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France - Games developer Electronic Arts (EA) has been using DPA 4061 miniature omnidirectional microphones for foreign dialogue recordings for its Battlefield 3 title.

"Part of our job consists of taking over and overseeing the foreign dialogue recordings for most of the games published by EA," explains Fernando San Nicolas Serrano, from EA's Central Development Services in Madrid. "We've recently been using the DPA 4061 on dialogue recordings for Battlefield 3 in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Japanese.

"The DPA 4061 was our first choice for the motion capture scenes dubbing, recreating as much as possible what was done on the mocap stage in the original version, with the 4061 mounted on the talent's forehead. We were st

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UK - Backstage Academy has announced the last few remaining places on its Stage Pyrotechnics course on Monday 5 March.

The one-day course is one of a few approved by The Association of Stage Pyrotechnicians and completion of the course will assist with membership of the association, by allowing one year's free membership upon joining.

The course, which provides an overview of different pyrotechnic devices, their uses and the relevant health and safety, is delivered at Backstage Academy in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. The day culminates in students helping to produce a pyrotechnics display in the LS-Live studio, a 17,500sq.ft space that is normally used for the production rehearsals of internationally recognised touring artists.

Backstage Academy will also be running the following courses in March: ProTools 101 course - 5 March; Vivien Basic - 15 March; Vivien Advanced - 16 Mar

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Germany - Over 200 Robe moving lights were used by lighting designer Manuel da Costa on the first series of the Voice of Germany (VOG) reality talent competition, recorded at Studio Berlin and produced by Schwartzkopff TV.

Da Costa needed a lighting rig that would give him ultimate flexibility, and again chose Robe to be at the core of this, based on his past successful experiences with the brand.

The 98 ColorSpot 1200E ATs were the backbone of the system. These, together with 98 ColorSpot 2500E ATs, 31 ColorWash 1200E ATs and 16 ColorBeam 2500E ATs were all picked for their intensity and power.

"The reliability, light output and colour are excellent." he states, "The movement is also really quick and I really like the smooth dimming of the ColorSpots."

While the ColorSpots picked out the set architecture, the Washes functioned as audience back-l

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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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South Africa - With no fewer than 24 channels, SuperSport, a subsidiary of the MIH Group, is the leading sports broadcaster on the African continent. Its programming, which can also be seen in neighboring sub-Saharan countries, includes sporting events from all over the world, broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

To meet not only the present but also the future expectations of its viewers, SuperSport recently invested in a new HD outside broadcast truck: the OB6HD, a high-end vehicle in every respect and one with exceptional capabilities, thanks to the lavish array of high-tech equipment on board, not least among which are its 28 high definition cameras. The design and implementation of the installation was the work of Sony PSE (Professional Solutions Europe) at their premises in Basingstoke (UK). SuperSport's new reference vehicle will be used primarily for the live tra

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Germany - Peavey Electronics is teaming up with Martin Professional to sponsor the popular Agora Stage at this year's Musikmesse in Frankfurt (21-24). Peavey and Martin will be providing a complete audio and lighting setup for both Agora stages during the entire four-day trade fair.

The Agora Stage, a large festival tent, is the exhibition's main performance space with live entertainment throughout the show. On Thursday evening, 22 March, Peavey and Martin will be holding a special Agora Stage event with entertainment including The Alex Skolnick Trio and the Peavey All Stars.

Peavey's commercial audio division will be supplying all the audio for the Agora Stage's setup, from the mixing desks to front-of-house PA and monitoring system. The gear that will be used includes the Peavey Versarray 212, which is powered by Crest Pro amplifiers and controlled using the companies Media

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UK - Matrix UK Solutions has announced its formation with Smile AV, the long-standing technical solutions company. Both companies recognised the change in market and client demand, with a need for their companies to supply a full spectrum of skills under one roof, Smile AV will now support Matrix with all their technical elements.

Jamie Gaskins, founder of Smile AV comments, "This is a fantastic opportunity for both businesses and our respective clients, we are now able to offer our clients a greater spectrum of skills and knowledge, which will in turn provides a more streamlined project."

Jamie Gaskins now forms an equal partnership with existing directors Matt Phillips and Grant Mitchell.

(Jim Evans)

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Arts Funding - Investment by businesses in the arts has dropped to its lowest level for seven years, despite a government drive to encourage philanthropy. Companies gave £134m in the financial year 2010/11, according to Arts and Business, which compiled the figures. That is £10m down on the previous year and the lowest since 2003/4. But overall investment in the arts, including money from private donors and trusts and foundations, rose by £28.5m to £686m, Arts and Business said. The charity, which aims to connect cultural organisations with donors, said individuals gave £382m in 2010/11, up £23m on the previous year. Investment from trusts and foundations rose from £155m to £170m.

Anarchy In The UK - The Sex Pistols have signed a record deal with Universal, it has been announced. An "expanded and repackaged edition"

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Germany - Allen & Heath will be unveiling a new ZED mixer at ProLight+Sound, Frankfurt, as well as showcasing the new GLD digital mixing system, and other recent additions to the ZED and Xone ranges.

