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Hand Held Audio has been supplying the BBC's Fame Academy with all of its wireless requirements since the show's debut in early October. Despite an initial poor showing in the ratings wars, Fame Academy has gained in popularity in recent weeks, culminating in nearly six million viewers for the live show last week which saw Malachi evicted, plus a live performance from guest celebrity Ronan Keating.

Hand Held began by supplying the show with a total of 14 Shure hand-held systems featuring Beta 58 capsules which were for use on the live performances at the end of the week. For the rest of the time, the students were furnished with a Shure beltpack lavalier system using MKE2 capsules as the cameras followed their progress at work and play. Hand Held's Mick Shepherd pointed out a certain irony in the fact that as the show's ratings go up, the gear requirements go down. "As students ar

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Uno di noi', the new prime-time TV variety show by RAI UNO, hosted by veteran pop idol Gianni Morandi with Lorella Cuccarini and Paola Cortellesi, is now Italy’s most-watched Saturday night television programme, with peaks of over 10 million viewers. The programme's guests include top Italian and international artists, including Craig David, Mark Knopfler, Tom Jones, Anastasia, Phil Collins, Franco Battiato, Piero Pelù, Lucio Dalla and Daniele Silvestri.

'Uno di noi' is one of RAI's biggest productions in terms of both the complexity of the audio and lighting systems and the studio dimensions. The studio (which holds over 1,000 spectators for each show) is 85m long and 35m wide, with a total area of approximately 3,000sq.m, and is 14 metres high. The lighting rig, designed by Pino Quini, includes 350 motorized fixtures, of which no less than 264 are from Italian manufacturer SG

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Gearhouse South Africa was extensively involved with the Auto Africa show (23-27 Oct) - Africa’s biggest motoring event. Bill Lawford was Gearhouse SA’s project manager for the event, running a team of 30 Gearhouse technicians. The bulk of the company’s work at Auto Africa 2002 was in providing sound, audio-visual equipment, rigging and decking. In particular, rigging the trussing proved no small feat - Gearhouse SA rigged over 500 different hanging points throughout the three main Auto Africa exhibition halls.

Among the 25+ stands that Gearhouse SA was involved in were Land Rover, Ford, Mazda, Alpha Romeo, Fiat, Chrysler Jeep, Renault, Honda and Porsche. The range of equipment was extensive: for example, a cube wall on the Mazda stand involved 48 separate cubes. "To set that up they had to be perfectly balanced and stitched together which was quite a job,"

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Ministry of Sound has had a new JBL Vertec line array audio system installed into it’s busy Bar space - the first area of the venue entered by clubbers, where it’s considered crucial to create the right audio impression. Vertec was supplied by JBL’s UK distributors Arbiter Pro Audio to Liverpool-based Over Audio, who co-ordinated the supply.

The system consists of eight Vertec VT-4889 elements - and was specified by David Bradshaw, the Ministry’s Head of Production. Bradshaw was looking for a system with large amounts of energy and direction that would adequately cover all areas of the unorthodox shaped room: apart from that, it had to look good, and work in the context of the space’s aesthetics. Bradshaw had realized the versatility of Vertec during the Ministry of Sound’s University tour earlier in the year, where they "used it in all conceiv

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Screenco provided a huge backdrop for this year’s Smash Hits T4 Pollwinners Party at London Arena, which was broadcast live on Channel 4. The event, co-hosted by Vernon Kay, June Sarpong and special guest host Kelly Osbourne, was celebrating its 15th year, and included performances by Liberty X, Sugababes, Atomic Kitten and Holly Valance.

Contracted by production company Nine Yards, Screenco’s vast 156-module, 25mm screen, all supplied from the company’s UK stock, measured 21.13m wide by 7.32m high, making it the biggest indoor LED high-brightness display ever seen in Europe. It thus provided an exciting solution for Hamish Hamilton’s Done & Dusted, who were responsible for the television production and design.

With all the risers set behind the screen, a large 8.1m x 4.88m door, positioned in the centre, raised and lowered on varispeed dual-brake motor hoists

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The seventh World Lighting Fair was held at Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall in early October. 50 companies from across Japan were joined by 21 international companies at the show, and the show enjoyed high visitor levels from the start, say the organizers.

Exhibits covered not only lighting products for stage and TV markets, but also new software and hardware were presented addressing their broad applications in markets such as retail, architecture, video projection, advertisement and promotion, design and presentation. The seminar programme included a broad range of topics from the latest on control protocols, education systems for theatre technology, opera productions and lighting design for theatres to a model of the lighting designer for the 21st century.

