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UK - Absen partnered with PSCo, Garden Studios and cinematography hire house Procam Take 2, to host the inaugural edition of its Virtual Production Forum on 20 October. Held in Garden Studios’ dedicated VP production facility, the event combined talks, panel discussions and educational content, alongside a scripted live action VP short Going Home, complete with acting, direction, and editing, all played out in real time.
Introducing the day, Brian Macauto, VP industry development director for Absen said: “We are increasingly seeing the impact of LED in filmmaking, and we are pleased to be supporting the virtual production trend with this event. We have put together an event today which helps to explain the latest innovative tech and to highlight the possibilities - we see this vibrant market as full of potential and we want to continue to collaborate with exciting

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Germany - The State Theatre on Gärtnerplatz, commonly known as the Gärtnerplatztheater, was opened in 1865 and its late-classical façade still characterises the ambience of the square in the centre of Munich that gives it its name. Last year, the theatre was converted to digital microphone technology from Sennheiser.
The repertoire of the Gärtnerplatztheater includes performances from all areas of musical theatre, from musicals and modern operettas to revues. The main performance venue is the grand auditorium, which is designed as a classical tiered theatre (balcony with a central box and three galleries) and can accommodate an audience of just under 900 people.
Dirk Buttgereit has been head of the sound department at the Gärtnerplatztheater since 2003. “We’ve been using Sennheiser wireless solutions for many years,” Buttgereit reports. “Even back in the 1
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Europe - Sustainable event power specialist, Power Logistics, has announced plans for its expansion into Europe. The first stage of this development programme is the establishment of a permanent base in Cork, Ireland. To better serve the needs of its Irish client base, Power Logistics has identified that having both an experienced team as well as equipment permanently based there will allow the company to deliver temporary power solutions efficiently and cost-effectively to the events and entertainment industry.
Power Logistics has been supporting Ireland’s premier outdoor events and concerts for over 15 years. This summer has seen the company deliver temporary power solutions for the numerous shows held within Live at the Marquee, Cork, and Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, alongside high-profile acts such as Garth Brooks and Elton John.
Commenting on this recent development,

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South Korea - HH Electronics, part of the Headstock Group of companies, has announced the appointment of Koil Corporation as its official distribution partner in South Korea. Koil will work closely with both HH and Generation AV, HH’s appointed sales agency in the region.
Koil’s president, Jo Mi Jung, is enthusiastic about the new partnership: "Koil Corporation is thrilled to work with HH Electronics, a company with long history and clear passion for the audio industry. HH Electronics’ product line-ups will be optimal choice not only for our sales channels but also for end-users."
Ian Wright, Headstock’s director of global sales agrees, “We’re very happy to be embarking on this exciting new partnership with Koil and look forward to seeing the HH brand continue to grow and thrive within the region. As a highly professional, well-respected company with a very

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Portugal - Contacta Systems is hoping to increase sales in Portugal through a new partnership with established distributor, NAUTA.
Founded in 1992, NAUTA is well-known for its portfolio of security solutions and fire safety products, as well as its audio systems, and represents many major brands.
With Portugal having recently become a member of CENELEC, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation, EN 17210 accessibility standards now apply to public buildings in the country and demand for assistive listening products is predicted to increase.
Head of business development at Contacta, Ran Meyrav, said; “This new partnership will enable us to meet the needs of installers and specifiers across Portugal, looking to meet the accessibility standards. In NAUTA we have found an ideal partner with great technical understanding and the right channels to

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China - Hangzhou Esports Centre, the first professional esports venue in China, recently opened its doors to esports professionals. The starship-shaped venue is a suitable fit for the futuristic and science-fiction feel of esports, but due to the large event space with a long reverberation time, it was a challenge to find an audio system that could achieve the extremely high requirements for esports competitions.
Tasked with providing the overall solution for the Hangzhou Esports Centre project, Zhejiang Dafeng Industry Co, along with AV distributor and provider, EZPro, designed and delivered a comprehensive PA system utilising a range of products from Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW).
The venue’s new PA system consists of 36 EAW KF810P line array systems, 12 EAW SB818P|F single 18-inch subwoofers, six EAW SB180zP compact high-output subwoofers, and fill speakers from E

