Details
UK - Hertfordshire-based Fine Art Professional (UK) Ltd - newly-formed supplier of professional moving head luminaire technology - made its UK company debut at this year's PLASA Show. The complete Fine Art UK product range was available for demonstration on stand and provoked plenty of interest.

Fine Art UK MD, Robert Owen, commented, "The PLASA Show provided a great introduction for the company into the UK and to many potential customers across Europe. There was a lot of interest in the Fine Art products and the real value they offer. After the understanding that this is not just 'another' moving head, comes the realisation that every installation and event can truly benefit from the Fine Art range. We've made some great contacts in just four days."

Broadly, the Fine

Details
UK - BBC Scotland's new state of the art headquarters in Glasgow, which boasts the latest broadcast technology and is the biggest TV recording space to be built in Scotland and the second largest TV studio in Britain, is to host the 2009 Showlight event.

Set on the banks of the River Clyde, the BBC's new high definition television studio complex was opened by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, on 20 September and is a bold departure from traditional TV studio premises.

Showlight 2009 will take place from 16-19 May and will be of interest not only to TV lighting directors, but anyone involved with entertainment and architectural lighting design. The BBC's high definition equipment will be utilised to illustrate papers from all genres of lighting, including theatre, film, event, education, architecture and, of course, television.

Organising committee chairman, Ian Dow, said: &q

Details
Germany - Frankfurt Airport's Public Address system in Terminal 1 has recently undergone extensive modernization. Amongst others, the northern amplifier room has been completely renewed. Sittig Industrie-Elektronik replaced the outdated central unit and installed Klotz Digital Varizone components within a traditional 100V Public Address System together with their network based multi channel speech management system (NetMSM).

Varizone Line Managers were installed to monitor 128 analogue speaker lines in accordance with DIN 60849. The Public Address System is used for public announcements, individual and automatic announcements at the gates and voice evacuation.

100V technology was chosen as it seamlessly fits in with existing equipment. The new northern amplifier room became operational in the summer of 2007. The central unit, amplifiers and Line Managers were supplied by FG-El

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

Details
UK - Projection specialists E/T/C UK supplied Christie high powered video projection and an OnlyView multi-screen control system onto a 24 metre curved screen for the BT Digital Music Awards, a Ballistic Events project, staged at London's Roundhouse.

The event honoured the best in the fast moving world of music-related digital innovation and communications. It was presented by Sara Cox and broadcast on Channel 4.

E/T/C UK's Andy Joyes was approached by Paul Corrick, from production company Reality, to supply projection for the event. It was the first time the two companies have collaborated, and Reality's Creative Director Alice Lindars worked closely with Joyes and the E/T/C UK team to design and programme the widescreen Awards nominations/winners graphics package plus live screen inserts.

The projection screen was curved around the rear of the stage in keeping with the nat

Details
UK - Hawthorn has announced its acquisition of Rex Howard (Drapes, 'King of Tabs', who have been supplying drapes to the film, TV, live event and theatre industries for over 60 years.

Hawthorn's managing director, Martin Hawthorn comments, "Rex Howard was an obvious choice to consolidate our position as a 'one-stop' technical solutions company. Following our acquisition of Core Creative back in March we now have a successful and established base in London and the purchase of Rex Howard allows us to build on that and further expand our London presence, as well as increasing our Drapes inventory."

(Jim Evans)

Details
UK - The Rigging Partnership is again expanding further into the camera flying market with the acquisition of the 'Spidercam' system which will be available from November. Specifically aimed at the large-scale arena and stadium market, the four way flying camera system provides High Definition broadcast and film quality camera feeds at speeds of up to 10m/sec. The stabilised head is supported by four winches capable of a staggering 350m of travel enabling the system to fly over areas of up to 250m².

Gavin Weatherall comments, "This new expansion within the broadcast industry sees TRP's Flywire division enter one of its most exciting times. Spidercam has an extremely impressive CV to date and we are very pleased to be the UK partners and given the bookings we have so far I am sure we are going to see further growth in this area of our services."

(Jim Evans)

Details
Australia - Studio 2 at Sydney's Channel Nine Studios has to be the busiest television studio in the country hosting a myriad of successful programmes such as The Footy Show, Funniest Home Videos, Mornings with Kerri-Anne show and the Sunday Show.

A decision was made earlier in the year to replace the Studios aging Strand dimmers and Andrew Veitch, Channel 9 Lighting Supervisor, knew exactly what he wanted; 24 channel wall mount installation LSC EKO dimmers.

"You really get bang for buck with the EKO dimmers and basically, they're very good," he remarked. "The dimmers have been installed for a few months now and we've had absolutely no problems with them. The installation by Coemar De Sisti was brilliant. They put them in and everything worked on the first day.

"With the EKO's you don't have to put any contactors in to run movi

Details
Lebanon - Beirut-based Vatech Video & Audio has taken over the distribution of Telex/RTS products in the Lebanon with immediate effect.

