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Sound and light are working together at the Bose Factory Store in Ashford, Kent, thanks to a state-of-the-art lighting control system from iLight Ltd. With the aim of creating a stimulating in-store experience for customers, the shop is sub-divided into different ‘retail experiences’ to demonstrate the high quality sound and home cinema products. Connected into the audio and AV systems, the iLight system is installed throughout the store as an integral part of the ambience control.

Comprising a mix of seven source controllers, one universal interface and a single two-button stainless steel control panel, the iLight solution is designed to be simple to use. The audio demonstrations and lighting within each retail area are selected via a Crestron touch screen that is connected

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MTFX has just finished the first phase of bringing together all the disciplines of the company under one roof. The group has invested over £500,000 in new premises just north of Bristol. This includes five acres of testing/research grounds and 4,000sq.ft of storage, manufacture and administration offices. The first phase is now complete, with the administration and offices having moved over to the new location. The second phase will be complete by Christmas and will include the transfer of all manufacturing processes, hire equipment, storage and sales stock. MTFX’s managing director Mark Turner told PLASA Media: "These are exciting times for us. For the first time in our nine year history, we will all be under one roof. This will allow all departments to work in unison and should make collections and deliveries much easier."

The company’s new address is Velt Hous

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Paul Highfield has joined large format projection specialists E/T/C UK. Paul was previously technical manager at Fourth Phase Production Arts (formally Production Arts Europe) for five-and-a-half years, joining the company when it first set up the London office in 1996. He joins E/T/C’s Ross Ashton, bringing a wealth of experience and knowledge of this specialist area to the Hounslow-based company.

Highfield’s arrival is also in line with current plans to expand E/T/C into new markets and offer a greater range of equipment and resources. E/T/C UK is sister company of the Paris-based E/T/C Audiovisuel, manufacturers of the renowned PIGI projectors and scrolling systems. Recent projects include a large son et lumière at Chiswick House, West London, the opening of the Dubai Shopping Festival, Sultans of the Dance - a large dance extravaganza staged at Mydonose Showground in

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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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Wireless performance and IEM specialists Hand Held Audio have purchased 14 of the new dbx in-ear monitoring processors from the Arbiter group PLC. Hand Held’s services include hire sales and consultancy in this precise area of audio. The dbx IEM Processor is new to the market and offers a whole range of effects and processing facilities integrated into a single 1U unit - saving both rack space and programming time. The Hand Held units have gone immediately into action on a large European touring production.

Hand Held’s Nick Bruce-Smith comments: "The dbx offers all the functionality needed, and the brand has a great reputation as a processor manufacturer." Product features include Lexicon reverb settings, four-band stereo limiter/compressor, five-band parametric EQ, four-band crossover, MIDI control, updatable software and many more - all the devices that would no

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When Carlton TV decided on a new format of ‘roadshow’ programme, they called on Star Hire (Event Services) Ltd to provide the stage and production support for the televised events. The CITV 'White Knuckle Tour' presented a number of challenges to Carlton, who required facilities for five stage shows and live broadcasts from five different theme parks during August. Both the stage show and the live element were required to work independently or as an integrated operation.

With the stage show, Carlton applied several criteria, specifying that they were looking for a company that could provide a 'turnkey' operation. Not only would the company be required to provide the stage, but also the lighting, lighting controls and power for the whole site. Star Hire’s Mobile Stages manager Jane Russen liased with Steve Adams at Carlton throughout the project and drew on Star Hire

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Martin Audio took advantage of PLASA to expand its Blackline range. The new Blackline F8 is a versatile, two-way passive system designed for applications where high output is required from an ultra-compact enclosure. It features a long-excursion 200mm (8") low frequency driver and a 25mm (1") HF compression driver mounted on a 90º x 50º horn. The horn is user-rotatable to allow the F8’s multi-angled enclosure to be used in either its vertical or horizontal orientation. Special attention has been given to the high excursion requirement of the LF driver. This enables the sound balance of the speaker to remain consistent throughout a range of power outputs. Where extra low frequency is required, sub-bass systems such as the Blackline S12 or S15 may be added.

The Blackline F10 is a 2-way passive system, designed to provide high quality club sound and stage monitoring from

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The Avesco Group has responded to the slowing European economy and the aftermath of the recent atrocities in the USA by accelerating the announcement of a restructuring plan. The initiative sees Dave Crump, managing director of giant screen specialists, Screenco, assume the newly-created role of Group business development director. He will take up the new position at Avesco headquarters in Chessington with immediate effect. Crump will focus on development of relationships and business opportunities across the Group’s entire range of AV service companies including Screenco, Creative Technology, Dimension Audio and the recently launched MCL.

Avesco Group CEO, David Nicholson, commented: "We have been planning this change for some time, but the recent events in the USA - and the consequential effects on our businesses - have led us to bring forward the announcement by several w

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It seemed like business as usual: another year, another PLASA Show. Existing products, refinements of products, new products; familiar faces mingling with the next generation of entertainment industry practitioners all anxious to find out what was new.

