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UK - White Light, the Association of Lighting Designers, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama are teaming up once again to present the New Technology Showcase, an opportunity to see and interact with the latest lighting technology in a theatre environment.

Held at RCSSD's Embassy Theatre on 24 January, the event promises to get to the heart of new fixtures and the features that designers and technicians want to see, without the pressure of a sales pitch. To complete the day, the highly anticipated annual ALD Pub Quiz will immediately follow the showcase.

Coordinated by White Light hire business development manager Craig Bennett, the afternoon event will showcase new products from leading lighting manufacturers. Featured products include the Altman LED Phoenix profile and Spectra Cyc 100, Chromlech Elidy S Panel, Clay Paky B-Eye, JB Lighting Sparx7 wash, Martin Prof

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Canada - Scapin Staging, a company which specialises in the sale and rental of staging equipment, has announced the acquisition of Show Distribution, a company also specialising in the sale and rental of staging equipment and electric hoists. This will allow Scapin Staging to reach new markets and to better serve its clients with the addition of new and exciting products.

This acquisition doubles Scapin's number of employees. It will also enable Scapin to offer its products in new markets such as the Maritimes and the US where Show Distribution maintains a distribution centre and has a significant market share. This will broaden Scapin's reach, which began when it moved into Ontario, opening its Toronto office in August 2011.

Under the new administration, Show Distribution's activities will continue at its Quebec City location with its current team while its rental department

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Serbia - TV producers Grand Production has invested in Robe's new Pointe moving lights, 24 of which were supplied by Robe's Serbian distributors Studio Berar Projekt following a specification by Grand Production chief lighting designer Goran Kravic.

These are the first Robe Pointes in Serbian TV, and the new fixtures went straight to work at the Studio Avala Film in Filmski Grad, Kosutnjak, Belgrade for Grand Show which is broadcast live on Pink RTV's Friday night prime-time, featuring a selection of popular folk bands interspersed with live guest interviews.

The show is a massive hit throughout the Balkan regions.

The Pointes will also be utilised on other shows produced by Grand Production for RTV Pink including Grand Parada, Narod Pita and Zvezde Granda, all of which are also music based.

Kravic has been using Robe products for around the las

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UK - For the 2013 - 2014 holiday season, production management company Culture Creative teamed up with lighting specialist White Light to help re-imagine part of London's Kew Gardens for a special night-time trail. The Illuminated Trail took visitors on a mile-long adventure, with lighting and production elements uncovering hidden spaces and revealing new looks for the Garden's mainstay structures. Overseeing the project was Culture Creative director Zoë Bottrell who worked with lighting designer Phil Supple of Light Refreshment to bring Kew to life.

White Light supplied lighting, cable, rigging equipment, and production support for the Illuminated Trail, Culture Creative's biggest nature-based project to date. The project continues a long relationship between the two companies, with White Light supplying several Culture Creative projects over the past eight years including ill

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Prog Rock Returns - 2014 sees the 40th anniversary of the release of Rick Wakeman's landmark concept album, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth based on the novel by Jules Verne. Wakeman and The New World Symphony Orchestra, accompanied by The English Chamber Choir and the English Rock Ensemble, will celebrate this anniversary with "a dramatic, live presentation of this epochal, classical-rock crossover work" - the Journey To The Centre Of The Earth 2014 tour. "This is the start of a new Journey," says Wakeman, "the original score for the album had been lost for so many years, making any new performances impossible. but after it turned up without warning , we managed to restore it and add previously missing music that was not included in the original performances. It has taken another half decade to develop it into this tour, but I can't wait

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UK - Flightcase and loudspeaker component manufacturer and steel fabricator Penn Elcom has converted all the lighting fixtures in its St. Leonards-On-Sea, East Sussex, UK factory and offices to energy efficient, low carbon LED lightsources which have been supplied by CLD Distribution, also based in East Sussex.

The switch from metal halide to LED technology at the plant is saving Penn Elcom a whopping 70% in ongoing electricity running costs!

Based on a 253 day working year with the production lines running 24 hours a day. Penn - which distributes its products worldwide - was using around 272025 Kilowatt Hours (KWH) of electricity before the new installation, a figure that's now dramatically reduced to 68,006 KWH, representing a saving of over £18,000 year ... and nearly 100 tonnes of carbon.

