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UK - InfoComm International this week stages University Days in the UK for the first time. University Days will be held at the QEII Conference Centre in London on Tuesday, 16 April and at Leeds Metropolitan University on Thursday, 18 April. Both events will feature a full day of education sessions and manufacturer training, plus lunch and a closing cocktail reception.

Programme highlights include The Reality of Radio Frequency Access Changes to AV Users, to be presented by Tuomo Toinen of Shure Distribution; GUI Design, Workflow and the User Experience, from AMX's Jonathan Mangnall; AV Systems Commissioning Best Practices, from Frank Sheehan of Visual Acuity; and From A Wobbly Castle To The Moon, an overview of AV services supplied to the London Olympics and Paralympics Ceremonies, led by Scott Burgess of Creative Technology.

Chris Lavelle, regional

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France - ACS France has announced the Shotover K1 from Shotover as the latest addition to its aerial filming equipment range.

"Adding the Shotover K1 to its portfolio, ACS France brings a new innovative offer in equipment that consistently produces unique and inspiring images, be it aerial filming (Gyron SuperG2, Flying Cam), flying cameras on wire (Cablecam and Skycam) or tracking cameras with the PFC Ultimate Arm," said Luc Poullain, CEO of ACS France. "All this high level technology increases ACS France's palette of products, allowing ACS France to offer economic solutions for complex shoots."

"At last, 4k has the stability it deserves with Shotover K1," said Aerial director of photography Jim Swanson. "Cineflex-type stability with a choice of cameras and lenses. I can't wait to work with it."

"Aerial cinematography is one of t

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UK - Following extensive research and collaborative testing, Inspired Audio and LMC Audio Systems have signed an agreement for LMC Audio to sell and service Inspired Audio products in the UK and Ireland live audio market.

Inspired Audio has developed a premium quality loudspeaker system family designed, manufactured, and tested in Nottingham, by the team led by design director Chris Scott, who has a track record of over 20 years of original design success.

Scott comments, "Inspired Audio gives me a clean sheet of paper in terms of the product and, equally importantly, how that product was represented in the marketplace. It is fair to say that having been around the block a few times I had clear ideas on what does and doesn't work and I knew that I wanted a clear, simple and controlled route to market, making a well-placed distributor the obvious choice for the UK.

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USA - ProSight Specialty Insurance, a global specialty insurance carrier in the film and live events industry, has announced that it is partnering with PLASA, the global leader in developing technical standards for the entertainment industries. The organisations have collaborated to advance PLASA's Technical Standards Programme to increase safety throughout entertainment production. Together ProSight and PLASA are ensuring that every professional in the business has access to all PLASA Technical Standards by making them available to anyone free of charge.

According to Lori Rubinstein, executive director of PLASA, North America, "Our alliance with ProSight will have a significant impact on the entertainment industry by allowing all those involved in the creation of entertainment events free access to standards that will make their lives safer and easier. We are thrilled that

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South Africa - For the tenth consecutive year, Johannesburg rental company MGG Productions were commissioned by csquare to provide the lighting for the rocking annual Potch Rag festivities held at Jool Plaas in Potchefestroom.

The Potchefstroom University sport grounds were alive as students built floats for a street parade which was followed by live performances from local band including Karen Zoid, Prime Circle and Die Heuwels Fantasties besides others.

It was the first time that Kevin Rieck of MGG had free rein on the design on the concert. On a permanent outdoor stage, the MGG crew built a box truss (4.5m x 10m) with three mid sections and a back truss for the Martin LC 2140 LED Wall. The show included Robin 100LEDs, Robin 600 LED Washes and Robin 300 Spots and beam work by Clay Paky Sharpys. All lighting and the LED wall were controlled on a grandMA full size and a grandM

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South Africa - Robe was the lighting choice for the 12th annual Metro FM Music Awards held recently at the Durban ICC Arena. Dream Sets were commissioned by Blue Moon Corporate Communications to provide the set and the technical elements of this prestigious event.

With an objective to deliver the best Metro FM occasion to date, Dream Sets' Robert Hoey, Eben Peltz and Sean Hoey were the technical directors. They collaborated with Gearhouse Durban who were the main technical suppliers.

Francois van der Merwe of Wizardry Group was the lighting designer and operator. "While I had free reign, Dream Sets wanted the show to be spectacular with theatrical looks and with lighting good enough for the television broadcast," he said.

