Ireland - Fiach is a new work by Philip Doherty that unites the disciplines of theatre, cinema and comedy in a live onstage and in-car drama, accompanied by large format video visuals, powerful sound system and theatrical lighting all in a Covid-safe drive-in viewing environment.
It is also an example of how a kit of eight Astera Titan Tubes, used with thought and invention by lighting designer Mick Murray can go a long way.
The Irish-language work was presented (with English surtitles) by Fíbín in association with An Taibhdhearc in a car park at Baile na hAbhann, Connemara, County Galway, starring award-winning actors Fionnuala Flaherty and Dara Devaney.
Producers Fíbín asked Mick Murray to create the lighting, video and staging designs. With an impress

UK - The Creative Production Group, owner of Reading/Manchester-based Visions, has announced the purchase of the London-based sound reinforcement company - Dobson Sound Productions.
Dobson Sound Productions works with a wide range of artists and venues on events from small, intimate dinners through to large festivals delivering high-end systems into a wide variety of live environments.
Chris Norman,CEO, comments: “We have always looked at opportunities to expand our service to our clients and have been keen to have a base in London. We intend to keep Dobson Sound Productions at its historic location in Deer Park Road, Wimbledon where David Lewis, Bill Woods and key members of the team will be on hand to look after customers. The acquisition allows the group to significantly expand its stock holding of sound equipment with a specialist audio provider, it also allows

Germany - Restart-19 is an evidence-based scientific study conducted by the University Medical Center, Halle, in conjunction with regional government, aimed at investigating the coronavirus risks associated with staging major cultural or sporting events in indoor arenas. The project has received almost a million euros in funding, a measure of just how desperate the situation facing the future of such events has become. The principle aim of the study was to determine which technical and organisational actions can most effectively minimise the risk of infection.
Comprising several sub-projects, the most visible element of Restart-19 was a large experiment conducted in the Leipzig Arena, featuring singer Tim Bendzko and his band, where 1,800 audience members attended to participate in different real-life simulations of the concert experience. Every measure was taken to ensure
featured content

Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

USA - Christie has announced the launch of the Christie Mirage SST RGB pure laser projector with a 50,000-lumen light source. With the same small and flexible form factor of the original 35,000 lumen Mirage SST, the new 50,000 lumen model cranks up the brightness for spectacular visual experiences, says the company.
The Mirage SST features a fibre-coupled, ultra-compact projection head weighing just under 51 kilograms and a remote light source that can be located up to 50m away from the head. It is engineered specifically for complex applications that require a high-brightness projector with incredible image fidelity, but that are tight on space such as venues without projection booths or outdoor weatherproof enclosures, or where quiet operation is critical and otherwise challenging to achieve.
“The new Mirage SST is a powerhouse in a small package,” says Larry Pau

Germany - d&b audiotechnik has announced the introduction of a new addition to the company's product repertoire, the 44S loudspeaker. The 44S is d&b’s first flush mountable cabinet, delivering compact, high performance audio and a wide range of flexible mounting options.
“For audio professionals who may be challenged by dimensions, architecture, or aesthetics, the 44S loudspeaker is a powerful, compact, flush-mountable loudspeaker that provides the sound needed, no matter what space they have to work with,” comments Wolfgang Schulz, d&b product manager. “It’s a very compact point source loudspeaker for flexible use in nearfield applications, and there is a big need in our industry for this type of form factor.”
An intelligent waveguide and baffle design creates a very smooth horizontal dispersion down to the lower frequencies while being tightly

USA - Earlier this month, Essential Church in Huntsville, Alabama, upgraded their stage lighting to improve the production quality of both in-person services and the footage they capture for online broadcast. Conventional fixtures were replaced by energy efficient LED lighting from ADJ and sister company Elation Professional, improving the aesthetic appeal of the stage and at the same time reducing the church’s energy bill.
Like most religious congregations around the world, Essential Church have made online services a major priority this year. However, as they experimented with filming their worship and teaching in their auditorium, they realized that the lighting setup, while adequate for those attending in person, was limiting the quality of their video recordings. They brought in Christopher Watts of Watts Technology to advise on a cost effective, efficient and effecti

USA/Europe - During the COVID-19 pandemic, literally every aspect of life has had to be rethought, but few verticals have faced hurdles like education is facing today. Whether or not to hold classes in person or remotely has become literally a fundamental choice. Marist College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1905 in Poughkeepsie, NY, faced those same difficult options as it readied itself to start the new school year in late August.
Technology solutions from Audio-Technica made that task i easier and successful. The school acquired and installed 150 Audio-Technica U851RO Omnidirectional Condenser Boundary Microphones and 50 ATDM-0604 SmartMixers, which now outfit 50 classrooms at the school. But the story of how this project came about is an education in itself.
“We wanted to offer a learning experience as close to traditional in-person classes, using a

