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Germany - The 2009 Europe Music Awards have taken place in Berlin and for the ninth year running Stage One were on board; on this occasion providing props for both the host Katy Perry and for the artist Shakira.

Working for MTV Networks Italy, Stage One worked to very short timescales, in order to provide several key props: a flown sign, star swing, moon swing and a giant champagne glass, all for Katy Perry, along with a dance platform for Shakira.

"We employ such a variety of skills in-house that we were able to draw on these and turn things around extremely quickly," said Neil Franklin, head of interpretation for Stage One.

Stage One constructed a multi-level chevron shaped dance platform for Shakira, which was designed to complement the overall set. Resembling the

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Germany - Harman Professional distributor Audio Pro Heilbronn has confirmed a major sale of Crown's new I-Tech HD amplifiers to German touring company, TDA Rental GmbH. The company has acquired a total of 56 amplifiers, divided between 32 I-Tech 5000HD's and 24 I-Tech 9000-HD's. This will add a further 376,000 watts of amplification power to the company's inventory.

TDA owner Stefan Todeskino says, "These are great amps, delivering a powerful sound, with a superb sounding DSP." Another feature that impressed Todeskino was the flexibility of the I-Tech HD's, enabling them to be used with all speaker types and in various applications. He notes that control is made easy due to Harman HiQnet System Architect software.

Todeskino, who has a strong relationship with Audio Pro for sales and service, explained the decision to purchase Crown. "We started off with a bunch

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UK - PSCo has added the new 85" Panasonic plasma screen to its rental fleet ready for the new season of events in 2010.

The 85" fits the gap between the 65" and 103" screens, and is designed for events, exhibitions and conferences. Benefiting from Panasonic's plasma technology and coupled with PSCo's range of input boards, the screens can display every type of analogue and digital content.

The screen is available with a range of accessories making it suitable for rental installations. They are all available on PSCo's custom built ScreenLifter, which allows the screen to be moved into position and raised up to 3m in the air at the touch of a button in either landscape or portrait. A floor stand, wall-hanging bracket and ceiling hanging bracket is also available.

Rental director, Mike Nield comments: "I am very excited about the addition of the 85"

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

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USA - ARRI is expanding the company's Lighting Division by hiring Ryan Fletcher in the newly created position of technical marketing engineer. Fletcher's main responsibilities include customer liaison and technical support for ARRI's pioneering LED systems and products for industrial lighting applications.

"I aim to help ARRI introduce novel, innovative lighting technologies to the entertainment lighting market, and maintain close ties with those who work in this field to ensure that ARRI develops the right tools for their needs," says Fletcher. " Expanding our capabilities in industrial lighting is another important goal, and I aim to support customers in their use of ARRI lighting systems for technically demanding industrial applications."

Fletcher previously worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the U.S. Department of Energy

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Italy - The Questo piccolo grande amore (This Little Great Love) project by Claudio Baglioni), features a journey through the artist's historical repertoire projected on a 16x6.8 mega-screen and is being recorded for a double live CD.

Lighting designer Mariano de Tassis reports: "The original idea for the lighting design came directly from the artist and was then developed jointly by myself and Fabrizio 'Bicio Marchi, production and designer manager. We needed to interpret this album concept with different colour schemes, paying great attention to the succession of individual scenic moments. The basic input aimed to confer maximum emotion to the characters and elements telling the 'story', with just a glimpse of the silhouettes of the musicians."

Much of the lighting system was branded Clay Paky: Alpha Spot HPE 700 to demarcate the space on the stage (arranged

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USA - ESTA has announces the winners of its 2009 Members' Choice Awards, which were presented on Saturday, 21 November at the LDI and ESTA Awards Ceremony in Orlando, Florida. The awards recognise newly released, outstanding entertainment technology products in three categories: Expendable, Widget and Equipment. Voting on these awards was open to all employees of ESTA member companies who attended the LDI show.

The 2009 winners are:

Expendable Category
Robo Glue from Rose Brand: A fast-setting, non-toxic water based adhesive that dries clear. Great for bonding porous substrates to difficult to bond synthetic materials. Robo Glue remains flexible and is available in large sizes.

Widget Category
SRI ProPlus Crossover full body fall arrest harness from Sapsis Rigging, Inc: A full body fall arrest harness that meets the requirements of the ANSI z359.1-2007 st

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USA - Two leading AV industry consultancies have teamed up to provide a new service for manufacturers, the Connectivity Readiness Check. The CRC is a diagnostic programme from Lab X Technologies and Stiernberg Consulting that helps companies definitively answer the question "Are you ready for connectivity?"

Combining over 25 years of systems integration industry experience, the Lab X and Stiernberg Consulting partnership will help AV manufacturers by assessing each one's current situation and making specific, targeted recommendations for how that manufacturer can meet both technical and business challenges head on. The CRC programme is designed to be fast, confidential, and low cost - a natural next step in establishing or improving product development and business development strategies in the interoperability era.

