Lighting

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UK - DHA Design Services (a sister company to DHA Lighting) has emerged the winner in the Lighting Design Awards’ Public Buildings category, for its lighting design for the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester.

The judges for the Lighting Design Awards, organized by Lighting Equipment News magazine and the Institution of Lighting Engineers, noted that the lighting design within the Daniel Libeskind-designed building "had to transmit the necessary atmosphere - abstract light slashes punctuate the ceiling, while large objects such as armoured vehicles and a Harrier Jump Jet are modelled using theatrical projectors."

The winning design made extensive use of DHA Lighting gobos, both custom designs and stock gobos from the company’s standard range. "Gobos can have a magical effect," notes DHA Design’s Adam Grater, "and for the sections

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The Netherlands / Belgium - Dutch show control company Ground Zero BV has announced that it has become the Dutch and Belgian dealer for the E:CUE lighting and show control system. The E:CUE system consists of hardware - the 19" Media-player, the Fader-unit, and several different DMX output dongles - and the Windows-based E:CUE control and programmer software, which can be used as a live lighting controller or as a programmer for the Media-player.

Ground Zero is also the dealer for Richmond Sound Design (sound and show control software and hardware), Pathway (DMX networks), Medialon (show control software), CompuCall (DMX controls with Dect telephones). The company’s own products include the Ground Control Console (stage manager’s desk) and the Kiss Box (controller networks) series.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - Drapes and rigging specialist Blackout was recently appointed by London-based Production House PAV, to help realise the dramatic set for a sensational one-off club night - The King of Clubs - for brand giants Budweiser.

Staged at London’s famous Old Billingsgate market, the event concept was inspired by the Budweiser King of Beers’ commercial, and King of Clubs was the culmination of a point-of-sale campaign by the company. Re-igniting the spontaneous party spirit of the late 1980’s rave scene, over 3,000 invited guests met at a central London location, before being whisked away by boat to Billingsgate - the first time the venue has been used as a club.

Blackout’s Project Manager, Chris Brain collaborated with Paul-Ant Viollet of PAV Productions, to realise his design, which took references from the ad campaign. Blackout provided massive quantiti

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UK - Lightfactor Sales has supplied leading sound, lighting and AV installation company CGA with an new lighting rig to revamp the famous Pantiles nightclub in Camberley, Surrey.

Pantiles, owned by independent local entrepreneur Bob Archer, has maintained its popularity thanks to a flexible mainstream music and door policy. CGA’s Chris Gunton has been supplying equipment, service and technical support to Pantiles for some years. The club’s current manager, Matt Highton comes from an engineering background and therefore understands the importance of good technology and production values.

Last year, it was time to upgrade Pantiles’ moving light system, so Gunton suggested Highton take a good look at what was available at PLASA 2002. When he reached Lightfactor’s stand and saw the SGM fixtures, he knew he’d found the moving lights he wanted! "

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UK - Paul Harte has been appointed hire manager at lighting, sound and staging specialists Stagecraft. Responsible for the management of the Hire department, Paul, who will be based with the Stagecraft team in Salisbury, will be working closely with Mike Naish, the new technical director of the recently-merged Live Events and Hire departments.

A trained electronics engineer Paul has worked on a freelance basis for the past two years and brings to Stagecraft a wide range of experience from within the industry, covering sound and lighting design, installation and service management. New technical director Mike Naish has worked with Stagecraft for 17 years and was previously a production manager for the Live Events department.

(Ruth Rossington)

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USA - The brand new 2.3m sq.ft Washington D.C. Convention Center, which features one of the largest ballrooms on the USA’s East Coast, opened with an enormous gala event with entertainment portion of the evening being provided by, in part, Cirque Du Soleil. With 700,000sq.ft of exhibit space and 125,000sq.ft of meeting space, the Washington DC Convention Center is the largest building in DC.

Lighting for the opening event was provided by GLP Inc and Maryland Stage Lighting Inc, and constricted of 18 MAC 2k washes, 24 MAC 2k profiles, 12 MAC 600s, 16 MAC 500s with an additional 200 conventional fixtures, all run from one of the first grandMA lighting consoles ever sold in North America. Lighting designer Gary Pair, lighting director/programmer, Demfis Fyssicopulos and ME Bob Halem, were responsible for lighting all three main ballrooms.

