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UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) and the Stage Management Association (SMA) will hold this spring's Production Managers Forum (PMF) meeting - open to all - at the forthcoming PLASA Focus, Leeds, on Tuesday 17 April at 11.30am, in the Royal Armouries Bury Theatre.

Founded in 2000, the PMF was created as a joint venture between the two associations, in recognition that there was no organisation dedicated to the specific needs of the production manager.

Since then, the PMF has held three to four meetings a year, on various subjects ranging from International carnets to greener productions.

This latest meeting is presented as part of the PLASA Focus seminar programme. It will concentrate on the ABTT's Technical Access Passport Scheme (TAP) - launched at l

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Jim Marshall Remembered - Guitar amp innovator Jim Marshall, dubbed 'the Father of Loud' for creating kit used by some of rock's biggest names, has died aged 88 and the industry has been paying tribute. A statement posted on the company's website called him a "legendary man", adding, "In addition to the creation of the amps, chosen by countless guitar heroes and game changing bands, Jim was also an incredibly humble and generous man who, over the past several decades, has quietly donated many millions of pounds to worthy causes."

Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash tweeted, "The news of Jim Marshall passing is deeply saddening. R & R will never be the same w/out him. But, his amps will live on FOREVER!"

Motley Crue bass player Nikki Sixx also paid tribute on Twitter, saying Marshall was "responsible for some of the greatest audio moments in

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USA - Nokia brought Times Square to a standstill last week as 30,000 people watched one of the biggest electronic take-overs of the iconic New York landmark for the launch of the Nokia Lumia 900.

Using the latest CGI technology the team behind the massive Hollywood blockbuster, i-Robot, created one of the world's largest LED displays. Nokia took control of nine of the square's famous electronic screens to ensure the crowd were immersed in light and music from every direction. The light show was introduced by international superstar Nicki Minaj, who sang a medley of tracks from her new album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.

A team of visual artist worked for more than 5,000 hours, day and night for more than three weeks, to create the hundreds of effects that were used on the large screens. All of the electronic screens were controlled from a mobile server that was f

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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 - The Stage Technologies 2012 schedule of UK training courses started off recently featuring A Beginner's Introduction to Automation and An Introduction to Stage Technologies' eChameleon Software, both of which took place at the company's London office. There are still some spots available for the June and September sessions of these popular courses.

The suite of hands-on events also includes the Chameleon 5 to eChameleon Conversion Course. All three courses aim to provide complete beginners right through to experienced automation practitioners with the key concepts and latest updates. Participants may choose from dates in June and September 2012.

The events are competitively priced. A 10% discount is available for members of the Stage Management Association, Stage Jobs Pro, The Association of British Theatre Technicians, and The Broadcasting Entertainm

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Philippines - Customers at the new Buddha-Bar in Manila enjoy an eclectic music mix that permeates the space through a Meyer Sound system comprising the largest count of self-powered low-voltage loudspeakers - 132 total - installed anywhere in a hospitality application.

Located in the trendy Picar Place development of Makati City, Buddha-Bar Manila is among the largest in the franchise, accommodating more than 500 people in the first-level lounge, second-level restaurant, and roof deck. The size of the property, combined with the franchise's extraordinarily high standards, entailed multiple challenges in acoustical and A/V system design, all of which were ably handled by ihD Ltd, a pan-Asian consulting firm headquartered in Hong Kong.

According to Ian D. Harris, managing director and principal consultant at ihD, the brief for high-quality music reproduction tilted the specific

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Indonesia - At the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Tourism Forum in Manado Indonesia, Laservision were honoured for creating the 'Best New Tourist Attraction' in Southeast Asia.

The ASEAN Awards for Excellence in Tourism gives recognition to ASEAN organizations who have contributed to the development and promotion of tourism in the Southeast Asian region including, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Laservision's Wonder Full light and water spectacular was selected as the Best New Tourist Attraction for its "creativity in design, functionality, harmony with the environment and the overall quality experienced by audiences".

The award recognises Laservision's continual contribution in delivering new and innovative solutions to the touris

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UK - Traction Sound and its distributor RWS Prosound will show off Traction Sound's PLASA Innovation Award nominated SDS Range of loudspeakers on Stand S-C19 at PLASA Focus, Leeds. They will also be running demonstrations of the products in the Lancelot Room at the Holiday Inn Express, adjacent and opposite to the exhibition centres.

Traction Sound's range of installation and portable pro audio speakers feature SDS Horn technology, the advantages of which Traction's technical specialist, Andy Pardoe explains: "The SDS Horn is a high frequency device that utilises multiple high-powered soft dome tweeters arrayed in a line. This eliminates the use of industry standard compression drivers and provides a higher quality listening experience."

