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UK - Bandit Lites is excited to announce that they have recently provided lighting production to the extremely successful, first ever Cbeebies Live! Fantasy Circus tour, presented by BBC Worldwide.

The tour - production managed by Nigel Mousley with lighting designed by Mark Cunniffe - visited UK arenas over the holidays, with a star-studded cast including The Tweenies, Postman Pat, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and many more. The tour included three shows daily, enthralling thousands of children and parents alike in a block-busting, action-packed highly visual performance.

Bandit UK's chief executive, Lester Cobrin, comments: "This is a fantastic song and dance show for the whole family to enjoy, especially over the holidays. The show is a highly innovative live stage production and I am extremely proud and privileged to be involved with such a dynamic team of peop

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UK - When you're out shopping, you can tell Christmas is approaching when you hear festive music in the shops and start seeing decorations in the high street. In a lighting rental company, you can tell Christmas is approaching when there's a massive upturn in demand for smoke machines, pyrotechnic controls, moving lights and battens for lighting painted cloths - that's how White Light knew Christmas was getting near as far back as November, as the first rigs for the traditional British pantomime season started shipping.

Before the end of that month, White Light had supplied lighting equipment to pantomimes including Mother Goose in Bromley (lit by Graham McClusky) and Aladdin in Glasgow (lit by John Tapster). These shows were quickly joined by another Aladdin in Brighton (lit by David Howe), Snow White in Manchester (lit by John Tapster), Cinderell

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Italy - In just over two years, Fiera Milano has built an avant-garde exhibition complex that combines record-breaking dimensions and exceptionally flexible use with the highest technological equipment standards. With its 345,000 gross square metres of undercover exhibition area (plus 60,000sq.m outdoors), eight huge halls almost totally free of columns, 74 conference rooms, 84 refreshment spots, and parking for 10,000 vehicles plus another 10,000 planned, the new Fiera Milano is the largest complex in Europe and sets a new world standard for the exhibition sector.

A nucleus of nine conference rooms make up the Stella Polare Conference Center, together with the newly-opened Auditorium, designed by the architect Speroni. This lavish shell-shaped space includes high quality audio management, from local control of all audio variables by a 40-channel Soundcraft MH3 audio console to

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UK - Using LED technology from Dialight Lumidrives, DW Lighting has helped transform the revamped Clocktower restaurant at Rudding Park, one of Yorkshire's top hotel and golf resorts.

The well-known Clocktower restaurant has undergone a major refurbishment featuring a cosmopolitan fusion of interior design inspirations from all over the world. Interior and feature lighting is provided by cool white and blue LEDs. Gordon Routledge, managing director of Dialight Lumidrives says: "The Clocktower redesign has enabled DW Lighting to make fantastic use of LEDs to create a visually stunning scene."

Dialight Lumidrives supplied 53 arrays with cool white LEDS and 12 arrays with blue LEDs powered by 33 Variled 16 drivers. Dialight Lumidrives specialises in the development of components to enable applications in solid state lighting, including power drivers, LED arrays and opti

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Europe - For the promotion of their latest album Feelin' Good, jazz artists Joe Sample (piano) and Randy Crawford (vocals) have been touring through Europe, accompanied by Sample's son Nick on (contra-) bass and Johnny Vidacovich on drums.The band was reinforced by Alcons pro-ribbon line-arrays.

This tour, Paul Mitchell was both sound supervisor and tour manager. Mitchell has worked with several of the great names in contemporary jazz and fusion; He was engineer on David Sanborn's Inside and Marcus Miller's M2, both Grammy award winning albums, but also engineer (& co-producer) of The Rembrandt's hit single I'll Be There For You from the TV show Friends.

Mitchell says: "I always loved the smooth top-end of a specific brand that I've been working with for many years and never thought of the possibility that it could be beaten. I started m

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UK - Three exciting performances took place in December in arena settings in Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham. A selection of the most captivating scenes from The Blue Planet programme were projected on an immense custom made ECT projection screen. At 16m x 8m, it was one of the largest screens ever used in the country. ECT designed and manufactured strong very lightweight truss sections in a aluminium finish for the frame. The front projection screen material had webbed black border with eyelets which allowed easy dismantling and erection.

Howard Raynor, promoter for the show said: "The screen did its job magnificently presenting these breathtaking BBC pictures to over 14,000 people in Arenas in Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham. The Blue Planet Live! has been attracting great reviews in all three cities."

