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UK - Three Allen & Heath iLive digital systems were employed for a recent outdoor festival featuring Liverpool's Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Managed by Kent-based PA company, SRD Group, and engineered by classical specialist, Ian Barfoot, the event employed SRD's newly purchased iLive systems to manage FOH and monitors, with a third system provided by Barfoot.

"We manage a lot of festivals and chose to invest in iLive because it has a simple interface for analogue desk users and provides full DSP to every input and output. For instance, it is important that we have a graphic EQ across every output and can still use the onboard effects," commented SRD Group's MD, Stuart Roberts.

The orchestra featured a full complement of instruments including 20 violins, mixed by an

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UK - Lightfactor Sales will major on core theatre and live performance orientated products from manufacturers including SGM, LDR and Novalight from Italy; VXCO from Switzerland, SFAT from France and LightProcessor from the UK. Lightfactor is the exclusive UK distributor for all these products.

One of the highlights from SGM is the new Giotto Digital 1500 fixture. Using a special patented application of DLP technology, the Giotto Digital 1500 combines digital effects generation with a fully-featured moving head fixture. It offers the features of a moving light with an innovative all-digital system for generating graphic effects, whilst maintaining fundamental features like fast movement, brightness, control standards and compact dimensions.

Giotto Digital 1500 can be used to create completely customisable all-digital graphic effects. It transcends the restrictions of standard g

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UK - HSL has supplied the upcoming BBC Series Hole In The Wall with 300sq.m of SoftLED curtaining, 160 Pulsar ChromaStrips, 60 i-Pix Satellite LED bricks, 24 JTE PixelLines and 20 Vari*Lite VL 1000 moving lights and a WholeHog 3 console for control.

Lighting for the 10 part series - due for screening in the autumn - is designed by Tom Kinane. The set was designed by Richard Plumb, and Svend Pedersen worked closely with Kinane in programming and operating all the LED, digital lighting and moving lights. Another important element of this visual equation was BBC vision controller Jim Murphy, and HSL's project manager was Sean McGlone.

Hosted by Dale Winton, the show features two teams led by Anton De Beke and Darren Gough. Each team has three lycra-clad celebrities who have seven seconds in which to jump through a tracking wall with variously shaped holes - or end up head-

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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 - At PLASA08, Tryka L.E.D Ltd will showcase its recently-launched Easy Link system, alongside its full range of high quality LED luminaires.

Tryka's Easy Link system makes short work of the notoriously time-consuming volume-installation of small LED modules. As the name suggests, the Easy Link system links fixtures in a series, via RJ45 connections, ensuring a quick and efficient installation when run in conjunction with Tryka's range of IDS drive systems, the company says.

The Easy Link system is compatible with the Tryka Module 3 range, the Tryka Module 6 range - featuring improved colour mixing and a new, tapered shape to fit a broad range of indoor, outdoor and underwater housings - and the Tryka Module 12 range. All units are available as either colour change versions or as single-colour units.

Also featuring on the stand will be Tryka's new RGB Strip Module system,

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UK - L&SI has learned that after nine years with PRG Europe, Alan Thomson has ceased to work for the company as of 8 August. Previously a director of PRG Europe based at Croydon, Alan was unavailable for comment, but L&SI understands he is considering a number of challenging opportunities.

In over 30 years of working in the theatre, Alan's clients have included Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, on productions such as Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Oliver. He was responsible for overseeing the lighting aspects of the VE and VJ celebrations in London in 1995 and in 2002 had a major role in the theatrical lighting support for Her Majesty the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations.

With many years of experience working in the Middle East, Alan has supplied lighting equipment and services to the Royal families of the United Kingdom, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and

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UK - Void Acoustics reports that its loudspeaker systems, control electronics and power amplifiers have been installed in The House Club and Terrace, in Greenwich, London. With design and installation by Essex-based Cosmic Electronics, the system represents the first part of a phased upgrade of the club's audio facilities, featuring Void's Stasys 8 subs and Impulse 3t mid/highs, with Mycro 8 full-range compacts as fills and DJ monitors. The success of the Void installation has already resulted in plans to re-equip the venue's other rooms to the same standard, using Void-based systems.

Mark Damon, director of Cosmic Electronics, comments: "The House and Terrace is a top venue, and one of south London's most up and coming clubs. Closely linked to Space in Ibiza - with monthly Space nights - the club had already experienced Void products, such as the Mycro 8s as DJ monitors in

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China - The Beijing Olympics has seen a few world records broken outside of the Olympic arena - a notable one for entertainment technologists being the largest quantity of media servers ever used for a single live event, the stunning opening ceremony.

High End Systems (a new member of the Belgium-based Barco Group) fielded a total of 110 Axon media servers for the opening ceremony, helping to create the largest ever HD projection: in this instance, one clip covered a screen encircling the stadium, measuring 1,942ft (592m) long by 45ft (14m) high.

All effects were achieved in real time using the Axon media servers and projectors with 78 HES Orbital Heads. Four Wholehog 3 lighting consoles controlled the Axon media servers in the ceremonies, connected with 12 DP2000s. Another Wholehog 3 worked in the TV broadcast booth.