Lamp specialist CLD Distribution offers a comprehensive and innovative range

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USA - LightParts Inc. (www.lightparts.com), the first dedicated parts and repair source for entertainment lighting, is celebrating the ten year anniversary of the company's incorporation. LightParts was founded in January 2004 by Don Pugh and Robert Mokry as the worldwide support centre for High End Systems' legacy products such as Intellabeam and Emulator, but due to customer requests quickly expanded into circuit board repairs and parts sales for High End, Martin, Flying Pig, Jands, Vari-Lite, Element Labs, Strong, Coemar, Wybron, Elation and Clay Paky products.

LightParts now stocks over $1,000,000 of parts for immediate shipment, and employs ten full-time staff at their 6700sq.ft headquarters located in Austin, Texas, USA.

"Many of the world's largest and smallest lighting rental companies now depend on LightParts for the best parts prices and fastest PCB repairs avai

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UK - Production agency Mobile Promotions has joined forces with corporate events specialist Lloyd Paul Events. Taking effect from 20 January, Lloyd Paul Events will be integrated within and become part of Mobile Promotions, with the complimentary portfolio of clients strengthening the conference and incentive travel side of the company.

Both sharing legacies in the events industry of over 20 years, the two companies will work as one to grow all sides of the business, from brand engagement activities, roadshows and stunts to award, conference and event production, with an enhanced focus on overseas incentive travel for 2014.

Paul Lloyd will join the team as event director, and he comments, "When you meet the Mobile Promotions team you are instantly struck by the passion they exude for their clients, which is something that we very much have in common. We pride ourselves on

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USA - While others around the world may have been watching a ball drop at midnight, those at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta were bathed in beams of light as Widespread Panic performed to thousands. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for both Widespread Panic's annual Toys for Tots concert and the New Year's Eve concert a day later.

Lighting designer Paul Hoffman created the design using the band's fall touring rig with "embellishments". Two long curved trusses stretched out over the audience to give the lighting more reach as well as accommodate the special effects like pyro and confetti.

Equipment included Vari*Lite 3000 Spots, Clay Paky Sharpys, GLP X4S's, Martin MAC 101s, Bandit 5x5s, Bandit GRN Pars, GrandMA2 Consoles, a 60" mirror-ball, and 2-lights. Additional video equipment included a video screen of Mirage Panels and Maxedia video servers.

"

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Canada - When Canada's largest airline, Air Canada, decided to relocate its Systems Operation Control (SOC) Centre to a new site outside Toronto, the company knew it needed to include modern technologies that would enable its employees to learn, work and collaborate easier and more efficiently than ever before. To do this, the forward-looking airline hired AV and IT integrator, Advanced.

According to Advanced co-president David Weatherhead, "Air Canada wanted to provide its employees with modern technological tools that would enhance productivity, simplify staff education, and accelerate collaboration. We worked with Thor Hoff, the IT project manager of the SOC relocation, to design professional AV systems for 13 rooms that are now being used for meetings, conferences, collaboration and training. By making it easy for staff members to share ideas, make presentations and man

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Australia - Planetshakers City Church at the Dallas Brooks Centre in downtown Melbourne lives up to its name in many different ways. A vibrant and growing church, Planetshakers is home to world-renowned contemporary praise and worship music. The powerful evangelical message led by Pastors Russell and Sam Evans is now driven home by a sound system that would shame many a touring rock band.

"We have an expanding congregation and a venue that can accommodate two thousand, two hundred across the stalls and two balconies," explained production director, Dan Cornwell. "To deliver a clear, accurate spoken word was a priority; the utmost intelligibility is a necessity. The dynamic nature of our services has a major musical component, this demands high SPLs and because of our expanding numbers we stage multiple services, so the system needs to be able to cope with regular

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USA - As an open space to accommodate community events and recreational activities, Tom Hanafan River's Edge Park sits on the Missouri River, creating a border between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska. Artist Dan Corson recently designed a massive light show for the park, complete with complex characters and simple, intuitive interactive games that spans across the park's five acres. Martin Professional light fixtures were installed by Bandit Lites to illuminate the artist's vision.

Inspired by European baroque knot gardens, the ever-changing light environment showcases choreographed sequences and patterns every half hour. Additionally the piece interacts with visitors via thermal cameras and analytics program to track and "play" a series of simple, intuitive and fun games. The motions of park visitors can control the lighting and allow participants to be track

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Italy - Andrea Taglia, live sound engineer for the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, is a huge fan of DPA Microphones and rates them as the most technically advanced and sonically transparent microphones on the market. It is therefore no surprise that Taglia personally owns a selection of DPA Microphones and regularly sources additional units whenever he is on tour with Bocelli, says DPA.