The show was conducted by award-winning compos

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Qatar - In early December as Doha, Qatar hosted the 15th annual Asian Games with an Opening and Closing ceremony befitting the world's top international sporting events. In a celebration of Qatar, the city of Doha and Arabic culture, Khalifa Stadium was transformed into a spectacle of colour and costume that placed Doha firmly on the sporting world's map. The ceremonies were produced by David Atkins Enterprises for DAGOC (Doha Asian Games Organising Committee).

Although the Qatari capital uncharacteristically suffered the most rain locals could remember in years, including a downpour just 45 minutes before the Opening, it neither dampened the spirit of the Games nor affected the nearly 400 MAC 2000 Washes used on the production.

Distributed through Martin's Australian representative, Show Technology, the MAC 2000 Wash fixtures along with Atomic 3000 strobes and Stage Cyclos w

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USA - The Entertainment Technician Certification Program Council has announced the first ETCP Certified Entertainment Electricians. These individuals have passed the rigorous, competency-based electrical examination which took place in October 2006. These electricians, the "Class of 2006", are listed on the ETCP website. There are 110 ETCP Certified Entertainment Electricians. 23 of these individuals also hold certifications in Arena and/or Theatrical Rigging. Each can be identified on the jobsite by requesting to see their ETCP ID card that includes their picture, date of certification and, most importantly, area(s) of specialty. They are also identifiable through the exclusive use of the ETCP Certified Entertainment Electricians logo on their business card or website.

Administrations of the electrical examination will begin at computer testing centres across the U.S.

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Finland - Two nights at Helsinki's largest venue, the Hartwall Arena, not bad for aboy from the wrong side of Queens. But then 50 Cent has become quite theinternational phenomenon in recent years, even in the frozen north ofEurope. Helsinki might be the capital of Finland, and Finland might beEurope's heavy metal HQ, but that didn't stop seventeen thousand excitedFinnish rap and hip-hop fans wanting to 'get tickets or die tryin'.

The Hartwall concerts were a one-off event, 50 Cent was not on tour, and assuch his Production called upon Akun Tehdas, Finland's leading equipment rental provider, to supply all of50 Cent's sound requirements. "This was a typical large scale event for us,"said Timo Liski of Akun Tehdas, "that meant 100% attention to detail."

Thecompany had just taken delivery of their brand new J-Series line arraysystem from d&b audiotechnik in Ge

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UK - Summit Steel supplied two 10 metre SmarTasts for Fatboy Slim's Big Beach Boutique event, taking place in Brighton, between the city's Palace Pier and its Marina.

Twenty thousand people moved, grooved and kicked 2007 off at the fantastic New Year's Day event, Norman Cook's first public performance on the beach since his ground-breaking Beach Party of 2002. To avoid a repeat of the chaos caused when 250,000 people descended on the south coast resort, this time around, the audience was very tightly controlled, and ticket sales were restricted to people with a local BN post code.

Summit was asked to provide the SmarTmasts by audio suppliers Britannia Row. Brit Row's Roly Oliver and Summit's Jay Call co-ordinated rigging the masts and the main Outline Butterfly line array PA system that was flown from them. They were positioned either side of the stage, 16 cabine

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UK - PSL supplied one of its biggest screens of 2006 to the UK arena tour by Madness, which culminated in a hometown gig at Wembley Arena days before Christmas.

PSL Music's Pod Bluman, says: "Production screens are getting bigger all the time, and the giant central screen for the Nutty Boys uses 80 panels of Lighthouse LED screens in 16:9 aspect ratio." Weighing in at 5.5 tonnes, the screen is of such a size that, in some of the smaller venues, PSL video rigger Chris Harris has had to put extra trussing into the roof spaces to hold it up.

To match the show concept, developed by production manager Lee Charteris, the screen carries a spectacular combination of live footage and graphic content, designed by vision director Tim Fleming. PSL provided a 3-man digital PPU travelling with the tour, all using Sony DXC-D35 cameras, with four additional fixed Sony cameras, and J

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USA - American Idol champ and Nashville recording artist Carrie Underwood, touring in support of her album, Some Hearts, is travelling light as she crosses the country with the grandMA light console. Underwood's album has sold more than four million copies since its release; her national tour is focusing on the fair and festival circuit.

The lighting for Underwood's show was built in rehearsals with a grandMA console by lighting designer Seth Jackson. Bandit Lites' lighting director, Drew Gnagey, who partnered with David Convertino to program and direct the show, is touring with Underwood armed with a grandMA light. "We programmed on a grandMA full-size and took a grandMA light on the road and it's been seamless," says Jackson. "It's as if it's the same console." Jackson and his team programmed the show so it not only includes the lights they're travel

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Portugal - Lighting designer Luis Vidigal enthusiastically embraced Robe moving lights on Monica Sintra's latest tour. She is one of Portugal's leading and most popular artists with an illustrious international career spanning the last 15 years.