HES products created a number of non-stop visual effects

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USA - The winner of ACM's Vocal Group of the Year 2007, Rascal Flatts has always enjoyed an extremely close relationship with its fans. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the country trio's concerts, during which Joe Don, Gary and Jay frequently walk into the audience, and even bring fans up on stage to participate in the show.

Rascal Flatts wanted to get even closer to its fans - literally and figuratively - during its current 2008 The Bob That Head tour. So the group called on All Access Staging & Productions (Torrance, CA) to create a set that would make it easy to interact with the audience. "They basically had a T thrust on their last set, and this year they wanted one that would extend even further out into the audience," said project manager Mike Bell of All Access Staging.

Working with set designer Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc. and lighting designer A

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UK - Serious Stages continued its 19 year relationship with the WOMAD (World of Music Arts & Dance) Festival, supplying three main stages for the 2008 event held at Charlton Park, Malmesbury in Wiltshire. Serious supplied the main open air arena with a stage and roofing system, and indoor stages for the festival's Siam and the Big Red tents. WOMAD 2008 featured over 70 live acts from 35 countries.

The Main Stage consisted of one of Serious's 15.6m, four-arch Supernovas - their new steel framed heavy load bearing structure launched earlier in the year. The Supernova offered 16m of stage depth, a trim height of 11m and six tonnes of weight loading per arch for sound, lighting and video production.

Serious also supplied all the stage decking for this, plus two 3.6 x 2.4m 'cowshed' extensions stage left and right, to house monitors and dimmer areas. They built 12m high satellite P

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Denmark - TV2, the second highest profile terrestrial television network in Denmark, has recently added a Lighthouse LED screen to its news studio, bringing a new visual dimension to its news broadcasts.

Installed by Odense-based Billed & Lyd ApS, the 8 x 5 panels (5.12m (w) x 2.40m (h)) P10-FA screen is used as a background for the channel's newscasters and shows graphics relevant to the particular story being covered.

This is the first LED screen to be used as a backdrop by any Danish TV station. The installation followed a highly successful test last year, in which TV2 used a similar Lighthouse screen as a backdrop to its coverage of the country's parliamentary elections.

Billed & Lyd ApS has been using Lighthouse screens for two years and specified the P10-FA panels for their visual quality and quiet, fanless design, as well as the ease of front panel access.

"The

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UK- Wales' Stage Sound Services has recently undergone a major restock of its wireless mic inventory. Their rapid growth has resulted in an order comprising 50 channels of Trantec S5.5, increasing their current stock to over 100 channels of Trantec UHF wireless.

Discussing the purchase, Stage Sound's managing director Phil Hurley said: "We have been using Trantec right from the start and it is a testament to their reliability that systems we bought over 10 years ago are still in use today. We constantly strive to supply the best for our corporate and theatre work, which means using the best audio equipment available. For us, that meant Trantec for quality, reliability, and especially value for money."

Aiming primarily at the corporate and theatre markets, Stage Sound realised they would have to increase their stock levels to keep up with demand. The first outing for

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China - Several billion people worldwide witnessed the splendour of the lighting effects in the Bird's Nest, Beijing's National Stadium, where the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games was held on 8 August. More than 200 Century Color 2500 and XL washlight fixtures from PR Lighting were specified to illuminate both the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games and Paralympics Games.

The night view lighting effects of the Nest were designed in five sections. The main effects focused on the traditional Chinese colour of Red, while the lighting system displayed different dynamic scenes, adding in Gold and Silver.

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games surpassed that of the previous Olympic Games - both in its high-tech application and the quantity of lighting fixtures used. Large numbers of computerised lighting effects were deployed to meet the needs of the

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Far East News - With Union flags fluttering at every turn, unpredictable weather and a line-up filled with UK bands, it seems like a typical British music festival. But it's not, says a BBC News report, it is the 12th annual Fuji Rock Festival, held at Japan's Naeba resort, about 200km from Tokyo. This year's festival has a British theme, celebrating the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the UK and Japan.

Union flags have been flying across the site, and many Japanese fans have got into the spirit with British-themed outfits over the three-day festival. British acts including The Courteeners, Hard-Fi, Primal Scream and headliners Underworld shared the main stage with Japanese performers.

But while the event is unashamedly based on Glastonbury, Fuji Rock is a totally different experience. "It might be inspired by Glastonbury, but done in a Japanese way," says

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UK- AV Integrators and special effects experts Arcstream AV have announced the opening of a London office, where clients can view and bring end users for product demonstrations of the company's portfolio.

The new office, based right next to Old Street will feature a variety of demonstration units including Arcstream's Living Image interactive floor, 3D Plasma and the newest addition to the portfolio, the iBar.

Neil Dickinson of Arcstream AV comments: "We are opening a London base to make it easier for our agency clients to view the whole range at once and to enable them to bring clients to the offices too. This is our second office in the UK, and joins our international partner companies in both Spain and China, bringing the total to four, with another exciting new project also in the pipeline."

