Education, Information and Entertainment -- PLASA Show 2015 Sessions Have it All...

This year's PLASA Show Sessions are covering a wealth of topics, with some of the leading names from the world of entertainment technology delivering educational, informative, and entertaining content.

Day one's Sessions featured The Soulsound Seminars presented by Darryn de la Soul who addressed the esoteric, technical, and practical aspects of being an Audio Engineer; "What could possibly go wrong? Planning the Eurovision Song Contest 2016"; "How many lights do you need? The work of the lighting designer on a budget ," and the perennially popular PLASA Rigging Conference & Riggers Forum.

Highlights from day two's Sessions included the keynote presentation from Pixar director of photography Danielle Feinberg, who flew in from the US to present "From Pixels to Pictures: The Cinematography of Pixar's Films", an illuminating insight into lighting techniques for the world of animation in the AV & Stage Showcase and Making Music Look Good from Block 9, which creates radical stage sets, large-scale immersive artworks, installations and live events.

Covering the underwater world of Finding Nemo to WALL-E's clean up on an abandoned, waste-covered Earth far in the future, Up, Toy Story 3 and fantasy comedy Brave, Danielle talked about her work with lighting creates mood, directs the viewer's eye to important part of the scene, creates safe and dangerous areas and delineates characters.

"After hearing about PLASA for years, I am so thrilled to be taking part this year," says Danielle, who will be looking at the art of lighting and photographing movies and how this translates into animation. "It is a rare and wonderful thing to be in a room full of people that appreciate the immense power of great lighting."

In Making Music Look Good, Block 9's Gideon Berger and Stephen Gallagher talked about their fascinating work on projects such as The Dismaland Castle at Banksy's Dismaland, Utopia at the Roundhouse, the Block9 area at Glastonbury festival and stage designs for Lana Del Rey and Skrillex, how they enhance the audience experience and blur the boundaries between performance, art and audience.

Day three saw the second of Phil Ward's Audio Panels, "NOISES OFF! Controlling event sound"; "DON'T WORRY, BE IP - Networking for live sound and installation", which followed "Digital Mixing For The Real World; MORE MIDI, PLEASE - Mixing monitors for artistic temperaments"; Adobe's Neil Stevens demo the latest developments in their Creative Cloud content creation tools and service; "How to use lights and Top Tips on Lighting and Interview and Tax Essentials for Freelancers".

"We have worked very hard to make sure we delivered a rich and varied program at this year's PLASA Show," says PLASA show content manager, Sophie Atkinson. "We are delighted to have been able to attract speakers of such a high caliber and the feedback from the Session attendees has been fantastic. We look forward to building on our educational offering with the excellent conference facilities at London Olympia in 2016."