Then came Tuesday September 11th and the PLASA Show faded into the background. Word from New York spread quickly around the hall. The atmosphere was surreal because the events that those who had received phone calls from the States were describing, couldn’t possibly have taken place, even in the wildest imaginations of those who work in this crazy business of ours that specializes in dreaming up the impossible then making it happen.

But as those who gathered in the Platinum Club lounge to watch the news live quickly found - all this, and more, was true. We watched the second World Trade Centre Tower crumble live in front of our e

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The very latest DAS Audio sound reinforcement system was specified for the European premier of the hit Broadway musical Songs For A New World. The new production, which had a nine-day run at The Old Fire Station Theatre during the recent ‘Oxford Festival of Theatre’, was sound designed by Giles Sutton, who specified the new DAS Compact 1 three-way, self powered cabs.

Sutton, who this year graduated from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with a BA Honours in Sound Technology, previously sound designed the show in a highly successful student production at LIPA, where it played to packed houses for a week. He was therefore already familiar with the level of reinforcement he was going to need for the seven voices on stage and four-piece electric band in the pit.

Having worked with the DAS house system in LIPA’s Paul McCartney Auditorium, Giles contacte

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Thrust SSC, the fastest car on earth, has been purchased by the Museum of British Road Transport (Coventry) and is to be displayed in a specially designed ‘Mach 1 Show’ open to the public from 9th September 2001. Thrust SSC, powered by two Rolls Royce Spey 205 turbojet engines, became the first car to achieve the Supersonic World Land Speed Record on 15 October 1997 by achieving a speed of 763.035 mph. It now takes its place in the museum alongside Thrust 2, its land speed record predecessor, which has been on display since 1992.

The car was purchased with the help of a major grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and this included a sum of money for use in mounting an imaginative presentation of the vehicle using a variety of audio-visual techniques. The museum awarded a contract for overall design and project management to JSP Design Associates Ltd. of Northampton to create

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Terme Olimia is a new theme park situated next to the Sotla River, which forms the border between Slovenia and Croatia. The complex comprises a hotel, apartment block, village, sports park, pool complex, nature camp and the Aqualuna Water Park. All the entertainment and announcements throughout the complex are broadcast through a combination of 36 Martin Audio Contractor C115s, distributed undercover throughout the restaurant and café bar areas, and 16 custom-weatherproofed ICT 300s, which are found in most of the zones in the park. The sound installation was undertaken by KSL Studio, Martin Audio’s Slovenian distributor.

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There was not much in the way of cricketing glory for England this summer, but there was one glorious day on the field at Littlewick Green, Berkshire, on August 23rd, courtesy of PLASA member Hayden Laboratories.

Three squads competed for the third annual Hayden Laboratories Pro Sound & Lighting Cricket Trophy, in which teams representing the PLASA Show's lighting and sound exhibitors took on the might of the PLASA Show organisers, Clarion Events. After successfully defending their title in 2000, Clarion were set for a fall this year, and fall they did, losing in the final to the PLASA Audio team, captained by Hayden Labs' Simon Curtis.

All three teams fielded some great performances during the day, with only one notable injury - to the neck of PLASA's financial controller Shane McGreevy (playing for PLASA Lighting), who took a show-stopping catch to send Clarion's James Brooks-Ward

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This month the BBC is running free courses for anyone in the broadcast industry to mark European Week for Safety and Health at Work 2001. This initiative aims to provide every opportunity for those in the broadcast industry to increase their knowledge and safety awareness. Key areas covered in all of the courses include risk assessment, responsibilities, control, co-ordination and communication.

Bob Forster, BBC Health and Safety Manager, says: "The lack of safety competence is one of the contributory factors in many accidents within the broadcast industry. Through this programme, anybody from stunt artists to special effects supervisors will be able to attend free training at a convenient location."

The BBC initiative has been warmly welcomed by the HSE, which has said: "Everyone has a responsibility for their own health and safety and all those involved in broadcasti

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At the PLASA Show, PLASA launched a new initiative in association with Forester Health, designed to pay for basic healthcare needs no longer fully funded by the NHS and to provide financial assistance in the event of hospitalization, accident or the birth of a child.

The Forester Cash Plan is not just another Private Medical Insurance (PMI) scheme - it complements the facilities of the NHS and will also complement and enhance existing PMI schemes because of the different types of benefits provided. The plan will cover pre-existing conditions for all PLASA members - companies and individuals - who sign up for the scheme before 31 December 2001.