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Japan - Kennedy House, a noted nightspot in Tokyo’s Ginza area reflects the classic hits popular in Japan from the 1960s through the 1980s.
The Hibino Lighting team kept this goal firmly in mind when redesigning the lighting rig at the club, which opened its Ginza branch in 1985. “Songs from the classic era make up most of the music at this venue,” said Hiroshi Adachi of Hibino Lighting. “Most of the clientele grew up in that era. They come here to enjoy a meal, listen to music, and have fun. So, we wanted to create lighting that contributed to this atmosphere without interfering with the artists on stage.”
Evoking the right atmosphere was only part of the Hibino team’s mission. They also had to ensure that their design would be camera friendly, since Kennedy House videos these performances for streaming. They achieved both goals with a balanced, flexible r

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Germany - Structures International – which is to be held at Messe Dortmund between 8 and 10 November – is set to cover ‘every aspect of the tent and marquee sector’. Europe's new trade show for temporary space solutions is to offer a one-stop-shop experience, focusing not just on temporary structures, portable buildings and tents of all varieties, but also on a wide range of accessories, decorative and functional equipment plus a host of service offerings.
The show will be supported by a packed supporting programme featuring a host of subject-matter highlights.
As well as established names in marquees and tentage, portable buildings and roofing such as Röder Zelt und Veranstaltungsservice, HTS Tentique, HR-Structure, Oostdam Flexzelt International, Eurostrechtents Deutschland, Skyliner and Stadur Productions GmbH, the exhibition will also showcase specialist b

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Finland - A zactrack SMART real time tracking system has been installed on the Main Stage at the Tampere Workers’ Theatre (Tampereen Työväen Teatteri - TTT) in Tampere, Finland, where it is being utilised by both the audio and lighting departments.
The building housing this 800-capacity stage was completed in 1985, its 20m width making it the second largest stage in Finland. The Theatre’s repertory programme presents Finnish plays, world literature classics and a diverse and vibrant range of musicals.
In 2020, they invested in L-Acoustics L-ISA immersive audio technology which brought the requirement for a leading-edge tracking product that would work for both audio and lightin,g explained Pauli Molnar, sales manager from zactrack’s Finnish distributor, Intersonic based in Espoo.
In the initial months of using L-ISA, it soon became apparent that accurate,

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Germany - As a virtual production and XR studio for film, advertising, live events and more, LEDcave aims to make high-tech media production accessible for all types of media teams and budgets.
Earlier this year, the company collaborated with soup.filmproduktion to bring the vision of German multinational home improvement supplies retailer, OBI, into reality, by utilising LEDcave’s most advanced studio in Berlin for OBI’s summer campaign Du must nicht alles wissen. Frag uns! Alles machbar mit OBI (You don’t have to know everything. Ask us! Everything is possible with OBI). Filmed under the direction of Justin Izumi, the giant LED volume powered by Brompton LED processing was used to extend reality by blending ultra-realistic virtual backgrounds and the physical set together.
“The aim of the OBI summer campaign was to inspire people to finally start the DIY proj

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USA - Nestled in the small-town charm of Greenville, Mississippi’s historic downtown, St. Joseph Catholic Church is rich with culture and community. Every week, parishioners come together under the high ceilings and stately archways of the nave, where light from stained-glass windows floods into the sanctuary.
While the stunning architecture suits the sacred music of the parish choir, the space’s design led to difficulties with spoken word intelligibility. The old sound system was unable to compensate for the demands of the space, but a generous donation allowed St. Joseph Catholic to meet the community’s needs with an audio upgrade: a new Iconyx sound system from Renkus-Heinz.
Church leadership consulted Allen Cotton, solutions architect with Mississippi-based integrator Sound & Communications, to design a new system that would cover the entire sanctuary –

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Singapore - Believed to be the first production in Singapore to feature Claypaky’s Tambora Batten, the revival of The LKY Musical recently concluded its run at the Sands Theatre at the Marina Bay Sands. Lighting designer Gabriel Chan chose 24 of the high-powered batten fixtures to provide backlighting and effects lighting for the show, presented by Aiwei and Singapore Repertory Theatre.
The LKY Musical is one of the most successful Singaporean shows of all time and the first large-scale musical to play the Sands Theatre in more than two years. The production opened to a sold out run at its debut in 2015 and was nominated for several categories in the Straits Times’ Life! Theatre Awards, including best lighting design by Gabriel Chan.
The production is based on the life of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. It spans about 30 years fro