Commercial and residential AV systems are becoming

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USA - Behind the Scenes, the charitable initiative of The ESTA Foundation has confirmed the winners of the 2009 LDI Raffle. The Grand Prize ticket for a $7,500 dream vacation was drawn by Rick Rudolph, the recipient earlier in the week of ESTA's highest honour, the Eva Swan Award. The Grand Prize was won by Mark McKinney of Lex Products who will share the prize with his wife Tracey Cosgrove who works for Rosco. The two were happily considering their possible travel destinations as the show wound down.

The winning ticket for the Second Prize of a $1,500 Amazon Gift Card was drawn by last year's Grand Prize winner, Ken Vannice. David Milly, the owner of Theatrical Lighting Systems in Huntsville, Alabama, was the lucky winner.

John Gebbie of Barbizon Electric was the winner of the Third Prize, a $1,000 Amazon Gift Card which was drawn by Matthew Griffiths, the Managing Director o

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USA - Nashville's Sommet Center arena was a complete sell-out the evening of 11 November 2009 as the country music industry came together to celebrate the 43rd Annual CMA Awards, the Country Music Association's biggest event of the year.

The ABC broadcast saw a record total of 23 music performances on the show by artists including Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Dave Mathews, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban. All of these performances were presented to the live audience with a large, multi-array JBL Vertec line array system supplied by ATK/Audiotek (Valencia, California).

The event system was designed by Pat Baltzell, principal at Baltzell Audio Design. It included five line array clusters made up of a total of 88 VT4889 full-size line array elements, joined by a separate flown cluster of 14 VT4880A full-size arr

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France - The Champs-Elysées in Paris, has been illuminated again this year with a stunning display of festive lights thanks to GE Lighting, which has been a partner of this annual event since 2002.

More than two kilometres of the tree-lined street linking the Arc de Triomphe to Concorde have been illuminated using a combination of GE's Constant Color CMH lamps as well as LED technology. More than 400 trees, including both rows of trees lining the avenue, have been lit up to sparkle like a "glittering forest". A second line of 120 trees in the inside row are decorated with 30,000 dynamic flashing lights to represent the "light from falling stars".

"GE Lighting is very proud to have been chosen once again to illuminate one of the most prestigious avenues in the world. Using the most energy efficient CMH and LED technologies, we have created a magi

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BeNeLux - Audient's high resolution mixing console Zen will travel to mainland Europe next month, to be featured in demonstrations at Maarten's Sound & Vision and DADA studio in Brussels on 14 and 15 December respectively.

Kicking off at 2pm in Heerenveen on Monday 14 December, Audient's sales director Luke Baldry will be presenting the newest member of the Audient family to visitors at the Maarten Sound & Vision offices based at Businesspark Friesland West 37. Owner of MSV, Lammert Wiersma says: "We have already had great interest in the Audient Zen over the past few weeks. This demonstration day will give Zen a great boost."

On Tuesday 15 December Zen will be stopping at DADA studios in Brussels. Starting at 3pm, intensive demonstrations will put the Zen through its paces and there will also be ample opportunity for questions during the afternoon. "Seeing the

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USA - The Entertainment Services and Technology Association has announced the election results for the 2010 PERA Council. The PERA Council within ESTA serves the needs of the equipment rental market for motion picture, television and commercial production.

The Council continues the work of PERA for camera, accessories, grip and lighting rental companies and manufacturers. Members of the Council are elected by the PERA Council Affiliates and are responsible for the development and implementation of programs and services for members in these market segments.

Elected to the Council were: Carly Barber, Illumination Dynamics - San Fernando, CA; Daniel Gurzi, Abel Cine Tech - New York, NY; Greg Meyers, Cinequipt, Inc. - Minneapolis, MN; JR Reid, JR Lighting - Las Vegas, NV; John Rule, Rule | Boston Camera - Boston, MA; Mark Tye, Citation Support, Inc. - Nashville, TN; Mark Wofford,

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UK - XL video UK supplied a PixLED screen, cameras, PPU and crew to the 2009 Cliff Richard & The Shadows UK and European tour which has just finished.

Video and lighting was designed by LD Derek Jones. The idea of the screen emerged when Jones decided that it would be more dynamic and expedient on truck space to replace potentially chunky scenery pieces with a multi-functional scenic/IMAG backdrop in the form of a screen.

This enabled them to run abstract and ambient effects as well as show IMAG, adopting a completely new style of presentation for a Cliff & The Shadows tour. Jones was particularly keen to have IMAG concentrated centre stage rather than on the traditional two side screen set up as - given Cliff and the Shadows' generally older demographic and their requirement for a clear view of the onstage action - side screens were also felt to distract attention away from t

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China - The National Games of the People's Republic of China, also known as the All China Games, is the most premier sports event of China of national level. It is usually held once every four years.

The Opening Ceremony of the 11th National Games at the Jinan Olympic Sports Centre recently relied on 2,500 lighting fixtures. This number exceeded the 2004 Athens Olympic Games opening ceremony and is very close to the Beijing Olympic Games. Furthermore the show utilised 246 PIGI projectors for a 20,000sq.m video screen, eight grandMA full-size and 40 MA NSPs (Network Signal Processor) controlled more than 40.000 parameters. Each MA NSP can calculate 2048 channels.

