Details
Australia - Currently playing at Melbourne's Regent Theatre is a new stage production of West Side Story. Peter Halbsgut lit the original version which earned him a nomination for a Tony Award. Now, several years later, this Australian production is in the capable hands of Greg Yates, associate lighting designer, with Chameleon Touring Systems supplying the lighting equipment for the tour.

Accompanying the show on tour is an ETC EOS 4000 console. "ETC products are always really good and well made," comments Yates. "They're user friendly and 'simple' to use. They're just really good consoles. The EOS obviously incorporates a lot of ETC history but it also seems to have the best features from other consoles. It's like they've grabbed all the best ideas on the

Details
USA - Community Professional Loudspeakers has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its work on Carbon Ring Cone Technology.

This technology offers greater efficiency in loudspeaker design, where a ring of extremely rigid carbon fibre is placed around the outer edge of a specially designed cone, resulting in a structure that is both lighter and stiffer than a conventional cone.

"An ideal loudspeaker cone would be infinitely rigid and have no mass," explains Community founder and president Bruce Howze. "Carbon ring cones are a realistic step toward this ideal."

The increased edge strength also enables the use of a deeply pleated narrow surround. A narrow surround permits a larger cone diameter, providing greater piston area in a given frame size.

"In short, a carbon ring cone is lighter, larger, and stron

Details
UK / Europe - European dry hire rental house AED Rent exhibited for the very first time at this year's PLASA Show and felt that they were very well received. The company took the opportunity to announce its forthcoming UK premises which will open towards the end of November.

Hannah Eakins, customer relationships manager for AED Rent UK said: "We weren't really sure what to expect as this is the first time we have exhibited at a UK trade show, but the welcome we have received has been a very warm one and we are looking forward to being open and providing support to UK rental companies from our new building in High Wycombe. We are very happy that we are finally able to announce the news!"

With warehouses and offices in Belgium, Germany, France and The Netherlands, AED Rent is one of the leading pure dry hire companies in Europe, supplying lighting, audio, video, trussi

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 - UK-based loudspeaker system manufacturer Funktion One used the opportunity provided by exhibiting at the PLASA Show at Earls Court last week to formalise the appointment of no less than six new international distribution companies.

The appointments are: for Canada - Audio Distributors International; for Taiwan - Audio 6 Ltd Co; for Malta - Fusion Sound; for Lebanon - Mamari Freres sarl; anf for South Africa - Metropolis Sound. At the same time, a new UK-based company called Solution 1 Audio and headed by Chris Hawkes, will be handling Funktion One's distribution in France, Portugal, Belgium and Morocco.

Ann Andrews of Funktion One told L&SI: "We have been exhibiting at PLASA for over 10 years and it has always been a successful show for us. It was a particularly vibrant show this year and we are happy to welcome so many new distributors into the Funktion One family.

Details
China / UK - DiGiCo has announced the appointment of Rightway Audio Consultant as exclusive distributor for China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, a decision that was cemented at this month's PLASA Show.

"DiGiCo is a world-renowned brand with a broad product line which offers excellent value in terms of price and all round performance. As a result, it is a perfect complement to our current and future business model. I am delighted to be the sole distributor for DiGiCo in China," says Mr Danny Lau, MD and owner of Rightway Audio.

For DiGiCo, the change to Rightway is a natural progression for its ever-growing customer base in the region, says the company. Take up of the SD range of consoles, including its latest offering, the SD9, has been strong and utilising the sales and technical abilities of Rightway will ensure that the customer service, training and support for wh

Details
USA - Robe Lighting Inc has moved its US HQ in Florida to new and better premises in Cooper City. The new facility has full climate control throughout all the technical and service areas, the spares department and warehousing, which is essential for the protection of electrical and mechanical components in the extreme humidity.

The new address is: 12349 South West 53rd Street, Cooper City, Florida 33330, USA; Tel : +1 954 680 1901.

With close proximity to all transportation hubs, the move will also consolidate the efficiency of Robe Inc's distribution network, says the company.

Robe Inc sales manager David Chesal and the team have already moved into the new offices, and have added a new member - Jerry Seay - to handle internal sales and co-ordinate the dealer network within the US.

Jerry Seay brings many years of experience in the worlds of production and moving lights to

Details
Barbados - Crop Over, a five-week summer festival, is one of Barbados' most popular and colourful events. Its origins can be traced back to the 1780's during the period when Barbados was the world's largest producer of sugar. At the end of each sugar season, there was always a major celebration to mark the culmination of another successful sugar cane harvest.

Since 1974, when the festival was revived, Crop Over has incorporated other elements of Barbadian culture and the event has transformed into an extravaganza that attracts people from around the globe. This year's festival featured several Calypso music performances and competitions. To ensure the thousands of people in attendance were able to hear and enjoy the festive atmosphere, high powered sound systems from D.A.S. Audio were placed into service.

Bridgeport-based Quality Sound Inc (QSI) was contracted to

Details
South Africa - Gearhouse South Africa designed and supplied a full technical production package to 94.7 Highveld Stereo's 2010 Johannesburg Day event (in association with Santam), produced by Primedia and staged at Riversands Farm in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Fourways.