In order to control all three of th

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UK - As lighting designers throughout the world crave the chance to get back to the art of designing rather than spending hours dealing with complicated computer equipment, Edinburgh-based rental company black light has become one of the latest companies to upgrade its lighting control to ETC’s new Emphasis lighting control system.

black light already stocks a variety of ETC equipment, but the company realised that an upgrade to Emphasis would prove beneficial, both for its own use and for its clients. Project manager Paul McGreal explains: "Apart from renting the system out for productions, we also intend to hire it to lighting designers and programmers, as well as inviting them to use it in our pre-programming studio. We already owned both an Express and an Expression desk, and as the Emphasis server has software for both, the decision to upgrade was an easy one.&qu

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USA - Color Kinetics has been awarded a new technology patent that will enable future use of LED-based lighting systems as a means of communication through a local area network. According to the company, the technology will open up new ways of applying highly efficient LEDs to intelligent networking for applications such as home or office automation.

The applications for this are wide-ranging in both commercial and residential settings, and the US Patent (number 6,548,967) covers local area networking through a lighting system that uses LEDs both to generate light and to wirelessly communicate data to external devices such as pagers, personal digital assistants, and any other device that's connected to the network. For example, an LED-based lighting system in an office could transmit data that triggers security systems to engage at a scheduled time; the lighting in a hospital co

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USA - Nashville River Stages is a three-day music festival held from 2-4 May in Nashville, Tennessee. Consisting of five stages spread over Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville, the centre district will be closed to traffic along the banks of the Cumberland River for the festival’s sixth year. Acts range from local singer/songwriters to national and international headliners and draw crowds of up to 25,000+ each year. There are over 60 bands booked and five stages for lighting supplier Bandit Lites to work with.

For each of the five stages, Bandit Lites is supplying a basic 120k rig. In addition, the two barge stages will be augmented with six Martin MAC 500s and six MAC 600s per stage. The bill inlcudes acts such as Def Leppard, John Meyer, the B-52s and Joe Cocker. "We are extremely honoured to be a part of this event as well as working with such a great production

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France - Nuit Celtique 2003 provided Paris’s Stade de France with a celebration of Celtic musical culture - and the huge heritage that resides in Brittany, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It was deliberately designed to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day - the patron saint of Ireland.

A collaboration between Stade de France Productions and Festival Interceltique (I3C) the one-day festival built on its inaugural success last year and used Coemar lighting heavily in the production. This was designed by Roch Segovia and supplied by Paris-based contractors, NAT. Programming was by Fabrice Delmontel and Jerome Feuillade.

NAT supplied two each of their newly-acquired iWash Flex and iSpot Flex, for which they provided a world debut earlier in the month for Renault, at the Geneva Motor Show. These were used with 45 of the Coemar CF1200 HE and 22 CF1200 Wash lights, along with 40

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UK - Metropolis AV has completed a cutting-edge sound, effects lighting and AV installation in Manchester at Lucid - the first of a new genre of multimedia concept venues.The unusual concept was developed by the Canadian-owned MagicCorp Group, and is expected to be subject to a selective roll-out. Metropolis was asked onboard by Lucid’s technical director, Nick Meacham, to implement the technical infrastructure that he’d helped design.

Metropolis’s brief also included the design of an integrated operating system for all things technical in the venue. The Metropolis team was headed by Simon Harris, and included site manager Stuart Clowes, technical director Shane Winterbourne, design project manager Martin Geraghty and installation engineers Shane Stanley and Ian Benstead.

The open plan venue has three levels, including a 1200-capacity Function Room/Showroom;

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USA - TMB has announced the addition of Tim Baca to the LA sales department. Baca’s career in real-world entertainment started out with a BA in Theater Design at Lynchburg College, Virginia, including a semester at the University College of London. He then went on to work as technical director for the B Street Theater in Sacramento, California, where he oversaw all aspects of production, including lights, sound, set design, and wardrobe (his favorite). Following that, he spent two years chasing skaters as tour electrician for the Disney On Ice roadshow. This gave Tim hands-on experience in lighting, board operation, set design, and all things AC.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - London’s City of Westminster College students are to produce a showcase sound and lighting event ‘see the sound’, engineered entirely by students on the BTEC ND Sound Engineering Courses and the C&G 1810 Theatre Electricians Courses.

