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Backstage Wages - Backstage and FOH staff are being urged to vote in favour of a pay offer from West End managements that is less than half the increase they originally demanded. In August, backstage and front-of-house union BECTU announced it was seeking a one-year deal for West End theatre staff that included a 9% pay rise. At the time, BECTU said it had submitted an ambitious claim that was justified by the increasing cost of living in the capital.
However, after "intensive" negotiations with the Society of London Theatre at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service failed to secure an agreement, members will now be balloted on a significantly reduced proposal.
It sets out a 3.5% increase for 2017/18, and the same again for the following year, with a 2.5% rise in 2019/20. Under the offer, the third year's deal would be subject to the Consumer Prices

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UK - Technology with Heart was the theme of Jaguar and Land Rover's inaugural Tech Fest which took place at Central Saint Martins in London in September.
Organised by London-based creative agency Imagination, the event explored how technology contributes to the auto industry and was packed full of innovative displays which demonstrated how technology is being used to make a positive difference.
Jay Plomer, senior production manager, Imagination commented: "The venue for this event is a fantastic space but it is a listed building and right from the start we were told that it would not be possible to install any fixing points in to the walls and ceiling. This posed the challenge of how to light all exhibits in a big area within the space – and so we brought Unusual Rigging on board to help us solve that problem."
Paul Rhodes, senior rigging supervisor, Un

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UK - Since Pyrojunkies first dipped their toes into the world of MA control they have been busy servicing the needs of productions such as Bros, Jason Derulo, the Diversity Genesis Tour, the Ghost European Tour, the Kaiser Chiefs, Stormzy at Brixton Academy and the Capital FM Summertime Ball.
“We have been using an MA dot2 console to control our effects for a while and been really impressed by what the system offered us in terms of programming and creating new profiles,” opens Pyrojunkies’ sales and project manager, James Priddle. “By the time we took the Kaiser Chiefs’ system out we were confident that we had found the console that was perfect for our unique requirements. For that tour, we hired a dot2-XLF as a final test before we took the plunge and ordered a dot2 Core from Ambersphere Solutions.
‘We worked very closely with Thor André and the rest of

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USA - Miami-based Mix3 Sound recently added 24 Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) Anya array modules to their rental inventory, bringing their total up to 48 Anya and 24 Anna.
James Newhouse, North American sales director for EAW, says: “John Ferlito and the folks at Mix3 have been fans of Adaptive since they purchased their first Anya system in 2015. Since then they have found that the flexibility and adaptive nature of the systems keeps it in high demand. It was an easy decision to increase their inventory to meet their clients’ needs.”
Mix3 put the new boxes to use at CAP (La Conferencia Apostólica y Profética) 2017, an Apostolic and Prophetic Conference held at the American Airlines Arena in Miami. Mix3 also provided an EAW Adaptive System for the stadium last year. The event draws more than 20,000 every year.
“We have used Anya for CAP since 2015,” add

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USA - Anthem Community Church in Gainesville, Florida, holds itself to a high standard of contemporary worship, matching its affiliated church, Atlanta-based North Point Ministries, which is among the largest churches in the US. High-energy music is a characteristic of both churches, so when Anthem built its new location, which opened in January 2017, it sought out the best professional audio systems possible. That included the Roland M-5000 OHRCA Digital Mixing Console as the hub of the church’s sound infrastructure.
“Anthem Community Church is a very tech-savvy church, and they had a very specific set of input/output requirements in mind,” recalls Jeremy Moyers, president of the Moyers Group, the AV integration company that has worked with that church since 2008. “For instance, they mix all of their monitors, including eight stereo channels just for IEMs, from the

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Italy - On the 10th anniversary of Luciano Pavarotti’s death, Friends & Partners Group and the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation produced a show paying tribute to the world-famous tenor.
Un Emozione senza fine (An endless emotion) was staged in the Verona Arena and aired live in prime time nationwide on TV and radio.
As well as a 70-piece orchestra, an electric rhythm section and numerous singers performing virtual duets with ‘Big Luciano’, the engineers had to mix a variety of sounds, from the raunchy tones of Zucchero, to the crystalline flute of Andrea Griminelli, Giorgia’s soaring jazz-tinged vocals and young opera talents from the Pavarotti Foundation.
Agorà of L’Aquila, the event’s audio and lighting contractor, deployed no less than six DiGiCo consoles at the impressive event, manned by several of the country’s most respected engineer

