Last year, 2005, the Ohio Christmas lights show video spread everywhere to amaze people. After having various people send this video to my dad in early December, he was convinced that we needed to match this with a show of our own. We worked slightly on getting the project going, but school was a higher priority at the time for myself. I had to get to know Pangolin software to design the show. When Christmas break came around we started to focus our attention on the music we wanted. My dad bought himself and I tickets to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in Green Bay, WI. On our way over Green Bay, we designed our DMX frames for each light (or each strand of christmas tree lights) and picked the song we would play: Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24. After being inspired by the TSO concert, we listened to Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 another 10 or 20 times.
Over the next few days, I worked on putting a DMX frame on a timeline for each time a light turns on or off. Pangolin had 3 timelines (the new update for the software gives you 8 now), in which you could only put a couple hundred frames on until you have to start another block (module) on the timeline to continue with the song. After working hard from the afternoon until early morning for a couple days, the timeline was supposedly finished. We aquired our various lights for the show and built some electrical equipment to power all the lights through dimmers, which were connected to the computer. During our work we had different individuals come and help us, so we thank them. After connecting our lights up we played the show for the first time. It needed improvment.
My dad and I worked more and more to finish the show before our new years party. We made two automated instruments move a couple times during the show after a lot of hassel, and went to sleep around 4 or 5 in the morning. The next day we cleaned up the inside of our shop to set up food and chairs for our guests coming that evening. The show went through, various times that night, with my dad operating a console for the lasers. Afterwords we were happy, but decided that there was still work to be done.
We added some laser animation into the show and fixed some timing problems. We then played the show a couple more times into February for different people. We then took down all of our equipment in March. Right now we are now working on improving the show even more and adding more songs. Hopefully we will have it all done by the party of next year.