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I-Vision recently supplied Fentura Production Services with lighting and lasers for an architectural illumination project for the town of Herne Bay in Kent. The high-impact event coincided with the launch of the two-week Herne Bay Festival. The lighting elements of the project were at its core, and included the linking of two sections of the derelict pier, lighting the shoreside Pier Pavilion building, and also a Saxon Fort - Reculver Towers - a short distance outside the town. The scheme was the brainchild of Herne Bay Seafront & Town co-ordinator Darren Simpson. Tim Matthews specified a 40W YAG laser to electronically stitch the two sections of the pier back together for this week-long lighting installation, which spanned the second week of the Festival. The normally darkened sea end of the pier was lit and highlighted by the scanning laser beams. Colourful architectural lighting for t

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Self-adhesive product innovators LeMark Group, winners of two consecutive PLASA Show awards for its Blacktak and SlipWay Tape products, has announced a strategic alliance and working partnership with Scapa Tapes plc. Scapa is one of the world’s largest adhesive tape companies, supported by 22 production and distribution sites around the globe. LeMark will work with Scapa to co-develop, market and manufacture a specialist range of both plain and printed products for all aspects and areas of the growing entertainment industry. Le Mark and Scapa will jointly look to expand both their European and particularly their USA, Canadian and Latin markets.

Stuart Gibbons, LeMark’s managing and marketing director said: "This is an exciting collaboration, bringing together the entrepreneurial skills of Le Mark and the manufacturing excellence of Scapa, forging a global alliance that

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When bwa-uk was asked to organize this year’s International Gathering of Champions by the Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) they once more turned to Summit Steel to rig the event for sound and lighting. Summit had rigged for them last year at the London Arena. "We chose Summit again because we have found them efficient and helpful," said Peter Willis of bwa-uk. "Ninety percent of an event like this is founded upon the pre-production and planning stages, and Summit’s input to this process was invaluable. They worked with us all the way to ensure the event ran smoothly and that clinched it for us."

This year’s event was held in two giant marquees pitched at KICC’s headquarters in Waterden Road, Hackney. The bigger of the two marquees measured a staggering 105m wide by 40m deep while the other measured 85m by 20m. The conference was

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Coe-tech has recently supplied Futurelight moving head luminaires to Hertfordshire-based technical production company Universal Events. Owned and run by Steve Butcher, the company has been providing sound, lighting and AV equipment and design for a wide array of events since its formation two and a half years ago. Universal services all its contracts from stock and doesn’t sub hire in or out. Butcher first saw the new Futurelight MH660 (spot) and MH640 (wash) luminaires in autumn 2000: the time was right for a moving light investment, and he sought a bright, reliable versatile fixture. The Futurelight 6 series met the spec at exactly the right price, so Butcher bought nine of each type in November 2000, and quickly followed up with another purchase of five more wash fixtures and six of the new MH860 spots earlier this year.

Recently, Butcher utilized his full Futurelight rig at t

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Enliten has recently lit the statue of George Washington on horseback which stands outside Washington Cathedral in Washington, USA. The challenging brief was to light the statue, and nothing else, and the acute angle of the lighting posed the problem of light spillage. As a distributor for DHA Lighting, Enliten’s Paul Simson knew how the company’s products could be used to best advantage, and turned to them to solve the problem. A DHA line-up grid was projected over the statue, and used to calculate the distortion of the statue’s image caused by the positioning of the luminaire. Then, using Photoshop and Illustrator programs to manipulate the image, an accurate gobo mask was created. Fitted onto the luminaire, it was a perfect match for the outline of the statue, ensuring that George Washington was the only thing in lights.

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Vertigo Rigging was called in by Silent Associates International Ltd to rig for the high profile Dealer Event revealing the new Mini to North American Dealers. By far the most ambitious Mini venue - one of three - on the menu that day was the Mezzo restaurant in Wardour Street, Soho, London. The mission for the Vertigo team, led by the unflappable Ken Mehmed, was to lift a Mini from the service bridge, at street level of the venue, into and across the downstairs restaurant area below - where the event was staged. Scenic aspects were designed by Hottopp Associates from the USA. Like Silent Associates, they were also under direction of California-based Route 66 Productions for the project.

