Lighting

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Zero 88 Lighting has appointed Graham Eales as sales and marketing manager. He joins from Selecon New Zealand, where he has been instrumental in raising its profile and performance throughout Europe. Eales has over ten years’ experience in the production and theatrical environments and having run a hire company in South Africa and been responsible for Selecon NZ’s sales in the Pacific Rim, Europe and North America. His takes on his new role in May.

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The London Hippodrome has recently installed a new Pulsar control system. The state-of-the-art console features four new Masterpiece 216s and is capable of controlling the vast 1,500 channel Clay Paky and generic lighting rig. Each Masterpiece has a specific section of the lighting linked to it making programming extremely logical and structured. A MIDI keyboard and MIDI enabled PC communicate with the Masterpieces to synchronise powerful lightshows that can be programmed and recalled instantly for any occasion. The rig houses seven huge motorised satellites, each with six moving petal arms. The control of these has been integrated into the new system via five Masterpiece Replay Units. The complex articulation of the moving rig is accessed through a Touch Screen PC, that commands and mimics the massive structure.

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Strand Lighting's new 300 Series consoles, combining Pentium-class processing and the essential featureset of the flagship 500 Series, is set to make its UK debut at the ABTT Show in London (5-6 April). Modules may be arranged in any order or pattern and may be detached up to 100 metres apart. Interconnection between modules is via Strand S Buss communication system over Cat 5 cable, with RJ 45 connectors for simple low cost connectivity. Starting with the 24/48 and 48/96 memory manual desks, the series progresses through the 125 and 250 channel memory systems, designed to meet the needs of small to medium facilities. Completing the 300 Series consoles is a family of four Showcontrollers. An extension of the powerful 510 Showcontroller, the new 310s offer full support for MIDI, ASCII and SMPTE show control.

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TMB Associates is about to move its London operations to a 12,000sq.ft facility in Brentford's dockland. Paul Hartley, general manager of TMB UK told PLASA Publishing: "Over the past couple of years our sales have really grown in the British, European and World markets. The new building has lots of room for extra stock and more people, to help us better serve both our existing and new customers." As most of the industry knows, TMB Associates is a distributor of entertainment lighting equipment, supplies and services, not to mention socks, and has been serving the professional lighting industry for 17 years. The new UK office will be open for business on April 3 at 2 Commerce Road, Brentford, Middlesex TW8 8LR. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8560 9652 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8560 1064

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The new Vari-Lite Virtuoso control console, previewed throughout 1999 and already working on major shows in the USA, is making its European touring debut this spring with six weeks of shows by Dutch chart-topping artist Marco Borsato. VLPS Amsterdam is supplying a substantial Vari*Lite rig for the shows. Central to the rig is the Virtuoso console, officially launched at PLASA and LDI last autumn, which is in command of both the Vari*Lite and conventional lighting systems plus 12 VL7, 12 VL6B) spot luminaires, 26 VL5 wash luminaires. Conventionals (supplied by Focus Showequipment) include nine 4-Lite Molefays with Wybron Scrollers, 12 ETC Source Four Profiles and three smoke machines under DMX control. The current tour is playing 1,500-2,000 seater theatres but in October a string of large arena dates including the Ahoy in Holland and the Sportpaleis in Antwerp has already sold out.

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White Light has been appointed by producer Cameron Mackintosh to supply the conventional lighting rig to his new musical The Witches of Eastwick, which will open at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in July. The Moving Light Company will supply much of the automated lighting rig to the production. Howard Harrison is in the lighting designer's chair and working alongside him will be assistant lighting designer Oliver Fenwick, production electrician Alistair Grant and lighting programmer Rob Halliday. Harrison's conventional rig will include over 200 units including ETC Source Four profile spotlights, Strand SL Zooms, Par 64s and various battens, as well over 100 Rainbow scrollers and Cadenza EP effects projectors with custom disks in White Light's VSFX motor units. Control will be from a Strand 500-series console. The Moving Light Company will be supplying the production with 12 Strand Alto Pi

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Gearhouse plc have set up one of the most powerful lighting production companies in the events industry with the merging of two of their subsidiaries, Lighting Unlimited (UK) and Kent-based Gearhouse XTC. The operation, headed by Nick Whitehead, will be known as Lighting Unlimited UK and will be based at the company's existing facility in north-west London. Lighting Unlimited already enjoys a major share of the corporate conference and product launch market, while XTC predominantly specialises in the exhibition markets. In anticipation of the increased workload, and as we reported earlier, Lighting Unlimited has already responded by recruiting three senior personnel from the Spot Co, including former sales and operation director Mick 'Jaggie' Scullion who becomes sales director. He is joined by project managers Tony Fagan and Theo Cox.