Students on these courses are training to be sound recording or lighting engineers respectively; they will be in charge of every technical aspect of the event from pre-production to rigging and operating the show, staged at the college’s professional theatre venue, the Cockpit Theatre. "We want to give the students an opportunity to produce, rig, light, record and operate a major event of this type," commented music technology course Tutor Steve Hepworth. "This is the only way you can give students a feel for what happens at a real event, and give them an opportunity to receive invaluable experience. We ha

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UK - On Thursday 15 May, The White Light Group will be holding an Open Day at their headquarters in Wimbledon, south London. Originally conceived as another chance for people to explore White Light’s base following their move there almost 18 months ago, and for customers to bid White Light's Hire Director Mike Crossman farewell as he leaves the company on a round-the-world tour, the Open Day is now expanding into something of a mini trade-show.

As well as staff members from all of the White Light Group companies, including White Light Hire, White Light Sales, The Moving Light Company, The Service Company, Colourhouse, Modelbox and Enliten, the Open Day will allow visitors to explore the latest products from a variety of suppliers and manufacturers including Blackout (with their new LED starcloths), E//T//C (with the latest in large format projection equipment), Howard Eat

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USA - Multi-lite USA has recruited Thor Sundby as account executive for its recently opened Burbank, CA facility. Sundby not only brings 12 years of sales and management experience with Sunray Manufacturing to the company, but also 25 years of production experience as a gaffer. Also joining the company is Lynda Whelan, whose 10 years of management experience, will prove invaluable in her new role as operations manager.

Owner and president of Multi-lite USA and its parent company, Multi-Lite Germany (one of Europe’s largest specialty lamp distributors), Wolfgang Massow commented: "We are very pleased to announce these additions and are confident that our growing customer base will appreciate the enhanced service their industry experience will provide."

(Ruth Rossington)

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USA - Theatrical Lighting Systems Inc has opened a TLS,Inc./Nashville branch-office and hired Kelsey Beard as project manager sales. The newest branch will be for sales only with the rental and service aspects of the business continuing to be handled through the company’s Huntsville office.

Kelsey Beard has a range of experience: he was most recently employed as a Certified Home Inspector for Pillar to Post, a franchise throughout the US and Canada. He was previously owner/partner in Beard-Wolf & Associates Inc (1976-1999) - manufacturer representatives for commercial, industrial and residential lighting products. During that time the company grew to achieve over $4m in sales in Tennessee. Beard worked closely with architects, electrical engineers, and owners in the design of lighting requirements of commercial and industrial buildings.

(Ruth Rossington)

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UK - Projected Image Digital has sold a second RADlite digital media server system to live video specialists XL Video, the video hardware suppliers for the final UK leg of Ronan Keating’s ‘2003 Destination’ world tour.

The RADlite was specified by lighting designer Peter Barnes - a great advocate and experimentalist with the RADlite system since first using it last year. Always a pioneer of utilizing video in new and imaginative ways onstage, Barnes has integrated RADlite on the Blue, Will & Gareth, S-Club and Blazin’ Squad tours. This time he went further, evolving its use as a visual effect working with a solo artist. The stage and video design for this final leg of the tour - which started back in 2002 - was a collaboration between Barnes and production manager Iain Whitehead of Production North. It consisted of five vertical upstage panels of Westerha

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USA - Morpheus Lights has introduced the new ColorFader3 series - adding remote variable-speed DMX fan control, direct push-button addressing and state-of-the-art electronics to the time-tested ColorFader line.

Morpheus’ original ColorFader provided an innovative approach to automated colour control for conventional fixtures with its patented subtractive colour system - the only way to add full CYM colour mixing to conventional lights. The new ColorFader3 series updates the time-tested S Fader, M Fader, XL Fader and 8 Fader models with state-of-the-art control electronics that expand functionality, simplify operation and optimize performance.

An innovative feature of ColorFader3 is remote variable-speed DMX fan control that permits cooling fans to be gradually brought to speed when they’re needed - without the abrupt rush of full-speed fans switching on. Variable-s

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UK - Newcomers to the world of theatre are being given an introduction to gobo and animation effects by DHA Lighting. The company’s Louise Tester is running a series of workshops and seminars to demonstrate how its products can be used to enhance lighting effects. These provide the chance to explore the potential of gobos, animation disks, gobo rotators, gobo YoYos and the DHA Digital Light Curtain.