World - Creative Technology (CT) has recently launched a new website. Since joining the NEP group three years ago, the CT business world-wide has expanded significantly through a combination of organic growth, acquisition and re-branding of regional businesses and is now operates from 24 inventoried locations across 15 countries.
The new website built over a 12-month period provides a consistent look, feel and messaging while allowing a high degree of local customisation for CT’s evolving global structure, says the company.
At launch there are dedicated new sites for US, UK, Middle East and Spain including multiple language options on the Spanish site.
In the coming weeks Asia Pacific, Northern Europe, Ireland, Germany and Holland will be added each with dedicated sites focusing on relevant local service offerings and market sector activities and significant

USA - At the end of 2019, footwear giant Crocs made the decision to move its warehouse to a brand-new distribution centre in Dayton, Ohio. At the time, the company had no idea just how its operations would be challenged in the months ahead, or how important the safety and operation of the distribution centre would become as an essential facility. Fast forward to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted every corner of the globe, Crocs took the necessarily steps to install an overhead paging system in its new distribution centreto ensure it was set up for business as usual in a world facing unusual circumstances.
In order to get the system quickly up and running, audio supplier Chapel-Romanoff Technologies (CRT), turned to LEA Professional to ensure Crocs could operate efficiently. CRT was commissioned to provide the overhead paging system for the facility which, at the t

Colombia - TV singing contest The Voice continues to dominate global viewing habits, and The Voice Kids in Colombia on Caracol Television is one incarnation of the phenomenon. Like its sister shows around the world, the spectacle demands ever-better visuals as each season ups the one before.
For the latest Colombian kids’ version of the show, video designer Alvaro Fuentes, from Bogotá-based visual design company Visual in Motion, drew on his collection of Green Hippo gear to achieve the ambitious looks required by the production team. Fuentes’s Hippotizer armoury is headed up by a Hippotizer Karst, which alongside a family of Hippotizer Media Servers drove the content for Season 4.
“Because of the complex LED screens setup on stage, which were in different positions, sizes and resolutions, we needed a tool to map the content onto the surfaces,” s

Italy - GLP’s new KNV series has been used for the first time in Italy, on two high profile broadcast TV shows.
The first of these was Radionorba Vodafone Battiti Live, where DoP Massimo Pascucci featured a large selection of KNV Cube, KNV Dot and KNV Line in the scenography, working alongside set designer Luigi Maresca and show director, Luigi Antonini.
This popular musical show is produced by Radionorba and broadcast by TeleNorba and Mediaset on the Italia 1 channel. Hosted by Alan Palmieri and Elisabetta Gregoraci, it features leading artists and their hits of the summer.
Generally, the traditional five episodes are recorded during the months of June and July in five different locations that represent the main cities of Puglia. However, this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the show would have been cancelled were it not for a supreme production eff

UK - Shaun Pearce, MD of Pearce Hire, is actively lobbying the government, as are many throughout the sector. He is asking for urgent government intervention. Specifically the continuation of SEISS (self-employment income support scheme) for those individuals working in the industry, continuing furlough support for employees and extending rates relief to event hire businesses (most of which are SMEs and owner-operated like Pearce Hire).
Pearce and his management team were looking forward to a record year in 2020, recruiting another four permanent members of staff with typically, over 70 seasonal freelance technicians being employed. Pearce Hire was on the cusp of rolling out its busiest summer season ever when the government shut down the economy and everything came to a grinding halt. “The impact was immediate and disastrous for us,” says the MD.
As an event pro

Urgent Call - A third of musicians are thinking about leaving the industry altogether, as the sector’s union makes an urgent call on government to protect its talent. One in three professional musicians are set to quit and find work elsewhere as a result of the pandemic, a newly published survey from the Musicians’ Union has revealed.
With the majority of live venues still closed and both the furlough scheme and Self-Employment Income Support Scheme entering their final months, the MU is warning the pandemic could spell the end for many professional musicians’ careers. Its research found the majority (88%) believe the government has not done enough to support musicians during the COVID-19 crisis.
Of those musicians covered by furlough and SEISS, 87% will face financial hardship when support stops next month. A third did not qualify for government assistance at al

Australia - With over 15 years serving the events industry and providing a complete range of AV production services, Australian company Audio Visual Events (AVE) continued with its precise level of technological achievement and client satisfaction even when live events ground to a halt.
By partnering with Create Engage and Sydney Masonic Centre (SMC), the company brought On Air to life, offering a plethora of high-end audio visual and virtual event capabilities, enhanced by powerful and intuitive Brompton Tessera processing.
“AVE, Create Engage and SMC have long-standing relationships and have delivered many successful events together over the years, so we knew we could count on them when the pandemic engulfed the events industry,” says AVE’s general manager, Paul Keating. “Together, we focussed on ‘why’ we should create the On Air studio, with k

UK - Unusual Rigging's work as designers and installers at English National Ballet's new HQ on London's City Island has been recognised as the building, delivered by Glenn Howells Architects has won the prestigious AJ100 Building of the Year award 2020.
The building was chosen ahead of eight other finalists and recognises the finest building completed by an AJ100-listed practice in the last 12 months. In choosing the ENB, the judges said three key aspects made the £36m project stand out from the impressive shortlist with one judge commenting on the range of functions accommodated by the building, which Glenn Howells has managed to pack on to relatively tight site 'with an almost Rubik's Cube-like stack of dance spaces slotted within'.
These include a suite of rehearsal studios and a full sized theatre space with stage and fly tower to accommodate full dress rehearsals