Lighting designer and chief programmer Weng Chun Pu reported, "The grandMA supplied us with an outstanding performance. If we haven't had the grandMA, we couldn't have realised the show the way it is."

Besi

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France - Studio 106, one of the principal live studios at Radio France, has recently been equipped with an Eclipse digital mixing console from Innovason. This is now their seventh console from the French manufacturer. Nevertheless, it was far from being a foregone conclusion - the Radio France technical team tried out four different consoles from four major manufacturers before settling on the Eclipse as the optimum choice.

"Studio 106 is one of our most important live studios that plays host to all kinds of live musical broadcasts from rock and roll to classical concerts and everything in between," explained studio chief Pascal Coulloux.

"A regular fixture at Studio 106 is the daily radio program on France Inter, Le Fou du Roi with French radio and TV personality Stéphane Bern, which takes a light-hearted look at current affairs, entertainment and

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UK - Scrub has supplied new 16 and 32 fader Icon D-Control consoles to BBC Studios and Post Production as part of an upgrade to facilities at Television Centre. Although a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the broadcaster, the company is required to tender competitively for BBC work alongside independent service providers. To meet customer demand there has been a gradual standardisation of its audio post production equipment onto the Pro Tools platform.

"Pro Tools is the industry standard, and it¹s essential that we can move projects easily between our own engineers and theatres, and work on sessions that may have been started externally," explains sound team leader Edurne Bengoa. "We have three dubbing theatres and two track laying rooms at Television Centre, two dubbing theatres at White City, and two dubbing theatres dedicated to Eastenders at Elstr

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UK - The millions of shoppers and tourists who flock to London's Covent Garden during the Christmas season can enjoy a special and illuminating treat, courtesy of Litestructures. The area's central plaza has two Palladian-styled buildings, both of which now sport festive chandeliers.

Fulfilling a commission from Jackie Cooper PR, longstanding Litestructures customers United Visual Artists (UVA) specified four large chandeliers, two of them 6m high and another two 8m, one of each to hang in both buildings. The circular bases have 2.5m diameters constructed using LitePro290-3, all clad with black powder coated aluminium sheet.

UVA provided the creative driving force behind the project, with Litestructures interpreting the design into aluminium assemblies, pre-building and pre-wiring all elements off-site at their Wakefield base. Litestructures then coordinated the installation,

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UK - Monitor engineer Nahuel Gutierrez has been using a Midas PRO6 live audio system for the Noisettes' UK tour. Having previously spent 15 months with its big brother the XL8 on the final Oasis world tour, Gutierrez found the transition to the PRO6 an easy one.

"I was able to mix on the PRO6 in the same way I did on the XL8, and after a short time learning where the controls on this surface were, I was flying again," he says. "Although it's a smaller surface, the PRO6 isn't missing any of the XL8's features. The sound quality equally as superb, and my favourite features were there, such as six full parametric equalisers on the output channels, which have allowed me to forget about graphic eq's for the last two years.

"Having fewer faders was never an issue working with the POP Groups, which once again were my main way of mixing. And I set up one group of f

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UK - The Tour of Britain is one of the highlights in the British cycling calendar. This year's race finished in London and took in some of the city's busiest areas, meaning road closures and stewarding had to be very carefully managed by AP Security.

This year's Tour of Britain covered 746 miles over eight days in September and featured eight stages, covering parts of Scotland, northern England, the south west and finally London. This required closing roads on a busy Saturday afternoon, managing the thousands of people who turned up to watch and keeping an eye on multiple places where people could cross the course.

In all, AP supplied around 200 staff, who were deployed throughout the night with bulk coming in for a 6am start on the Saturday. The route was divided up into six sectors, each having a sector supervisor. Beneath the supervisor, staff were deployed on road closures

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Italy - To mix the sound on Italian singer/songwriter Gianluca Grignani's latest tour, rental firm Idea Musica Service of Latina in central Italy fielded a DiGiCo system conceived by AudioProgetti, a company with its HQ in Cavenago Brianza (Milan) specialising in the design, supply and installation of pro audio systems.

AudioProgetti's technical manager Gabel Guagliumi explains how the system came about, "Idea Musica's brief was to put together a complete touring control system with 56 input channels and 24 outputs, a single core for audio input/conversion (avoiding the additional cost and space required for splitters) and digital signal transport.

"We opted for a DiGiCo SD8 and DiGiRack setup because it enables us to have control of 60 input channels in the three sections of the console worksurface, the same excellent preamps as the DiGiCo SD7 and D5, a modular stag

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Peru - Being one of the country's leading audio rental companies, Red Power's client list reads like a Who's Who of the Peruvian event and international touring industries. And with a busy schedule to service, the company bought a second DiGiCo SD8 just months after purchasing its first.

"We bought our first console in July this year and were really impressed with its great sound and its price point," says Red Power owner Andrés Cuadros. "We have other digital consoles in our inventory, but the SD8 has a lot of advantages - its sound quality, versatility and ease of operation make it a favourite console with all the engineers who have used it here."

Deployed on a variety of events - from shows by Faith No More and Kansas to Placido Domingo, Il Divo and Sarah Brightman, not to mention some of Peru's highest profile festivals - the SD8 quickly establis

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