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14 March 2016

Director Phil Lidstone believes this purpose-specific policy has given them a competitive edge in one of the company's core market areas.

"We design for each individual application rather than use a one-system-fits-all approach," he stated. "We are known as specialists in this sector, where we integrate the two disciplines of pro audio and audio visual under a common control platform. It's a case of being able to differentiate between speech-only systems and those requiring a full dynamic range - and make them operable by non technical users."

RCF, he says, have systems that cover all eventualities. "We have confidence in their ranges, and from R&D to fini

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14 March 2016

Lite Alternative's Paul Normandale has designed the six floor-mounted impression XL LED heads into an elaborate motion controlled set.

His company also fielded a further nine impression 120RZ Zooms from their inventory - adding to the fixtures they first incorporated into the set design for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs earlier in the year (all fixtures supplied by AC Entertainment Technologies). Like the XL's these were mounted at the back of the stage, and blasted their light through four 8 x 8 sections of spinning aluminium louvre shutters, lifted on a Kinesys K2 motion control section.

After a three-year break, the New York-based Scissor Sisters were clearly seeking something more sophisticated than a disco lighting set - b

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14 March 2016

As part of the refurbishment, the hotel brought in Bose Pro Partner, Apple Sound, to upgrade and enhance the AV in the Carden Suite. The self-contained Carden Suite, which has its own entrance and car park, can accommodate up to 400 delegates and continues to complement the existing 11 conference rooms and dedicated business centre, all supported by highly trained event and conference organisers.

In addition to nine 60" plasma screens, Apple Sound installed a Bose sound system, consisting of a Bose ControlSpace ESP-88 audio management system, and Bose Panaray 502As loudspeakers with bass support from Panaray MB4s, to provide both background and foreground sound for c

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14 March 2016

Monitor engineer, Steve Pattison, uses a mixture of the R72 surface and a Touchscreen laptop, giving him the flexibility to talk to the artists during sound check, and move around the venue during the show.

"The band are loving the fact I am on stage face to face changing their mix as they ask, and not running back and forth to the desk. They want to know why we haven't had this before! It's useful having the laptop when stage space is cramped as I can put the rack backstage and sit my laptop on the house desk."

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14 March 2016

Barclay Dakers, who heads up the online resource for theatrical supplies, said, "We have been overwhelmed with positive feedback and suggestions since the launch of the site two weeks ago - it has exceeded all expectations."

The site - which prides itself on ease of use and relevance of information - is an exclusively online service. This ensures that overheads are kept to a minimum and pricing can be reduced accordingly.

Dakers continued: "Essentially, efficiency is the name of the game at oubiance.co.uk. We have worked hard to ensure that the site is easy to navigate and this helps customers to quickly find what they are looking for. In turn, processing an online orde

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14 March 2016

Zbigniew Hubner Theatre, which was founded in 1945, has long been a focal point of Polish theatrical culture, attracting leading artists, directors, musicians, choreographers and stage designers both nationally and internationally. The venue has a long history of using Midas consoles, with a Midas Legend 3000 and a Venice installed in theatres two and three respectively.

Sebastian Ku?ma, the theatre's head sound engineer, chose the PRO6 having previously used the Midas Legend 3000. He was particularly impressed with innovations such as the ability to control the time of crossfades between two scenes wit

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14 March 2016

DBN was asked to light the dance/indie/crossover by event organisers The Warehouse Project and Ear To The Ground - with whom they have worked on many other projects.

Ian Brown headlined the main stage on the Friday night and Friendly Fires on the Saturday, and the project was managed for DBN by Nick Walton.

Walton also did the production design for the main stage, which was largely based around the lighting spec and design for Ian Brown by LD Fletch from Colour Sound Experiment. The rig also incorporated the flexibility to be morphed into a completely different l

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14 March 2016

David Edelstein, who co-organised of the event with his wife Brenda, comments: "We set out from the National Theatre following a hearty breakfast. In total we rode over 1600 miles and on the way visited 16 fascinating and unique theatres. We've been welcomed by some wonderfully hospitable and generous theatre staff and are hugely grateful for all the brilliant support we received. Sponsorship came from all sectors of the entertainment industry, we certainly couldn't have done it without them."

