UK - Avolites once again proved to be the most popular festival console of choice at Glastonbury, with numerous desks used to run lighting in a huge variety of areas across the site. On the Acoustic stage, two Diamond 4 Elites were used by LD Rob Sangwell and programmed by Gary Churchill, running Martin MAC 2K Profiles, 2K Performances, 2K Washes, 550s and 250 Entours. The Acoustic stage used Avolites dimming plus Avo DMX buffer boxes and Fineline supplied all lighting.

Gary Churchill said: "The D4 is great. I have used it before a couple of times but here I've really had a chance to put the desk through its paces. I like the wide choice of faders and the fact that you can put any playback anywhere you like and have direct access to all the fixtures onstage." He added that the Elite was also a handy size, and could easily be moved by one person and lifted by two.

In

Denmark - Martin Professional's line of popular, award-winning MAC moving heads is expanding with the launch of the new MAC 700 Profile which squeezes as much into the fixture as possible, while maintaining the same fixture size as the MAC 550. In fact it is designed to fill the gap between Martin's 575W MAC 550 and the 1200W MAC 2000 Profile, although this 700W profile spot is packed with more features than either.

The combination of efficient 700W double-ended lamp and new glass reflector technology produces a remarkable light output. A full CMY color mixing system and eight-position colour wheel are included. All colors on the wheel are replaceable and the CMY color mixing system, animation wheel and a 'Quiet Mode' option make the MAC 700 ideally suited to the theatre market.

A gobo animation system is included, that which was pioneered by Martin in the MAC 2000 Performance

UK - James Thomas Pixel Fixtures were utilized in a number of non conventional ways at Glastonbury 2005, including the architectural illumination of the Festival's Pyramid Stage, seen - literally - in a completely new light for the first time!

These various lateral applications of Pixel fixtures illustrated their energy-saving properties, adaptability and low heat emissions. The latter specifically enabled them to be encased in plastic and other impromptu weatherproofing materials to protect them from the swamp like conditions, in abundance at this year's Festival!

Pixel's Chris Ewington and Pyramid Stage LD Andy Porter (AKA Fraggle) had been speaking about architecturally lighting the Pyramid for the last couple of years. In 2004, Fraggle used PixelPAR 90s to illuminate the internal structural detail of the lighting rig. This year, with the new 110ec PixelLine wash fixture co

UK - Lighting designer Peter Barnes wanted to create plenty of visual eye candy for both cameras and the live audience - with what was primarily a daylight show in London.He wanted the brightest and highest impact LED fixtures with which to do this, and chose 120 PixelLine 1044s and 14 of the new PixelLine 110ecs. Barnes created zigzagged LED borders to the onstage trusses and used the 110's at the bottom of the PA scrims firing out into the audience.

Barnes also used PixelDrive for controlling the content running through the Pixel fixtures. The ability to drag, drop, rotate and resize video sources via PixelDrive proved invaluable for his design, as none of the battens were rigged straight. The batten's own onboard effects made it possible to have fast strobe sequences, as seen with The Who and Paul McCartney.Show lighting director for the BBC was Bernie Davies with all lightin

New Zealand - Historically, theatre lighting designers have been unable to produce crisp shutter cuts or pattern projection in very long-throw situations. The problem being, the only luminaires available to date either utilize plastic lenses which cannot maintain the desired light output and beam quality or they have beam angles which are just too wide. This issue has been addressed by Selecon, the company claims, by a new lighting tool. The Pacific 5° High Efficiency Fixed Beam has been designed as a no-compromise long-throw lens tube for the Selecon Pacific range.

Featuring a dual glass lens design using a 300mm front lens, this luminaire delivers more light than the Pacific 5.5°-13° Very Narrow Zoomspot (200mm front lens) with an unmatched beam quality. Shutter cuts are knife-edged (or with a well controlled soft cut - adjustable using the rear lens); high contrast pattern

UK - Le Maitre were called upon by United International Pictures/Nibbs Events to turn Leicester Square into an alien attack zone for the premiere of the new War of the Worlds movie on 19 June. A six-man crew of pyrotechnicians worked over two 12-hour days and used a range of different special effects on the set in the centre of Leicester Square. The park was turned into a dramatic bomb site for the stars and guests to walk through before entering the Odeon cinema though a tunnel.

The set was designed to look like the fall out from an alien attack, with piles of rubble, overturned cars, a demolished archway, broken lampposts, park benches and a phone box. Le Maitre used CO2 Jets in the craters on the ground, which fired throughout the show. The craters also held the Dragon gas flame effects, which spewed flames in random bursts. The Pyrotek Dragons were also used on the balconies

Belgium - Barco has launched a mobile, self-contained outdoor LED solution, which incorporates a rotatable 9sq.m LED display mounted on a trailer. The new B-10 is a cost-effective mobile LED solution incorporating Barco's SLite 10 outdoor LED screen modules. As a fully self-contained unit with display, image processor and internal power supply, the B-10 can be set up by one person and can be ready to operate in less than 15 minutes, say the company. With its 360° rotatable screen, the B-10 can also easily be positioned or repositioned throughout an event to face the audience, regardless the setting. In addition, the B-10 has an adjustable tow-bar, which allows it to be used with any car or truck with a towing capacity of 3,5 ton and above.

