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UK - This year’s PLASA Show seminar programme both embraces the Show’s 40-year history and continues to provide valuable education across the most important and topical subjects in the industry today. This latest tranche of the Show’s free-to-attend seminar programme will have particular appeal for anyone in AV and lighting, those wanting to refine their social media interaction, boost their productivity with processes and apps or learn more about the Production Managers Forum.
Two sessions that have the AV market firmly in mind will take place in the Audio & AV Theatre: Where does audio stand within today’s corporate environment?, chaired by AV Magazine’s editor Clive Couldwell; and Installations – you’ve come a long way, baby, chaired b

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Record Breakers - The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the International Festival have both had record breaking box offices in their 70th anniversary year. By Monday afternoon an estimated 2,696,884 tickets had been issued for Fringe shows, an increase of 9% on last year. The event saw 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows at about 300 venues. Edinburgh International Festival's sales topped £4.3m and audiences surpassed 450,000. The Edinburgh Book Festival also had a good year with a record footfall of more than 250,000 into Charlotte Square Gardens, the largest audience in its 34-year history.
The venues for this year's Fringe included a swimming pool, a bathroom, a football ground, a tunnel and a racecourse with themes ranging from identity and grief to Brexit, Trump and the Syrian conflict.
Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: "

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Switzerland - Schertler Group has released three new modules for ARTHUR, its Format 48 modular mixer that users can configure and build themselves. The new Multiple In, Subgroup and Spring (reverb) modules have been designed for seamless integration into the existing range of input and output units, offering greater flexibility and more efficient workflow.
The Multiple In is a Class A input module that can receive 4 line signals (or two stereo lines). Mainly intended for use with audio devices that generate a 0 dbV line signal, it is designed to enable simple routing of line signals to ARTHUR’s L/R Master. Although the unit has more limited features (i.e. no Gain, filters or Aux routing), it is very useful for subgroup routing: Its inputs can accommodate effect units, CD players, tape or digital recorders, preamps of any kind and electronic instruments such as keyboards an
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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

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UK - PLASA 2017 at Olympia will give lighting professionals the opportunity to see for themselves what the latest buzz around some of Elation Professional’s newest luminaires is all about. From 17-19 September, Elation will be showcasing at Stand H40 its new breed of hybrid luminaire, the full-colour IP65-rated Paladin strobe/wash/blinder effect, along with the award-winning Proteus line of IP65-rated arc-source moving heads (Proteus Beam and Proteus Hybrid).
Other innovations on display will include the Artiste DaVinci, a full-featured theatrical-grade LED moving head spot for the creative LD; the popular Fuze Series of dynamic LED wash luminaires (moving head and IP65-rated PAR versions) for classic wash looks from cutting-edge LED wash lights; and the Platinum 1200 Wash, Elation’s brightest LED moving head wash to date with the power of a 1500W discharge.
The E

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South Africa - The Sneddon Theatre was host to a charity event to raise much needed funds for medical expenses for Themi Venturas, a local theatre practitioner and an industry legend based in Durban. The event was well attended by many key industry players, who generously donated money towards the drive.
South African comedian and actor, Aaron Mcilroy, wore two hats on the night, one as friend to Themi and the other as a performing artist. “I had the privilege of sharing the stage with my long-time friend John Vlismas,” said Aaron. “It's incredible to think even though we have known each other for over 20 years until this day we have never shared the stage in a performance for the public. I find this strangely bizarre.
“The evening was absolutely amazing! Not only was the audience brilliant but everyone in the entertainment industry had lined up to offer their

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USA/UK - High Energy US punk rock band Blink 182 is currently on an international tour following the introduction of its new guitarist and vocalist Matt Skiba, and the release of the new California album. Jason Decter, front of house engineer for Blink 182 for the past eight years, has chosen the new SSL L200 Live console - supplied on the EU leg of the tour by PA systems specialist, SSE Audio Group, and in the US by Hi-Tech Audio via Rat Sound Systems - for the job of bringing the band's particular mania to the PA.
Blink 182 is a three-piece band that, according to Decter, "fits nicely into 36 input channels... the drum kit, bass guitar, two vocals, and some playback tracks." It’s not a huge input list, so getting the kind of power and vigour that Blink 182 is known for from the stage to the audience, while keeping its edge, requires magic from all sides. Of course

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South Africa - Set, lighting and AV designer, Wilhelm Disbergen, relied on a Hippotizer Boreal and a giant mirror to create something extraordinary for the ballet production Big City, Big Dreams, staged at the Joburg Theatre.
The original showcase, directed by Fiona Ramsay, was a collaboration between three dance companies – the Joburg Ballet, Vuyani Dance Company, and Moving Into Dance Mophatong. Over 40 professional dancers adorned the stage as classical ballet infused with contemporary and street dance. The love story, with the city of Johannesburg as the backdrop, portrays a young man in the corporate world who falls in love with a dancer.
An artistic and key focus of the set was a giant mirror (15m x 9m) suspended at a 45-degree angle over the white ballet mats below, enabling the audience to see the dancers from above. “I also projected visuals on the