Starting at 4am on the Sunday morning of the event, the glass panels from the bridge leading to Mezzo’s kitchen area on the top floor were removed along one side. This allowed the Vertigo crew to

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When this flagship vessel sets sail in late 2003, she will be the largest passenger vessel ever built - over 345m long, 45m wide and 72m tall - making her five times longer than Cunard’s first ship, Britannia. All 45 on-board entertainment systems will be designed by Nautilus Entertainment Design (NED), based in La Jolla, California. Since designing its first lighting systems for Carnival Destiny in 1996, NED has built its capabilities to not only include lighting systems, but audio, rigging, video, broadcast and large-format projection systems as well. NED’s QM2 project manager Bill Havens and the NED design team will be working closely with Harbor Marine Systems (HMS), the French-based entertainment contractor selected by the Shipyard to install the entertainment systems. HMS has previously installed entertainment systems for cruise ships constructed throughout Europe. Thi

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The Lyric in Hammersmith - one of the few surviving Frank Matcham-designed theatres - has returned to Marquee Audio a year after making a major investment in sound mixing, playback, processing and sound reinforcement equipment, to have them configure a new hard disk recording studio. The theatre’s sound technician Nick Manning (pictured in the new recording studio) explained that the new studio equipment fell into the remit of the theatre’s IT upgrade, which is being funded by an Arts Council grant.

"While the theatre was working on replacing its business systems, I set about drawing up a scheme for a dedicated sound computer, which would enable us to produce sound effects for shows," explained Nick. "I then spoke to Andy Huffer at Marquee Audio about designing a hard disk recording system based around the industry-standard Logic Audio software package."

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The White Light Group will be returning to its regular location on stand F4, just inside the main doors of the exhibition hall. The familiar White Light bar will be back - and this year the company will be in party mood, as it celebrates its 30th birthday! It will be sharing the party with younger members of the White Light Group, including The Moving Light Company, The Service Company, Enliten, Modelbox and Colourhouse.

On show on the stand are a selection of products for which White Light is the exclusive UK distributor. This will include the complete range of Robert Juliat followspots, including the new Marius 1.2k followspot which is a nominee in the PLASA Awards for Product Excellence, as well as smoke and haze machines from Look Solutions. White Light's new adjustable and fully-rated LOLER Lighting Ladders will also be on show, holding the latest addition to The Moving Light Comp

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PRG ran its annual Used Equipment Auction in July. The event, a joint effort between two PRG companies - Fourth Phase and ProMix Electrotec - sees hundreds of items going under the hammer. Fourth Phase inventory featured miles of cable, dozens of intelligent moving head units, and hundreds of Lekos and Par cans, while ProMix Electrotec offered professional sound reinforcement mixing consoles, power amplifiers and loudspeaker systems. Bill Groener, north-east regional vice-president, told PLASA Media: "There is tremendous interest in professionally-maintained equipment that is being sold from our rental inventories. Intelligent buyers have figured out that they can stretch their budgets through the acquisition of this kind of gear. By turning over our rental inventory to these savvy buyers, we are able to purchase new gear to offer our rental clients." PRG is also running a used

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On August 20th, TMB’s Los Angeles staff held a monkey installation ceremony to celebrate the signing of the lease on the company’s new international headquarters. As part of the celebration, TMB’s signature surf monkey statues were placed on the building’s rooftop, making the new home official. The newly-built headquarters is a 40,000sq.ft facility, overlooking the Hansen Dam Golf Course in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. The building is located approximately 10 minutes from TMB’s current Burbank location. Over 8,000sq.ft of customized office space, plus training rooms and a fully-featured demo/showroom are currently under construction. The 32ft high shop area will contain over half a mile of small parts shelving, plus space to house over 1,000 pallets on a VNA (very narrow aisle) pallet racking system, using a digital, wire-guided forklift. Addition

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NHL Hockey Team the Nashville Predators have purchased a Fat Frog console from Zero 88 through local dealer Bandit Lites in Nashville. Jimmy Corn of the Predators, whose home stadium is the Gaylord Entertainment centre in Downtown Nashville, specified the Fat Frog after an exhaustive process of looking at different consoles and decided that the Fat Frog "offered the best bang for buck" and "the most features in the price range". The console is running eight Martin Pro MAC 2000s, four High End Systems Cyberlights, a host of special effects and conventional lighting. The main focus of the effect lighting is pre-game and intermission entertainment, and for highlighting each goal when it is scored. A concern of Corn's and the rest of the lighting team was that their new console be easy to learn for inexperienced operators, but still be powerful enough to perform edits on

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grapevinejobs is a new internet jobsite, designed exclusively for professionals in and around the broadcast, film and music sectors. The site launches on 6th September 2001 and aims to become the destination of choice for jobseekers and employers in those sectors.

