04 April 2012
We hereby pay tribute to John Reinders (18 April 1985 to 29 February 2012). If you have stories or photos to share, we would like to add it to this page. Please send this to [email protected].
Here’s to you John.
Mark Gaylard from MGG Productions writes:
I had the pleasure of knowing and working with John when he was studying Entertainment Technology at the Pretoria Technikon. He, like many of us in this industry, got his grounding and first experiences at the Technikon, and this is how we met. I had just moved my business out of my parent s garages and things were on the up and up. We needed more help and this resulted in us using second and third year students on a freelance basis. There was a rumour of this guy “John” who was very, very good and so he soon ended up helping us out with setup and gigs. My first impression right from the beginning was here was a person with passion and unbelievable work ethic , no matter what time, how menial the job was he would be there. He had an insatiable appetite for how things worked, understanding how it worked and implementing his new knowledge into shows. 
Things went well for the both of us and in the end we offered a bursary for his third year. In his third year he excelled even further winning best lighting student and did his two month practical with us. During this time he worked really hard and got his first taste of working in all disciplines and many segments of the industry. 
This was 2006 I think and during this time John was very busy with his technician work and freelancing for us. The first order of business that John helped me organise was Code 10 licenses for our crew and himself. This helped us out immensely as at that time it was a long waiting list. However, it was sorted out with his ‘contact’ and now we could do more work with bigger vehicles. He was very good at driving heavy vehicles, he understood the dimensions of trucks, how to load them and how these behaved when loaded vs speed. I think he continued to drive for companies when they were in a fix, and was very useful. He was always on time. 
Starting out working for us I think John got his first taste of multi disciplines, Sound, Lighting and Audio Visual and driver. Jack of all trades, he was very good at everything.
It was the start of the calming effect that John had for me and for the many different people he would meet over the coming years. I would start the day knowing that John was on the event and all would be fine with a happy client at the end of the job.
It was also the start of his rigging experience, this I think turned out to be his strength. We had just started with our inventory of motors and truss and we were very inexperienced. John helped me to get confidence in flying rigs instead of using our trademark push up stands.
I think it was the first time he met Paul Newman from Lucidity. The brief was to hang some exhibition banner s and signs. John organized all the rigging and with the help of one crew member they managed to hang everything perfectly angled and straight. Over the years he honed his skills and became a master rigger, extremely confident at heights and efficient on any size projects. The one that we should mention is the speed and accuracy he rigged with Siya for Dreamsets Miss SA 2011 Sun City – 50 points in a single morning.
A memory I have from when we hired John (when he was working for himself) was for a function at Constitution Hill. I had worked through the night before and had managed to tip the truck at the venue and meet John early on setup morning. The brief included the rigging of lighting as well as the programming and control of lighting – it was on a MA full size lighting console. I asked, “Are you sure you know it ?”, to which he replied, “Go to the next gig and we will handle this.” I remember coming back to the venue just before the guests were to arrive. The lighting looked unbelievable , the rehearsal looked unbelievable and the client was over the moon. 
Earlier this year we again asked John for his help with two conferences that would run back to back. The one photo with all the blue lights is again his multi disciplined capabilities in action running lighting and AV. I remember getting a sms that the projector had a problem, it was swopped out and the client didn’t even know.
The second one was for Roche. John has been doing this particular conference for four years, same client but different technical companies. We had been doing it for the past two. On this project the one thing I would like to share is the extra mile John would go to make things look good. It was the gala dinner banquet one night, all we had was the theme holding slide. Without anything been said, John goes on to the internet , starts downloading pictures of masks and makes a themed holding slide of his own accord, very happy client. 
John also liked to build huge yet functional FOH control areas. He would prep extra kit so that he could lean, stack and make a wall of kit that would be like a NASA mission control! He would network everything so that it would work with his iPad and laptop.
Further to Paul Newman from Lucidity’s speech at Johns memorial, it is amazing to see the far reaching effect John had in the industry, from the photographer that came every morning to load photos before the delegates walked in at functions, the conference organizing committees with whom he sat till late into the night loading presentations, big corporates who when told of his passing were devastated, the drivers, crew, conference organizers and banqueting organizers. Everyone he had contact have only good things to say and will miss him.
He was truly a “supertech,” an all rounder who excelled at everything he undertook to do. In the process left fond memories with everyone he interacted with.
