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Gearhouse South Africa was extensively involved with the Auto Africa show (23-27 Oct) - Africa’s biggest motoring event. Bill Lawford was Gearhouse SA’s project manager for the event, running a team of 30 Gearhouse technicians. The bulk of the company’s work at Auto Africa 2002 was in providing sound, audio-visual equipment, rigging and decking. In particular, rigging the trussing proved no small feat - Gearhouse SA rigged over 500 different hanging points throughout the three main Auto Africa exhibition halls.

Among the 25+ stands that Gearhouse SA was involved in were Land Rover, Ford, Mazda, Alpha Romeo, Fiat, Chrysler Jeep, Renault, Honda and Porsche. The range of equipment was extensive: for example, a cube wall on the Mazda stand involved 48 separate cubes. "

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Ministry of Sound has had a new JBL Vertec line array audio system installed into it’s busy Bar space - the first area of the venue entered by clubbers, where it’s considered crucial to create the right audio impression. Vertec was supplied by JBL’s UK distributors Arbiter Pro Audio to Liverpool-based Over Audio, who co-ordinated the supply.

The system consists of eight Vertec VT-4889 elements - and was specified by David Bradshaw, the Ministry’s Head of Production. Bradshaw was looking for a system with large amounts of energy and direction that would adequately cover all areas of the unorthodox shaped room: apart from that, it had to look good, and work in the context of the space’s aesthetics. Bradshaw had realized the versatility of Vertec during the Ministry of Sound’s University tour earlier in the year, where they "used it in all conceiv

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Screenco provided a huge backdrop for this year’s Smash Hits T4 Pollwinners Party at London Arena, which was broadcast live on Channel 4. The event, co-hosted by Vernon Kay, June Sarpong and special guest host Kelly Osbourne, was celebrating its 15th year, and included performances by Liberty X, Sugababes, Atomic Kitten and Holly Valance.

Contracted by production company Nine Yards, Screenco’s vast 156-module, 25mm screen, all supplied from the company’s UK stock, measured 21.13m wide by 7.32m high, making it the biggest indoor LED high-brightness display ever seen in Europe. It thus provided an exciting solution for Hamish Hamilton’s Done & Dusted, who were responsible for the television production and design.

With all the risers set behind the screen, a large 8.1m x 4.88m door, positioned in the centre, raised and lowered on varispeed dual-brake motor hoists

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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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The seventh World Lighting Fair was held at Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall in early October. 50 companies from across Japan were joined by 21 international companies at the show, and the show enjoyed high visitor levels from the start, say the organizers.

Exhibits covered not only lighting products for stage and TV markets, but also new software and hardware were presented addressing their broad applications in markets such as retail, architecture, video projection, advertisement and promotion, design and presentation. The seminar programme included a broad range of topics from the latest on control protocols, education systems for theatre technology, opera productions and lighting design for theatres to a model of the lighting designer for the 21st century.

The next WLF will be held at the same venue from June 24 to 26, 2004.

(Lee Baldock)

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PCM’s famous Lodestar Motor School continues its on-going world tour, with the first, highly successful event to be held in Dublin. The School was co-ordinated by top Dublin-based lighting sales and installation company Stage Lighting Centre, run by the charismatic Pat Walsh, assisted by Paddy Farrell. It was held in the prestigious Abbey Theatre in central Dublin - the National Theatre of Ireland.

28 people attended the School, presented by PCM’s tutor-in-chief Tony Dickson. They came from all areas of the professional entertainment industry from across the country. The two-day Motor School covered many topics. A king pin of the PCM course is the complete stripping down and re-assembling of a Lodestar motor, enabling students to learn about the role and significance of the machine’s electrical and mechanical components, and how they inter-relate. Working in pairs, st

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The Jiri Myron Theatre in Ostrava is one of the Czech Republic’s leading theatre venues, and the home stage of operetta, drama and ballet ensembles of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. During the recent summer recess, the theatre partially upgraded its ageing control system, choosing ADB control and dimmer systems after comparing competitive products from various local and international suppliers. ADB’S Czech representative Zat Easy Control supplied the equipment.

The lighting crew and the head of the lighting department, Stanislav Dvorak, had already worked with a complete range of ADB equipment in the Antonin Dvorak Theatre, which is also part of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. ADB’s top of the line console Phoenix 10 was chosen for the control desk. This allows enough flexibility to harness the mix of moving and conventional fixtures installed through

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Theatre Projects Consultants is about to start work on site on a new arts complex in Ningbo, the largest deep water port in China, some three hours drive to the south east of Shanghai. Designed by Theatre Projects in conjunction with French architects Frederic Rolland & Partners, the arts complex will bring Ningbo into line with other Chinese regions and includes a 1,400 seat opera house and 800 seat theatre.

"This project is unique because we have been engaged for the full project," said David Staples, managing director of Theatre Projects Consultants, London. "Normally Theatre Projects, and any other foreign consultants, would be involved only in the initial planning stages and conceptual design phase. Once these had been completed we'd hand the project over to local contractors."

This project is also unique in that, because the site is in a flood plain, the art

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The Event Services Association (TESA) is moving into providing training for the UK event industry with the launch of a series of Health and Safety Courses.