The next WLF will be held at the same venue from June 24 to 26, 2004.

(Lee Baldock)

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PCM’s famous Lodestar Motor School continues its on-going world tour, with the first, highly successful event to be held in Dublin. The School was co-ordinated by top Dublin-based lighting sales and installation company Stage Lighting Centre, run by the charismatic Pat Walsh, assisted by Paddy Farrell. It was held in the prestigious Abbey Theatre in central Dublin - the National Theatre of Ireland.

28 people attended the School, presented by PCM’s tutor-in-chief Tony Dickson. They came from all areas of the professional entertainment industry from across the country. The two-day Motor School covered many topics. A king pin of the PCM course is the complete stripping down and re-assembling of a Lodestar motor, enabling students to learn about the role and significance of the machine’s electrical and mechanical components, and how they inter-relate. Working in pairs, st

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The Jiri Myron Theatre in Ostrava is one of the Czech Republic’s leading theatre venues, and the home stage of operetta, drama and ballet ensembles of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. During the recent summer recess, the theatre partially upgraded its ageing control system, choosing ADB control and dimmer systems after comparing competitive products from various local and international suppliers. ADB’S Czech representative Zat Easy Control supplied the equipment.

The lighting crew and the head of the lighting department, Stanislav Dvorak, had already worked with a complete range of ADB equipment in the Antonin Dvorak Theatre, which is also part of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. ADB’s top of the line console Phoenix 10 was chosen for the control desk. This allows enough flexibility to harness the mix of moving and conventional fixtures installed through

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Theatre Projects Consultants is about to start work on site on a new arts complex in Ningbo, the largest deep water port in China, some three hours drive to the south east of Shanghai. Designed by Theatre Projects in conjunction with French architects Frederic Rolland & Partners, the arts complex will bring Ningbo into line with other Chinese regions and includes a 1,400 seat opera house and 800 seat theatre.

"This project is unique because we have been engaged for the full project," said David Staples, managing director of Theatre Projects Consultants, London. "Normally Theatre Projects, and any other foreign consultants, would be involved only in the initial planning stages and conceptual design phase. Once these had been completed we'd hand the project over to local contractors."

This project is also unique in that, because the site is in a flood plain, the art

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The Event Services Association (TESA) is moving into providing training for the UK event industry with the launch of a series of Health and Safety Courses.

Designed to improve standards in the events industry, the first three courses are planned for March, April and May of next year and will be undertaken for the Association in conjunction with Richard Limb, Director of Leisure Safety and Group Safety Manager with the Symonds Group, one of the industry’s leading event safety consultancies.

Costing just £195 + VAT per delegate, the one-day course will cover everything from risk assessment planning to the evaluation of both indoor and outdoor sites for events. Delegates are given a practical exercise to do in site planning and complete the course with a TESA/Symonds Certificate to show that they have completed the work.

Further courses are also being planned in other areas of

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Impact Europe, a market leader in audio visual integration, has signed a pan European agreement with Christie, a leading supplier of high performance projection systems. The agreement encompasses the entire Christie product portfolio.

Impact Europe integrates audio visual products into a variety of presentation systems ranging from simple meeting rooms, to network management centres and virtual environments, as well as providing customer support and facilities management contracts for those installed systems. "With over 39 engineers and dedicated support staff, based out of their Customer Support Centre in Sunbury, UK, Impact Europe is ideally positioned to provide its customers with Christie solutions, which can be supported by a comprehensive range of service and maintenance offerings, with the added security of facilities management and full service contracts when needed,"

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Legendary New Jersey, NY DJ Tony Humphries performed at Ministry of Sound in London last week with a storming set, during which he used the new Denon DN-S5000 single CD player. This was the first UK public performance using the new Denon machine which is just becoming available after its launch in September.

Denon equipment has always been a favourite with Humphries. The first piece of Denon kit he bought was the maverick DN-2000F twin CD player. This was followed by the state-of-the-art DN-2600F twin CD player and the DNM-2300R Mini Disc recorder. When he heard about the DN-S5000 Humphries contacted Silvio Zeppieri at Denon USA. The gig at Ministry of Sound was approaching and he was keen to be the first person to use the machine at a major UK event. Zeppieri thus arranged for a loan model to be made available for use in his studio. To ensure the a unit would be available at the Minis

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A Nexo Alpha-E sound reinforcement system has been installed in the impressive new Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, a prestige project which has much in common with another high-profile Nexo customer, the Stade de France in Paris.

