Selecon and Rosco held a hands-on open day at the end of October at RADA’s new premises in London. Members of the ALD, STLD and PLASA were invited to have a closer look at the newer products that were launched at this year’s PLASA Show.

Amongst these was the Finelite II projector which was used to project images in the theatre at RADA, thus demonstrating the potential for this product. Also on show was the new dowser for use with Selecon’s MSR Pacific - well received by those in attendance who see it as a key development in lighting control. Rosco demonstrated its award-winning ImagePro: attached to a Selecon Pacific, it provided food for thought for those wanting to use gobos but not wanting to have the high costs associated with glass gobos.

(Ruth Rossington)

The Italian fashion show Moda in Villa took place in early September. The event, organized by Uniontessile and Unionorafi of Apindustria, Vicenza, was staged at the Villa Cordellina Lombardi in Montecchio Maggiore (one of the most prestigious Vicentine villas with frescoes by Tiepolo), and previewed not only this winter’s fashions, but jewellery that was to be later presented at Orogemma 2002.

In addition to a special satellite programme on the TV Moda channel broadcast by TELE + and Stream TV throughout almost the whole of Europe, the evening could also be watched live on the web via a link on www.modainvilla.com.

As planned by the organizers, the lighting system played a fundamental role at the event: as well as illuminating the catwalk, it also created a highly imaginative backdrop, colouring and delineating the villa’s façade and projecting the logos of designers pre

Eurolites Productions, Ireland’s largest lighting and production rental company, is moving to a new 12,000sq.ft warehouse in Portlaoise, Co Laois. However, it’s going to go down as one of the shortest moves in the history of the industry as the company is literally moving from Unit 3 on John Keyes Business Park to Unit 5. The new unit will provide more space for the company and allow more room for manouevre in the pre-building of full rigs. It will also provide a second loading bay and a separate area for the programming and preparation of moving lights.

Eurolites’ existing 6,000sq.ft building will be retained by the company and will be occupied by Eurolites Sales, the lighting sales division of the company and Martin Professional distributor for Ireland. A full operational demonstration studio will also be constructed in the coming months. RoadBox, the flightcase man

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

Australia-based Brown’s Precision Welding, manufacturers of high quality aluminium products, has announced a new product, Brown’s Multifunction Tower (BMT). At the heart of the BMT’s innovative design is an adaptive connection plate allowing any existing industry standard truss to be incorporated into the tower or ground support design. This cost-effective approach also results in the Multifunction Tower being one of the most versatile systems available in the world today.

Beau Southey, managing director of Brown’s Precision Welding and designer of the Multifunction Tower, says: "The BWT is designed to maximise the usability of every component and integrate effectively with which ever truss the end-user requires including any existing rental stocks. Even the sleeve block may be used independently as a truss corner block."

The tower itself comprises a

Barco has won a order worth $3 million from one of North America’s foremost AV rental and staging companies, AVW-TELAV Audio Visual Solutions. Barco will deliver 30sq.m of its renowned ILite6 indoor display technology, as well as 20 SLM R8 Performer projectors to AVW-TELAV. The digital display and projection solutions will be used by the company at various high profile events throughout North America.

AVW-TELAV Audio Visual Solutions, which is a new company formed by the merger of TELAV Audio Visual Services and AVW Audio Visual, is one of North America’s leading AV rental and staging companies. AVW was founded in 1971 and although headquartered in Dallas, had 15 locations throughout the US. TELAV was established in 1982, and from its base in Montreal, Quebec operated 18 locations across Canada. Today, AVW-TELAV Audio Visual Solutions has 34 offices coast to coast and offe

The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama has purchased an Allen & Heath ML3000 15 buss live sound VCA console as part of a major upgrade to its audio system. The 32-channel mixer was recommended and provided by the Cardiff branch of Stage Electrics, one of Europe's leading suppliers of technical equipment to the entertainment, leisure and presentation industries. Stage Electrics also supplied a Martin Audio Wavefront W2 and WS2A speaker system as part of the upgrade.

There are currently 530 students enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (the 'Royal' title was granted by Her Majesty The Queen during her recent Golden Jubilee visit to Wales), situated close to Cardiff city centre. Among the courses on offer are a BA and postgraduate diploma in Stage Management (the post-graduate course being sponsored by Stage Electrics), which both feature a Technical Studies module c

Biamp Systems has announced the introduction of several new products and significant software enhancements that will serve to expand its digital audio platform. One such introduction includes a group of three remote panel controllers, as well as a Logic input/output box to control Audia.

The three remote control panels offer several new features: Volume 8 allows up to eight individual or group levels with Audia. The levels may include inputs, outputs, mixer levels, matrix cross-points or any number of volume controls. Select 8 provides the selection and control of up to eight actions from within Audia. This control can be used to establish presets, mutes, ducking and/or combining. Volume/Select 8 combines the functionality of the Volume 8 and Select 8 on one two-gang panel. According to Ralph Lockhart, president of Biamp Systems: "We wanted to give the end-user as much flexibility

No sooner had we got the news online that Le Mark had been nominated for the Huntingdonshire Business Spirit of Ingenuity Award than we got a message to say that the company had actually won it. Ruth Bagnal, from The East of England Development Agency, presented the award to the company on Friday 1 November in front of 200 top business people at the Marriott Hotel in Huntingdon.