Fadi Serhan, the general manager of the company, has been an expert on the Lebanese broadcasting market for over twenty years, working as a broadcast engineer for 10 years before founding Vatech Video & Audio in 1996. The company, which recently opened a new showroom in the centre of Beirut, maintains excellent contact with all the major Lebanese broadcasters, and now employs a staff of seven to handle sales, logistics, engineering and support.

"With Telex/RTS systems in our portfolio, we can now offer our customers the best intercom solutions available on the market," declares Serhan. "Furthermore, the Lebanese market has put the uncertainty of recent years behind it and is now growing fast. Private broadcasters are investing i

Details
UK - For the first time in 50 years, the massive dish of the Jodrell Bank Observatory's Lovell Radio Telescope was utilised as a giant open-air projection screen for a public son et lumière event, Space 50.

Space 50 is a series of events celebrating 50 Years since the launch of the world's first artificial satellite - Sputnik 1 - which the Telescope tracked - significantly marking the dawn of the "Space Age".

Creative Media Techniques (CMT) supplied all technical infrastructure - including projection, lighting, lasers and sound - and crew, working closely with show producer Dr Alastair Gunn, a radio astronomer from the University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy - who conceived the event.

The CMT team was led by Richard Hawkins. The original brief involved projecting moving images onto the 75m wide dish, together with a sound system for the audio tr

Details
Venezuela - As Venezuela recently crowned its new Miss Venezuela 2007 in Caracas, a grandMA ultra-light and a PC with grandMA onPC together with an MA 2Port Node onPC PRO running in full tracking backup were used for the show. The console controlled a media server which triggered a 12 x 6m LED screen and 28 plasma screens.

The contest is the national beauty pageant and has been held since 1952. It selects the country's representatives to the Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International pageants. The final competition telecast generally lasts about four hours and is broadcast live across Latin America by the television channel Venevision, with edited versions for the USA and Mexico.

"Since my first contact with MA Lighting products in 1992, my experience with them was absolutely positive in all aspects," explained lighting designer Roberto Penso, who was responsi

Details
Europe - American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins played a string of European dates this past August as part of a much anticipated reunion tour. Playing in support of a new album, Zeitgeist, the band then headed to North America for an extended leg of the tour.

Lighting for the European dates included MAC 2000 Washes, MAC 2000 Profiles, Atomic strobes with Atomic Colors scrollers and LED tubes. Lighting supply for the European tour was by Bandit Lites UK with Bandit programmer/lighting technician Greg Shipley handling lighting design duties.

"The band likes to feel surrounded by their set. After I designed and presented several plots, the band chose the final design that we carried for the tour. I chose Martin lights for many reasons but durability would have to be at the top of the list. The European tour was out for one month and there were no issues

Details
Australia - The Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final day kicked off and ended in great style - with a little help from Robe on the lighting front.

The 'official' tournament Breakfast was hosted by North Melbourne and staged in hall 2 of Melbourne Exhibition Centre, with all lighting and rigging supplied by Clifton Productions. The rig included Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200E AT moving lights.

A long day of great entertainment ended with the post match After Party, held in the Punt Road Oval (home of Richmond Cricket Club) in downtown Melbourne - with Cliftons again supplying lighting, staging - and more Robe moving lights.

Lighting design for the Breakfast was a collaboration between Alex Saad (also the event's moving light operator) and TV lighting director Don Collins (who operated the generics). Cliftons' main systems tech was Michael Parsons.

The stage set w

Details
UK - Kew Gardens is best known as the home of one of the world's leading collections of plants, both for scientific research and horticultural purposes, but to many regulars it's also famous for its evening entertainment in the form of Summer Swing at Kew.

The five day event has been running for the past 23 years, and Bruce Kirk has been working on it for 22 of those. The event began as a promenade concert inside the beautiful Temperate House, once the largest plant house in the world and now the world's largest surviving Victorian glassstructure. Kirk was lighting designer for the second concert and soon became overall production manager. He is now Kew's consultant production manager for this and other major events at the gardens.

"When I first started working on the event, it was for a few hundred people inside the Temperate House," explains Kirk. "Now we have

Details
UK - ETC dealer Northern Light hired out lighting and controls - including one of ETC's newest lighting desks, the SmartFade ML - for the hugely popular Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

One of the most successful comedy and entertainment venues at the Fringe, The Gilded Balloon was established in 1986 and now operates eight spaces at what is, in real life, Edinburgh University's student union building.

In addition to the SmartFade MLs, Northern Light project manager Calder Sibbald also supplied two ETC Congo jr lighting control desks and five SmartFade desks, as well as various ETC Source FourR luminaires.