Jonny Goodwillie, sales director at Traction Sound continues, "The SDS range is designed to deliver accurate sound reproductio

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USA - In the first two months of this year, ATK Audiotek supplied three very different PA system configurations to three of the biggest events in the entertainment calendar - the Super Bowl pre-show and halftime musical performances, Grammy Awards broadcast, and Academy Awards telecast - that ably demonstrated the efficiencies introduced by the company's adoption of Powersoft amplification.

Last year, production sound provider ATK standardised exclusively on the Powersoft DIGAM K10.

Brett Valasek, general manager, ATK Audiotek reports, "The Powersoft K10 amps have definitely made everything more efficient for us, from inventory management to trucking to system management and power management. Standardising on the K10 has overall been a very efficient way of managing inventory from start to finish, on all projects, from the Super Bowl to the Grammys to the Academy Awards.&

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UK - MT Pro Ltd will be making its first visit to PLASA Focus since becoming the distribution arm of MilTec (UK) Ltd at the beginning of this year.

"We are really looking forward to the show because sales have been very strong in the 'pro' sector of the business for the last six months." commented sales director David Faulkes. "Our product range has been expanded and refined and we have been making inroads into the stage, corporate and events markets.

"This has been mainly due to strong sales of our LED moving heads and wireless uplighters, backed up by new products such as the LED Batten2 which uses 8 Watt quad colour LEDs. Audio sales have been helped by a new high quality, horn loaded speaker cabinet and a signal processor which is made in Germany."

New products also being displayed include a compact speaker cabinet and two new wireless uplighters

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UK - Maltbury will once again be exhibiting at PLASA Focus: Leeds (17-18 April 2012).

"This year we have some exciting new projects to show you including our work with electricity generating pavements - Pavegen," says the company.

Maltbury Staging has made its name in the performing arts field, but in recent years has worked on a number of collaborative projects in a range of very different areas.

"It is true that these projects often involve people standing on a raised structure but nowadays it is as likely to be a fitter in a factory, an engineer down a railway shaft or a group of excitable people producing electricity simply by stepping on a paving stone," the company adds.

But this is no ordinary paving stone. Pavegen is a revolutionary way to generate electricity: requiring no connection to the national grid and needing no special effort by those g

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Germany - Prolight & Sound in Frankfurt was visited by Le Mark's Matt Every and David Cartwright earlier this month. Fischer, who have more than 24 years of success in the field of professional lighting and sound, are one of the company's recent Dirty Rigger distributors and were exhibiting the whole range on their stand.

"Dirty Rigger were really well received and having them on the Fischer stand gave real credibility to the range," says Every. "We are looking forward to working with them over the coming years to build the brand in Germany."

(Jim Evans)

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Brazil - The beginning of February saw AP Security being asked to represent the UK on a trade mission to Rio de Janeiro, the host city of the 2016 Olympics. General manager, Andy Stevens, was lucky enough to be AP's representative and, whilst there, met with senior members of the Rio Organising Committee, as well as all three levels of Government.

"Rio will stage an incredible Games," says an impressed Stevens. "The country's passion for carnival and celebration will see to that and, with the iconic backdrop of Copacabana Beach, Sugarloaf Mountain and the legendary Maracana Stadium all supplemented by a brand new Olympic Park, it will certainly bring Rio to the world."

Referring to the 2012 Games, he added, "There is a huge amount to which Rio is firmly looking towards London to learn and understand. Rio's private security industry operates very differ

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Australia - The Newcastle Museum recently relocated to new facilities at the old railway workshops adjacent Civic Railway Station in the heart of Newcastle. As part of the relocation, and with regard to the place they held in the story of Newcastle, BHP provided sponsorship to develop a gallery devoted to the history of steel making in the region.

As part of the development in 2011 Mental Media were commissioned by the City of Newcastle to design, produce and install "a dramatic audio visual program which will interpret the excitement, colour, drama and noise which is inherent in the steelmaking process" to "enliven the exhibition, expand the visitors' experience and help to interpret the very large objects on display in the exhibition".

Mental Media proposed a major 'object theatre' production that provides visitors with a glimpse of the inside of a steelw

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UK - PDD, the premier product and service design innovation consultancy, has replaced the long-serving, drop-down projection screen in its London headquarters with an 84in dnp Supernova One, fitted with 23:23 High Gain screen material.

When the Company first moved into its new HQ in Hammersmith 15 years ago, the conversion from a former warehouse was carried out using many of its clients' products. And this included an ingeniously designed portable Deltascreen projection screen which was converted into an installed version.

But the 20 year old technology was now well past its sell-by date, and in conjunction with the overhead projector presented an image which was far from sophisticated.

"It was very old fashioned - really just an ancient bit of fabric," said Tim Court operations director at PDD. "We were using this screen for creative presentation purposes, a

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USA - With 14 campuses in and around the city of Chicago and 25 weekend worship services each Sunday, New Life Community Church is one very active non-denominational Christian church. Until recently, their Midway Campus sanctuary faced a number of speech intelligibility and related challenges with their sound reinforcement system. The situation is now resolved-thanks in large part to the new sound system consisting of Variant Series installation line array loudspeakers from D.A.S. Audio.

