986. Yeah, because what it took was

(01:19:32):
the New York rental shop saying we're not buying any more of
your stuff until you put this common protocol in it.
You ain't going to get an order from us until you do this.
There's no purchasing mite that is demanding this common
protocol in wireless. You know it.

(01:19:55):
And it wouldn't take too many people together to get together
and say, OK, you take this. Theme park company and this, you
know this these four big rental companies.
And they all say this, they can make some demands, but even the
four of them getting them to agree now because they are so

(01:20:15):
big now, you know, you've got these massive companies out
there and it's a constant battle.
Who's bigger, the manufacturers or the dealers?
I think we're back to the dealers now and, you know,
they've got their own sort of alliances or whatever and
they're going to push for whatever they own or whatever,
you know, they control. There we have the momentum of

(01:20:37):
the pile of equipment. If the equipment that I own, if
it costs me a nickel to change it back.
To give you one more example, that is a particular bee in my
bonnet this week. Chain hoist control cables.
Yeah, 7 pin chain hoist control cables.

(01:20:58):
Do you realize that there are like 5 separate pin outs?
Out in the market, Sadly I do because I have a used equipment
platform, remember. And let's go one step further.
You would say, wow, is there a safety problem?
Because surely the ground pin would be the same on all of the

(01:21:21):
five different pin outs, right? Yeah, no, not so much.
So here we are and we're there'san effort right now to try to
solve this within ESTA, but it'sgoing to require some portion of
the chain hoist rental market toalter the.
Pound That's going to be hard. I know, I know I've had this

(01:21:46):
problem so many times. You have no idea, you know, you
know, and I mean you, you actually have, you have a shock
hazard problem. You know, you, you have a a a
production company that realizedthat that that ended up changing
their pin out on all their equipment because they realized

(01:22:06):
because of this grounding pin problem when a, when a employee
got shocked, yeah, thankfully didn't get hurt, but got shot,
right. So this idea of competing pin
outs and inter inurbatable cables that are not compatible
and not safe it you know it's a disaster.

(01:22:29):
Yeah, well, what about and you know, I, I'm guessing this
probably hasn't even been addressed in ESTO yet, but what
about AI? You know, AI assisted lighting
design, AI controls AI. Like are there going to be any
standards or anything do you think?
I have no knowledge. Of that center, yeah, yeah.

(01:22:52):
I mean, it is so far outside my area of expertise or even what's
on my radar at this point. Yeah.
Now, you know, will there be a console that listens to it, you
know, to to a user? And so make me a make me a
backlight watch that looks friendly.
You know, maybe I don't, you know, certainly it's not a very

(01:23:17):
big leap, right? So who knows what's going to
happen? Well, or how about replicate
that audience look from Taylor Swift's era's tour stop in
Belgium, you know, or whatever, Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, I think you can go
a heck of a lot further into even literally, you know,

(01:23:39):
stealing people's work. But again, there's there's no
protection, there's no IP there necessarily.
So I think it's going to have tobe addressed at some point, just
like it is in every other business, in movies and music,
in anything where there's creatives involved are all
scrambling to protect, to protect their material right

(01:24:00):
now. And lighting designers should be
no different. I, I I.
Agree with you and I simply say that is going to be someone
else's problem to solve. Right.
Come on, take that one on, SteveI.
Don't think so, no. So one of the things I've been,
you know, I guess it happens when you reach a certain age.
I've been called upon to help share more mentoring, help

(01:24:25):
share, you know, with through this podcast as well, sharing
stories and, and just introducing like there's
probably a whole bunch of young people out there, believe it or
not, Steve, who don't know who you are.
And I know this comes as a shockto you and to me as well, but,
but you know, I've, I've been doing this geezers of gear thing
and now at LDI, we've started something called Dining with

(01:24:47):
Dinosaurs. And there's actually going to be
1/3 wrinkle to that that is going to be announced by LDI for
this year. So, you know, I know you've
mentored so many people in this industry, like hundreds,
thousands of people probably. Is that something that you still
try to get heavily involved in? Well.
Yeah. I mean, the way I get involved

(01:25:08):
in it now is, you know, we, we have the Fred Foster mentorship
program at ACC, you know, where we, where we, we connect young
aspiring young student designersto professionals and we create
mentorship links, you know, for 10 or 11 students per year, you

(01:25:30):
know? Yeah.
And I'm involved in in in the the logistics of that program.
And that's got to be fine, making those connections.
Yeah, it is. It definitely is.
Yeah. And I think it's something we we
need to do, you know, as an industry, we definitely need to
do it more. Yeah, I, I completely agree.
And and honestly, it it's a great source of pride.