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Taiwan - Winly Engineering & Trading was tasked with designing and supplying an L-Acoustics system for the 28th Golden Melody Awards (GMAs), the Chinese speaking territories’ highly-regarded music awards.
Winly, who has worked on the GMAs from its first edition, designed and prepared a lighting system to cope with the venue’s deep, narrow configuration, basing its design on L-Acoustics K1, K2, Kara and SB28.
“A big challenge for the system design was the shape of the venue, its limited rigging possibilities and the fact that the production requested no fill system in front of the stage,” says Winly’s president and production manager for the event, Andy Chen. “With the help of L-Acoustics’ Alvin Koh, we made an initial design of the system with L-Acoustics 3D acoustical simulation programme, Soundvision, to provide us with the optimum result.”

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South Africa - Philips Lighting's latest lighting fixtures are playing a key role in the current series of South Africa's TV talent contest Idols.
The LED-based Philips VLZ Profile are enabling more finely colour-balanced television pictures for the latest series.
Produced by Mzansi Magic channel 161 DSTV, Idols is currently in its 13th season. The lighting designer, for the seventh consecutive year, is Joshua Cutts, one of South Africa's leading practitioners of the art of lighting entertainment shows for television. For this year's run, Cutts, along with director/executive producer Gavin Wratten, wanted to build on the show's highly successful 12th season by further enhancing the set and lighting design.
"I was looking for two things," says Cutts, "a strong, iconic backlight and a strong profile with framing capability for my keylight. It was al

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USA - SRae Productions and Clear All Visuals were responsible for the video & lighting production design for Lady Antebellum’s world tour.
Matt Geasy of Clear All Visuals specified two separate setups, each with a pair of Hippotizer Boreal Media Servers. Both setups were used to feed the LED screens and each one was triggered depending on the performer, switching between two or three outputs.
During the global event, the SRae team ran Hippotizer in conjunction with an automation system. The Kinesys motor control system fed PSN data to the servers, so that they could live-track the screen positions in real-time. The end-result was the content tracking of the screens as they moved throughout the show.
For Lady Antebellum’s automated screens, the system provided information regarding the vertical position of the two motors for each truss. This was a challeng

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USA - The main area of the AmericanAirlines Arena has received a new sound reinforcement system.
The 21,000 capacity venue, home to the Miami Heat basketball team, is now equipped with new loudspeakers from the Aero Series 2 and UX Series catalogues of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio.
Jorge Arronte, manager of sound and matrix, along with David Vickery, the director of broadcast services, are the two key on-site personnel responsible for many of the arena’s key facility decisions and have upgraded numerous areas at the arena.
This latest loudspeaker upgrade brings the signature sound of D.A.S. Audio to the main arena seating areas. The facility enhancement includes 128 D.A.S. Audio Aero 40A enclosures, 16 Aero 20A cabinets, along with eight UX-218RA sub bass enclosures - all governed by Lake/Dante loudspeaker management & distribution system. Arro

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Poland - Polish TV production company ATM has been adding Robe products to its inventory of lighting equipment in recent years.
The company initially invested in LEDWash 800s (for Euro 2012 held jointly in Poland and Ukraine) as well as LEDWash 1200s and, most recently, 50 Spikies.
The lights are also used to service ATM’s own productions and are available as part of the assorted technical packages offered to other production companies booking the studios.
ATM’s first purchase of LEDWashes was for 26 pieces, delivered by Robes Polish distributor Prolight, and from that moment forward the TV production company has only invested in Robe LED washes - it now has over 100 LEDWash 800s in stock.
The Spikies were purchased last year after ATM representatives saw the fixture at the 2016 Prolight+Sound Expo where it was launched. The Spikes have been in high

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UK - The Howl Scream Park made its annual return to Mead Open Farm for 13 ‘nights of terror’ in October, where the likes of Topper the Clown and Grandma Lycanthrope waited to greet you with rotting arms. FunFear is a team of experienced engineers, technicians and designers who specialise in creating Halloween attractions and for the past three years, they have been in charge of turning the much-loved family farm into a land of torment and nightmare.
There were five haunts to be explored at The Howl including Toppers Twister, The Shed, Hotel de Basquervilles, Squealers Yard and the House of Hounds. In each maze you could expect to encounter impressive audio, lighting and special effects, along with a legion of terrifying actors which combine to create an immersive experience where you were the bait.
The maze with the highest “sca