Under the Cash Plan, cash refunds are provided for dental treatment (100% refund), eye tests, prescription glasses and contact lenses (100% refund), prescription charges and physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic homeopathic acupuncture, refle

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Lamba launched a number of new products at PLASA from Stanton Magnetics, for whom they are the exclusive UK distributors. The RM30 is a hybrid three-channel techno/scratch mixer which will appeal to a wide cross section of DJs - each channel features gain control, slider pan and a versatile three-band EQ with complete kill. The DFX-1 is what Stanton claim to be the world’s first trackball-controlled signal processor. It features 90 effect presets which are synchronized to any audio source on-the-fly, using Stanton’s advanced BPM engine. Designed for both live and recording applications the DFX-1 has both RCA &1/4in connections. The DRM-120 provides four full channels to mix with, but there is the added enjoyment of creating effects on the fly, using the Stanton trackball or BPM-driven DSP effects. The S-250 is Stanton’s first table-top single CD player - complete with P

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Soundsense, one of the leading providers of sound equipment to the broadcast industry has made a substantial investment in digital audio products, as a result of customer feedback. For the broadcast market, the company has invested in Soundcraft's compact digital on-air mixer, the RM1D, which is finding great appeal with radio broadcasters working with RSLs (Restricted Service Licences), where equipment is only required on site for up to 28 days, the maximum term of the broadcast.

"We have a large number of RSL customers," explains Derek Tallent of Soundsense. "We needed to buy more consoles, and, although we were initially looking at high-specification analogue consoles, we soon realised we could buy into the digital future with the RM1D at an attractive entry price. Although most radio, and 99% of our customers, are still analogue, we see the RM1D as a future-proof inv

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Summer may be over but the boys from EST are still busy rolling around Europe. Four trucks, laden with props for Welsh crooner Tom Jones’ Eastern Bloc tour, have just left Russia. In addition, EST is providing logistical support to the R Kelly tour of Europe, and to French star Garou as he embarks on the second leg of his mammoth tour of France which he started back in March. EST’s purple and yellow trucks can also be seen with Orbital as they perform a series of one-off shows around Europe.

Meanwhile, in the corporate arena, two trucks, laden with almost a mile of trussing have just left Frankfurt where Summit Steel rigged a special event for PCI Live Events, a launch party that heralded Ford’s new Fiesta before an invited press audience on the evening before the Frankfurt Motor Show opened.Following this event, EST scheduled in over 70 trailer movements for the retu

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Mackie Industrial, the contractor products division of Mackie Designs Inc, announced at the recent PLASA Show the introduction of its 'Mackie Central' rapid proposal development software. The Mackie Central V.1 software application is aimed at automating the proposal and documentation facets of a sound contractor's business. Written specifically for the sound contracting market, the software aims to streamline the creation of professional proposals that are routinely created by contractors for design/build and negotiated bids.

The key to the product's appeal is the fact that it includes a fully-automated drag-and-drop Quotation Builder that performs all of the calculations typically assigned to a spreadsheet. In addition, the program assembles written descriptions for each of the products in the database into a Word-compatible proposal. The product thereby provides a finished, professi

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As Vari-Lite Production Services expands into new markets and increases its market appeal, the company today announces the addition of lighting industry veterans Andrew Nikel and Mark Rudge as account managers for the VLPS offices in New York and Los Angeles respectively. "Because VLPS is expanding its sphere of influence, we need leaders with experience in new markets who also have an understanding of the markets that have long been a part of our foundation," said Rusty Brutsché, Vari-Lite chairman and CEO. "Andrew and Mark have that expertise, and will be key in helping extend our reach into new markets where automated lighting is beginning to be used more frequently."

Nikel, who began in the lighting industry as a master electrician in regional theater, spent 13 years with Production Arts/Fourth Phase. He most recently served as senior project coordinator for th

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Stage director and visual designer Robert Wilson and poet and musician Tom Waits have teamed up with the Betty Nansen Teatret in Copenhagen to create a performance which has stirred up far-reaching and unconditional enthusiasm throughout Denmark and Europe. The production is the classic Woyzeck, by Georg Büchner, based on the story of a young soldier and his reaction to a warped society, culminating in the murder of his girlfriend. In the hands of Wilson and Waits, the play is given a strikingly modern look. Lighting designer A J Weissbard draws inspiration from traditional methods of creating environment and atmosphere, using specialized lighting effects to give the set a feeling of simplicity, whilst at the same time empowering the unfolding tragedy.

This first all-Danish performance of the 164-year-old tragedy was given at the Betty Nansen Teatret late last year, and the pro

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Chiswick House is an historic 18th century home whose walls no doubt have tales to tell of its many fascinating inhabitants. The house was designed and built by the wealthy Lord Burlington, who was an amateur architect fascinated with the classical period; hence the lines of the house are simple and elegant - a perfect canvas for the projection of stunning images to recall the spirit and lives of those associated with the glorious building.

Ross Ashton from E/T/C UK was the man responsible for the creation of an absorbing 35-minute Son et Lumiere that recalls the halcyon days of Chiswick. Famous figures such as King George 1, Handel and Alexander Pope all succumbed to the charm of the House and it was these that inspired Ashton and his collaborators: "When I was first presented with the idea of creating a Son et Lumiere about Chiswick House, the trickiest part was figuring out who

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