The Atatürk Olympic Stadium seats 80,000 spectators, which makes it one of the world's largest Olympic stadia. The opening event featured a match between the teams of Galatasarray Istanbul and Olympiakos Athenes. Although the venue is intended mainly for athletics and football, it will also be used for concerts, where it’s capacity can climb to 100,000.

At a total cost of about USD140 million, the Atatürk Olympic Stadium is a state-of-the-art facility. Designed in the form of a crescent, the stadium's roof is a complex, huge steel structure with a total weight of 4,400 tons and a total size of 31,000 square metres. In addition to all th

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Large format projection specialists E/T/C UK projected the images of the BBC’s 10 Greatest Britons onto three different city centre landmarks. Contracted by the BBC, E/T/C UK did this over the three evening’s leading up to the broadcast of the final programme in this high profile series.

As the final winner was announced, the face of Winston Churchill, voted the all-time greatest Briton by the public, was then projected onto all three buildings - in London, Liverpool and Bristol - in a simultaneous live broadcast.

The project followed on from E/T/C’s work with the BBC for the first programme in the series - on Viscount Horatio Nelson. They projected the face of Nelson onto the Shell Building on London’s South Bank. This projection was such a success, that the BBC decided to publicise the finale using the same hi-impact promotional techniques of large format p

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Star Hire (Event Services) Limited joined the cream of the pop world once again when it installed the staging for the 2002 Top of the Pops Awards in Manchester.

The Awards, hosted by Ronan Keating, attracted a veritable A-List of pop stars, from Best Newcomer Will Young, to double- winner Kylie and Lifetime Hall of Fame winner Sir Elton John. They also performed live sets alongside Miss Dynamite, Blue and the Manic Street Preachers.

The set, designed by Miranda Jones of Mermaid Design, was in keeping with the look of the televised weekly programme, but expanded to fit the dimensions of the enormous Manchester Evening News Arena. Star Hire was contracted to supplement the Arena’s own staging system to house the huge production. This included building the awards platform sited to one side of the stage and a temporary ‘bridge’ and red carpet walkway connecting the plat

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The World Rally Championships were recently staged in Cardiff, and Stage Electrics was on hand to provide significant resources over a number of key sites for this major sporting event.

The Network Q Rally started on the 14 November and was timed to coincide with the switching on of Cardiff’s Christmas Lights. The main high street in Cardiff was closed to traffic from 10am, and there then followed a race against time to ensure all of the production was in place by 5pm. Stage Electrics provided main stage lighting on a Star Hire Mk1 Stage, as well as lighting to other areas.

The biggest focus of the Rally for spectators was the Super Special Stage, hosted in a purpose- built arena in Cardiff’s Docks. Stage Electrics powered the majority of all site services, as well as all spectator and emergency lighting. A total of 24 generators supplied through Power Electrics of Bristo

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In mid October, CISCO Systems officially opened its new European headquarters in. Spreading over 40,000sq.m, the futuristic premises are designed to accommodate 800 employees. The opening was attended by several hundred invited guests and featured an full line-up of entertainment. The music was provided by the Dutch musical star Linda Wagenmakers, and the sound by an Electro-Voice X-Array system. "For the sound crew," remembers Axel Nagtegaal of Electric Audio, "the need was to cover the full spectrum - the speeches, the gala, the recorded music and, of course, the live music as well - and the results proved yet again how versatile and flexible EV’s X-Array system really is." The system specification included 2 x Xds, 2 Xcns, 6 Xbs, 4 Xfs and 4 Xcbs, together with several EV P-3000 amps.

(Ruth Rossington)

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Creative Technology (CT) produced some unusual television effects for the BBC Children In Need fund-raising marathon hosted by Terry Wogan and Gaby Roslin recently.

The company was contracted by BBC Resources to build on the Totaliser screen reinforcement they provided last year, as well as adding a spectacularly ‘retro’ LED dancefloor. The dancefloor dominated the stage and was in use for much of the evening. CT’s project manager Paul Holden commented: "Last year we provided a flown screen over the Totaliser using Barco i6 high-brightness panels. This year we used 80 of the Barco i8 panels, in a 16 x 5 configuration."

The display - measuring 7.16m wide by 2.24m - was run in 16:5 format, receiving 16:9 aspect ratio feeds, to create a letterbox effect. The content mostly comprised of Totaliser-specific graphics. But the more challenging aspect of the set wa

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A virtual winter wonderland has been created at New York’s Grand Central Station, thanks to High End’s Catalyst system.