Exhibiting in Hall 8.0 on Stand C22, Allen & Heath will be launching the ZED60-10FX, a new mixer based on the top-selling ZED-10FX with the addition of premium quality 60mm faders.

The ZED60-10FX is a compact, portable mixer for solo artists and small bands. Two of the four mono channels have high impedance jack inputs that can take a normal line level or a low level input from a guitar pickup, so guitars can be plugged straight into the mixer without the need for DI boxes. Two stereo inputs are provided for MP3/CD players or keyboards, and the mixer is equipped with configurable USB audio in/out to capture a stereo recording, XLR main stereo outputs, a flexible monitoring section

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UK - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light is appearing at the Arc Show this week in London's Business Design centre.

Products from White Light's family of lighting manufacturers will be on stand M36 and will feature units from Coemar, Core Lighting, i-Pix, Interactive Technologies, Leader Light, Prism Projection and Wireless Solutions.

White Light is also sponsoring the foyer by supplying LeaderLight's new series of street lights. Lighting designer Durham Marenghi will also be using i-Pix BB4s and Leader Light606's, as well as placing a giant light bulb in the foyer to take things back to basics.

Coemar's Reflection Series will make an appearance in the form of the Reflection LEDko Full Spectrum, an innovative 'Multi-LED' light source producing a uniform beam with no pixels or dots and full spectrum colour mixing and the Reflection LEDko VariWhite.

On display from

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Denmark - The Exterior 400 Image Projector from Martin Professional is a fully-weatherproofed LED image projector with over 7000 lumens of power that can effectively integrate dynamic logos, textures and other graphics into outdoor lighting designs for greater visual impact.

Housing up to six easy-to-replace designs (gobos), the Exterior 400 Image Projector is suitablel for commercial logo projection or textured projections in architectural environments. Gobos are fully customizable for the ultimate in design freedom.

Up to eight interchangeable colours allows for complete colour customization. High-quality dichroic colour filters enable rich and long-lasting colour projections.

A range of programmable effects such as colour scrolling, image rotation, focus and iris effects can be used to add an extra element of eye-catching animation. The luminaire is also fully dimmable to

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Germany - In an unprecedented move, GLP has announced that the LED light engine used in their impression Spot One and impression Wash One fixtures now carries a full five year warranty.

The replaceable LED engine gives the highest light output from a single RGB source in a Spot or Wash based fixture on the market today - and to ensure that customers are confident in this latest technology, GLP have issued this new warranty, says the company. Being built on a 'plug and play' integration level, the light engine itself is easy enough to replace, should it ever be required.

GLP's business director, Kasper Gissel, commented, "This five year warranty is something we are very proud to share with our customers. We know the reliability of our fixture range and the component parts, and we also know from our customers that they are fed up with the wild and wacky claims we have seen

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Germany - At Prolight+Sound 2012, Gerriets will present new screens including OptiBlack - a nearly black front/rear screen for soft-edge projections, and the transparent matte Frost, "a perfect diffusion film for backlighting".

Also showing will be the new, heavy-duty track system - the Cargo series - suitable for precise maneuvering of LED video walls and large heavy scenery in four profile/load rating sizes S/M/L/XL for 250-1200kg.

Large-screen wall systems Tube and MegaScreen featuring top or bottom rollers operated with virtually silent motors will be also demonstrated. Enlarged dance and event floor spectrum: Vario Ergodance, for user-friendly permanent and portable applications, with optimum shock absorption and Gerriets' inherently flame-retardant stretch fabrics Heavy-, Molton- & Muslin-stretch which offer individual stretching factors for wrinkle-free surfac

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UK - London-based distributor Smoke Factory UK will launch it's new range of LED fixtures at PLASA Focus: Leeds (17 -18 April) where the company is exhibiting for the first time this year. Alongside the new Kandolite LED range will be the full range of Smoke Factory haze and fog machines.

On show for the very first time in the UK will be the Kandolite range of LED fixtures. These Chinese-manufactured units have been built to rigorous European specifications and to a high build quality, says the company.

Also on view will be both 36 and 60, LED 3W PAR fixtures. Plus RGBAW 3W Battens and Cyc Lights, outdoor 1W and 3W LED IP67 Wall Wash units. A powerful moving Wash Light completes the range.

"The Smoke Factory range will feature the ever-dependable Tourhazer 2, the original industry standard for Haze machines. Alongside will be the CaptainD, Data2, Scotty2 and the rest of

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UK - Paradigm Audio Visual has undertaken a major internal restructure following founder Greg Jeffreys' decision to return to the coal face, taking over the day-to-day running of the company as Managing Director.

Jeffreys' immediate strategy has been to divide the company into autonomous focused divisions, promoting Susan Hall, who has been with Paradigm for 10 years, to operations director for the whole group. Fresh from securing another successful ISO 9000 audit, she will now take charge of all logistics, while joining her as assistant is new recruit Amanda Goggins.

At the same time, Paradigm invested heavily in IT to improve its CAD and process capabilities in anticipation of its relocation to the new Bedfordshire base which has three times the existing capacity.