Those who took to the road were: Rob Barnard, Neil Collins, David Edelstein, Charles Haine

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14 March 2016

"We are very excited about this relationship and have already begun selling Eurotruss systems into permanent installations through our dealer network," stated Eric Mueller, director of sales for PRG Distribution NA. "It is evident to me that that our friends at Eurotruss have the same mindset for support and responsiveness as we do in any situation. They are very responsive to our needs for our customers and we look forward to working together with them for some time to come."

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

"We had been looking for a floor to best suit our school for some time, as we offer such a wide variety of performances we need a floor that could do it all. Overall we found Le Mark's Consor portable dance & performance floor to be incredibly durable easy to roll out and very well priced. My personal thanks to Le Mark for the flexibility and patience in arranging the order and delivery, a great floor, and great service to match" says DanceWork's Sue Stead.

DanceWorks hosted two sell-out shows in June in aid of Help for Heroes.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Named in honour of the late designer, developer and commentator Tony Gottelier, this award aims to recognise the product developers who have made a significant contribution to the development of the equipment and tools that enable our entertainment technology practitioners to continually push the boundaries of event production, presentation and installation.

Once the shortlist of nominees is decided, the Voting Phase will begin. This year, to help ensure that only legitimate industry professionals can cast a vote, voting for the n

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14 March 2016

Working in the main Concert Hall, which holds over 1,000 people, Bico installed a Unison Paradigm system with 24 ways of dimming to control the house and rehearsal lights, along with an sACN network system, all connected both to a new Ion control desk and several wall mounted fader stations. Two 48-way Sensor dimming racks and five gateways were also fitted for show light.

Søren Jørgensen, sales project manager at Bico, comments, "This year, we were tasked with updating all their old dimmers with streaming ACN (sACN) and integrating the house and stage lighting. After doing on site tests with the Ion and another manufacturer's desk, the Ion was specified because it operates sile

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14 March 2016

The Victors - the first to enter South Africa - are installed in the largest of the venue's three auditoria, the 1487-seat main Opera Theatre, where upcoming shows include Le Grand Cirque Fantazie, African Songbook, the Cape Town International Ballet Competition and Mamma Mia!.

Senior lighting operator, Nicolas Tilney comments, "Robert Juliat has fantastic equipment with superb R&D. Their followspots are extremely user-friendly with the placements of their controls. The followspots have a general feeling of high quality. From what I had read and seen I knew what I wanted and what I would get from RJ. There was no reason to compare them with any other products."

Robbi Nassi from Electrosonic add

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14 March 2016

The ceremony, held at the Cultural Village in Doha on 10 May 10 was the second stage, the first phase of which began in November 2005 and was completed in December last year. This is an ambitious project, the aim of which is to provide gas to some of Qatar's most significant industries.

For this event Creative Technology supplied four Barco R20+ projectors with 0.8 lenses blended onto a 27m wide x 6m high rear projection screen, also provided by CT. This was used to run the main show content and included GFX video and Catalyst. Operated and programmed by CT London's Anthony Bezencon, the entire system was driven by

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14 March 2016

The lighting designer of this event, Liufeng Shu, renowned for having realized several shows of international significance, including the Singapore International Cantonese Opera Festival and the Qingdao Austria Sail, has chosen the iSpot Extreme 6000, the iSpot Flex and the CF 7 Hard Edge X, which are all Coemar products.

The iSpot Flex, launched in 2002 at the LDI in Las Vegas, boast three patents. They are the first moving heads made with 2000 W discharge lamps, featuring a carbon fibre body.

The iSpot Extreme 6000, created for the Winter Olympics of 2006 in Turin, are the first moving heads with a 1450 W lamp.

The CF 7 Hard Edge X won the Award for Innovation in 2000, are

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14 March 2016

Iwate Prefectural Hall plays a leading role in the art and culture of Iwate, being used for many different purposes, including music, theatre and conventions. Open since 1973, the building's main hall spans three floors and can accommodate almost 2,000, with a secondary 600-capacity hall.