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UK - S+H Technical supplied a 12mm LED surface for the 2017 TV Choice Awards.
The award ceremony brought together over 400 TV and entertainment celebrities at a gala dinner evening in The Ballroom at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane in central London.
Stoneapple Productions designed and produced the ceremony for many years and S+H has been supplying screen for the last three.
This year, four columns – two per side - of the S+H’s 12mm LED product flanked a main projection screen positioned upstage centre. The LED columns each measured 7m high by 1m wide, and in between each of these was a vertical row of blinder lights.
The LED columns were used to display a variety of video content produced by Stoneapple for the event, including Awards graphics and aminations, for which they were highly effective.
The 12 mm is an ideal product for events like this.

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Kenya - An Audient ASP8024 has been installed in Nairobi-based studio Supersonic Africa as part of a project to expand the facility.
The upgrade was prompted by the arrival of weekly music TV programme Coke Studio Africa, which was filmed at Supersonic earlier this year.
“Musicians from all over the world come together and work on original compositions and mashups,” says producer at Supersonic, Muna Chuba, explaining that this was the second year running that they have hosted the show. “This gives us a lot of coverage as a studio - it’s actually how some of the international musicians get to know about us.”
Those who’ve recorded and mixed at the studio include multi award-winning, local pop band Sauti Sol and international artist Wizkid. Enter the large format mixing desk from Audient, which according to music producer and Supersonic studio own

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South Africa - DWR Distribution provided new lighting installation for the annual Christian Revival Church (CRC) Dreamweek Explosion conference held simultaneously in Bloemfontein and Pretoria in October.
Phase 1 of the upgrade saw CRC Bloemfontein’s Main Auditorium receive a huge facelift. The 5 000-seater Auditorium situated in the South of Bloemfontein was extended to accommodate an additional 1 200 people. The ceiling was removed, air conditioning installed, and a new 24m wide stage, more than double the size of the original stage, was built.
The DWR team, headed by Robert Izzett, installed Prolyte H40V trussing above the revamped stage onto which both the church’s existing lighting fixtures and the new LED power saving units comprising of 18 Robe Spiiders, six Robe Pointes and 28 LED Parcans for audience wash were hung. An 8 Port Node was added to the MA syste

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UK - The audio system in the main concert hall at the Lighthouse arts centre in Poole, Dorset has been upgraded.
The venue was originally conceived as the home of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and has adequate acoustics for classical performances, but the increase in speech orientated material performed there in recent years meant a new system was needed to improve speech intelligibility.
Jake Sutton, technical manager at the Lighthouse explains: “The system we had in place was really only suitable for public address and simple amplification for events. We augmented this for music and other performances that required more audio support but it was very hard work to get an acceptable sound. Our main issue was lack of direct speaker coverage and uniformity of sound across the whole auditorium. We, alongside theatre consultants Charcoal Blue, invited three PA compan

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UK - Stormzy’s Gang Signs and Prayers tour was extensively lit with Ayrton fixtures.
Lighting designer Steve Bewley opted for an Ayrton-laden specification for each incarnation of Stormzy’s show, which visited various academy venues this year before concluding with two Brixton Academy gigs.
“There were 38 MagicPanel-R units and 10 MagicBurst on my list. The UK and Ireland shows were all of a decent size, Brixton Academy has a capacity of nearly 5,000 and then we had various festival variations and a special rig for Glastonbury. Altogether, there were six different designs but the Ayrton fixture choices were always central to the show. Their dynamic look is not something that can be replicated and they were versatile enough to adapt to all the different venues and configurations.
“For the academy shows, we stripped out the house rigs to make it enti

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USA - The recent audio upgrade by Clark at the First Pentecostal Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas featured the world’s first installation of Martin Audio’s new Wavefront Precision Compact (WPC) and Mini optimised arrays with iKON amps along with CSX218 subs and the new LE100 monitors.
The system includes 16 WPC a side for the main array with a side fill array of six WPM a side covering the extreme outside corners. The stage was modified to accommodate five CSX218 subs per side recessed into the front, with everything powered by the iKON amps. All the hangs are covered with white acoustical fabric for visual integration.
First Pentecostal’s sanctuary is an acoustically challenging space with large domed ceilings, a balcony, stained glass windows and hard marble surfaces. “They didn’t want to add acoustical treatments,” says Clark Project Manager Brandon