Gearhouse's project manager Dave Tudor comments, "It was the first time we have worked on the show, so we wanted to bring a fresh look and approach, increase the production values, and let the client see just what can be achieved with imagination, appropriate use of equipment and a bit of lateral thinking".

One of the challenges was to create a performance environment that would work in daylight - the show started at 10am and ended after dark, catering for the sold out 18,000 audience as well as the cameras (the show was recorded for DVD for future release).

The line up featured 14 of South Af

Details
UK - FocusTrack, the production lighting documentation system has announced a new purchasing option designed to make FocusTrack even more accessible than before. FocusTrack's new Single Show option enables the purchase of FocusTrack for one single production for a cost of UK£245 - US$375.

This compares to the original Full FocusTrack licence at UK£400 or US$600. That licensing option is still available for those looking to use FocusTrack to document multiple productions. In addition, FocusTrack is available to students for UK£90 or US$140.

"When we first launched FocusTrack, I thought that programmers would be the ones to buy it, since it directly saves them time and effort in tidying up and documenting the shows they work to create," comments FocusTrack's Rob Halliday. "In fact, in most cases programmers have persuaded the show to purchase it.

Details
UK - West London based Entec Sound & Light continued its supply of lighting solutions in site specific venues for some of the most exciting shows of London Fashion Week.

Working in the former Eurostar Terminal at London's busy Waterloo Station for lighting designer Simon Tutchener was a project with many challenges.

The trains to Paris and Brussels had long left the station, but the perfect fashion runway remained in place along the concourse of Platform 4, complete with all the charisma and transitional charm of the neo-industrial setting. Tutchener and the Entec team's biggest challenges were working the light levels in the ever changing daylight conditions inside the glass roofed building, and installing lighting kit into very limited spaces. Some of this was over the old train tracks, which still contain live DC volt rails that are part of Waterloo's signalling network.

Details
China - ShowTex Hong Kong supplied and installed the main stage draperies and hundreds of meters of tracks for Franco Dragone's latest creation in Macau, a spectacular grand scale water themed theatre.

Thousands of meters of ShowTex's inherently flame retardant Paris CS Velour line the entire building as acoustic masking. The main curtains are also made from the satiny 520gr/sq.m weight velvet. Drapes attached to custom curved Alu-Pipe tracks serve to mask all technical equipment, catwalks, grids, and wiring in the venue as well.

The House of Dancing Water is a show created and directed by Franco Dragone in the Li Chung (Sandi) Pei purpose built and designed Dancing Water Theatre at City of Dreams in Macau.

As one of the main features of Melco Crown Entertainment's leisure oasis City of Dreams, the 2,000 seat venue combines advanced technologies with a traditional bla

Details
UK - Comedian Dara O'Brian returns to our BBC2 screens to host series nine of the panel show Mock The Week!.

Richard Martin Lighting supports lighting designer Dave Davey's design. The design brief set out for Davey when he first joined the production, was to "make the set look colourful without spill onto projection screens". To achieve this Davey opted for VL1000TS' "All hanging, focussed on to backing flats".

The VL1000TS luminaire combines the functionality of one of the most popular conventional lighting tools - the ellipsoidal reflector spotlight - with the versatility of an automated luminaire.

Automated functions include CYM colour mixing, rotating gobos, variable diffusion, and a zoom lens that ranges from 19° to 36° for normal imaging and a super zoom function that ranges to 70°.

Davey comments, "The VL100TS is the righ

Details
UK - Shure's PSM 900 - the first to market channel 38 ready in-ear monitors - may only have debuted at the beginning of 2010, but in that short time they have picked up fans in high places. They're already being spec'd for high-profile TV shows - including Later with Jools Holland - and are being used on more and more world tours by artists including The Who, IronMaiden, Phoenix and Passion Pit.

And now the PSM 900 is picking up awards too. PLASA 2010 saw a host of pioneering products entered into the Award for Innovation. The PSM 900 was one of three products commended by the PLASA judges, who remarked: "A combination of technology in this in-ear wireless monitoring system allows the user to save significant time in setting up on-stage mixes. The Judges felt the Cue mode and RF mute were useful features that combined to make a flexible system."

Shure Distribu

Details
UK - Cooper Controls has released software Version 2.4 of the LightFactory PC based lighting control software. In line with Cooper Controls drive to implement RDM across its entertainment product range, LightFactory now features RDM support, providing automatic patching and fixture setup.

Version 2.4 supports full tracking as an option per show file. For each show, you can now select between a hybrid tracking mode and a full tracking mode, depending on preference. Both modes support the ability to record a cue as cue only, track forward, track back, or block.

As pre-visualisation is done before getting in to a venue the patch setup in the visualiser may not always be the same as what is found on site. To accommodate this, a separate patch can now be set for visualiser output so that you can continue to do blind programming on the visualiser once you are in the venue, without h

Details
UK - Tendai Mucheri from Ascot, Berkshire, a winner of the Sennheiser Prize for Best Music Production Recording 2010, graduated with BA (Hons) Audio & Music Production from Bucks New University on 6 September.