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South Africa - Queen of Bollywood in India, Shreya Ghoshal, took to the stage at Emperor’s Palace, Johannesburg on 20 August. Rental company Bass Mechanics supplied the full technical solution which included sound, AV and lighting, the predominantly Robe lighting rig controlled with a grandMA ultra-light.
“One of the huge advantages of working on a rig with mostly one brand makes programming and designing simpler and easier to implement during a short period of time,” commented Sushil Patidar, owner and technical director of Bass Mechanics.
“Time is always a challenge and as a lighting designer, we only have a certain amount of it to ensure all pre-planning is complete. The grandMA console, which ran through Nexus DMX Artnet, helped greatly with both implementing our vision and utilizing the rig to its full potential,” says Ravi Paima, lighting designer at t

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Europe - Painting with Light continues its active collaboration with entertainment tech giant Panasonic through the current European Media & Entertainment Roadshow initiative which is showcasing the brand’s latest, high-powered projectors.
The projectors work in conjunction with technologies that the Belgian creative design practice has invested in and is using in innovative ways.
These are BlackTrax remote tracking, d3 high performance media servers and Notch real-time interactive video content.
The specialist technical and programming skills needed to optimise and run these systems are also being provided by Painting with Light and the overall project is being managed for them by Wouter Verhulst.
This creative / technical partnership was first seen at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) exhibition, Amsterdam in February, where Painting with Light’

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UK - Driven by the market demand and enhancing the existing stock of its clients, Dry Hire Lighting (DHL) has recently made a heavy investment in SGM’s LED technology.
Having added a substantial amount of Q-7 flood lights, P-5 and P-1 wash lights, SixPack blinders, and G-4 Wash and G-4 Wash-Beam moving heads to its inventory, it is ready to support and fulfil equipment shortfalls discretely as and when required by professional lighting hire companies.
Co-director, Rob Merrilees, states: “The selling point from our point of view is LED, IP-rating and reliability, and SGM ticks all these boxes. Our relationship with SGM is very strong and hopefully this will grow in the future.”
During a HQ visit at SGM Light, co-directors Rob Merrilees and Nic Tolkien met with SGM CEO Peter Johansen and SGM UK director Ian Kirby.
“We appreciate the opportunity to

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USA - Combining various musical styles such as jazz, house, folk and soul with African, Asian, and Middle Eastern influences, it’s clear to see why Bonobo has been described by Electronic Beats magazine as one of the most prolific “genre shunning” producers. Fittingly, the lightshow on this artist’s world tour was given an expansive look by Will Thomas with help from a collection of Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
Thomas relied on 19 of the Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures, supplied by Colour Sound Experiment, to complement the impressive video walls in his design for the tour, which supported Bonobo’s UK Top 5 album Migration. Given the central role that video played in his overall stage design, it was of great importance to Thomas that his lighting coordinate with the video playback, while also reflecting elements of the darker, edgier and

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Australia - With a career spanning 40 years, iconic Australian band Icehouse has continued to delight millions with their music, well-known and loved by audiences across generations. Icehouse began in 1977 as a Sydney-based pub rock band called Flowers, who were the highest paid unsigned act in Australia at the time.
In 2006, Icehouse was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame, being described as “one of the most successful Australian bands of the 80s and 90s”’. Icehouse’s 1987 album Man of Colours remains to this day as the highest-selling album in Australia by an Australian band.
With a history like that, it’s no wonder the band have been selling out their 40 Years Live Tour this year as it travels the country - with more dates just announced.
Touring with an audio package from JPJ Audio, the tour utilised in-h

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USA - Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado is one of the most iconic concert venues in the world. Everyone loves playing in this unique setting with its special ambience and for a recent Trey Anastasio Band (TAB) gig, LD Marc Janowitz used Robe BMFL Spots to highlight the rock formation at the back of the stage.
Marc is currently on tour with the artist with whom he’s worked since 2012. It is the third TAB tour that he has designed, and this time, the design brief was to break everything right down to basics and take a pure-lighting approach with no video, scenic or backdrops.
The touring lighting package also had to fit into a 15ft trailer towed behind the bus and dovetail into a ‘top’ package being supplied by the local promoters at each venue. So Marc looked for small, light and bright fixtures and chose 25 x Robe Spikies and 13 x Spiiders.
These are posi

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on tour is not an unfamiliar occurance. After all, the band has been on the road since it was established in 1976 and has since been considered one of the most successful and long-running American rock groups in history. This year’s tour, however, has a different air to it: not only are the Heartbreakers commemorating their 40th anniversary, but 2017 is expected to be the last year the group will tour on such a large scale.
The 46-city, cross-continent tour began in April and will continue through late September stopping at major US, Canada and UK venues to celebrate with their most dedicated fans.
With the additional pressure to mark these milestones, touring sound reinforcement powerhouse Sound Image was called upon for their services. And when it came to designing the front-fill element of the customised electro-acoustic system, presiden