(01:25:52):
Unfortunately, it's not a very good source of income, but it's
a great source of pride for me when you know, this podcast will
go out and you know, absolutely I will get messages in e-mail or
whatever from people who are like, you know, I just got out
of college. I've just started my first job
in such and such rental company or theater or whatever.

(01:26:13):
I listen to your Steve Terry podcast.
I learned so much, you know, canyou tell me more about this or
that or whatever, right. And constantly connecting people
outside a podcast, constantly looking for better opportunities
to provide coaching and trainingand mentoring to people.
And so obviously Fred Foster wasone of the greatest whoever did

(01:26:35):
it and really created such greatprograms back well before he
passed on. And so, yeah, it's it's great
that you can continue to be a part of that.
I think it's such an important part of our industry, especially
the short shortages too, like there's everybody's looking for
people. Absolutely, I agree with that.

(01:26:56):
So mentoring is important. Are there any any incredible
lessons you've learned in your career that either still guide
you today or that you tend to share most often like?
Actually that, you know, as partof the, as part of this
mentoring program, I often say, you know, to people who are, who

(01:27:17):
are mentees in the program, you know, what are the things you
need to do in your career to be successful?
First is just show up. Don't don't be too picky about
the, the, the, the kind of job you're going to take next,
right? Don't say, well, it doesn't meet

(01:27:40):
my long term career goals. Why?
Why shouldn't you be picky? Because every career in the
lighting industry, every successful career at its bottom
end, is the result of the confluence of a bunch of
completely unlikely, unpredictable events.

(01:28:03):
My personal example, How did Steve Terry get connected to the
first computerized lighting system on Broadway?
He went to the theater and the system blew up and there he was
to help fix it, right? So, so just say yes in,
especially if you're early in your career, don't say, well, I,

(01:28:25):
you know, it's a theme park job,but I really want to do concert
lighting. You got a lot of stuff to learn
in every aspect of the business.So when something comes along,
don't be too picky. You'll learn something.
Great. Great point.
Great point. Second point, be someone that

(01:28:47):
people want to work with. Like when you go to be an
assistant to a Broadway lightingdesigner, it's kind of assumed
that you know the technical aspects of the job.
But, and I'm not talking about adopt an obsequious approach

(01:29:07):
here. I'm saying be somebody that
people enjoy working with. And at the end of the day, on
the meal break, you get invited to come and and have dinner with
us. I love that.
Yeah, I love that. That is the connections that is
going to make your career, the network that you're going to

(01:29:28):
build. If you're the greatest genius
in, in, in some aspect of, for instance, video mapping, but
you're a real asshole and you're, you're and you're,
you're, you're kind of arrogant and you know, you, you, you
think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread.
You might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but no one's

(01:29:51):
going to want to work with you. So, so don't be, don't be too
far out there in terms of self promotion.
It'll come to you. You don't have to make it happen
in that way, right. Yeah.
So. Those are both amazing.
And it's so funny because I ask concert guys all the time though
that question and they'll come back with those same exact two

(01:30:14):
points worded slightly different.
Like one would be say yes and then figure it out.
You know, just say yes, keep saying yes as much as you
possibly can. And, you know, showing up on
time and all of those things that seem to have been lost with
some generations. You know where because I'm early
for everything. My my, my partner girlfriend,

(01:30:36):
she's she's also early for for everything.
You know, we just come from a different place, I guess.
But then the second one, again, same thing, which is they've
shortened sort of the description to don't be an
asshole, you know? You know, there's another,
there's like a corollary to thattoo, which is where in a, in a

(01:30:58):
given point in my career, where in the universe do I fit?
I'm going to give you an exampleof this from Mr. Fred Foster.
So Gil Helmsley is teaching at UW, and he's working on a show
at the Metropolitan Opera. And he invites a couple of his
students to come and participatein the process.

(01:31:23):
And there's a production meetingat some point.
And it's like Fred and Gil and 75 great designers and producers
and the whole, you know, the whole upper echelon of the Met.
And they're serving drinks at this production meeting.
It was in those days. Yeah.

(01:31:47):
And so they, they have a drink. Fred gets up and goes to the bar
and pours himself a second drink.
Gil Helmsley says to him, Fred afterwards, Fred, you're not at
the point in your career where you get to do that.