"This provides us with expanded evaluation and demonstration facilities for our traditional and new simul

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USA - Lee Dodson has been appointed vice president of business development for both TV One and Magenta Research, two Nortek, Inc. companies in the Pro AV market.

Dodson, a 25-year veteran of the Pro AV industry, joins Nortek from Premier Mounts, where he served as president. He has served as the elected chairman of the InfoComm Manufacturers Council for two terms, and also served on the InfoComm Leadership Development Committee, twice as Chairman of the InfoComm Exhibitors Committee.

"I am delighted to join this respected group of AV manufacturers," said Dodson. "TV One and Magenta Research are two of the most innovative pioneers in our industry. I see opportunities to develop additional synergies between these highly complementary business units within the Nortek technology family. With experienced and motivated management teams and cutting-edge new technologie

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UK - The Clore Studio Upstairs is, as the name suggests, upstairs at the Royal Opera House. This versatile venue is used as both a ballet rehearsal studio and as a performance space in its own right with its own programme of workshops, events and small-scale performances for audiences of up to 200. It offers a 'laboratory' environment in which independent artists, small-scale companies and Opera House personnel can experiment and collaborate. An APG MX1 sound system has recently been installed by APG's UK sales partner, Red Square Audio.

RSA's Paul Nicholson explained that Martin Adams, head of sound at the Royal Opera House, had been looking for a solution for the Clore Studio for a while. "Martin wanted something that would deliver high quality speech and light music program material across the whole of the audience seating area, which occupies the full width of the room,

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UK - Chaos Visual Productions worked with the fashion glitterati, providing the LED screens and catwalk projection and effects for this years' London Fashion Week, and London Fashion Weekend, at Somerset House.

The 4.48m wide (Barco Olite) screen situated in the stunning neo-classical courtyard of Somerset House, showed live streaming from the catwalk shows and highlights from London Fashion Week events and interviews.

Chaos worked with Bacchus and other contractors to streamline the systems used to broadcast the catwalk shows from other locations on the main courtyard screen, "Last year we were faced with every catwalk show from all the other LFW locations bringing us the edited video of their show in a completely different format, sometimes we'd have bags full of USB's all holding different formats all needing to be uploaded and shown on the main screen straight away -

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USA - FocusTrack, the production lighting documentation system, and SpotTrack, its companion programme for recording followspot cues, have had a long involvement with the hit musical Billy Elliot in London, Australia, New York and on tour around the USA. Now that involvement is continuing with the new, faster-moving US 'tour 3' of the show.

Designed once again by Rick Fisher, working with associate LDs Dan Walker and Kristina Kloss, the new tour has downsized the rig in order to allow it to be set-up more quickly on that road while retaining the overall look that won Fisher a Tony Award for his work on the show in New York.

The adaptation to the new rig used FocusTrack as the reference point to previous productions: the software held a photographic record of every focus of every lamp in the show, and also every individual cue in the show. This information could instantl

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UK - Martin Audio is making its groundbreaking and award-winning Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) technology available to a wider range of touring and installed sound applications, in a smaller and lighter version, with the release of the new MLA Compact - formally launched during two days of demos for industry specialists at London's HMV Hammersmith Apollo this month. This keenly anticipated system will make its world trade show debut at next month's Prolight+Sound expo in Frankfurt.

Incorporating the same principles that have made the MLA such a game-changer on the international touring circuit, MLA Compact delivers this cellular technology to a wider range of applications that do not require the full power and throw of the full-size MLA, or where a smaller, lighter system is required - such as medium-scale touring and fixed installations.

Director of sales, Simon Bull

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UK - At 6.51am on Monday, 23 January an artificial sun rose over Trafalgar Square in London- an hour before the first appearance of the real sun. Then once the real sunset at 4.33pm, the artificial one kept going for another three hours - giving Londoners a total of four extra hours of sunlight on the day that psychiatrists describe as 'blue Monday'.

The Trafalgar Sun was created by public art group Greyworld, in conjunction with Tropicana's Brighter Mornings campaign. The lighting equipment for this dramatic project was supplied by entertainment lighting specialist White Light, who also provided a demo/rehearsal space and equipment to the Greyworld team over the project's six-month development period.

As Greyworld's Andrew Shoben explains, that timescale included everything "from re-assuring Transport for London that the sun wouldn't blind taxi drivers in the area to the

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UK - On Friday 22 June a group of intrepid motorbike riders hailing from all sectors of the entertainment technology industry will set off from the Royal Albert Hall in London for a four-day open-air tour of England's green and pleasant A-Roads.

Their mission? To raise as much money as possible for industry charity The Theatrical Guild (TTG), the only charity dedicated to looking after the interests of backstage and Front of House personnel.

"2012 marks the third First Night Riders event and we're hoping to make it the most successful and fun ride yet," says organiser David Edelstein, who is a keen biker and managing director of stage engineering company Triple E. "It's important that we value the help charities like The Theatrical Guild provide. TTG is the only charity in the UK available to anyone who works, or has worked in theatre - backstage or front of hou

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