This annual award recognises what Sennheiser considers to be the best recording produced by Bucks graduates. Working with recording artist, The Carps, Tendai and fellow team member, Kumbirai Ruzuidzo, recorded and produced two master tracks as the final project in his production company coursework, and was chosen as the winner of this year's competition.

Tendai, who is originally from Zimbabwe, said: "Wow, a Sennheiser Award! When I found out that I had won it, it was the best feeling ever to know that a reputable company such as Sennheiser recognised all the hard work that was put in to producing the songs."

Phil Cummings, UK artist relationship manag

Details
Germany / USA - Stefan Feistel and Wolfgang Ahnert of Ahnert Feistel Media Group (AFMG), along with Ambrose Thompson of Martin Audio, will receive The AES Publications Award during the 129th AES Convention, 4-7 November in San Francisco.

Their winning article, selected as the outstanding paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society during the previous two years, is titled Methods and Limitations of Line Source Simulation. The award "is to be made solely on the merit and quality of the published work" according to AES guidelines.

"We are proud to accept this award in recognition of our work on accurate and efficient measurement and modelling of line arrays", says Stefan Feistel of AFMG. "We have developed techniques that are now in constant use worldwide. This paper outlines the methodology behind simulating the p

Details
UK - Stage Technologies launched the Sculptor Animation Toolkit at this year's PLASA and made waves in the Innovation Gallery amongst automation programmers and artistic directors all the way from London's West End to Europe and the USA.

Sculptor Animation Toolkit is an add-on for 3ds Max, a software package commonly used to animate films, movies, and games. The contemporary demands of technical theatre require a simple, flexible plotting tool that retains awareness of the restrictions of physical equipment and Sculptor Toolkit fills this niche by combining the safety and robustness of Stage Technologies control systems with the creative freedom enjoyed in a modern 3D animation environment, says the company. The toolkit excels when applied to venues and productions with many hundreds of automated axes and scenic elements such as revolves, hydraulically-driven, custom-built machi

Details
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies' Video division, the exclusive UK & Ireland distributor for Green Hippo products, is holding an open day on Tuesday 28 September to demonstrate the UberPan and other new software components of the Hippotizer media servers range.

There are still places available for the event, which is being held in conjunction with Green Hippo at AC-ET's Northern sales office in Leeds. Technical staff from both companies will be on hand to demonstrate the full functionality of the Hippotizer, which has long been recognised as one of the leading media servers in the industry.

New for 2010, the V3 software continues to add an impressive selection of components including UberPan, VideoMapper, TextEngine, LiveMask and 3D Show Pre-visualisation.

UberPan is a multi-server screen management component that allows multiple Hippotizers to work together and create a

Details
USA - Lighting designer Tom Kenny was the first in the world to get his hands on Martin Professional's ultra-compact MAC 101 LED moving head wash light, scattering 200 of the 2200 lumen fixtures across the sets of the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).

Mirroring the show's success (it was the most watched VMAs in nearly a decade), Kenny says the MAC 101s were the most talked about lighting fixture out of the 1500 moving lights on the show.

"Once we brought them on site, it had so many scenarios we could use it in," Kenny commented. "Everybody loved it. The director, some of the bands, and some of the scenic people said, 'can we use that light?' It has a million and more uses. We hid them all over the place and used them as a scenic element, putting it in places that no other light can fit in."

Hosted by Chelsea Handler and broadcast live from the

Details
UK / USA - Australian surf/roots artist Xavier Rudd is currently in the middle of his Koonyum Sunworld tour which spans the UK, North America, Australia and Europe. The European and US legs of the tour are being handled by Concert Sound Clair and Clair Brothers respectively. Concert Sound supplied an Innovason Eclipse digital mixing console for monitors for the first UK part of the tour and Clair Brothers has supplied one for the US leg. When the tour returns to Europe in November, they'll be going out with a pair of Eclipses from Concert Sound supplied by Red Square Audio.

Production manager Simon Skeet, who started off using the Eclipse on monitors before handing over to engineer Lenny Goncharov, comments, "The first thing to say about Eclipse is that it has proven to be both reliable and stable. From an operational point of view, the flexibility of the control sur

Details
Germany - Wolfsburg's Autostadt decided to bring some West Indian flair to town during its Caribbean Summer festivities that ran from 3 July through 29 August. tarm Showlaser provided the laser effects for the Colours of the Caribbean show that highlighted the festivities. Visitors to the Autostadt had the opportunity to experience a breathtaking display of laser effects, aquajets, and pyrotechnics every evening at 10pm.

The show's theme, scenario, and music changed every week, starting off with Into the Blue, which was followed by Magic Green and Red Passion, and concluded by Colourful Cultures.

For this year's event, tarm Showlaser installed a total of 11 laser systems whose radiant atmospheric effects immersed the Autostadt in a sea of colours.

A pair of high-powered laser systems scanned the night sky from the roofs of the AutoTo

Page 2552 of 3465

Latest Issue. . .