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UK - After a four-year gap, Hawthorn has again worked on Pro Retail, this year - the number one retail trade show in the UK, is held at Telford's International Centre. Hawthorn was contracted by DB Systems to provide lighting, sound, rigging, staging, power distribution, starcloth and crew for the two day event.

Hawthorn's project manager, Matt Oscroft specified Clay Paky Alpha Spots and Alpha Wash lights, supplemented with Pulsar's LED Par 36s and Thomas LED battens. For control, he chose an Avolites Sapphire and Irad Pixel drive. In order for Hawthorns to get across their design concepts, Oscroft used their new WYSIWYG suite, providing visuals and complex designs for both DB Systems and the final client, Palmer and Harvey. This software proved to be invaluable as time was limited onsite and there were no space or time for errors.

Oscroft's sound spec included Martin Audio li

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UK - Showsec managed crowds at London's Earls Court and Manchester's MEN Arena for the new format Give It A Name festival.

Give it a Name was a new indoor festival concept launched in 2005 at London's Alexandra Palace This year the festival developed to run over two days, in two cities (London 's Earls Court and Manchester 's MEN Arena ), with two stages in the two venues.

Lost Prophets and My Chemical Romance headlined 26 bands that gave tens of thousands of fans ten hours of non stop music, with two stages allowing quick change-overs, creating a great atmosphere at both venues.

Showsec manager Paul Joy ran a team of 120 trained crowd management professionals at the MEN Arena, looking after the fans front-of-house, the pit area and the backstage. Steve Reynolds ran the FOH Showsec team of 200 staff at Earls Court, and the two managers liaised through-out the weekend

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South Africa - dbx Professional Products, a manufacturer of professional signal processing products and a division of Harman International, have played a key role at the Kitchen Bar, in the ground-breaking Design Quarter, in Johannesburg.

Situated in the suburb of Fourways, it is South Africa's first truly comprehensive décor and design retail centre - a vibrant hub for lovers of cutting-edge décor products and design services, industry trend setters, socialites and restaurant patrons.

Kitchen Bar is a key feature of the development, presenting new standards of culinary excellence influenced by international trends. A crucial element in the new venue is having AV facilities to equal these standards. Harman Pro products distributor, Wild and Marr were called to the challenge.

Since Kitchen Bar was designed to be a restaurant, cocktail bar, lounge and night spot

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USA - Circuit Lighting was once again hired to provide Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200 AT fixtures for cable TV channel HBO's most popular football show Inside the NFL. The show was recorded at the Ford Museum in Detroit.

Circuit Lighting services many major TV shows and events, and their team of four was led by Mirash Lekaj for this event. This award-winning and popular cable talk show, which analyzes football teams and games, was staged in the middle of the Museum's exhibition displays.The fixtures were dotted around across the floor, on the set and on a ground supported trussing system. Being in a museum environment was very challenging - all the work had to be undertaken with great care and skill, and with the safety of the exhibits in mind at all times.

The Robe's - 12 Spot and 12 Wash fixtures, the latter with electronic ballast - were chosen because of familiar

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Belgium - Barco reports that the Royal Sporting Club Anderlecht (RSC Anderlecht) has chosen Barco's latest sports perimeter LED solution for its very own Constant Vanden Stock Stadium in Belgium. The SP-10, specifically optimized for Broadcast, brings LED visualization and the broadcasting world together for the first time.

Anderlecht chose the Barco SP-10 and Sports Box management controller for its stadium as it wanted to differentiate itself from other stadiums by providing an enhanced match day experience for fans, viewers and advertisers alike. As one of the most successful Belgium football teams on the European level, Anderlecht fully recognizes the real value the SP-10 will add to the sponsorship packages that it is able to offer advertisers. With the SP-10, advertising opportunities are greatly improved and provide a better experience for viewers and greater revenue oppo

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UK - AV and integration specialists Metropolis have completed a sound, lighting and AV installation at the new-build independently owned Common Room in Sheffield, which features the first use of their new Met3 RGB Cove Strip LED product.

The venue's owners wanted to appeal to wide mix of students, young professionals and sports fans, and approached Metropolis on the strength of their other work in this field which includes the current Sports Café brand roll out.

For the first floor Common Room - in a converted Post Office warehouse building - they wanted to create a stimulating and lively environment throughout the bars and large pool playing area with the imaginative use of sound, lighting and AV. They also wanted colour changing LED lighting in the street side windows and below the pool tables.