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Open Air Abba - Mamma Mia! is to perform outside at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre next year to celebrate 24 years since the show premiered in London in April 1999. The show will run at Scarborough Open Air Theatre, the largest open-air concert arena in the UK, from 14-18 June 2023, as part of the show’s UK & International Tour. It marks the return of theatre to the venue, which has hosted music acts in recent years. More than 30,000 tickets are on sale for the six performances.
Creator and producer Judy Craymer said: “We are so excited to be bringing Mamma Mia! to Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer. With its heart-warming story told through the wonderful music of ABBA, Mamma Mia! lends itself perfectly to the outdoors.”
Closure Threat - The future of a Manchester music venue which has hosted bands such as Wet Leg, Elbow and the Arctic M

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USA - Earlier this month, Danley Sound Labs and their marketing agency Forum Communications were recognised by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts’ 17th Annual w3 Awards. The partners earned a gold w3 Award for the redesign of their website www.danleysoundlabs.com.
“Our focus on Danley’s new website was to improve the user experience and simplify access to product information,” said Nick Kastner, director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications. “The requirements for the design were to simplify access to products and to showcase the many impressive applications and installations of Danley products.”
Forum’s process for the design focused primarily on recategorisation of product information, simplification of the site’s architecture, and full implementation of Danley’s brand.
“At Danley, the only true way to understand the

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UK - TiMax spatial audio and showcontrol manufacturer, Out Board, has announced a strategic relocation of its distribution partnership through Poland, in alliance with the strategic growth plan of its long-standing distributor, Polsound.
Following many successful years with Polsound who have supported and developed the market in Poland, the TiMax range of products including TiMax SoundHub and TiMax Tracker will be managed through ESS Audio.
The strategic coordination leverages the additional solutions-based project resources within ESS Audio, which operates across the full spectrum of TiMax's core live event and theatre markets, as well as the rapidly-growing presentation and experiential sectors where the unique immersive audio technology adds notable benefit and value.
Out Board director, Dave Haydon, commented, “We have always had tremendous synergy with the

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UK - Following the extensive report released by PLASA and #WeMakeEvents last winter, they have now released a follow-up survey, investigating the ongoing recovery of the supply chain to the live events, entertainment and installation industries. Companies and individuals are invited to complete the survey, which closes at midnight on Sunday 20 November.
This new survey will build upon last year’s findings which were sourced from nearly 2,000 industry professionals in over 40 countries. The subsequent 2021 report revealed huge challenges: 45% of companies took on additional debt to survive the lockdowns, 94% of manufacturers experienced delays in components, 69% of companies faced skills shortages, and full-time freelancers in the industry dropped by 52%.
With last year’s survey serving as a solid benchmark, the new follow-up survey will accurately measure the progr

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USA - The annual iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas is, at its core, a nationally televised special. Tom Kenny always has this firmly planted in this mind when designing the lighting rig for this two-day series of performances by stars like Black Eyed Peas, Pitbull, Lionel Ritchie, Diplo, and The Black Keys.
“This is a big, multi-camera TV show,” said Kenny. “Every year I try to have the most modern and popular fixtures for the visiting designers to work with so they can create dynamic looks in this big space (T-Mobile Arena) that come off well from every camera angle.”
To achieve this vision, Kenny works closely with the entire design team to ensure the seamless integration of light and video on stage. Toward this end, he strives to minimize empty spaces between video walls and the lighting rig, which although they may be ok for live audiences, come off d

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Belgium – tvONE CORIOmaster2 and Hippotizer solutions have been installed at the Council of the European Union and European Council headquarters in Brussels, to drive several LED and LCD walls used as graphical backdrop during high-level international events.
Housed in two buildings, the Council of the European Union is where ministers from each EU member state meet to discuss, amend, and adopt EU directives, and coordinate policies. The European Council, housed in the same buildings, is responsible for the political direction and priorities of the European Union.
The institutions already use two tvONE CORIOmaster2 video wall processors at their facilities in both the Justus Lipsius Building and the Europa Building in central Brussels. In the Europa Building, a CORIOmaster2 manages the visuals on a Barco LED wall in the VIP entrance - where Heads of State and ministe