West Chester, OH-based Troubadour Solutions, an A/V design / build firm with a focus on churches and associated Christian venues, was contracted to design and install the new sound reinforcement setup at the church's Midway Campus. Dr. Scott Weaver, owner and chief designer of Troubadour Solutions, discussed the challenges of the project and his reasons for deploying 14 D.A.S. Audio Variant loud

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UK/USA - London-based theatre design consultancy Charcoalblue's work is making waves on both sides of the 'pond' as the multi-award winning transformation of the Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres wins the prestigious USITT 2012 Architecture Honour Award.

In 2007 Charcoalblue saw two of its previous projects, London's Young Vic and The Unicorn Theatre, receive USITT Merit awards.

For the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), Charcoalblue consultants worked in close collaboration with project architects Bennetts Associates and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) project team to transform the now critically acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. RSC artistic director, Michael Boyd has since described it as, "a miracle of a space that combines the epic and the intimate ... it's quite extraordinary."

Charcoalblue provided complete design and planning con

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Puerto Rico - Chauvet Professional lights accompanied Gilberto Santa Rosa, bandleader and singer of salsa and bolero, during the first concert of his tour at Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferre. David Ayala designed the lighting for the 36 Chauvet lights, provided by rental company Musique Xpress.

The all-girl band backing up Santa Rosa's performance played from circular podiums of different heights placed in two groups of four on each half of the stage. Behind these podiums, on the floor, Ayala placed 12 Q-Wash 560Z-LED wash fixtures, lighting the band while shooting bright beams towards the ceiling.

Ayala placed six COLORado Batten 72 Tour linear wash lights at the front of the stage bathing the floor and singer in colour. Placed at the base of the podiums other four COLORado Batten 72 Tour fixtures discretely lit the instrumentalists. Ayala programmed each grouping separa

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The Netherlands - When noted Dutch cinematographer and film director Jan de Bont was approached to produce an art project which promotes the country's HSL-Zuid high speed rail project, his concept of a 3D film of the route was technically challenging. But with the assistance of an Alcons Audio system, audiences of the finished film, Surfing on Light, enjoyed a complete sensory experience.

De Bont has worked on many high profile films, including Twister, Basic Instinct, Die Hard and Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Having covered road and sea transport as director of Speed and Speed 2: Cruise Control in the 1990s, it was appropriate that he should finally be able to turn his attention to a rail-themed project.

Filmed by cameras mounted on the front, sides and rear of a train, which traversed HSL-Zuid several times, the finished project involved

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Belgium - Rental company Soundfield has become the latest L-Acoustics Rental Network Agent, having placed a substantial initial order from ASC Audio, the local distributor in Belgium.

Soundfield now boasts an inventory of 24 KARA, 24 x KIVA and 24 x KUDO WST line source cabinets; 14 x SB18 and 24 x SB28 subwoofers; 12 x 115XT HiQ active monitors; 12 x 12XT coaxials; six LA4 amplified controllers and 36 x LA8A controllers in LA-RAKs.

The company runs an installation arm, Sotesa, alongside its rental business, specialising in theatres and concert halls. Sotesa was increasingly working with L-Acoustics products for its fixed installation work, so the move to become a Rental Network Agent was a logical one.

To introduce their new equipment to the Belgium market, Soundfield organised a two-day open house event at the Brussels Event Brewery, with separate rooms to showcase the dif

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UAE - Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises, distributors of Neutrik for the past 20 years has been appointed as the distributor for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries which include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

"Neutrik connectors are an essential part in any audio, video, lighting and communication system," commented Chicco Hiranandani, business development manager at NMK. "Their connectors can be found across the region in large infrastructure projects, mid-sized facilities to small venues. Ensuring availability, providing technical knowledge and keeping momentum is our focus as newly appointed regional distributors."

"Our first action as the new regional distributors is hosting a dedicated OpticalCon training event in May to educate the market about their fibreoptic solutions. We re

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Belgium - The colourful 49-year history of the Porsche 911 reached another milestone this year with the introduction of the 2012 model. Featuring many refinements, but continuing the immediately recognisable 911 profile, one regional European launch for the new car enjoyed the benefit of a DiGiCo SD9 mixing console. Or, as it was for the events, an SD911.

Belgian audio visual company GSF Event specialises in corporate and political events, working with such illustrious organisations as the European parliament, motor manufacturers Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and many others.

GSF has been an audio-visual partner for Porsche for five years and works at the launches for all of the company's new cars. Following the new Porsche 911's debut at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show, early 2012 has seen regional launches as the new model reached main dealers with GSF providing the production te

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