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UK - Leisuretec has become the new UK trade distributor for ADJ.
Mike Henden, Leisuretec's managing director, comments: “Distributing ADJ is an exciting new prospect for us. Their products are smart, easy to use and have a very competitive price point. We appreciate that the choice we provide our customers is essential when they’re specifying for their clients.
“ADJ is a high-quality yet affordable lighting solution that our customers can offer their clients when faced with challenges like tight budgets and niche applications. We believe we’re a consolidated source for our customers and our new partnership with ADJ emphasises that strength.
“Expect strong stock holding, technical support, training events and efficient delivery across the ADJ range. We will also host ADJ training events in the TecZone for those who want to grow their knowledge on the br

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UK - Cardiff-based events specialists 11th Hour were stage and lighting suppliers for the 2017 Steelhouse Festival, held in July near Ebbw Vale, South Wales.
11th Hour, who had previously worked at Steelhouse in a limited capacity, saw their responsibilities expanded and enjoyed a highly productive if rather damp week.
Max Rhead, promoter and co-organiser of Steelhouse Festival takes up the story: "We teamed up with 11th Hour to provide the power solutions for the Steelhouse Festival back in 2016. We were incredibly impressed with their knowledge and professionalism as well as the quality of the equipment that they supplied. So, when the requirement for a new stage and lighting supplier presented itself for 2017, we immediately contacted director Andy Hopkins and the boys to expand t

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USA - Sound production company Firehouse Productions has found significant value in the sound quality, quick deployment and low total cost of ownership of Audinate’s Dante audio-over-IP networking.
Over the years, the company, which has provided sound production systems and support services to major rock concert tours is also integrally involved with sound production for special live events, such as the 2017 International Indian Film Festival held in mid-July at the MetLife Stadium, as well as live events for corporations including Macy’s, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Biogen and Wyndham.
In television, the company has played a key role in producing audio for live broadcasts, such as The Tony Awards, NBC’s The Wiz and Peter Pan, The Daily Show, In Performance at the White House, the iHeart Music Festival and Global Citizen Festival.

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The Netherlands - Eindhoven live music venue De Effenaar has recently updated its lighting rig with Robe fixtures.
De Effenaar hosts around 20 gigs a month across its two halls with capacity of 1300 and 400. Former house lighting specialist Yoeri van Leersum specified 12 x DL7S Profiles, 12 x DL4X spots and four DL4F fresnels, together with 42 x Robe PARFect RGBW LED PARs. These were added to their existing stock of Robe MMX spots, DLF Washes, 600E spots and 300E Spots, LEDWash 300s and LEDBeam 100s.
House technician Sven de Hoog explains: “We also wanted to make a statement with the DL7Ss,” confirmed Sven, “As far as we are aware, we’re the first music venue in the Netherlands to have the DL7 series in house and possibly in Benelux - and it’s always good to lead the way!”
The DL7Ss are in action in the large hall while the DL4X and DL4Fs are earmarke

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USA - Audio and networking technology developer Archwave joined other OCA Alliance members in a series of AES70 demo sessions at the AES 2017 show in New York.
The focus was on the practical implementation of AES70 (also known as Open Control Architecture or OCA) rather than the theory. How to make an AES70 device and How to make an AES70 Controller offered step-by-step instruction and working demonstrations on how to build fully functional AES70 implementations.
The sessions were led by Bosch’s Jeff Berryman and showed the practical combination of AES70 for controlling and connecting network devices in conjunction with the AES67 standard for audio-network streaming. The demonstration included a Focusrite audio source, a BOSCH Dante implementation and RAVENNA/AES67-enabled Genelec monitors, all connected in a single network and centrally managed by Arch

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Vietnam - Ba Sao Investment recently installed a complete audio system by Harman Professional Solutions at the Vietnam National Drama Theatre.
The theatre, which was built in the 1950s, was recently redeveloped and Ba Sao Investment upgraded the audio system with a complete Harman audio solution.
Nguyen Khac Anh, CEO of Ba Sao Investment, says: “Vietnam National Drama Theatre asked us to install a modern audio system with perfect coverage at every seat in the house. The new Harman system delivers clarity, depth and intelligibility across the entire 620sq.ft theatre, with no audible delay. Management is very pleased with the solution, especially because it offers the flexibility to easily integrate new components in the future.”
The system comprises JBL VRX900 Series line arrays, JBL PRX700 Series powered speakers,
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