Designed to improve standards in the events industry, the first three courses are planned for March, April and May of next year and will be undertaken for the Association in conjunction with Richard Limb, Director of Leisure Safety and Group Safety Manager with the Symonds Group, one of the industry’s leading event safety consultancies.

Costing just £195 + VAT per delegate, the one-day course will cover everything from risk assessment planning to the evaluation of both indoor and outdoor sites for events. Delegates are given a practical exercise to do in site planning and complete the course with a TESA/Symonds Certificate to show that they have completed the work.

Further courses are also being planned in other areas of

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Coemar has unveiled a trio of ground-breaking, multi-purpose moving yoke fixtures. iSpot FLEX, iWash FLEX and iProfile FLEX form a significant development in Coemar’s Carbon Fibre series, offering the lighting designer total creative freedom, with greater light output.

Previewed at last month’s LDI show (see full report in the December issue of L&SI), these instruments are highly flexible, covering all lighting applications in the power spectrum (up to 2k) - within a single unit! With the light output reduced, the low power/low noise factor makes it ideal for operating in television studios. At the top of its power rating FLEX will be at home in any arena or stadium concert rig, and actually runs brighter than Coemar’s NAT 4k fixture.

The brainchild of Bruno Dedoro and Fausto Orsatti, the FLEX range was designed in Coemar’s laboratories in Castelgoffredo, Ital

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Impact Europe, a market leader in audio visual integration, has signed a pan European agreement with Christie, a leading supplier of high performance projection systems. The agreement encompasses the entire Christie product portfolio.

Impact Europe integrates audio visual products into a variety of presentation systems ranging from simple meeting rooms, to network management centres and virtual environments, as well as providing customer support and facilities management contracts for those installed systems. "With over 39 engineers and dedicated support staff, based out of their Customer Support Centre in Sunbury, UK, Impact Europe is ideally positioned to provide its customers with Christie solutions, which can be supported by a comprehensive range of service and maintenance offerings, with the added security of facilities management and full service contracts when needed,"

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Legendary New Jersey, NY DJ Tony Humphries performed at Ministry of Sound in London last week with a storming set, during which he used the new Denon DN-S5000 single CD player. This was the first UK public performance using the new Denon machine which is just becoming available after its launch in September.

Denon equipment has always been a favourite with Humphries. The first piece of Denon kit he bought was the maverick DN-2000F twin CD player. This was followed by the state-of-the-art DN-2600F twin CD player and the DNM-2300R Mini Disc recorder. When he heard about the DN-S5000 Humphries contacted Silvio Zeppieri at Denon USA. The gig at Ministry of Sound was approaching and he was keen to be the first person to use the machine at a major UK event. Zeppieri thus arranged for a loan model to be made available for use in his studio. To ensure the a unit would be available at the Minis

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A Nexo Alpha-E sound reinforcement system has been installed in the impressive new Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, a prestige project which has much in common with another high-profile Nexo customer, the Stade de France in Paris.

The Atatürk Olympic Stadium seats 80,000 spectators, which makes it one of the world's largest Olympic stadia. The opening event featured a match between the teams of Galatasarray Istanbul and Olympiakos Athenes. Although the venue is intended mainly for athletics and football, it will also be used for concerts, where it’s capacity can climb to 100,000.

At a total cost of about USD140 million, the Atatürk Olympic Stadium is a state-of-the-art facility. Designed in the form of a crescent, the stadium's roof is a complex, huge steel structure with a total weight of 4,400 tons and a total size of 31,000 square metres. In addition to all th

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Large format projection specialists E/T/C UK projected the images of the BBC’s 10 Greatest Britons onto three different city centre landmarks. Contracted by the BBC, E/T/C UK did this over the three evening’s leading up to the broadcast of the final programme in this high profile series.

As the final winner was announced, the face of Winston Churchill, voted the all-time greatest Briton by the public, was then projected onto all three buildings - in London, Liverpool and Bristol - in a simultaneous live broadcast.

The project followed on from E/T/C’s work with the BBC for the first programme in the series - on Viscount Horatio Nelson. They projected the face of Nelson onto the Shell Building on London’s South Bank. This projection was such a success, that the BBC decided to publicise the finale using the same hi-impact promotional techniques of large format p

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To celebrate the 21st birthday of one of its most consistently successful product designs, Formula Sound has launched the second generation of its enormously popular QUE - 8 and QUE - 10 foldback mixers a mere two decades after the first models appeared.

Although the Mk 2 units have a smart new appearance, plus some extra facilities, they still feature exactly the same internal design and construction which have made the original units consistently popular with artists and audio engineers throughout the world. Designed in conjunction with a world-famous recording studio, the original QUE - 8 and QUE - 10 gave musicians and vocalists the opportunity to set and adjust their own monitor mix without affecting any master recording or PA mix. The units featured 8 or 10 channels respectively, each with its own volume and pan control, plus a master treble, bass and volume control section. They

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Star Hire (Event Services) Limited joined the cream of the pop world once again when it installed the staging for the 2002 Top of the Pops Awards in Manchester.