Van der Merwe programmed on a grandMA2 full size and incorporated video on a MA2 server. He had some 66 Robe fixtures at his disposal. "Ther

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China - Race Day at the Formula One Shanghai Grand Prix: The excitement mounts. Second only to the incredible spectacle of the cars is the intense sound, as the air fills with the roar of engines. It's a meeting of sound, vision and passion. Reflecting this fusion, Infiniti Red Bull Racing and Sennheiser are joining forces for the 2013 racing season.

The audio specialist has been named as the first Official Audio Supplier, supplying professional audio solutions for the Factory debriefs, driver interviews and powering the DJ booth in the exclusive Paddock Club. The cooperation kicked off at the Shanghai race with a special DJ set from Chinese superstar DJ, Jamaster A, and the creation of an exclusive edition of Sennheiser Momentum headphones.

While Infiniti Red Bull Racing takes winning performance to the track, Sennheiser will take premium sound backstage as the first ever Off

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USA - When California-based Barten Production Service recently provided technology reinforcement for the 2013 MOD Awards at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas, the set design depended heavily on Volkslicht Zoom and Spot One LED fixtures from GLP's impression range. Barten have been providing sound, lighting, AV, and production management services for the event, which honours the best modular trade show exhibits and event designs, for several years.

Dave Barten's eponymous company has a long association with the event, as it does with GLP - having first been introduced to the German company's LED solutions as a result of being the 'trussing partner' of Cosmic Truss, for which GLP is the distributor for the Americas. Today they own 12 Volkslicht Zooms and eight Spot Ones, which are regularly out on duty.

"The amazing thing was that at the MOD Awards we were able to handle

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Germany - The Nexo Awards are presented annually in Frankfurt, and this year, the big prize was carried off to the other side of the world. Group Technologies, the Melbourne-based company that was the first to launch and make sales of Nexo's new flagship STM Series, was named as Distributor of the Year 2012-13 at the Prolight+Sound show Awards ceremony.

Beating off competition from Chile, Mexico and China, GT Group won the top Nexo Award for its impressive launch of STM at the end of 2012, described by those who attended as 'simply the best product introduction we have ever seen'. GT was also the first to bring an STM system into use in the real world, signing up Australian rental company Monitor City as an early pioneer of Nexo's modular line array. Anthony Touma of GT was in Frankfurt to pick up the Award from Denis Baudier.

Other winners included Iemke Roos of the Netherlan

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USA - With six separate vocal choirs, full worship band, and energetic services, First Baptist Church-Broad in Memphis Tennessee presents as a healthy and vigorous place of worship. It's also growing just as vigorously; the new church building has an auditorium that seats fifteen hundred people; as such a new sound system was a high priority. "Music can break barriers of both language and culture," said Rod Vester, Minister of Music at First Baptist. "Within a city that has struggled with racial division, we are thankful to be known as a 'love to love' church. All are welcome to worship, so the sanctuary has to be equipped to support us."

"The new worship centre was constructed to maintain the rich history of the church while looking to the bright future," reflects director of operations, Reverend Craig Freeman. To accomplish this, First Baptist Chu

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USA - Eastern High School, in Voorhees, New Jersey, is a regional district school with 2100 students. Its main outdoor stadium is a 2500-seat, multi-season venue used for football, field hockey and track and field events. In 2012, Eastern began a major renovation that will conclude with new artificial turf and a new track in time for June, 2013 graduation ceremonies.

As part of the renovation, Eastern upgraded their stadium sound system with Community R-Series, WET Series and iBOX loudspeakers. The stadium previously had four Community R-Series model R2-474 loudspeakers on light poles - two at both ends of the home team bleachers. JD Sound and Video refurbished these, added Polar Focus brackets and re-aimed the R2s for better coverage. JD then added a pair of WET Series W2-218s on the press box to cover the home-team bleachers and delayed the original R2s to avoid artificial ech

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Finland - SGM has made a breakthrough with its LED products in Finland, notably with Jaakko Peltomäki Ltd. After the Helsinki-based events company saw the Danish company's impressive display at Prolight+Sound 2012 Jaakko Peltomäki himself made the decision to invest, after being particularly impressed by the LB-100 LED Balls.

"We were looking for some new ideas for our productions - and these were perfect," he said. Seeing how they could be formed into curtains to deliver alluring 3D spatial effects, they invested in 550 strings, each containing seven 34mm Balls, 20 TLD-612 pixel drivers to run it ... and some extension cords.

The 21-year-old company has a versatile work roster, ranging from fashion shows to retail, and they have full turnkey capability, with sound equipment, trussing, video and LED screens. "In fact I was looking for the LED screens when I ha

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UK - XL Video supplied full video production - including 457 tiles of Pixled F12 LED, PPU / cameras, Catalyst media servers and crew for the recent UK arena leg of Biffy Clyro's Oppositesworld tour.