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Europe - Foo Fighters will be on the road through December promoting their ninth studio album, Concrete & Gold. Following dates in Asia, the Seattle band will hit Berlin and London before opening their US fall tour at Cal Jam 17 in San Bernardino, California in October. Since 2010, Dan Hadley has been the group’s production designer and lighting programmer/director, and his current design includes 27 Flare Q+ LR linear fixtures.
“We are going very light for quick runs of festivals,” says Hadley, “I had to make sure that the fixtures we were bringing packed a punch. I used the original Flares on the last tour to bash and colour the crowd. The Q+ Linears do the same job while providing an unbroken line of light and colour. This adds a sort of architectural/scenic element that makes it stand out from any other lighting rig that the audience is seeing that day

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UK - The latest lighting console from British lighting and video control manufacturer Avolites is currently being used to control the versatile lighting rig on the National Theatre's River Stage Festival on London's South Bank.
A free outdoor event, the River Stage Festival runs each weekend throughout the month of August. Audiences are invited to see a wide range performances from award-winning dance and cinema to family workshops, live music and theatre.
"The festival's varied performance agenda features over 60 live events," says Huw Llewellyn, the National Theatre's lighting resources supervisor and chief lighting designer for the River Stage. "To meet demand, we needed a lighting console that could deliver an extensive range of lighting control options."
The Arena console is the latest control surface in the Avolites Titan range, with 40 precision playbac

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UK - MDG is a well-respected manufacturer of industry bench-mark haze and fog generators and is loved and well-known within the industry. This summer the company has made some unusual new friends, namely Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad from the riverbank.
The Wind in the Willows the musical, has had a riotous run at the London Palladium this summer. Spectacularly produced by Jamie Hendry Productions and written by Julian Fellowes, Oscar-winning screenwriter and creator of Downton Abbey, and the Olivier award-winning composer and lyricist, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, the show has been a great success.
The production’s lighting designer, Howard Harrison, insisted on using two MDG ATMe haze generators for this show. Harrison commented, “MDG is one of the super companies I have always believed in. They produce very good high-quality products and I ha

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USA – Eos family control becomes even more versatile with the release of the newly-upgraded iRFR and aRFR iOS and Android mobile applications. Both remote apps boast fully-redesigned user interfaces, more intuitive connectivity and an expanded feature set, including a full-feature keyboard and direct selects. This redesign is available as a free update for anyone who has previously purchased the iRFR or aRFR application. Note that software v2.6 must be installed on the host Eos device (console, RPU, laptop, etc) for these revised applications to work.
All app sale proceeds will be donated to charities that support lighting and theatre professionals in need. There are two versions of each app: one supporting Behind the Scenes (BTS), the US-based charity that assists production personnel in need, and one supporting Backup, the UK-based equivalent.
The existing apps –

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USA - JR Lighting provided the lighting, rigging and control package for the US leg of American pop punk band All Time Low’s The Young Renegades tour , a successful six-week run this summer that featured Elation Professional lighting and video.
Lighting designer Jeff Maker (Pierce the Veil, The Dresden Dolls) has worked with All Time Low for the past eight years and earlier this year used Elation lighting on a string of shows in the UK and Europe. For 2017’s U.S. leg he added a dominant upstage visual piece in the form of an eye-catching LED video wall. “Whereas the UK design was all about the lighting, the U.S. leg was very video heavy,” Maker explains, referencing the unique cityscape/soundwave video wall made up of Elation EMAG4 LED video panels. “We wanted to create a very interactive design that helped transform the stage with each song having its own persona

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Japan - Summer is the festival season right around the world — and that includes Japan, which is awash with many music festivals.
Rock In Japan is one of the biggest open-air events of its kind in the country, and is held on four days over two consecutive weekends in August. Once again, crowds of more than 68,000 people assembled on each day, totalling over 272,000 people in all. Tickets sold out in advance, and many TV stations reported on how successful the event was.
Martin Audio Japan has deployed its MLA speakers for this event for many years, and once again they covered the main Grass Stage with their equipment for the 2017 edition. While this again included the MLA series, all attention was focused on the new XE500 floor monitors along the front edge of the stage, seen for the first time in Japan and Asia Pacific. Powered by an equally new Martin Audio

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USA - The theme of the fourth annual EST Festival, which took place outside Cleveland August 11-13, was “1970 Something” a tribute to those unruly, hard-driving days when social inhibitions seemed to be falling like bowling pins. Early Seventies style swagger was out in full force during the two-day festival, as its founder Machine Gun Kelly and other hip-hop heavyweights like Gucci Mane tore things up with some high-powered decibels. There were even some period piece scenic elements dotting the festival grounds for atmosphere, but the Alex Kay lightshow that supported the onstage performances went way beyond anything anyone could ever have imagined back in the day.
Kay, of NPi Audio Visual Solutions, used an array of high output fixtures, a 13’ x 20’ video wall, and projection mapping with 20K projectors to create a non-stop visual assault that matched the music on
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