(01:32:08):
You, you, you're not in the, in the I get the second drink mode
really meaning, meaning recognize that when you're new
in the in the community and you're, you know, the, the
second assistant, whatever, you don't get to make demands.

(01:32:29):
You don't get to you. You have to figure out where do
I, where am I? Where do I fit in the universe
of hierarchy here? Let me ease into the next
hierarchy, not force my way intoit.
Yeah, yeah. So you know.
And I liked it a lot. Maybe I didn't tell the Gil
Helmsley story that well, but it's it, it sort of says it all,

(01:32:51):
you know? Yeah, I what was Fred's
background like, how did how didhe, where did he, what was his
story before, ETC. Since he can't tell me
obviously. You know, he was in, he was at
UW, you know, and thought he wasgoing to be a lighting designer
and he was in Gil helmet Gil's program.

(01:33:14):
And the, the, the theater got a new Thorn Q file system, you
know, control system. And he and his brother went and
looked at this and said, wow. And it, and it cost, you know,
like $500,000. That was in the that was in the
days of really high-priced control console.

(01:33:37):
And Fred and his brother looked at it and said this is
unbelievable. This thing is a real piece of
shit. We could build this for about
$100.00. So what did he and his brother
do? They went off and went to
Gilhelmsley and said we're goingto form a company and we're
going to build this console. And they did.

(01:33:59):
And that was the genesis of the channel Track console eventually
was produced for color trend, right.
So you know this. That's wild.
Yeah, it is. It's totally wild.
And he and he realized that he wasn't cut out for being a
lighting designer. And then that that it became,

(01:34:23):
ETC. And here.
We are, thank God. Yeah, 50 year, 50 year
anniversary. Yeah, I know, I know of ETC.
I don't know if you know this, but ETC actually just became a
sponsor of this podcast just a couple weeks ago.
Yeah. So it was great time e-mail.
It said oh ETC wanted to be a sponsor.
So would you? Would you go on the podcast or
something? Oh, that's what finally got you

(01:34:43):
on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I should have done that earlier.I I know you sent that or.
But no, no, it wasn't me. It wasn't me.
No, I I wouldn't been wanting toget you on forever.
But you know, I was having a conversation recently with
someone and we were talking about LDI and you know, I've
been to everyone except Nashville.
The very first one I think, and we were talking about was the

(01:35:06):
first one by the OK, so I was atNashville then I missed Dallas,
the first Dallas. So I was talking with someone
recently just about, you know, how we've lost a lot of friends
and people you miss seeing at LDI now.
And for me, Fred Foster is one of them.
Like, first of all, I always hada really great conversation with

(01:35:27):
Fred about just where things aregoing in the world and, you
know, just him in, in those sandals and, and always smiling
and bouncing through the aisle ways and stuff.
And, you know, like, I didn't have direct involvement with him
very much other than just to sayhello and, and have a meeting
occasionally to talk about the business or something.

(01:35:48):
But yeah, I I definitely miss seeing Fred at at the trade
shows. Yeah, he was one of my best
friends for many years before I came to work for ETC.
Yeah. And John Resnick, Jonathan
Resnick is another one that thatI was, I was always, he was one
of I had, I keep this circle of people that no matter what
happens in the world, we communicate like at least once a

(01:36:10):
month and it's usually an hour or two.
And it's just like what's going on with this company?
What's going on in this world? What's going?
And Jonathan and I entirely opposite on football, opposite
on politics, opposite on lots ofthings.
It was the easiest 2 hour conversation I had every single
month. And I loved Jonathan Resnick,

(01:36:32):
great guy. But there's obviously way too
many of those at this point in our lives.
And an. Increasing number as as we we as
we reach a certain age. Yeah, Yeah, we don't.
Think about all of a sudden all my friends are gonna be
disappearing. You know a lot of them are and
the reality is there. That's.