The Ayrshire rockers' sixth studio album has been their first to take the Number One slot creating huge excitement. The sold out tour featured a set created by show designer / director Misty Buckley, an intricate tree-like structure at first glance which at second squint could morph into of a pair of lungs, complete with the arterial / branch complexity of both structures. This set piece also featured integral video elements.

It was combined with a lighting design by Oli Metcalfe and live camera direction by Richard Shipman to form a colourful and interesting visual aesthetic and backdrop to the band's incendiary performances which earned rave reviews!

XL's project manager

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Denmark / UK - Folk singer Sam Lee finally ended his long search for the right vocal microphone when he discovered DPA Microphones d:facto vocal microphone.

Lee, who was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize in 2012, was introduced to the DPA d:facto Vocal Microphone by Front of House sound engineer Jamie Orchard-Lisle.

"Finding a microphone to match my voice has never been easy," Lee says. "After successive attempts to find the gear to capture the full colour and dynamics of my voice, I've always been left feeling a bit cold. It wasn't until Jamie introduced me to the DPA d:facto Vocal Microphone that the full Technicolor really left the stage and illustrated the depth and clarity of my range."

Multi-talented Lee is not just a folk singer - he also teaches and hosts radio and TV programmes. His debut album Ground of its Own is an unusual folk collec

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Russia - Moscow's renowned Durov Theatre recently upgraded its sound equipment selecting the new Allen & Heath GLD digital mixing system to manage FOH and monitors.

Founded in 1912 by the clown and animal trainer, Vladimir Durov, the famous children's theatre and circus is an historical entertainment venue. The theatre's audio equipment had not been updated for 30 years and was not providing even sound coverage to the amphitheatre-shaped hall. Consequently, a QSC line array was installed, along with a GLD digital mixing system, comprising the GLD-80 console supplemented by GLD-AR2412 and GLD-AR84 I/O audio racks, all supplied by Allen & Heath's Russian distributor, MixArt.

"GLD was selected for this project for several reasons. Firstly, it has a user-friendly interface similar to that of analogue mixers, so it is easy for the theatre's sound engineers and technical staff

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UK - The fund raising show has been so successful of recent years, that even if you never watched the series Glee, then you would still understand the concept of what it is about.

As part of Comic Relief or Sports Relief, CBBC's Sam and Mark, along with Naomi Wilkinson, present the all singing all dancing talent contest, in which groups performed in front of celebrity judges (vocal coaches David and Carrie Grant and choreographer Sisco Gomez) to be crowned the nation's best young Glee Club. Those select few groups were whittled down through week of previous auditions held across the country.

Long standing LD Roger Williams designed the spectacular lighting show which was provided by Richard Martin Lighting (RML). The show is filmed at BBC Glasgow and is overseen by local company TSL and Tony Kennedy.

The rig comprised of VL500s, Atomic Strobes, Alpha Beam 700s, Sharpy

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Trinidad - With 15 of the biggest Chutney Soca artists in the world taking part, the recent Chutney Soca Monarch competition, held at Skinner Park in Trinidad's San Fernando, was the biggest of its kind in the world, showcasing talent from North America, the Caribbean and the UK. This event has been taking place for the past 18 years under the organisation of George Singh's South Ex Event Management.

With 10,000 people attending, the event is a launching pad for many careers in the industry and has triggered an international awareness of this music genre overseas, creating some massive productions. Prevalent in Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Surinam,'Chutney Soca' itself is described as a crossover style of music incorporating Soca elements and Hindi-English lyrics, with the indigenous 'Chutney' music complemented by Indian instruments like the dholak and dhantal.

This year fiv

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Brazil - The beginning of 2013 has seen DiGiCo consoles partying on down in two of Brazil's hottest destinations, with an SD8 on monitors for Jamiroquai at the Credit Card hall in São Paulo and the flagship SD7 at Rio de Janeiro's legendary Carnival.

Monitor engineer Dan Ungaretti has been working with Jamiroquai since early 2011, and uses a DiGiCo SD8, provided by long-term supplier Britannia Row Productions, to mix the band's in-ear monitors.

"Jay Kay prefers wedges and has a fair few of them around the stage, so he has a separate console and engineer for them. And as there are 11 other musicians on stage, it makes sense to handle them separately.