"I've been using DPA Microphones for many years and bought my first stereo d:dicate 4006 recording microphone when it was still known by the old Bruel & Kjaer name," says Taglia. "I first became familiar with the DPA brand when I was using the company's miniature microphones on singers in musical productions. I eventually began using them on instruments as well, which gave me great results. I'm now a huge fan and have bought quite a few for my own microphone collection, including the

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Australia - Video display experts, Technical Direction Company (TDC) supplied all video technology elements for the 27th ARIA Awards held at The Star, Sydney, Australia on 1 December 2013.

The ARIA Awards are the official awards of the Australian Record Industry Association attended by an audience of over 4,000. The event was broadcast live on Channel 9's GO! with performances from many Australian artists including Birds of Tokyo, Bliss n Eso and Tame Impala as well as special guest appearances from Alicia Keys and Lorde.

The ceremony was produced by Michael Long and Vicki Gerrans. Set design was by Kim Buddee. Stunning screen graphics were produced and operated by Rod Morris.

TDC supplied custom automated rolling screens with ultra-bright 26K HD projectors, that not only provided a uniform, succinct and clean look according to the set design but also acted as a mask

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UK - The Institute of Professional Sound (IPS) has announced further details of its post-production orientated 2014 Training Weekend, which takes place in the English Midlands over the weekend of 7-9 February, 2014. The venue for the expanded event is now the Woodland Grange Conference Centre (www.woodlandgrange.com), on the northern outskirts of Warwick and Leamington Spa.

Speakers from the cream of the UK-based post-production industry have now been finalised. Dennis Weinreich and Conor Mackey will be opening the weekend with a look at workstation-based post-production workflows. Veteran film and TV sound editor Chris Roberts (Alien Vs Predator, Episodes, Foyle's War) then leads a seminar on dialogue editing, and Bernard O'Reilly (Death Of A President, Andrew Marr's History of the World) and David Humphries (Hustle, Shameless) close Saturday

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USA - InfoComm International's latest standard, ANSI/INFOCOMM 10-2013, Audiovisual Systems Performance Verification, has been approved by ANSI, a private, non-profit organization that administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization and conformity assessment systems.

ANSI/INFOCOMM 10-2013, Audiovisual Systems Performance Verification provides a comprehensive, systematic, and practical approach to verifying performance of AV systems. This standard will provide practitioners the ability to produce a verifiable evaluation of the audiovisual system based on quality assurance, testing, and acceptance, and will ensure the system conforms to the owners' operational needs, as established in the system/project documentation. A one-page overview can be found at infocomm.org/standards.

"Through the development of this standard, InfoComm has achieved its goal of establi

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Norway - Solid State Logic has appointed Bary Sales AS as its Live console distributor in Norway. Bary, which has long been a leader in the rental market, is setting up a new sales division with the SSL Live as its centrepiece product offering.

"As a brand new sales company, Bary Sales couldn't ask for a better brand than Solid State Logic to kick start the new division," says Marius Ryen, co-owner of Bary AS. "SSL immediately puts a high-quality stamp on our young organization, and sets the benchmark for our work and distributions. SSL has a very strong trademark in the world of music production, and this reputation is also widely recognized in the live industry. To be trusted to represent the innovation and legacy of the SSL brand in the Live market is a thrilling task."

"We are very excited to add Bary Sales, which is a young, dynamic and growing co

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The Netherlands - AV Networking World conference, to be held in Amsterdam on 4 February 2014, has announced its line-up of panel speakers for the informative networking educational event. Participants will be eligible to receive four InfoComm CTS RU credits.

Sponsors include Allen & Heath, Attero Tech, Audinate, Bosch, Bose, BSS Audio, Focusrite RedNet, Harman, Nexo, Open Access, Peavey Commercial Audio, Shure, Soundcraft, Stewart Audio, Symetrix, TC Group, 2N Telecommunications, and Yamaha Commercial Audio. This free all-day event will be held at the Amsterdam Holiday Inn near the RAI Convention Center.

The conference features over 20 panellists from industry design consultants, installation contractors, networking experts, plus major professional audio equipment manufacturers. In addition to the broad spectrum of informative panel discussions and presentations, a major inter

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USA - St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hampton, Iowa, was dealing with a problem familiar to many churches: their existing sound system was simply not adequate. The layout of the church's sanctuary did the system no favours, with a tall ceiling and lots of glass causing any number of reverberations, making speech intelligibility and clear music nearly impossible.