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USA - Design firm Darkroom Creative is handling lighting design, set design and video content for Walker Hayes’ Glad You’re Here Tour and has employed Elation Professional’s compact Smarty Hybrid moving head in a multifunctional role. The 15-city run kicked off on 29 September in Johnstown, PA with lighting supply by Bandit Lites.
Early this past summer, Darkroom Creative received a call from Walker Hayes’ manager Robert Carlton, who was forming plans for the emerging country star’s first headlining arena tour. Thanks to a successful album release earlier in the year, along with the breakout Fancy Likewhich was nominated for Best Country Song at the 2022 Grammy Awards, his popularity has taken off.
“At that point, it was all just building blocks - arenas, two trucks, six weeks - and from there it was a good deal of collaboration between us, W

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USA - In preparation for Thomas Rhett’s just-concluded Bring the Bar to You Tour, a 30-date US trek, FOH engineer Trey Smith and monitor engineer Jimmy Nicholson had plotted out much of the tour’s sonic complexity during a series of extensive rehearsals leading up to it. During these, while the band, musical director and Smith arranged keyboard and guitar-amplifier modelling patches, Nicholson perfected what Rhett himself would hear in his IEMs while allowing each performance to be both true to the recordings and fitted perfectly to each successive venue.
The only way to accomplish that, according to the audio engineers, was via DiGiCo’s Quantum7 console - times two. Rented through Nashville-based Spectrum Sound, the identical control desks reportedly made all the difference in terms of being able to reliably execute a complicated show night after night.

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USA/Europe - Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys has completed her sixth concert tour playing 31 dates in North America and 21 in Europe on the Alicia + Keys World Tour. The show, which celebrates the 15-time Grammy winner’s career from her early R&B music to her seventh and eighth studio albums, finds Keys singing, playing piano and DJ-ing to the delight of fans.
Lighting designer, Bryan Barancik, principal of Luxious Creative in Boston, selected 142 Ayrton Perseo Profiles as the workhorse fixtures on the rig in the European leg. He also chose two grandMA3 full-size consoles with five NPUs to control the lighting plus a grandMA2 onPC command wing for use by the touring techs. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive North American distributor of the Ayrton and MA Lighting brands. 4Wall is the lighting and video equipment vendor for the tour, which kicked off in Birmingham,

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UK - As a contribution to Global Lifting Awareness Day, the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) put lifting-related topics for end users in the Entertainment sector under the spotlight.
Without lifting the entertainment industry will grind to a halt: theatre, television and film sets would not be moved, lighting rigs for live concerts will remain on the stage instead of above it. However, in the spring of 2020, the sector really did come to a sudden stop. Entertainment was hugely impacted by Covid, being one of the first sectors to be put into lockdown and often one of the last to be freed from restrictions, as Paul Fulcher, founder and managing director of Rigging Services, explained in his presentation on Post Covid rigging training requirements for new recruits working in the Entertainments Sector. Many freelance contractors found themselves out

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UK - Offering authentic Turkish food within a colourful upbeat space, the dining and drinking experience at Lokma restaurant in Stratford is billed as ‘both exotic and succulent.’
Combining traditional cuisine into a contemporary setting has been flooding the London restaurant scene in the last few years and thanks to technical assistance from Flipside AV, Lokma guests will enjoy musical entertainment alongside a menu deeply infused with culture and tradition.
Having already designed a successful system at the Lokma restaurant in Bermondsey, Flipside were called upon once again to make the Stratford location work just as well. James Cooper, managing director at Flipside recalls: “It took a bit of planning to work out the space as a whole – being split across multiple levels, while still being quite open, it’s a slightly unusual space to work with, but I’m r

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USA - Old time country is in good hands with ACM and CMA award-winning singer/songwriter Jon Pardi whose classic country sounds on his Ain’t Always the Cowboy Tour are being complemented by lighting from Elation Artiste Mondrian and Artiste Monet luminaires.
Described as ‘the kind of honkytonk that gets people drinking, dancing and drowning their heartaches,’ Pardi combines an old-fashioned country vibe with youthful energy. He hit the road July 14 in support of his new album Mr. Saturday Night with stops all over the US.
Chris Reade and Jay Ballinger of KYVA Design have been designing and conceptualizing with Jon Pardi for the last eight years. For the Ain’t Always the Cowboy Tour this past summer, Reade says that Ballinger proposed the idea of projecting strength with steel beams and rugged structure elements that resonated within that co
  1. Abbey Road installs VDC Purple Patchbays
  2. Chauvet meets Made in America expectations
  3. Church Of God upgrades with L-Acoustics Kara II
  4. WPL makes Preston Park debut for Brighton Pride
  5. Harman Pro continues the fight against cancer
  6. Whitepaper outlines sustainability issues in live production
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