"There are 60 inputs from stage. I have some extras for the ears and rehearsals, so I'm using all 60 channels on the desk, plus I've snuck another couple in the back door. The entire band wears IEMs and there is a pair

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Europe - Events crewing firm Gallowglass is expanding its European operations with the opening of two offices - in Paris and Monaco.

The company established its first French base in Nice in 2006 and has become a regular presence along the Cote d'Azur, particularly at the Cannes Palais des Festivals, Nice Acropolis and Grimaldi Forum Monaco.

Gallowglass managing director Nick Grecian said: "The fact that we undertake jobs right across mainland Europe, and consistently in France and Spain made it essential to have local bases, and we opened in Barcelona and Nice at the same time. Since 2005, our Cote d'Azur activity has enjoyed solid growth so it was a natural progression to establish a permanent presence in Monaco as well."

The company's Paris office has been four years in the planning but has quickly filled its order book with jobs such as Google Arts at the Mus&ea

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Eurovision Update - Abba's Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus are set to write an anthem for this year's Eurovision Song Contest, organisers have announced. The pair will team up with Swedish DJ and producer Avicii to compose a theme track for the event in Malmo, Sweden. We Write the Story will be performed for the first time at the opening of the grand final on 18 May.

Show Statistics - Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound closed with113,000 visitors from 142 countries (2012: 109,481 visitors, 120 countries). "This visitor response has far surpassed our own expectations and that of the exhibitors", says Detlef Braun, managing director of Messe Frankfurt GmbH. "With 113,000, the visitor numbers not only exceeded last year's results by three percent, but it also surpasses the all-time record high from 2009 (112,478 visitors). This is a fantastic result for th

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Germany - ETC's Layers of Light Theatre proved once again to be a popular attraction at this year's Prolight+Sound, with visitors standing off the stand and on tip toes to see the two different presentations.

The first presentation demonstrated how each of the different types of fixtures - tungsten, HID and LED - can work well either individually or together as instruments in a lighting director's tool box; while a second showed how easy it is to set up a lighting system for a gig, making use of the new Magic Sheets function on the control desks and RDM technology, and demonstrating how ETC control desks, fixtures and power control products work together.

Everyone who attended both presentations as well as a personal demonstration of any ETC product was entered into a draw to win a Source Four Mini. The winners were announced as Markus Fuchs, Jan Lemmenmeier, Marcus Schindler

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UK - At the start of the X-Factor auditions in 2010, One Direction as a band didn't even exist. By the end of the competition they had only come third. Today, they have sold over 14m singles and 8m albums and are credited with sparking the resurgence in the boy band concept and of spearheading a new "British Invasion" in the USA.

The production values for their extensive 2013 tour, taking them through the UK and Europe, on to the USA and into the Australasian market, reflect their status as the boy band of the moment. Why have Load Cell Rental been contracted to weigh parts of their rig? Production North's director Steve Levitt has a straightforward answer, "Any show needs to be safe. There have been too many incidents of things falling over in the past couple of years - the video screen that dropped in Florida last month is a case in point - as a touring producti

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UK - This year marked 25 years since Red Nose Day first burst on to our screens and it continues to go from strength to strength, working with some of the biggest names in show business to pull out all the fundraising stops and do something funny for money.

To help capture the fun and energy of Red Nose Day Night of TV: Comic Relief - Funny For Money Richard Martin Lighting (RML) once again came on board to shine the light on some of Britain's best celebrity talent including Michael McIntyre, Rob Brydon, John Bishop, Lenny Henry and Claudia Winkleman.

Chris Kempton, who has designed the lighting for Red Nose Day Night of TV shows for the past 11 years used all the lighting tricks of the trade to bring the show to life, using s Robe Robin 600 LEDWash's, VL1000TS, MAC 700's, VL2000 Wash's, MAC 600's, Sharpys and VL3500's.

Chris Kempton said, 'The Red Nose Day Night of T

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UK - Suppliers to the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games can now champion their involvement in the sporting spectacular, after a landmark deal reached by the Government, British Olympic Association (BOA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC). The new Scheme - the first of its kind - provides eligible suppliers recognition for the part they played in the success of the London 2012 Games.

Le Mark have been awarded a specific licence due to the incredible contribution they played in the opening ceremonies and in recognition of the work and services provided and can now legally promote this worldwide.

With the licence now approved "Supplier of custom printed floor (Ceremonies) to the London 2012 Games." Le Mark are able to promote their work at trade shows both in the UK and internationally, apply for industry awards for their London 2012 work and use the

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  4. Clay Paky adds sparkle to Gary Barlow Tour
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  6. Ski Championships goes digital with Yamaha
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