The Judges selected Le Mark for the new ‘Ingenuity’ award following close scrutiny. The company had proven that following the commercial slow-down which had affected many businesses, Le Mark had "self-invested, innovated and diversified into new business sectors," showing a new level of performance and growth.

Le Mark’s core business is still very much the development of ‘self-adhesive solutions’ - skills which were applied to the development of new products, including

Following the launch of its new sales department earlier in the year, Birmingham's SSE Hire has recently completed a major overhaul of the audio system at Sheffield University. The brief given by the University's technical manager Pete Brenchley was to provide separate systems for the three venues at the University. The Octagon, the largest of the three venues, was to have a new main PA system capable of handling touring acts. The Foundry, which runs seven nights a week with a variety of events and music styles needed new main PA, foldback and control equipment and Fusion, the Union bar, was to benefit from an installation capable of running in the background all day and coming forward to power the DJs at night. On top of this, the systems needed to be completely compatible with each other so that gear could be moved from venue to venue depending on the show to be supplied.

SSE designe

VDC has supplied Taunton-based rental company APR Audio with custom-built cable looms for its new Electro-Voice X-Line PA system, enabling the remote operation of its Electro-Voice P3000RL DSP amplifiers. This is the first application of its type in the UK, and the first in the world to be configured for a stadium-sized X-Line system.

Andy Reed of APR Audio has been a customer of VDC since he started out in the audio rental business, so it is no surprise that every length of cable for his new X-Line rig has been sourced from the London company. A variety of Van Damme products, including Black Series, Blue Series, Socapex-based speaker multicores and breakouts, and associated panel work, is in place, but the innovation lies in the custom link looms that combine armoured Cat 5 data cable with audio lines. These looms connect stage systems to the front-of-house control, and enable the amp

Istanbul-based Focus has been appointed the new distributor for L-Acoustics in Turkey. Formed in 1997, the company is an exclusive distributor for more than 20 product lines in Turkey, including sound, lighting and staging products. Since its establishment, the company has forged strong partnerships with some of the leading installation companies within the market and benefits from a high level of recognition in Turkey as a whole. Cenk Yildiz, sales manager of Focus, comments: "We have 20 years experience in this field, and Focus has always been respected for carrying the best products and offering the highest levels of service, so it’s appropriate we should now have L-Acoustics in our portfolio."

(Ruth Rossington)

Marquee Audio has masterminded a multifunctional/multimedia design and installation in the 1000-seat auditorium of a greenfield development in Tonbridge, Kent. The company was awarded the contract by Harvester Conferences, a subsidiary of Harvester Trust, to equip their new development at The River Centre.

This will enable Harvester - a community-motivated, Christian charitable organization - to operate as a conference and community facility, as well as a church centre. Harvester had already made the decision not to extend to the 9m high ceiling which would have enabled them to have presented unamplified speech projection (instead opting for a 6m floor-to-ceiling pitch). They also opted for an amplified state-of-the-art PA system with full conference facility audio-visual, and put the work out to tender.

With seven-day utilization in prospect, Marquee recommended a Nexo system as bei

When the headquarters of the Mayor of London's Greater London Authority on the south bank of the Thames opened to the public in September this year, they set a mandate that they wanted to be accessible to the public via television, radio and the internet.

One of the key technical requirements was to create a backbone - with various plug-in points throughout the building - that would allow information in the form of data and text, video and audio to flow from its source to any desk or display screen, the GLA website or for national broadcast. IVC, the company awarded the £2.1 million contract, were also asked to provide a high-grade portable presentation unit, that would be able to operate in both the first floor assembly chamber and way up on the ninth floor.

IVC devised a solution based around an 80" dnp Black Bead screen and Christie Roadster X4 DLP projector, also designing

Following Vertigo Rigging’s mammoth undertaking at this time last year at the Odeon Leicester Square, for the premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the company returned to the same location for the launch of the latest Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Paddy Burnside was again Vertigo’s project manager for the event. This year the company rigged two ‘goalpost’ screen supports, constructed from James Thomas SuperTruss, in front of the Odeon’s two side billboards, onto which were flown LED screens supplied by Light Media Displays. The trussing supports were braced back to the building using chemical fixings, and the base of each leg was encased in a three-quarter tonne concrete block, clad in plywood - these latter, cast at Vertigo’s workshop in Bermondsey, to comply with Westminster Council requ

Audio Projects have supplied and installed a Martin Audio sound reinforcement system to the Hazlitt Theatre in Maidstone, having won a competitive tender. Sound engineers had been unhappy for a while about the sound in the theatre, particularly the dead spots. The theatre’s production and operations manager, Eric Lund, realized that an upgrade was essential, so with Audio Projects’ Stephen Hall set about investigating several alternatives before being invited to a demo of the EM series at Martin Audio’s High Wycombe HQ.