South Africa - For those who refuse to give up on life, events and making memorable occasions, DKSS has announced Pop-Up Events and their in-house virtual live studio.
Midrand based technical supplier, DKSS, has surrounded itself with upbeat clients and suppliers to create unusual events during these unusual COVID-19 times. The company's in-house studio, more like a television broadcast space, consists of a 12m x 4m stage with a 13m x 13m (12.5m x 3m) curved Absen PL 3.9 Lite screen, while lighting includes 18 Robe LEDBeam 150s for fast beam work and a quality wash and 12 MiniPointes, particularly useful when hosting a band or music production on stage.
"Our saving grace has been the relationships built with our suppliers over the years," say CJ de Klerk and Warwick Lawson of DKSS. "Changing the look and feel of the studio is as easy as picking up the phone and reques

Belgium - Social distancing protocol has kept many of Volvo Van Kasteren’s customers from visiting the dealership’s new showroom on Grembergen Stone Road in Sint-Niklass, but those who were fortunate to attended the facility’s grand opening celebration, held just weeks before the lockdown went into effect, still have vivid images of a memorable evening.
Taking place in mid-February, the two-day event, which introduced Volvo Personalized Service (VPS) concept to its market, featured the latest hybrid and electric vehicles, such as the XC40 and XC90, set against the background of a sleek glass and metal showroom.
Accenting the sights of the celebration was a lighting rig, brought in for the occasion by Solico Event & Expo Technics, that featured Chauvet Professional WELL Fit and Rogue fixtures.
In keeping with the engineering tradition of Volvo, the temp

India - AM Integrated Solutions and GRS AV Solutions recently outfitted RYU Bar with a complete Harman Professional sound reinforcement solution to ensure quality audio quality for patrons and party-goers alike.
Opened in January, RYU Bar is one of the latest additions to the popular nightlife scene in the bustling city of Gurgaon. Named after the Japanese word for dragon, RYU Bar delivers a pan-Asian experience, bringing together food, cocktails, music and décor from Chinese, Japanese and Malaysian cultures. To ensure immersive sound throughout the main space, rooftop terrace and private lounges, the owner hired AM Integrated Solutions and GRS AV Solutions to install a complete Harman Professional sound system, consisting of JBL loudspeakers and subwoofers, Crown amplifiers and BSS digital audio processors.
“RYU was a uniquely challenging project for us, in terms

UK - Responding to the effects of COVID-19 on their business, Johnny Palmer, managing director of SXS Events, promptly rebranded his Bristol-based company to Pytch, and constructed The Virtual Venue in one of the empty warehouses on the industrial estate in Brislington which he owns.
“We rationalised that the world was in chaos, and in any case our old name was a mouthful. Our industry is full of three-letter acronymed companies, so we came up with Pytch instead.”
Explaining the ethos, he says, “We are here to share messages and create memorable experiences. We decided the broadcast model was better, so I built TV studios.” This includes a 12m x 15m main stage and a Green Room.
Aside from attracting new business Pytch also has a number of clients on retainer in the corporate, conference and exhibition sectors. “We knew we had to deliver something serio

USA - The long, hot summer of COVID-19 saw live music safely come back to Chicago’s lakefront with the new Lakeshore Drive-In venue. Artist management company AudisBliss spearheaded the project working with LEC Event Technology, (LEC) to transform a parking lot just west of the Adler Planetarium into an in-person concert venue that keeps the safety of the attendees, artists and employees in mind.
LEC provided Ayrton Perseo-S fixtures for the stage, the first compact, multi-function luminaire with an IP65 enclosure rating developed for intensive outdoor use.
“The Lakeshore Drive-In is one of the most respected drive-in operations in the country and the only sustainable drive-in model in Chicago, which is operating very successfully within COVID guidelines,” says Matt Brotz, owner and director of Operations at LEC. “LEC took on the role of hardware provider prod

Lithuania - Located on the westernmost edge of Lithuania near the Baltic coast, UAB ProDJ is a full-service technical provider working in many areas of production, from television through to festivals, opera, sporting events and arena-scale concerts. Their in-house facilities include dry hire, logistics, rigging, lighting, video, crew and technical support.
The company took delivery of an Outline Mantas 28 Golden Configuration rig during lockdown, a ready-to-roll complete solution designed for audiences of approximately 600 - 1500 (and also suitable for integration with all Outline GTO, C-12 and Superfly kits as down- and out-fills when required).
The equipment list includes 16 Mantas 28 compact line-array enclosures, eight DBS 18-2 subwoofers and a single Newton 16+8 system processor, plus a complete suite of rigging, cables, pre-wired racks, weather protection and ev

Latest Issue. . .