The history of Capture

Birth

Capture's origin story starts early 1994 when Lars Wernlund's science teacher engaged him as a lighting technician in Youthquake - a youth theatre project. His introduction to the lighting design process and the teamwork that goes into producing shows inspired him. Having used up a couple of erasers while drafting lighting plots using a pencil, Lars quickly combined his newfound interest with another - computers and programming.

The idea of creating a computer software where symbols could be moved around on the plot freely is how Capture was born.

Team-up

Later in 1994, as a part of work experience, Lars met Lasse Berg who was working as a lighting designer at Folkteatern. Lasse shared Lars's interest in computers and programming and they quickly became a team.

In January 1998 the first version of Capture saw the light of day. Armed with a demo of Capture 1.0 on a floppy disk, Lars and Lasse attended the NOTT 98 tradeshow in Oslo. To their great disappointment there were no computers on site to show the software on, forcing them to leave with unfinished business.

Lars Berg showing Lars Wernlund how Capture is used at Folkteatern in Gothenburg

1994-1998

2000

A new millennium

While the world was busy worrying about the year 2000 problem, the CEO of AVAB Kent Flood was preparing a lighting show for the millenium change. Using motorised military searchlights placed in a circle around the harbour of Gothenburg, a sequence of numbers counting down was to be projected on the cloud ceiling.

In order to not give away the show to the audience in advance, Kent needed to visualise the design using a computer. By implementing support for receiving AMX (an AVAB protocol similar to DMX) over a serial port and simulating pan and tilt movement, Capture was used for real-time pre-visualisation for the first time.

World Wide Web

With a marketing budget on the level of coffee and cinamon rolls, the quintessential Swedish fika, placing ads in international magazines such as Lighting & Sound International was far-fetched at the time. The Internet of course provided the answer, and early 2001 the first website was launched.

At the same time the search for international distribution began, with Lars travelling repeatedly to the PLASA show in London to make new connections.

2001

2002

Connecting

In January 2002 Lars Wernlund and Vangelis Manolis e-met on the LightNetwork forum during their university studies. Lars was studying computer sciences and Vangelis mathematics and computer sciences, while also working as a freelance lighting designer since 1994.

Based on a common ground of all things lighting and computers, Vangelis immediately started field testing Capture 2.1 and early beta versions of Capture 3.0.

Reboot

Capture 3.0 was launched in June 2002. It was a complete redesign of the software and featured a library of design items, including the first Vari-Lite, High End and Martin moving lights. It was clear that new moving lights would be brought to the market in a steady stream, and in October 2003 Vangelis officially joined the team as the library manager.

That year Capture was shown at an international tradeshow for the first time, at ShowTech 2003 in Berlin. The following year, Vangelis took Capture overseas to LDI 2004 in Las Vegas for the first participation in an American tradeshow.

2002-2004

2005

Eurovision Kyiv 2005

Following Ukraine's win in the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest with Ruslana's song "Wild Dances", the finals were to be held in Kyiv the following year. The Swedish design team was led by Pontus "Bullen" Lagerbielke who decided to use Capture for the previsualisation of the songs' lighting designs. A studio was built in Stockholm where the three AVAB Congo operators pushed a yet to be released version of Capture 2005 to its limits.

To the team's delight the Greek song "My Number One", performed by Swedish born Helena Paparizou, took the finals to Athens following year. Success was in the air!

Forming a company

After the release of Capture Polar in 2008, sales really took off. This growth brought new challenges and on January 1st 2011, Lars, Lasse and Vangelis formed the limited Swedish company Capture Visualisation AB as equal partners.

Later the same year they organised the company's first independent tradeshow stand at PLASA 2011 in London, followed next year by a stand at ProLight 2012 in Frankfurt.

2008-2012

Lars, Vanegelis, Lars and Mathias in Varberg 2016

2015

Reinforcement

Capture Polar was the first version of Capture to feature "shadow mapping", a shadow rendering technique that relies on hardware acceleration. With the popularisation of PC gaming, hardware acceleration and rendering technology was developing at a remarkable pace.

In 2015 Mathias Wahlin was hired as a software developer. Mathias had previous experience of hardware accelerated graphics as well as computer based lighting simulation, making it possible to keep up with advances in rendering technology.

Into the future

Capture continues growing at a steady pace, both as a team, a product and in popularity.

You can read more about our mission and values on the We are Capture!-page.