The lighting kit was supplied by Lisbon-based Insom, and Vidigal's design utilised 10 Robe ColorWash 575 ATs and 12 ColorSpot 575 ATs positioned on the back truss and floor, "I wanted to have a lot of power from the back of the stage" he explains. The tour itinerary included a great variety of venues, and "The 575 is a neat enough fixture to fit into the medium sized and smaller venues on the tour, but it's output is incredibly bright, so it was the ideal solution for the specific 'look' I was trying to create for Monica."

He's first used Robe fixtures on Sintra's 2005 tour, and was impressed; he now always requests

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UK - XL Video UK renewed its acquaintance with dance gurus Basement Jaxx - arguably one of the most exciting live acts in the UK right now - supplying all the video kit for their UK arena tour.

Basement Jaxx's largest tour to date, amalgamated the talents of their LD Jonathan Armstrong and video director Nick Fry into a dynamic creative team. The two worked very closely in their respective departments to produce energy pumping show visuals that matched the band's full-on, action-packed dance attack.

XL project manager Des Fallon says: "Once again it's refreshing to see something truly original and unique happening through the close collaboration between video and lighting."

It was Jaxx 'ringmaster' Felix Buxton in particular who initiated the idea of an upstage video screen. He specifically wanted a light source that could be used to silhouette the band, and has al

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USA - Space is still available in a series of courses taught by industry experts Richard Cadena, Vicki Claiborne, Steve Irwin, and Richard Wolpert during The ESTA Foundation's Mid-Atlantic Training Week, 29 January - 2 February 2007. Designed for lighting designers, programmers, electricians, and technicians, you can register for the full week of courses or individual days.

The courses will be held from 10am - 5pm at Prince George's Community College in Largo, MD (12 miles from Washington D.C.) and are sponsored by The ESTA Foundation's Seminars and Training Committee and Theatre & Entertainment Technology at Prince George's Community College.

The schedule of classes is as follows: Monday and Tuesday offers an Entertainment Electrician Seminar, led by Richard Cadena. Basic Electricity for Theatre and Stage Power Distribution, taught by Richard Wolpert, takes place on Wednesday

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UK - Audio-visual sales and service company, Green-i, has marked its fifth anniversary by acquiring the interests of corporate event service company, Canegreen Commercial. The deal was confirmed on December 1, 2006, and becomes effective from January 1, 2007.

Both companies were set up as associate business units to the successful rental production company Canegreen Ltd, established by Yan Stile and Pete Edmonds back in 1982. In 1996 Andrew Frengley spearheaded Canegreen's expansion when the new Canegreen Commercial made an instant impact in the corporate event market. In 2001 Green-i, under Ian 'Woody' Woodall further underpinned the expansion with a vibrant installation division in the industry's growing leisure hospitality sector. Concurrently Richard Brooker Sound Design added a third string to Canegreen's bow.

The new Green-i executive brings the two successful former ind

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UK - Britannia Row, Blackout, Creative Technology, PRG Europe and Avolites held their joint Christmas ball, for the second year, at the newly refurbished Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square on Tuesday, 12 December, 2006.

Delighted by the success of the black-tie and flamboyant themed evening, Bryan Grant, managing director at Britannia Row says: "Around 1,200 friends and clients attended the ball during the course of the evening. This was twice the number of guests who were present last year and everyone was expecting it to be at least as successful. Big stress, but our merry band of rascals pulled it off - it was twice as good!"

Jim Baggott used his creative and directorial talents to design the party. Lost Vagueness provided the live entertainment which included Santa's Grotty, The Laundrettas, Dynamo Rhythm Aces, The Fat 45s, Gurlesque and Anna Piana.

Special th

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Malta - The opening of the Malta Fairs & Convention Centre (MFCC) represents a further success for Arena Structures' award-winning TFS temporary venue. The company was presented with an internationally challenging project, which it delivered on time and on budget.

Ruben Caruana, managing director of the Maltese events company Sign-It, was impressed by the TFS when he saw it in action, hosting concerts of up to 10,000 fans, when it was used as the temporary Wembley Arena Pavilion venue during the refurbishment of Wembley Arena, London. At the time he was researching solutions for a large exhibition, conference and concert venue in his Malta.

Arena's account director, Simon Marsh, supervised the removal of the TFS from Wembley and its delivery in Malta. At the same time, Arena dealt with the arrival of 20,000sq.m of temporary structures' equipment from other clients, including t

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Europe - From September to December, George Michael toured arena venues throughout Europe. Celebrating the two and a half decades of his career in music, the 25 Live tour finished off in style, playing nine huge London gigs - four at Earls Court and five at Wembley Arena.