Scharff Weisberg Pro Audio and Staging in New York is supplying production for the event, using two Catalyst systems with orbital heads on two projectors, controlled by the Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II lighting console. The Catalyst system blends moving light technology with graphics projection technology: when fitted with the optional orbital head, images can be projected anywhere in three-dimensional space. The system can be run on most programmable lighting consoles.

The show started 19 November and runs through to the 31 December, with showings every 15 minutes from 11am to 9pm on the ceiling of the Grand Central concourse in the historic Manhattan landmark. The six, three-minute video projection shows reflect artists' interpretations of the meani

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If confirmation were needed that the era of digital mixing had arrived, then mid November was the time. In a period of frenzied activity Britannia Row Productions had a remarkable eight Yamaha PM1Ds working simultaneously.

"We’re used to being busy," said Brit Row’s logistics planner Roly Oliver, "but even by our standards to have eight PM1Ds out at the same time was a significant event. The applications were a real mix, from events like MTV and TOTP Awards to tours by artists as varied as Richard Ashcroft, Robbie Williams, Jamiroquai and Cliff Richard. Craig David took two boards for a series of TV promotional appearances all over Europe.

"This is a prime example of our commitment to new technology," said Brit Row’s director Bryan Grant. "As a company we actively seek out what equipment best supports our client needs, and both the up

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A big thank you to Le Mark and Roscolab as this Christmas both companies have decided to send their Christmas greetings via e-mail and advertising respectively, instead of traditional Christmas cards, with the money saved being donated to the Light Relief charity.

Stuart Gibbons, managing director at Le Mark explained: "A Christmas card has a life of one or two weeks before it's disposed of, so my suggestion was an e-card to send either via e-mail or to create something along the lines of a virtual Christmas tree to use on an industry news site."

Duncan Smith at Roscolab added: "Light Relief has enjoyed a high profile recently, especially at PLASA 2002, and I wanted to add to that. As we usually buy charity Christmas cards anyway, as well as taking every opportunity to give something back to the industry, I thought this year instead of cards we should make a donation t

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Lightfactor Sales has supplied lighting designer David Hurst of Full-On, and installers Entserv Ltd, with a variety of bespoke lighting, audio and show control equipment for the £1.2 million ‘Bond, James Bond’ exhibition at the Science Museum. It’s the biggest ever official James Bond exhibition, and arrived in London following a six-month installation at the Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford. The run at the Science Museum was designed to tie in with the recent launch of the new Bond film ‘Die Another Day’ (a full report on this appears in the December issue of L&SI).

The exhibition's main contractor, Themetech, was appointed by project manager Jacqui Wicks, in December 2001; they, in turn, approached David Hurst and Steve Richley of Entserv to assist in the huge project’s realization. Entserv have worked on numerous international

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Alfie have become the latest high profile act to join the Audio-Technica family, signing an endorsement deal following a series of successful product evaluations. According to bass player Sam Morris, "the initial contact with A-T came about through our management company. As well as looking after us, they also represent The Charlatans, who have used and trusted A-T mics for ages. We thought it was a great idea in principle, but we wanted to make sure the mics were right for us." After talking to Audio-Technica’s market development manager, Paul Mason, and checking out a range of Audio-Technica mics in rehearsals, the band were keen to extend the association and become fully fledged members of the Audio-Technica endorsee family.

"For the gigs we now have 20 channels of A-T mics", explains Morris, "covering all of the kit, vocals and the bass and guitar rig

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Stage Electrics is extending its reach into the TV arena, following a series of successful projects during 2002, including BBC Songs of Praise in Blackburn, where the company supplied a full rig of tungsten heads, MSR Fresnels, dimming distro and twin set generation; the Good Food Show at the NEC (with two satellite OBs running in parallel in Manchester and London); and Children in Need for the BBC in Cardiff, where the outside of Broadcasting House was lit up for the week prior to the event and an outdoor stage was constructed for Radio Wales OB.

The Welsh connection is particularly strong, with Stage Electrics Wales, which is based in Cardiff, picking up two televised outside broadcast programmes recorded in Amlych (Da De Dil Di) and in Machynlleth (Dafyd Iwan Concert) in the past few weeks alone. Over their 22-year history, the company has supplied technical equipment and skills for

  1. Marquee supplies dV-DOSC for Production House
  2. Martin Wavefront for Centre Stage
  3. Midas DIRECT offers pre-owned consoles via web
  4. PCM install at Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin
  5. Stadium sound from Martin Blackline
  6. JBL supplies Military Intelligence at Sandhurst
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