"The reverberation time in the main hall is 1.75 seconds when vacant, and 1.45 seconds at 80% capacity," says the hall's head of hall administration, Mr Naruo Seki. "With a system that has a relatively long r

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14 March 2016

Melvin Benn, who runs the Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals, described it as "blatant money-grabbing". He told BBC News, "The quantum leap in what the PRS are being paid by live music promoters is very, very substantial compared to what it was 10 years ago. Live music is so much stronger than it was, and therefore the receipts the PRS are getting are substantially more than they were. Instead of being ple

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14 March 2016

Baldwin joined fellow students and leading figures from the College, the board of Governors, architects BFLS, project managers Davis Langdon and construction team Willmott Dixon to celebrate this symbolic moment in the building project. Work will begin shortly on the roof structure, the final construction phase of what will be an important new gateway to Cardiff.

"It'll make such a difference to us as students to have everything all together in one building at last, and on this scale, and not to have to travel to other venues to do our work,' said Baldwin. 'I can't wait to get in there and start s

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14 March 2016

The Playground Weekender has emerged as an eclectic gathering featuring a diverse mix of international and local artists, coupled with a relaxed outdoor atmosphere featuring multiple music stages, cabaret acts, a cocktail bar, a healing area, yoga and an array of international food and market stalls. The PA system had to cover a large area but also needed to be well integrated into the visual presentation, and to go up quickly.

The main system consisted of 24, three-way KF740 modules flown in two line arrays on either side of the stage using 12 KF740 modules each. These were augmented with eight EAW SB1002 Large Format

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14 March 2016

During the week thousands of delegates, presenters, exhibitors and visitors descend on the Harrogate International Centre. To facilitate the audio-visual aspects of the conference, R&B provided a team of 30 engineers who work closely with the event organisers, Ocean Media Group and the venue technical staff. 2010 was the 9th year that R&B have provided support for this event, which is always a highlight of the year.

As well as AV support in five conference rooms, R&B Group also supplied numerous plasma screens to exhibition stands and produced a daily in-house/web TV program

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14 March 2016

Stageco project director Dirk de Decker and creative designer Es Devlin consulted with Muse production manager Chris Vaughan, and Malcolm Birkett, technical designer for the tour to create the unique stage designs to support the artistic concept of the show.

Stageco's Koen Peeters and Tom Frederickx were also essential to the team, creating CAD designs and complex calculations needed for the bespoke stage, which was comprised of 20% unique components alongside Stageco's trusted staging system. Dirk then worked out the tour logistics to create the stage in the most efficient way for transportation and building.

The 34

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14 March 2016

The Sector Skills Council for creative and cultural industries has named Gateshead College as the only college in the North East and one of only a few in the country to lead on new training opportunities.

This will mean that the college, in partnership with international music venue, The Sage Gateshead, will now work as the founder college of the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural Skills (NSA) to ensure it continues to provide the best possible learning opportunities by bringing together education and industry.

The NSA, along with the national network of 20 founder Further Education colleges, is also working in partnership with over 200 theatre and live music employers. Gateshe

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14 March 2016

Pulse AV were asked to design, supply and install a comprehensive audio visual system for the entire venue which is divided into five separate audio zones: Bistro, Main Bar & Lounge, Function Area 1, Function Area 2 and Function Area 3.

Wall-mounted DBX ZC-8 keypads located behind the bars are used to control the volume level and audio source in each zone. Each zone is capable of having its own audio source and volume level regardless of what is being heard in any other zone.

A combination of Control24 and Control26 in-ceiling speakers are used throughout the entire venue. Weatherproof surface-mount

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14 March 2016

Investors in People is a national standard which helps organisations transform their business performance. Preparing for the IIP assessment (which took over a year) has involved all of the Black Light team and has led to a business-wide rebranding, improvements in its business systems and a number of changes in staff roles and responsibilities. Together, these have streamlined the company's operations and improved customer service.

"IIP has helped me, as the business owner, focus on what is important for Black Light and start rolling that out," says Gavin Stewart, Black Light's managing director. "I hope tha