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Playlight has now expanded its lighting hire operation for customers based in the south west and London areas. Barry Hampson, Playlight's commercial director told PLASA Publishing: "Due to our recent large scale commitments to major film productions, we realised that our service to the television and drama production markets was under-resourced. To address this we have introduced additional lighting stock at our London base." The company now has an increased range of studio heads and moving lights, generators, ARRI HMI and MSR heads, Kino Flo heads and Joker light and socket Pars, plus a host of power distribution and cable.

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Martin Professional will provide over 300 automated luminaires for the Eurovision Song Contest 2000 to be aired on May 13th from Stockholm, Sweden. Martin distributor, Oscar lighting, will provide over 200 moving heads, including MAC 600s, 500s, 300s and 250s, as well as other Martin luminaires. Belgian company Groupe Son Privé (through Martin distributor EVDV) will also be providing 60 MAC 600s for the Eurovision Song Contest. This is the second year running that Martin lights will be used for the popular talent show. Eurovision 1999 from Israel also boasted a huge Martin lighting rig. This year's event will take place at Stockholm's Globe Arena and will be aired by Swedish station SVT. An estimated audience of over 100 million viewers will tune in to the show. Lighting Designer for this year's event is Kristoffer Röhr and the massive lighting rig will be the largest intelligent ligh

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Color Kinetics has introduced ColorBlast, which they claim to be the world's first digital lighting fixture designed to wash interior and exterior walls with rich, saturated colours and colour-changing effects. The product utilises Color Kinetics' patented Chromacore technology to generate over 16.7 million colours and colour-changing effects via microprocessor-controlled red, green and blue LEDs. The unit has built-in intelligence offering onboard control to run an assortment of pre-programmed lighting shows, including colour washes, cross-fades, random colours, fixed colours and strobes. The fixture also may be easily programmed and controlled externally by an industry standard DMX512 lighting console, a PC or Color Kinetics' own line of controllers.

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Lightfactor Sales has completed the sale of High End Studio Spot 250s to Liverpool-based AdLite - the newly formed sister company of Ad Lib Audio. This is the first investment in moving lights by the new lighting rental and installation company, headed by Dave Platt, who also specified the fixtures after seeing them on the Texas world tour at the end of last year, for which Ad Lib Audio supplied the sound and Dutch lighting company Flashlight provided the lighting.The fixtures have now been used at a number of events, including an all-night dance event in the Isle of Man, and the slightly more decorous theatrical environment of the Stand By Your Man UK tour, for which Platt was LD. AdLite already have a busy summer festival season planned, and expect to be adding more Studio Spots to their inventory in the near future.

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PLASA EXCLUSIVE:Danish financial newspaper Børsen has reported this afternoon that Peter Johansen, the former head of Danish lighting manufacturer Martin Professional, has received a three-month jail sentence following this week's high profile trial for company fraud. In addition, he has been fined a total of DKK 3.6 million (approx £300,000).The Danish newspaper Børsen, also reports today that Poul Schluter, the former Danish Prime Minister and chairman of the board of Martin Professional, has given notice of his resignation, and will leave the company on April 27th.

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PLASA EXCLUSIVE:PLASA Publishing has this afternoon learned that US-based Matthews Studio Equipment Group - one of the largest suppliers of professional equipment to the entertainment industry, has today announced that it has filed a voluntary petition for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The NASDAQ-listed company supplies conventional and automated lighting, grip, transportation, generators, camera equipment, audio and video equipment and theatrical supplies via its worldwide distribution network.Carlos D. DeMattos, chairman and CEO, said: "We have spent the past several months attempting to come up with a proposal that would address the company's challenges outside of a court proceeding. Ultimately, the time required to complete a restructuring transaction and the uncertain cost of closing unprofitable locations were too great to overcom

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A host of industry friends and colleagues from all over the world gathered in Cambridge on Saturday 8th April to wish Derrick Saunders, Pulsar's long-time sales and marketing director, well on his retirement. Colleagues who paid tribute included Pulsar MD Paul Mardon, Clay Paky's Enrico Caironi and Lightpower's Gunther Olbricht. Derrick won't lose touch with the industry altogether for he plans to work alongside wife Monica at Adda Super Cases. PLASA would like to take this opportunity to wish Derrick and Monica all the very best for the future.