Created by specialist recruitment consultants, Searchlight, the service will be free for jobseekers, with only a minimal cost to advertisers. A year in the making, the site can filter out jobs that aren’t likely to be of interest to a particular user and will monitor new job postings and send an e-mail alert if a relevant job comes in.

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Event design company, Beautiful Neptune Design, turned a crisis into an opportunity after an office break-in earlier this year left the company without computers and software. The company, a partnership established in 1995, offers lighting and set design, technical drawing and visualisation for live events, performances and exhibitions to producing companies.

Company director Steve Hicks decided to turn the situation to his advantage by investing in new IT equipment. Clients can now expect greatly reduced modelling and rendering times during design development and final presentation. Through the use of ‘bi-directional drawing linking’ and parametric modelling, designers will be able to easily manipulate and modify elements in a 2D or 3D environment.

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Victoria Park in Hackney, East London, exploded into life in June as legendary French pyrotechnic artists Groupe F performed their high-energy Garden of Light spectacle - with live fire and music.

The result was an unforgettable incendiary experience; Groupe F used the park environment as a backdrop, filling the surrounding space with sparks, flames, bangs and flashes - as well as a colossal jet-flamed Catherine wheel. Groupe F’s relationship to fire and ‘fireworks’ is certainly not a classical one. The show opens with an alchemist character,stoking and playing a ‘keyboard’ of fire - and just as alchemists changed the properties of real substances, Groupe F transformed fire into water for the finale of the 45-minute show.

Thousands crammed into the park to enjoy the two nights of free performance, part of the month-long London International Festival of

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Firepower is the new Royal Artillery Experience, set in the historic buildings of the Royal Arsenal on the River Thames at Woolwich.

The attraction was designed by Event Communications, whose main challenge was to overcome people’s discomfort with the reality of war. They tackled this by highlighting the role in the fight for democracy and freedom played by the armed forces, especially the Royal Artillery, which has been present at all major theatres of war involving the British Army over the last 300 years.

The centrepiece of Firepower is the ‘ground-shaking’ Field of Fire - a spectacular multimedia presentation that recreates what it feels like to be in the middle of a real battle. On entering, visitors are surrounded by various pieces of artillery. Suspended above these are four 5m wide front projection screens. Projecting onto each screen is a Barco 6300 LCD Vid

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Chainsaws, angle-grinders, axes and flame-throwers - just some of the impressive weaponry being demonstrated by participants in this summer’s Robot Wars tour.

Thousands of eager fans were treated to over two hours of destruction and mayhem, all carefully choreographed by director Hugh Wooldridge. "It’s an amazing mix of old and new cultures," he explained. "We’re acting out the ancient idea of gladiatorial combat, but with cutting-edge robot technology. In fact, almost the entire show is controlled - our job is to make the audience think that it’s not.

Even under controlled conditions, the sheer power of the robotic stars of the show (some of which weigh in excess of 150kgs) meant that humans were excluded from the combat area. "Not only do we have to keep our distance from the action, but we’re also shooting through thick Macrolon sc

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RCF/Mackie has been responsible for the design and supply of a sound system for the new Terminal A at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport at Fiumicino, based around the company’sRX-3000 programmable matrix system.

The new Terminal, built at a cost of ITL 125 billion, is 170m long, 80-100m wide and 20m high, with a covered surface area of 55,000sq.m. It replaces the temporary building constructed in 1997, with the aim of comfortably accommodating more than 12 million passengers a year who use Fiumicino for domestic flights and who, according to recent estimates, are due to grow to 17 million by 2005.