The project was managed for Metropolis by Stuart Clowes. The client's sp

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UK - XL Video supplied video equipment and crew for the sold out arena tour of Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds. The show - a dream of Wayne's to tour live ever since he wrote the piece in 1978 - has received great reviews for its staging and projection visuals.

The tour, run by Steve Nolan's Chromatic Productions Ltd, featured a front projected 80ft wide by 15ft high screen using eight Barco ELM R18 projectors, relaying two hours of high resolution CGI narrative visuals, created by Media Station.Above was a massive Martian Fighting Machine (MFM) set piece, and on stage right was a flown 10ft three-dimensional head onto which a specially made video animation of narrator Richard Burton was projected.

The tour was project man

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Italy - Following a very successful first year, in which business targets for the first two years were exceeded, Star Orbit Italia has moved to larger offices. A total of 35 Star Orbit stages were erected in 2005 around Italy, ranging in size from 12m to 20m spans and extra equipment is currently being manufactured to build up the Italian stocks.

The benefit of the operation was also dramatically demonstrated on Live 8 weekend in 2005, when the UK industry completely ran out of stage roofs. But Star Events Group was able to come to the rescue provide a 20m Orbit system by shipping it over from Italy to the organisers of B-Live on Clapham Common at very short notice.

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USA - After a recent remodel, Christ United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Sugar Land, Texas moved into a larger and more aesthetically pleasing space. Unfortunately, the room suffered from a twofold reverberation problem: too much of the wrong kind for one application, and not enough of the right kind for another.

The church's dual dilemmas stemmed from the spectral characteristics of the sanctuary's architectural acoustics. Any sound system that fully excited the room would produce high-frequency reverberation certain to impair voice intelligibility. At the same time, low-mid reverberation needed for depth and fullness in organ music and congregational singing would be seriously deficient. Further architectural changes to remedy the situation would have been prohibitively expensive, and likely detrimental to the visual aesthetics of the room, as well. Fortunately, consultant and a

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Malaysia - Hong Kong-born Jacky Cheung (not to be confused with Jackie Chan, whom he has starred opposite in movies), is often idolized for his huge number of film credits but he first achieved phenomenal success as a singer of CantoPop (Cantonese and pop) music. In fact, Cheung's concert ticket and CD sales indicate him reigning as the world's most popular Chinese language singer for nearly 15 years.

In 1997, Cheung launched his own lavish production of an updated traditional musical, Snow Wolf Lake, which quickly sold out an unprecedented 43 consecutive shows at Hong Kong's mammoth stadium. In late 2005, when Cheung's new touring version of the show arrived in Malaysia, local rental company SES Sound and Light welcomed him with a world-class production package that included a brand new system of Meyer Sound MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers.

The two sold-

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USA - Amerex Corporation of Trussville, Alabama has installed an Allen & Heath iDR system to manage audio matrixing and distribution of important operational and safety functions including fire and tornado alarms, telephone paging, and the shift-break alarm.

Designed and installed by Larry Bounds and Barry Henry of the EBS group, from Odenville, Alabama, in conjunction with Amerex's in house system technicians, the iDR-4 system also includes the optional PL-8, a four input/output logic contact closure unit.

"We chose the iDR because the programming of the box is very simple and the processor is very solid. We were able to install the system very quickly without any of the employees knowing," says Bounds. "We have also used the iDR in many other installations and we have found it to be a flexible and reliable solution."

The Amerex Corporation is the leadin

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UK - Welsh rockers The Lost Prophets co-headlined at the two venue Give it a name festival with American angst emo band My Chemical Romance.

The festival lighting systems at both venues were exact duplicates of each other - with a pretty standard four horizontal truss set up featuring an array of moving lighting, strobes and generic fixtures. Each band had the opportunity to add to the rig, but the only one that took advantage were - The Lost Prophets.

LD Mark Scrimshaw, who has been in the business since 1990, had six mega pods hung from the upstage truss. Within each of the pods there were six PixelLine 1044s and an Atomic strobe. Each of the pods was hung on two motors and at various points during the set - the pods were moved up and down to various pre-set positions creating a constantly moving blinding wall of light.

Scrimshaw enthuses: "I was looking for a

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Australia - Robe ColorWash and ColorSpot 1200 AT moving lights were used to light the Mercedes, Holden, Ford and Dodge-Chrysler, Smart Car, Nissan, Honda and Hyundai stands and displays at the 2006 Australian International Motor Show.