Throughout the tour, three DiGiCo consoles have been the beating heart of the audio system - a D5 Live on Front of House, another for George Michael's monitors and a D5T for band monitors.

Andy 'Baggy' Robinson has worked with George Michael for the past three years. He is the tour's head of sound and Michael's monitor engineer. He says: "Early on it was obvious this show was going to need a digital desk solution. With 15 in the band, including six backing vocals, plus the lead vocal who has very exacting monitoring requirements and needs large amounts of time devoting to him, it swiftly became ap

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USA - When it comes to spectacular shows, few can top these annual holiday season tours of the Eastern and Western USA. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) just keeps getting bigger every year, along with their db/EV rigs. Starting in early November and running through the end of December, the show has grown into a phenomenon that becomes more elaborate every season. For the 2006 concerts, each tour hit the road with a powerhouse 64-box EV X-Array system. Blending a contemporary Christmas narrative with metal-tinged takes on festive classics, these events pack stadiums night after night.

Since visionary composer Paul O'Neill formed the TSO back in 1996, db Sound has brought their sound to legions of fans with EV's X-Array loudspeaker systems, providing a balance of rugged reliability and warm, musical reproduction that have made the db crew and their EV systems a fixture on the t

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USA - Once again Total Structures will be helping one the largest motor manufacturer's promote their products at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) being held in Detroit in January. Hot on the heels of last year's massive Ford corporate structure (a total of 1.5 Miles of truss was supplied) the company has just finished the production of additional equipment for both the Ford and General Motors booths.

For NAIAS 2007 the Ford Motor Company made some changes to the previous year's enormous 110,000sq.ft. ceiling structure, with the entire ceiling moving 15ft. upstage to allow lighting troughs to be repositioned over the new floor layout.

One of the cross stage trusses now fell under an air-wall and the top of the truss at trim sat above the low position of the air-wall track. Total Structures had to make a 240ft. dummy truss 2" thick (essentially a ladder ly

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UK - Liquid is the first nightclub to open in the picturesque Monmouthshire town of Chepstow, South Wales. With a funky minimalist design, an innovative LED mood lighting scheme and a broad mix of good music, it's immediately started becoming a destination for discerning clubbers from in and around the area.

Independent owners Stuart Hayles and Ian Fell, who also own The Castle pub in the town, spotted a gap in the market that they thought they could fill with their brand new 300 capacity venue concept, sited on first floor a former bank.

They wanted to combine high production values with a friendly and chilled vibe, and were also keen to utilise other local businesses and skills, so asked i-Vision's Luke Dodd to design, specify and supply environmental lighting. He had previously produced a small mood lighting scheme for the pub, which had made a real difference to the atmosp

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USA - Two brand-new rooms were recently commissioned at theCleveland Institute of Music: a recital hall and a state-of-the-art audiocontrol room. Theroom was designed by Dr. Peter D'Antonio, adjunct professor of acoustics atthe Institute, while the installed system was developed by Bruce Egre, headof the conservatory's audio recording degree program with an ATC (AcousticTransducer Company) 5.1 surround system as the cornerstone of the new soundsystem..

The two new rooms were added on to one of the existing buildings at the CIM,with the recital hall on the front and the control room on the back. "Thenew control room was designed and built from the ground up to beacoustically precise," says Egre. "We didn't have to try and fit a squarepeg into a round hole, so we were able to avoid some of the more commonpitfalls of re-fitting an existing space. The institute was ve

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USA - Originally a burlesque LA dance revue, the Pussycat Dolls have developed into an A-list phenomena with the likes or Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera queuing up to join in the Doll's flirtatious show for a night.

Lighting designer Scott Warner has worked with the band since March and they have been performing shows all over the world. The lighting rig has developed along the way and now boasts a battery of Martin fixtures and 35 PixelLine 1044s.

Warner actually first discovered PixelLines purely by chance. He explains: "When we first came to the UK I was using a different LED fixture that wasn't available in the UK. The rental company asked if I would like to try PixelLines - and I was hooked!"

Warner wanted a clean look with a disco feel and was happy that the budget allowed him to creative a stunning show that would complement the sexy movement of the ban

  1. grandMA on Amy Grant's DVD shoot
  2. Paradigm help engineer 3D projection concept
  3. K.M.E. PANO at Berlin-Tempelhof airport
  4. Turbosound install at Swedish spa hotel
  5. HK Audio powers Sugababes gig
  6. XTA sound for exclusive Dubai nightclub
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