Calder says: "I recommended the Gilded Balloon take ETC equipment for the festival because of the quality of the equipment, as well as the superb after-sales service provided by the company, especially by their associateregional manager for UK & Irelan

Details
USA - Apollo Design Technology announces it has changed its metal gobo production process from chemical etching to laser technology. The chemicals used in the etching process qualified Apollo as a "large waste generator" in Indiana. Changing technologies eliminates thousands of gallons of annual waste.

"While everyone at Apollo shares a concern for the environment and workplace safety, switching technologies could not happen overnight," states company founder and president Joel Nichols. "We have been transitioning into this new process for over a year to ensure laser technology met or exceeded the quality and service standards our customers have come to expect from Apollo. We are extremely pleased to be delivering our products in a cleaner, safer way."

(Jim Evans)

Details
Europe - 'Innovation, information, and inspiration' are the three themes for this year's Integrated Systems Roadshow, as it prepares to depart on a five-city tour of some of Europe's emerging markets for AV and Electronic Systems technology.

The Roadshow, powered by Integrated Systems Europe, begins in the Danish capital of Copenhagen on 17 October, before visiting Warsaw (19 Oct), Prague (22 Oct), Vienna (24 Oct), and Zagreb (26 Oct).

In addition to an expanded exhibition area, the Roadshow will feature a strong line-up of education sessions, led by some of the AV industry's most respected professionals, and all provided free of charge to attendees.

"Our training sessions give attendees a unique opportunity to update their knowledge about the latest technology developments in this thirving market," says Mike Blackman, managing director, Integrated Systems Events.<

Details
UK - Resolution Distribution, UK distributor for Apex Audio has joined forces with the manufacturer to offer a product training opportunity on 25 October at their KV2 House premises in Harrogate. Apex product engineer, Renaud Schoonbroodt, will present the product seminar.

The session will highlight the full range of the Apex Audio product line, with particular emphasis on the Argos and Hera ranges of sound level limiting equipment - proven, essential tools for any installation requiring sound level management.The seminar will also highlight the dB range of analogue signal processing, including the recently launched dB-G8 8 channel gate and dB-C8 8 channel compressor limiter along with the popular dB-Q zero graphic equaliser, and the Intelli Series of digital products. Further details can be obtained from andys@kv2audio.co.uk .

(Jim Evans)

Details
USA - D-Tools reports that high end speaker manufacturer, Mordaunt-Short has joined the D-Tools Manufacturer Vantage Point (MVP) programme.

"We are pleased to be a part of the MVP programme and to offer our high end speaker product information to SI users," said Daniel Jacques, president of Audio Plus Services, North American importer for Mordaunt-Short, "We look forward to not only contributing to the success of the MVP programme as a whole, but also enhancing individual client projects with our advanced engineering and renowned design."

"We are pleased that Mordaunt-Short joined the MVP Programme," said Adam Stone, president of D-Tools. "Their products are cutting edge in technology and design and will give our users an additional high end product to integrate into their client's unique systems."

(Jim Evans)

Details
USA - Sonny Sonnenfeld and Scott C. Parker have announced the third annual Stage Lighting Super Saturday. This intensive all-day seminar will take place on Saturday 26 January 2008 in New York City.

A Broadway lighting designer will provide "inspiration." A dozen theatre lighting professionals will speak. About 20 manufacturers will be on hand and have technical personnel and equipment to demonstrate.

Sonny Sonnenfeld says, "the programme is designed to educate beginners and new professionals who seek additional training. It will be 10 hours of hard work, fun, and a great learning experience."

(Jim Evans)

Details
USA - Rob Drake, Mayor of Beaverton, Oregon, joined with Beaverton-based Biamp Systems and industry advocacy group, InfoComm, to officially declare 21-27 October as AV Week. A host of companies and organisations from around the world will celebrate AV Week with special events at schools, job fairs and community outreach activities.

Biamp has organised a series of special events to take place over the course of AV Week including visits to local area High Schools to perform complimentary hearing exams and present a lecture on the science of sound and a tour of the company's R&D and manufacturing facilities by students from the DSP programme at Portland State University.

Commenting on the declaration, Biamp Systems marketing project manager, Abbey Masciarotte noted, "With the advent of digital technology, audio and video technology pervades so many aspects of everyday life:

Details
Portugal - Meyer Sound has announced that industry veteran Miguel Lourtie has joined the company's European Technical Services group. Lourtie will be providing technical support and design services to customers within the European community. He will also be an instructor in Meyer Sound's growing education programme, using his multilingual capabilities to reach industry professionals in their native languages including Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian (as well as English).

Lourtie has been affiliated with Meyer Sound over the entire course of his career in sound reinforcement, starting in 1993, when he first worked for a Meyer Sound distributor in Europe, and then as a Meyer Sound certified SIM engineer. In 1997, Lourtie founded Lourisom, an audio consulting and distribution business in Portugal, which distributed Meyer Sound products in the country.

"Miguel's long relatio

Page 2126 of 3465

Latest Issue. . .