Several attempts were made to improve the system's performance, but these tries amounted to little more than "band-aids" according to Mark Carey, president/owner of Spencer, Iowa-based Carey's Electronics. Eventually, a consensus was reached among the church's leadership and members that a permanent solution was in order, and Carey and his team were selected to spec different options for the system, all of which revolved around products from Bose Professional Systems. Carey and the church eventually dec

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Australia - Since the 1990s, Sydney's Darlinghurst Theatre Company have provided a forum for actors, writers and producers to express themselves on the professional stage. Proud champions of independent, sustainable theatre practice, they were chosen by the City of Sydney to be the managing company of the newly established Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst.

The Eternity Playhouse is the result of a four-year renovation of the heritage-listed Burton Street Tabernacle by the City of Sydney, a 126 year old Baptist Church, unused for worship since 1996. In consultation with the City of Sydney and architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Darlinghurst Theatre Company has helped transform the building into a unique, state-of-the-art performance space that lovingly emphasises the building's original features while delivering high-quality technical results.

The Eternity Theatre is named for

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USA - All eyes in the dynamic world of gospel music were focused on the Metro Nashville Municipal Auditorium recently for the 29th annual Stellar Awards. The oldest award in this vibrant musical genre, the Stellar ceremony was viewed by millions of gospel music devotees on the national Up television network.

Lighting the two-hour Stellar Award broadcast presented a special challenge for LD Mark Carver (Mark Carver Designs, Nashville) and programmer Susan Rose. "Our overall vision for the design was to define the space on stage, while meeting the technical demands for broadcast quality in a live awards show," said Carver. "The Chauvet Legends were instrumental in helping us achieve this goal."

Carver and Rose's lighting rig included 24 Legend 230SR Beam fixtures from Chauvet Professional. They used 16 of the moving heads on eight truss towers positioned acro

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USA - The countdown to midnight in New York's Times Square is always something special and this year even more so for Elation Professional as lighting designer Paul Miller turned to Platinum Beam 5R moving heads and ELAR 108 LED Par lights supplied by Christie Lites to light musical performances for the time-honoured Times Square celebration.

The celebration began in the early evening and featured star-studded performances on two stages by the likes of Miley Cyrus, Blondie, Melissa Etheridge and other crowd favourites. An estimated one million people gathered in mid-town Manhattan for the event, which culminated in the famous ball drop, with millions more watching on television and via live streaming throughout the world.

Powerful lighting effects and New Year's Eve go hand in hand with bursts of colour and light streaking through the air a natural part of the experience. Ente

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UK - Avolites Media Ai Media Servers have been used to power the stunning visuals that punctuated British born superstar Jessie J's latest heart pumping European tour Alive.

Designed by show designer Vince Foster, with visual content created by Paul Caslin, the widescreen style set comprised three portrait-hung LED Screens upstage, while the curvaceous set was visually sculpted using 600 horizontally positioned BARCO MiStrips.

The content featured a mix of pre-recorded content and live camera feeds mixed by vision director Steven Price, all powered by Avolites Media's industry-leading Ai infinity 8 Server with eight Full HD outputs.

Video specialists Creative Technology supplied the Avolites Media intelligent video mapping technology along with the LED screens, MiStrips and the technical team to run it.

"What made the Ai Media server particularly helpful for th

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Europe - High End Systems, a Barco company, and AED Distribution have agreed on a partnership for the European Master Distributorship of High End Systems products.

After the successful introduction of the HOG4 platform in 2012-2013, High End Systems decided to further professionalize the sales of High End products in Europe through the concept of Master Distribution. AED Distribution, who has been Master Distributor for High End Systems in the BeNeLux, France and the UK in 2013, was appointed as European Master Distributor.

The European partnership includes all EU countries, incl. Russia, Turkey and Ukraine but with the exception of the Scandinavian Countries, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. AED Distribution already appointed AC Entertainment (UK), Interlight (NL), Lagoona (FR), Eclalux (FR), T&C (FR), Preworks (Austria), SIM (Russia) and Elit (Turkey) as Sub-Distributors.

Rena

  1. MilTec's Blakite speakers for major bar chain
  2. grandMA2 rolls along with Mannheim Steamroller
  3. PLASA Focus: Nashville 2014 expands programme
  4. Robe gets into the Festigal spirit
  5. Leeds superclub impresses with Geodome
  6. Backstage Academy inspires Sheffield students
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