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The Palace Theatre, Watford, is one of the few remaining producing theatres in the country, with many of its productions touring nationally and playing in the West End. The Grade II listed Edwardian theatre is currently undertaking a fundraising campaign to raise £1.5m for essential refurbishment and chief electrician Ian Saunders came up with the idea of projecting a fundraising message onto the safety curtain to highlight the appeal to the audience. To get the appeal off the ground, ETC Europe donated two Source Four lanterns to the theatre. ETC Europe's Peter Ed, made the presentation to Ian Saunders whilst Stage Technologies' Nikki Scott was instrumental in organising the donation.

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Australia-based lighting control and dimming specialist LSC Lighting Systems has said that the company is now "back stronger than ever", following last year's problems, which involved the company entering voluntary administration (similar to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the USA). LSC say they are now fully recovered, with the support of new investors, new additions to the team and new distributors. New team members include design draughtsman Nathan Plemming and R&D engineer Sean Scott, while another important area to be addressed is customer relations. Marketing director Alan Graham said: "The sales and marketing infrastructure at LSC is focussed towards creating good information flow to the customer . . . By appointing sales and marketing support officer Belinda Kischkel, LSC can offer a quicker response to customer issues and demands."

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Artistic Licence has announced the launch of its new website, which offers full e-commerce facilities allowing customers to order any products from the company's range, on-line. The Artistic Licence product range now exceeds 100 items, ranging from DMX512 test equipment to LED digital lighting. Customers can also download all product manuals, advance product information and demonstration software.

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City Theatrical's Autoyokes have been specified for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints' new conference centre in Salt Lake City, Utah. 50 Autoyoke fixtures, used with ETC Source Four luminaires, will be installed at the 21,000-seat Assembly Hall. The Autoyokes, which are equipped with AutoIris and 50-degree lens tubes and have 16-bit pan and tilt resolution, were specified by lighting consultant Auerbach + Associates.

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2000 marked the first full year of trading for Amptown Cases UK, and a debut appearance at the Frankfurt trade show, where the new SiP case inserts and flying RigRax cases generated an enormous amount of interest. The company's Steve Kane told PLASA: "We have been inundated with enquiries and orders from existing and new customers. In fact, the response has been so much better than we anticipated that we have been taking on new staff to cope with the extra workload."

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High End Systems and its lead equity investor, Generation Partners, have hired an investment banking firm to represent High End as it seeks to find a new partner to fund the company's further growth. Although Generation Partners made a substantial investment in High End two years ago, the company's existing management holds a major stake in the company and plans to remain actively involved. The company's expansion plans include a broadening of the product range and a higher profile worldwide, underlined by the new sales offices in New York and London.

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Cambridge-based Adda Super Cases has signed an agreement for the exclusive UK distribution of the Con'dome and Flightdome products with French manufacturer Impact Evenement. These innovative protective products, which have become common sights at trade shows around the world in recent months, are ideal for protecting a wide range of lighting instruments in applications from club opening nights, movie premieres, son et lumieres and other outdoor promtions.

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Martin Professional is to hire Stig Poulsen as its R&D director. Poulsen takes up his new position in August replacing Finn Kallestrup who leaves Martin at the end of July. Poulsen was previously technical manager at Danfoss Building Control Divisions in Denmark, and prior to that was engaged in development at Infocom Systems, Purup Electronics and ABB Scandia - all Danish firms.

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Strand's remodelled Quartzcolor range of HMI and studio fresnels will be piloted into the film location and cinematographic markets by the recently-launched LCA (Lights Camera Action), based in Greenford. Started by directors Nick Shapley, Graham Kerr and Richard Maskell last June, LCA has grown quickly, necessitating a move into the 10,500sq.ft warehouse and office space in the Vari-Lite building, formerly occupied by Brilliant Stages.

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MTFX has recently invested in a new glitter (mylar) cutting machine which will allow them to provide a range of glitter and confetti products. In stock at present is over 200kgs of both gold and silver mylar fetti in stock which MTFX can now cut to any size or shape required.
  1. Pulsar's New Sales & Marketing Structure
  2. Latin Lights from SGM
  3. Art-Net
  4. Tim Adams to be New Editor of Installation Europe
  5. IALD Awards Scholarships from Trust Fund
  6. Midnight Movers
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