(01:36:52):
Well, my girlfriend and I have really gotten into this
longevity stuff, you know, just health stuff basically in
general. And then you start thinking,
because it's happening actually with my girlfriend's mother, you
know, she's in her late 80s now and all of her sisters and
brothers and friends and everybody's dying.
And at some point you just become old and lonely because

(01:37:14):
you survived longer than everybody else, right?
Absolutely. So it's, you know, the moral of
the story is get a really young wife, really young friends, you
know, just hang out people younger than you and, and you're
good. Although, you know, one of my
very good friends just passed away in the last couple of
years, and that's Richard Pilbro.
And yeah, and you know, Richard was a perfect example of

(01:37:41):
somebody who everyone wanted to be with, and he basically
created a new generation of friends as as new generations
came along. Right.
Yeah, so it was. Yeah.
No, I, I mean, the thing about our industry, I love having
these relationships with people in our industry who are at that

(01:38:03):
level, you know, call it 60 and above or whatever.
And because, you know, knowing how things were done back then
and then knowing this and knowing this.
And like, just the fact that I was there when moving lights
became a thing and and then whenLED became a thing and, and when
digital consoles became a thing and all of those things, you

(01:38:23):
know, so many people in our industry today don't know what
it was like before you had multiuniverse digital grand MA
consoles or whatever, right, Absolutely right.
And, and it's it's great sometimes to tell those stories
and they look at you like you'renuts, Like why would you do
that? You know, because that's what we
had. But did did we miss anything?

(01:38:48):
Charities I know you're involvedin, obviously the ESTA stuff,
right? Yeah.
You know, I mean, I think I mean, there's, there's charities
and then there's good causes. So charities are things that are
5 O 1C3 tax deductible. And certainly the ESTA behind
the scenes program, which, you know, takes care of people in

(01:39:09):
need in our industry. Yeah, in a wide variety of ways
is a terrific, Yeah, terrific thing to do.
And I'll beat the drum again, leaving aside the tax deduction,
because it's not a. 501C3 but there's bang for the buck in

(01:39:29):
supporting the ESTA technical standards program.
Yeah, yeah, well, and I was, I think I've talked to somebody
about this. It might have even been Lori or
something, but I was involved inthe early days because I was an
executive at Martin and we had asmoke machine company.
And one of the earliest things that was taken on by the

(01:39:50):
technical standards was fog and smoke and smoke.
And I, I thought I was involved,but really I was too dumb to be
involved in that. And all I was was a check.
And so I was happy to be that because that was probably the
biggest thing that that was needed at the time.
There weren't enough smart people to figure out what needed

(01:40:11):
to be looked at in fog and smokecertainly didn't need me, but I
was able to convince, you know, the little short Dane to, to
write a check to support it. So and.
By the way, you know to this daythe representative from Actors
Equity who first joined the the ESTA program to to work on that

(01:40:31):
bog and smoke standard is still involved.
Right, Yeah. Or as they call it with a with a
New York accident accent. You know, fog and smoke.
Fog and smoke. Yeah, yeah.
You know, those people used to drive me crazy back in the day
when I had a, a smoke company within Martin.

(01:40:52):
We were just constantly getting these letters saying I can't
dance when there's smoke in the room or I Can't Sing when
there's smoke in the room. And and you know, I think there
was a bit of a placebo thing going on there too though, but.
Could be, but the fact that now there is a standard, of course
it's the one standard that gets enforced the actors and had

(01:41:17):
input into it, Yeah, I mean that's an important.
Thing. Yeah, yeah, it really is handed.
Down like the tablets? Yeah, Created with a wide
variety of interests. Yeah, weighing in well and, and
I will tell you that obviously with a race to the bottom on
some of these technologies, whether it's fog machines or or

(01:41:38):
you know, which you can now buy at Spencer Gifts and Costco
probably and moving lights that you can buy on Amazon.
Now it's a good thing that thereare standards and it's a good
thing that that those standards matter to most companies.
So yeah, well, I'll tell you what, Steve, I really appreciate

(01:41:59):
you doing this, taking your timeto enjoy.
Myself here and thanks again forinviting me.
Oh geez, I I. Memory lane a little bit.
So I'm so honored that you wouldcome and do it again.
You know, I, I, you sit at a very high place in, in my
regard. And will you be at LDI?
This winter, I haven't typicallybeen going to LDI because the as

(01:42:24):
the standards meetings are no longer right, you know,
concurrent with with it, but could be we'll see.
I think there's a push to to sort of move those things a
little closer together. Again, I've talked to I've
talked to Todd about that. So that would be good.
Yeah. All right.
Well, you have an incredible week and I do hope to see you

(01:42:45):
soon. Unfortunately, the only place
I'll probably see you as that trade shows.
So do you live in Wisconsin? No, I live in New York.
I spent my. Time between the Upper West Side
of Manhattan and the East End ofLong Island.
OK. Good for you.
Good for you both good choices. All right, Steve, thanks.
OK, thanks. Have a good one.
Bye. Bye.

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#306 - Steve Terry - Be someone people want to work with.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#306 - Steve Terry - Be someone people want to work with.