The Motor Show - a flagship event for the automobile industry - toured from February to April, visiting all of Australia's major cities. It showcased the latest in automotive design and technology including futuristic prototypes and concept vehicles, and hosted an array of demonstrations and entertainment venues.

Robe's Australian distributor Universal Lighting and Audio (ULA) worked closely with the country's leading production company, Clifton Productions in producing technical and creative solutions for all of the booths. In February, Clifton underwent massive expansion with the purchase of 100 Robe AT series luminaires enabling them to servic

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UK - Visitor attraction integration specialists Sysco are presently using multiples of Christie LX LCD projection, to reinforce major exhibitions in London's premier museum.

Sysco's expertise was called upon recently when the British Museum wanted to stage its current Michelangelo Drawings - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to follow the evolution of some of the world's most celebrated artworks.

The exhibition traces 60 years of Michelangelo's stormy life, from intimate studies made when he was in his early 20's to the visionary Crucifixion scenes carried out shortly before his death. Featuring 90 drawings the exhibition pulls together one of the world's largest collections of Michelangelo's work in 30 years (including three studies for the fresco in the Sistine Chapel).

Design company Metaphor was tasked with helping audiences make the connection between the three 90cm high

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USA - Poseidon, the new remake of the 1972 film, stars Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, some High End Systems Studio Spot 575 automated luminaires and two Wholehog 3 consoles. The Warner Bros. Pictures release promises to make a big splash in movie theatres and IMAX theatres starting 12 May.

Studio Spots were specified in the upside down nightclub set for various reasons, says programmer Scott Barnes. "I went with the Studio Spots because I needed the lights to be fairly small and I wanted to do a Gobo Shake (a special effect in Studio Spot) to simulate that the head is jammed or broken. John Seale, the director of photography, loved this feature.

"For the nightclub we just used three Studio Spots. It was a small rig. Before the ship rolls over, there are a number of establishing scenes. One of these scenes is in the nightclub on the ship. This was

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Hungary - Eleven audio professionals gathered in Budapest early this year for Hungary's first Meyer Sound training seminar on source independent measurement and the SIM 3 audio analyzer system. The intensive five-day course was taught by Mauricio "Magu" Ramirez, Meyer Sound's senior technical seminar instructor, with logistical support of the event entrusted to Makkay Imre of Chromatica, Meyer Sound's Hungarian distributor.

"After finishing this seminar, I felt like the proverbial blind man who has his sight restored," says Komjáthy Árpád, chief engineer for Expander 2000 Ltd., one of Hungary's largest rental companies. "Now I can see what I hear!"

Imre adds: "Attending a seminar led by Mauricio is always a great pleasure. He has an exceptional talent for helping his students learn quickly and in a practical manner."

The course mate

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USA - For more than 15 years, Ronan Chris Murphy has proved himself to be one of the most sought-after producer/mixers of hard jazz, progressive rock and experimental music. Over the past five years, Murphy has spent much of his time working from his own Culver City-based Veneto West Studio. Having engineered and produced over 200 albums for others - including some 15 records for King Crimson and various offshoots - Murphy, an accomplished guitarist and composer, is now turning his attention to his own solo project, which benefits from an all-star backup band of Levin on bass and Chapman Stick, Keneally on keys, and both Mastelotto and Bozzio on drums.

Seeing that Bozzio's percussion setup spans 16 feet and includes literally dozens of drums and cymbals, Murphy and co-engineer Dan Richards chose to run the drummer's entire kit through 15 channels of A-Designs Audio microphone pr

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Northern Ireland - Between 7.00pm on Tuesday 2 May and 9.00am on Wednesday 3 May 2006, a break-in occurred at the premises of Park Audio at 41 Sydenham Road, Belfast. A large amount of sound equipment was stolen together with a vehicle belonging to the company. The vehicle has since been recovered. Park Audio is appealing for any information that may lead to the recovery of the missing equipment.

Anyone with any information relating to the above incident is asked to contact Glenn at Park Audio on 02890 805805, or the Belfast Harbour Police on 02890 553000. Park Audio is offering a financial reward for information leading to the safe recovery of the stolen equipment.