Already this year there have been sessions for students at Westminster College and Mountview, as well as for new sales staff at AC Lighting. Louise also ran workshops at the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough last month. DHA staff have led numerous workshops - not only in the UK, but around the world: Rainer Weggen recently hosted an Open Day in Lisbon, whilst further afield, the company despatched two moving-effect training kits to China, where they will be used to

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UK - For the third (and probably last) time, Roger Duncan is producing a batch of stencils intended to harmonize the notation of most generic lighting equipment for television, theatre and film when ideas are expressed on paper. Over 500 designers now use these symbols approved by the BBC, the Society of Television Lighting Directors and the Association of Lighting Designers.

There are over 80 holes in each stencil and comprehensive advice sheets come with each order, based on 40 years of stencil use in television. The symbols are now included in WYSIWYG, but this is a very effective starter kit. Duncan Lighting Design will contribute £1 to Light Relief and £1 to the British Heart Foundation for each stencil sold. As before, the cost is £19 + VAT each, plus £3 per order.

(Ruth Rossington)

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UK - Bandit Lites have bought eight Coemar SuperCyc 2.4s from Coemar UK to fulfil Pete Barnes’ lighting design for Westlife’s 18-week European tour. Bandit general manager, Mark Powell, confirmed that his company was supplying 13 of the SuperCycs in all - some commandeered from their American inventory. "These are popular lights with us," he stated.

Board operator Barry Halpin confirmed that five of the SuperCycs were being used to rear-project onto a cyc immediately behind the band, while another is used to create a backlight effect as the band make their stage entry. In Pete Barnes’ design, the remainder are used dramatically as understage uplighters - firing up from the 4ft recess at a 60ft wide, clear perspex deck, treated with diffused gel.

Coemar’s SuperCyc 2.4 is a recent addition to the Panorama family of high power, wide angle CYM col

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Australia - Although Dynacord products have only been distributed in Australia for two years, they already enjoy popularity in the region, as the first Dynacord Dealers Meeting made clear.

The meeting in Australia was upbeat - not just because the Australian DC distributor, Bryan Davidson, had chosen Lindeman Island as the location, with the Great Barrier Reef as a backdrop, but also because the eight Dynacord dealers that made the trip had strong turnover figures to report. "Dynacord has an excellent reputation in Australia," comments Davidson. "LittleMax, Corus Pro and Cobra are all best-sellers." The world's first compact line array system seems to have been especially successful in winning converts. "I never seem to have enough Cobra systems in stock," Davidson told us.

During the DC Dealer Days, in addition to various product demonstrations

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UK - White Light North has been chosen as the lighting supplier for the 2003 Garsington Opera season - Garsington Opera's 15th anniversary - which runs from 14 June to 12 July. First established in 1989, Garsington Opera performs a repertoire of operas in a purpose-built semi-outdoor auditorium in the grounds of Garsington Manor, near Oxford. The festival often stages works never before seen in the UK, and provides a platform for new singers; for the successful realization of these aims, the company received the European Culture Project Award for Performing Arts from the Pro Europa European Foundation for Culture.

In recent years, the lighting design for Garsington - a challenging brief that involves incorporating the ever-changing outdoor lighting into the design for each production - has been handled by Bruno Poet. When putting together the package for this year's season, whic

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USA - In one of the LED fixture’s first outings with a major American concert act, the spectacular lighting system on Tim McGraw’s 2003 tour includes eight Pulsar ChromaBanks. The LED strip fixtures, specified by tour LD John Broderick, are used for chasing color washes and very bright ‘blinder’ effects. They are arrayed symmetrically above the custom three-tiered black stage and its 40ft wide backline of 4ft x 4ft video cubes. Tour contractor Premier Global Staging of Nashville, Tennessee obtained the ChromaBanks through Pulsar distributor TMB.

Tim McGraw designed the set and rolling stage, which Premier Global Staging fabricated into a working structure. According to account manager, Steven ‘Creech’ Anderson: "We’ve used LED blasters in the past and always saw potential, but these ChromaBank LED strips are four feet long, and

  1. Lighting world gears up for Showlight 2005
  2. ELP out on the Hustings
  3. Latest Robert Juliat followspot to debut at White Light Open Day
  4. Space Park Bremen comes alive with ETC
  5. Pulsar introduces Masterpiece 96
  6. PLASA/Russia Open Day: London
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