"It was a question of finding a product that would provide the right coverage, because there are 300 seats in the stalls and a further 56 in the balcony," said Stephen. "I knew the Martin range would provide the coverage and versatility for the wide band of shows the theatre receives - and because several of their management live locall

Not only a new landmark, but a watermark on the south-western English coast, the National Maritime Museum Cornwall (NMMC) in Falmouth will open its doors to the public for the first time in December 2002.

Designed by award-winning architects Long & Kentish, the magnificent harbourside blends with and enhances its surroundings. The exhibitions within were designed by Land Design Studio with Kevin Theobald of London-based Maurice Brill Lighting Design onboard as lighting designer. Although an unconventional-looking building, the museum is fitted for the most part with conventional exhibition lighting equipment, but for two of the galleries, the Dark Gallery and the Daylit Gallery, more sophisticated lighting systems were needed.

The Dark Gallery required a control system capable of co-ordinating the lighting with an AV system, so Theobald specified an ETC Express 250 Lighting Playback

Shure Inc has announced the shipment of its latest personal monitoring system, the affordable PSM 200. As the least expensive in-ear monitor system offering both Shure’s renowned quality and innovative new features, the PSM 200 makes the benefits of in-ear monitoring accessible to a wide array of cost-conscious musicians, houses of worship, and installations requiring assistive listening devices, say Shure. Aside from cost, the PSM 200 components boast new features including the built-in ability to upgrade the receiver from wired to wireless, a transmitter that is also a mixer, and a high fidelity earphone.

For those users that can’t initially afford wireless, the P2R Hybrid Receiver protects their investment by allowing them to upgrade at a later date. The hybrid receiver starts as a wired bodypack and with the addition of the TransMixer component, operates fully as a wire

The Winterthur Theatre in Switzerland, which hosts around 250 theatrical events every year, has recently undergone a lighting upgrade, overseen by lighting director Wilfried Potthoff, who had the theatre outfitted with 50 Clay Paky CP Color 150-E colour changers. Products were supplied by Claudio Merlo’s ECM, distributor of Clay Paky products in Switzerland.

The majority of the products was installed overhead in the large hall adjacent to the main auditorium. The theatre frequently hosts conventions, parties, meetings or other gatherings in this area, often accompanied by background music. The CP Color colour-changers can provide synchronized colour-washes and cross-fades to create a variety of moods and effects to augment these occasions.

More CP Colors were placed behind a white canvas inside the theatre to create very effective colour scenes, boldly standing out among the th

London-based Premier League football club Charlton Athletic has met its growing post-match media requirements by constructing a press interview/communication theatre. ML Executives, who have been servicing the club’s audio needs for a number of years, were asked to outfit the new suite, designing an eight-zone system. The firm selected QSC’s multi-channel CX168 power amplifier to provide the solution.

To achieve DSP control, ML Executives used the Shure P4800 Precise Digital Control software - interfaced via a PC within the unit - with a DRS10 scene controller for digital remote switching. Via the newly-provided Shure ceiling and desktop mics, combined with RCF/Mackie PL80A ceiling speakers, managers can hold their post-match briefings, while ISDN lines allow the press to file their reports and photographs digitally. A link with the Charlton Athletic website allows the post

Tourtech, the Northampton-based rental company, has joined the L-Acoustics V-Dosc network, alongside the existing UK Partners of Autograph Sound Recording, Britannia Row Productions, Delta Sound, EFX Audio and Wigwam Hire.

Tourtech’s current inventory consists of 40 ARCS cabinets, 20 SB218 and four SB115 subwoofers, 24 115FM floor monitors, four MTD108a and four MTD115a speakers. Additionally, they have just taken delivery of an initial 16-cabinet turnkey V-Dosc system, including six dV-Doscs. The new V-Doc system was pressed into service just a few days after delivery for the current Coldplay European Arena tour.

Tourtech’s managing director, Dick Rabel, comments: "Clearly, this was a natural development for TourTech having used L-Acoustics ARCS to such tremendous effect in the past. I continue to be a working sound engineer and consequently have had extensive exper

Building on their success as video supplier for Madonna’s ‘Up For Grabs’ this summer, XL Video UK is back in the West End working for cinematographer and projection designer Jon Driscoll, and production company Tiger Aspect on the new musical Our House, featuring the music of Madness.

Driscoll and film editor Richard Overall have again teamed up with video scientist Richard Turner to produce the visuals, working in close collaboration with lighting designer Mark Henderson and Tiger Aspect’s production manager Steve Rebbeck. The production’s principal projection sequence takes place during the seminal Madness hit Driving In My Car. The Morris Minor car comes onstage, and the minimal set turns into a giant three-sided screen surface, in old-fashioned Cinema 180 film projection style. The footage propels car and cast on a journey which starts on the st

Latest Issue. . .