RCF’s association with Rome’s airports stretches back around 25 years, to when the company first started supplying sound equipment to both of Rome’s airports - Fiumicino and Ciampino. One figure that the audio team from Reggio Emilia (home of RCF and now Mackie

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Capitalising on recent installations such as the Core in Yeovil, The CC Club in Piccadilly, London and Toxic8 in Cambridge, custom neon specialists Simply Neon are expanding in several directions. Within the space of a month, the company has appointed a new general manager, moved into a new, expanded UK base in Staines, Middlesex, and is opening a European branch based in Portugal. Simply Neon’s so-far buoyant 2001 continues with the appointment of Phil Kendrick as the new UK-based general manager while managing director Tony Newman opens a Portuguese office, aimed at developing new market opportunities in Europe. Originally trained by Hoover as a toolmaker, Kendrick has enjoyed a varied international sales and marketing career spanning many areas including garden building and the surveillance/security industry. Kendrick comments: "It’s great to be onboard with Simply Ne

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Lighting distributor Fourth Phase in London was chosen to provide additional projection equipment for what was the culmination of U2's Elevation Tour, which played to fans at the specially constructed 80,000 capacity arena at Slane Castle, County Meath, Ireland, on August 24 and September 1.

U2's regular show designer Willie Williams and lighting director Bruce Ramus worked with the band to create a simple background to complement the mega group’s performances. Working closely with head of projection Anne Johnston, Williams chose Fourth Phase in the USA to supply products for the duration of the world tour: initially the design used four projectors but, due to the greatly increased size of the audience at Slane Castle, Fourth Phase London was asked to supply an additional four projectors.

Integral to the production, the E/T/C Audiovisuel PIGI projectors were used to project abs

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Four days of events will mark the public opening of the world's first rotating bridge. The Gateshead Millennium Bridge links Newcastle Quayside with the new arts and leisure developments on Gateshead Quays - including BALTIC the Centre for Contemporary Art, which opens next year, and the Music Centre Gateshead, where work has already started on the new international centre for music performance and education. The £9.7 million lottery-funded project will be officially opened on Friday September 14, the date for the first public showing of its high-tech lighting system. This will be followed by a weekend of unique live musical performances - staged by music north, the producing and presenting arm of Music Centre, Gateshead.

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Metro Broadcast led the UK by providing state-of-the-art High-Definition multicamera equipment into Europe, on Saturday 11th August 2001. Produced by Done and Dusted and staged at the Mungersdorf stadium in Cologne, Germany, the Robbie Williams concert was captured using 15 Sony High-Definition cameras following Metro’s success in supplying the UK’s first ever multi-camera High-Definition shoot to an S Club 7 concert earlier this summer. Metro sourced six of the camcorders from the Continent using its global agency, Eurocrew Worldwide, whilst obtaining the other nine from various hire companies in the UK. Having managed the first multicamera High-Definition shoot, the main challenges were logistical. "10 camcorders from one country was exciting in itself, but 15 spread over four was certainly a challenge," reveals Mark Cox, facilities director at Metro. "There

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For the first time PLASA is running an on-site clinic at the PLASA Show to lend useful business support and advice to member companies exhibiting at the event. This new initiative, which will also see the launch of a new health-related service, is aimed not only at existing PLASA members, but also at prospective members who can learn for themselves the advantages to be gained from using PLASA services. During the course of the Show, representatives from the Association's range of service providers will be on hand in the PLASA Clinic to answer questions and assist members. Services available include the following:

Telephone Interpreting Service provided by Comunicado: interpreters specializing in over 100 languages. Cost is charged per minute, less than half price to PLASA members.

Legal Advice Service provided by Sherman Phillips: advice on intellectual property, contract, leasehold

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An alliance has been established between ultraviolet lighting manufacturer and scenic production firms Wildfire and UV/FX. The agreement, which commences immediately, calls for UV/FX to handle all of Wildfire’s scenic design and production, while UV/FX will exclusively utilize Wildfire’s ultraviolet lighting fixtures, lamps and other creative materials on all of its projects.

"Over the years, Wildfire has helped create some of the most dramatic ultraviolet scenic productions at destinations and events all around the world. Working with UV/FX, we will be able to expand our scope of services while continuing to create the innovative ultraviolet lighting systems that the industry has come to expect from us," said Wildfire vice president John Berardi. This new alliance also reunites UV/FX president Richard Green and creative director Kent Mathieu with Wildfire, the co

  1. Selecon Pacific Lights ‘My Fair Lady’
  2. New JBL Speakers for West Bromwich Albion
  3. Screenco Enlists Volunteers at Edinburgh Festival
  4. New LightJockey at PLASA 2001
  5. Delta Wins Legal Case Against Federal
  6. Stanton Enjoy Record Summer
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