Details of the equipment are as follows: 16 Crest Audio CD3000 power amplifiers and 6 Crest Audio CD2000 power amplifiers - all housed in 6 x 12U racks; 2 Community RS220 loudspeakers; 2 Community FB1

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UK - Large format projection specialists E//T//C UK debuted their new multi-screen video control software - OnlyView - on a projection show onto Senate House in London, for the Royal National Institute of The Deaf (RNID) last week. Onlyview was UK launched in March, and this was the first show to combine both methods of projection for a single creative result.

The Onlyview system, was working in conjunction with PIGI projection running on the established OnlyCue control system. Merging the two control systems and projection formats allowed E//T//C UK to produce a dynamic moving montage of images and information for the press launch of the RNID's new hearing test phone line - part of their Breaking The Sound Barrier campaign.

The video and film artwork and creative concepts were produced by Jason Bridge working with production company Pull Creative. The large white build

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UK - The impact of David Gilmour's distinctive, edgy guitar work does not wane with repeated listening and Turbosound's Aspect loudspeaker system, used on his current On an Island tour, reproduces every note to hi-fi quality.

Both Turbosound and sound rental company Britannia Row have a long history with Gilmour that stretches back to Pink Floyd days and loyalty in the Gilmour camp to both companies is strong.

"There are a lot of people involved here who have been with David from day one," says production manager Roger Searle. "But no one is so set in their ways that they're not prepared to change things. David has a way that he likes to work, so that's the way we do things and if he's happy, we're happy."

Searle had some influence over the decision on choice of sound system. As he puts it: "I stuck my twopenneth in. We got a great result from

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UK - The 100% Light bursary scheme is being launched at the brand new lighting show 100% Light. The 100% Light bursary scheme has been designed to make it easier for smaller companies to exhibit at the show.

All potential bursary applicants should be UK-based designers who have not previously exhibited at the 100% shows. Applicants who can demonstrate craft and design skills in producing commercially viable products for the lighting industry could be eligible for one of this year's 100% Light bursaries. There will be three 100% Light bursaries on offer to the most original and innovative new designer-makers, with the winners each receiving a 50% discount against the cost of stand space at 100% Light 2006.

The 100% Design bursary, launched in 1997 has helped more than 70 designers. Running alongside established sister shows 100% Design and 100% Detail, 100% Light will feature a

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USA - SurgeX, a leading manufacturer of professional AC power products and control systems, announces that the company's 2005 Rep of the Year award was recently presented to the New York-based firm of Cardone, Solomon & Associates (CS&A).

Covering the manufacturer's Northeast region, from Virginia to Maine, CS&A is under the direction of co-founders John Cardone and Mike Solomon, who were presented with the same award by SurgeX only three years ago.

Cardone says: "It is a pleasure representing a product like SurgeX, which provides such reliable performance and clear benefits to the designer, integrator and end user of any AV system."

"Working with such a professional and attentive rep firm like CS&A is certainly a mutually rewarding experience," says SurgeX co-founder and senior principal Michael McCook. "Their broad-based knowledge of system

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UK - A decision to underwrite the trade price and bring distribution in-house has enabled Van Damme UK to increase dealer margins whilst at the same dramatically decreasing the suggested selling price of its new, highly acclaimed Musician Series - a range of high quality hand terminated instrument, speaker and microphone cables launched in the first quarter 2006.

Van Damme's marketing director Nigel May says: "This is one of those very rare occasions where both trade and suggested selling prices can be cut without compromising product quality. The cost savings achieved are being passed directly on to our dealers, which means that our Musician Series cables are now up to 40% cheaper."

As part of the re-organisation, the company has appointed Simon Christie to the position of account manager for the Musician Series and he will be liasing directly with the MI trade. Chr

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South Africa - The Soundcraft range of MH desks has been widely adopted over recent years in South Africa, with companies deploying them for use in installed applications, such as theatres, as well as for live touring sound.

The list of MH users, in particular, is rapidly expanding, and the latest to add its name is MGG Productions, who have purchased a Soundcraft MH3 32ch console from distributors Wild and Marr.

Formed in 2000, MGG primarily supplies technical services and equipment for events and productions in the fields of sound, lighting and video - but in this short period the company has put together a large inventory of equipment.

Having expanded rapidly, MGG found a growing requirement for a FOH desk to meet demands of larger events, and enable them to supply a FOH solution to complement their new JBL VRX PA.

"Having enough channels on a desk is essential, an

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