The Awards, hosted by Ronan Keating, attracted a veritable A-List of pop stars, from Best Newcomer Will Young, to double- winner Kylie and Lifetime Hall of Fame winner Sir Elton John. They also performed live sets alongside Miss Dynamite, Blue and the Manic Street Preachers.

The set, designed by Miranda Jones of Mermaid Design, was in keeping with the look of the televised weekly programme, but expanded to fit the dimensions of the enormous Manchester Evening News Arena. Star Hire was contracted to supplement the Arena’s own staging system to house the huge production. This included building the awards platform sited to one side of the stage and a temporary ‘bridge’ and red carpet walkway connecting the plat

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The World Rally Championships were recently staged in Cardiff, and Stage Electrics was on hand to provide significant resources over a number of key sites for this major sporting event.

The Network Q Rally started on the 14 November and was timed to coincide with the switching on of Cardiff’s Christmas Lights. The main high street in Cardiff was closed to traffic from 10am, and there then followed a race against time to ensure all of the production was in place by 5pm. Stage Electrics provided main stage lighting on a Star Hire Mk1 Stage, as well as lighting to other areas.

The biggest focus of the Rally for spectators was the Super Special Stage, hosted in a purpose- built arena in Cardiff’s Docks. Stage Electrics powered the majority of all site services, as well as all spectator and emergency lighting. A total of 24 generators supplied through Power Electrics of Bristo

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In mid October, CISCO Systems officially opened its new European headquarters in. Spreading over 40,000sq.m, the futuristic premises are designed to accommodate 800 employees. The opening was attended by several hundred invited guests and featured an full line-up of entertainment. The music was provided by the Dutch musical star Linda Wagenmakers, and the sound by an Electro-Voice X-Array system. "For the sound crew," remembers Axel Nagtegaal of Electric Audio, "the need was to cover the full spectrum - the speeches, the gala, the recorded music and, of course, the live music as well - and the results proved yet again how versatile and flexible EV’s X-Array system really is." The system specification included 2 x Xds, 2 Xcns, 6 Xbs, 4 Xfs and 4 Xcbs, together with several EV P-3000 amps.

(Ruth Rossington)

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Creative Technology (CT) produced some unusual television effects for the BBC Children In Need fund-raising marathon hosted by Terry Wogan and Gaby Roslin recently.

The company was contracted by BBC Resources to build on the Totaliser screen reinforcement they provided last year, as well as adding a spectacularly ‘retro’ LED dancefloor. The dancefloor dominated the stage and was in use for much of the evening. CT’s project manager Paul Holden commented: "Last year we provided a flown screen over the Totaliser using Barco i6 high-brightness panels. This year we used 80 of the Barco i8 panels, in a 16 x 5 configuration."

The display - measuring 7.16m wide by 2.24m - was run in 16:5 format, receiving 16:9 aspect ratio feeds, to create a letterbox effect. The content mostly comprised of Totaliser-specific graphics. But the more challenging aspect of the set wa

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A virtual winter wonderland has been created at New York’s Grand Central Station, thanks to High End’s Catalyst system.

Scharff Weisberg Pro Audio and Staging in New York is supplying production for the event, using two Catalyst systems with orbital heads on two projectors, controlled by the Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II lighting console. The Catalyst system blends moving light technology with graphics projection technology: when fitted with the optional orbital head, images can be projected anywhere in three-dimensional space. The system can be run on most programmable lighting consoles.

The show started 19 November and runs through to the 31 December, with showings every 15 minutes from 11am to 9pm on the ceiling of the Grand Central concourse in the historic Manhattan landmark. The six, three-minute video projection shows reflect artists' interpretations of the meani

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If confirmation were needed that the era of digital mixing had arrived, then mid November was the time. In a period of frenzied activity Britannia Row Productions had a remarkable eight Yamaha PM1Ds working simultaneously.

"We’re used to being busy," said Brit Row’s logistics planner Roly Oliver, "but even by our standards to have eight PM1Ds out at the same time was a significant event. The applications were a real mix, from events like MTV and TOTP Awards to tours by artists as varied as Richard Ashcroft, Robbie Williams, Jamiroquai and Cliff Richard. Craig David took two boards for a series of TV promotional appearances all over Europe.

"This is a prime example of our commitment to new technology," said Brit Row’s director Bryan Grant. "As a company we actively seek out what equipment best supports our client needs, and both the up

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A big thank you to Le Mark and Roscolab as this Christmas both companies have decided to send their Christmas greetings via e-mail and advertising respectively, instead of traditional Christmas cards, with the money saved being donated to the Light Relief charity.

Stuart Gibbons, managing director at Le Mark explained: "A Christmas card has a life of one or two weeks before it's disposed of, so my suggestion was an e-card to send either via e-mail or to create something along the lines of a virtual Christmas tree to use on an industry news site."

Duncan Smith at Roscolab added: "Light Relief has enjoyed a high profile recently, especially at PLASA 2002, and I wanted to add to that. As we usually buy charity Christmas cards anyway, as well as taking every opportunity to give something back to the industry, I thought this year instead of cards we should make a donation t

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