(Jim Evans)

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Germany - Now in its 22nd year, the Jazz an der Donau (Jazz on the Danube) festival is one of the most firmly established jazz festivals in Europe. Running from 17-20 July, this year's event featured performances from artists such as Reamonn, Sérgio Mendes, and Percy Sledge.

As in previous years, a team of sound specialists led by Ingo Haasch was responsible for the production. The centrepiece of the sound reinforcement design for 2008 was an Electro-Voice XLC 127DVX line-array system, with Electro-Voice TG-7 power amplifiers (equipped with RCM 26 modules) providing the power, and a Midas XL8 console.

Haasch commented: "With many sound engineers still unfamiliar with the XL8, the choice was greeted with some scepticism initially, but effusive approval thereafter. We all agreed that the sound this year was even better than last year."

(Jim Evans)

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Europe - Spotrental's Gladiator IV followspot has enjoyed a successful summer, with multiple units in use by many of the highest profile tours, festivals and concerts of the season, as well as making appearances in TV studios throughout Europe.

Metallica were among the first major acts to specify the 4,500 watt followspot for its shows in Katowice, Poland, and Prague, Czech Republic (where eight units were used in both cities). The company also supplied 2,000 watt Super Troupers for the band's show in Bucharest, Romania.

At the other end of the musical spectrum, a Gladiator IV was used by Dutch television for a promotional video for Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

The major European festival Pinkpop, in Holland, also used eight Gladiator IVs for performances by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and the Foo Fighters, as did another Dutch fe

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Austria - Allen & Heath's iLive digital system was selected to manage FOH sound for the Eurovision Young Musicians competition final, which was hosted live in Vienna's Rathausplatz prestigious city hall square in front of an audience of 45,000 spectators.

Selected from 16 European contestants aged no more than 19, the seven finalists from Slovenia, Russia, UK, Finland, Greece, Holland, and Norway performed live during the Gala Final which marked the opening of the annual Vienna Festival. The young musicians were accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Aleksandar Markovic, which also performed Leonard Bernstein's Candide overture during the interval.

Head of sound for the event was Adolf Toegel who was using the iLive system - comprising an iDR10 Mixrack and iLive-144 control surface - with an EtherSound module to record the whole orchestra live via a 64-cha

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UK - Global capital markets newspaper Euroweek chose London's Royal Courts of Justice (RCOJ) to hold its bi-annual award ceremony on 22 May 2008. For the third year running it would be down to Euroweek's production company Event Concept to transform the Courts into an effective event space in the two hours between the Courts closing to the public and 400 corporate guests arriving.

The busy schedule for the evening included a pre-dinner drinks reception with background music, a three course meal, 12 award presentations, a charity presentation, a silent auction and entertainment from comedian Jimmy Carr followed by a live salsa band.

The production presented a number of challenges for Event Concept's head of AV Jamie Corteen and his team. Corteen said: "The venue is long, quite narrow and very tall. Essentially it's a huge Cathedral-like space built from Portl

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UK - The London Mela - a lively and colourful fusion of traditional and modern South Asian music, arts, culture and food - is a free event held in the London Borough of Hounslow's Gunnersbury Park on 10 August, attracting crowds in their tens of thousands. This blend of cultural diversity requires a sensitivity and awareness when it comes to ensuring crowd safety - a task carried out by AP Security.

"Our staff was given a comprehensive briefing, so they knew what to be aware of and how any occurrence should be handled," explains AP's national sales manager, and head of security for the event, John Phillips. "We had a highly experienced management team on site and with the implementation of certain road closures in the area, the entrances to which were manned by our staff, the likelihood of unwanted factions gaining entry was immediately limited so the public could

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UK - Over 85,000 fans enjoyed the biggest ever V Festival at Chelmsford's Hyland Park August 2008, with Power Logistics supplying power and site lighting to the 12,000 acre site.

The expanded thirteenth V Festival sold out in hours and the public encountered a new look site, with five stages and a new main stage arena featuring headliners Muse and The Verve. Promoters Maztec worked with production management Nine Yards to reconfigure the event and accommodate the additional 10,000 fans.

Power Logistics has supplied the event since the company started, but this year Project Manager Dave Oxley worked particularly closely with production manager Claire Sampson planning the site months in advance to ensure the increased power requirements were met in all of the new areas.

Oxley managed a team of 14 staff who over the two week build period installed a huge temporary power infrast

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Hong Kong - Martin Audio has confirmed that Patrick Lau has joined the company, with responsibility for International sales in the Asian region. Lau previously worked for Dah Chong Hong, the Martin Audio distributor for Hong Kong, China and Macau, and has been instrumental in spearheading the growth in sales, and generally expanding the company's profile in the territory.

David Bissett-Powell, managing director, said: "Martin Audio felt the timing was absolutely right to reinforce our commitment to the Asian market by providing easy access to local support. He will continue to support DCH in their growth of the Chinese market at a time when they too are strengthening their Pro Audio team."

"Having worked with the product for many years, and being located in Hong Kong, Patrick was the ideal candidate to serve the region in a timely and efficient manner."

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