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Laser F/X On-line Newsletter - Special Reports

Sunday, May 30 1999

1999 Brewster Awards

    A capacity audience of 70 people filled the Halton A & B halls for the 1999 Brewster Awards. After cocktails, the guests partook of an excellent buffet dinner with a wine service sponsored by Cambridge Technology. After the dinner, the tables were moved aside so laserists could watch the show theatre style and ballots were distributed (the Brewster Awards are voted on by the people present in the room).

    The graphics portion of the competition featured six entries from AB Obscura Magica - Sweden, Green Rose Laser - USA, Laser Spectacles - USA, MediaLas - Germany and New Wave - Canada. Competition was fierce with very high quality images and animations displayed in all the entries. One of the entries was an all-raster module of the trailer for the upcoming "Austin Powers" movie.

    In the beam category there were five entries from MediaLas - Germany, Laser Spectacles - USA, Laser Entertainment S.R.L. - Italy, FFP Lasers - Canada and Matt&Matt - USA. The beam modules featured exceptional use of colour and split second choreography of the beam effects with the music.

    While the ballots were being counted, New Method Lasers set up the new Cambridge 6210 galvos and gave a demonstration of the new high speed scanning system using the LCN graphics system as the source. The combination of the LCN controller and 6210's are said to do 60k and higher images, because of the software tweakable velocity compensation and interpolation parameters.
    Unfortunately due to some technical problems (these included prototype driver cards that were not yet fully optimised to 60+k, and a smaller-than-optimum power supply with only basic heat sinking for the driver amps), the module displayed was not running at full speed but the quality and flicker free images were none the less impressive to behold.

    After the scanner demo, the winners were announced and those present in person collected their Brewster awards and gave short speeches.

Winning laserists who attended the Brewster dinner show off their awards - Jan Kriland (AB Obscura Magica), Dirk Baur (MediaLas), Dave Nash (FFP Lasers), L. Michael Roberts (Organiser).

The winners in the graphics category were:

• First -- "Ghost" by MediaLas (Christian Luick)
• Second -- "Ray of Light" by Laser Spectacles (Tim Walsh)
• Third -- "L.O." by AB Obscura Magica (Jan Kriland)

The winners in the beam category were:

• First -- "Beyond" by MediaLas (Dirk Baur)
• Second -- "Rockit" by FFP Lasers (Dave Nash)
• Third -- "Vivaldi" by Laser Entertainment S. R. L. (Alberto Kellner)

 

    After the Brewster Awards, the hall was cleared and laserists were re-admitted at their own risk to the "Scorchathon". The laser's power was increased to about 0.8 watts per fibre head and a selection of beam shows was played back. Additional shows from Laser Spectacles and LOBO were presented, as well as some of the winners and entries from the Brewster Awards.

Links - Quick Links to Report Pages

In order to present as many pictures as possible, we have broken this special report down into a number of pages to speed access. Most of these are large pages with many images so please be patient while they download.

Laser F/X '99 Report - Introduction and background
Friday 28 May - Behind the scenes and the crew
Saturday 29 May - Pangolin School and Open House
Sunday 30 May - Trade Show - Trade Show info and pictures
Sunday 30 May - Brewster Awards - The Banquet and entries
Monday 31 May - Seminars and LaserFest
Scanner Wars - Faster than 30K scanners debut at Laser F/X '99
Candid Camera - A selection of 20 photos (very large page)

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