As a cost efficient, self-contained mobile LED display solution, Barco's B-10 offers all companies - large or small - the opportunity to own

The Netherlands - Luxeon LEDs from Lumileds Lighting claim to have conquered one of the major challenges to the use of LEDs in general lighting - the wide variation in the colour of white light emitted from a given LED - with a proprietary conformal coating process that delivers the market's only uniformly white solid state light source.

The Luxeon-exclusive coating process ensures that a uniform layer of phosphor is applied to every facet of the Luxeon LED die, eliminating the varying phosphor thicknesses that cause colour inconsistencies within the beam pattern of white LEDs from other vendors, say the company.

"We wanted to use high-power LEDs in some of our flashlight products to give our customers the maximum light output along with the ruggedness and longevity of solid state lighting, but we rejected most white LEDs because of their poor colour quality," said R

Belgium - ADB has appointed Pascale Van Eycken as marketing communication officer. Van Eycken, who formerly worked as an e-business manager in the pharmaceutical industry, will provide the company's sales force with technical and promotional material, and work to widen the exposure and strengthen the company's image. She will also continue with improvements to the ADB website, and be responsible for designing and editing the company's monthly newsletter for its distributors, as well as the company's presence at exhibitions, including concept and booth design.

(Lee Baldock)

Belgium - ADB's Warp, the fully automated zoom profile spotlight, picked up the Showtech Product Award 2005 in the category Lighting & Projection Technology, at the recent Showtech exhibition in Berlin. The award is presented every two years by the Showtech organizers in conjunction with the German Association of Theatre Professionals (DTHG). It is intended to reward innovation, functionality and design, among other criteria. The Jury decision for Warp was unanimous, say the company.

Besides its silent operation and accurate repositioning, the sophisticated remote control capabilities of the fixture were particularly praised. After successful demonstrations and comparative tests by professional users, a number of prestigious venues have recently installed motorized Warp units, including Glyndebourne Opera House, UK; Munich Staats Oper, Germany; Paul Klee Cultural Centre, Switzer

UK - The former head of lighting at the Millenium Dome defrauded its operator out of nearly £4m. Simon Brophy, 39, and David Gordon, 44, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC).

It has been found that Brophy used his position as head of lighting to ensure that an extremely profitable contract went to a company he specifically set up for his own benefit - Pro Design - of which Gordon was also a director. Both are to be sentenced later this month.

The fraud was discovered when in September 2000 the NMEC had become suspicious and called in the Metropolitan police. This was followed by an investigation by the Public Sector Corruption Team and the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Directorate. Detectives discovered false information within the tender document submitted by Pro Design and Brophy, Gordon and several others were subsequen

UK - HSL Productions has supplied a complete stage lighting and sound system to the high profile nine-week Opera Holland Park season, plus site-wide lighting and electrics, power distribution and full public address and announcement audio. The acclaimed season features a total of six full-scale productions, each running two at a time in repertory, and is promoted by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

HSL has been supplying Opera Holland Park for the last three seasons, project managed for them by James Ewart, and in four weeks, they built a complete 830 capacity theatre and site infrastructure, including all backstage facilities, dressing rooms, stage, auditorium, picnic and public areas and front of house. The stage is built under a custom canopy and has two structural points that are also used to fly the spine of the lighting rig mother grid - a carefully balanced netw

USA - With the help of Stage West Theatre Restaurant and All Suites Hotel in Ontario, Canada, and Horizon Control Inc, Entertainment Technology recently completed a one-year software beta-testing of the Marquee ILC lighting control console. The Marquee ILC began its journey under the supervision of a project team that included Gordon Pearlman, Robert Bell, Alan Martello, Rick King, and Jim Laird. Robert Bell explains: "I needed someone who would take the time to write out notes, instead of simply blowing by potential problems. I also looked for that real-world environment where the system could be operated by talented and knowledgeable technicians. I found all of this at Stage West."

Located in Mississauga, Ontario, Stage West is a Las Vegas style dinner theatre with around 500 performances each year - generally three musicals and two plays. The productions are changed

UK - Designing the lighting for the biggest ever gig in the UK, a design which will be copied at nine other huge gigs worldwide and seen by up to five billion viewers on TV and online, is no mean feat. But talk to Peter Barnes, lighting designer for the phenomenally successful Live 8 concerts, and it all seems like a walk in the park.

Originally scheduled to finish at 8pm, then 9.30pm, London's Hyde Park concert was widely expected to over run. "There's a massive difference between running a show that finishes at 8pm, when it's still light, and one scheduled to finish after dark," said Barnes. "So the day before, we got a team to go and rig six VL2416s on each of 16 delay towers in the park. Not only did they provide light on the crowd at night, but during the day they also gave a sparkle for the cameras when they filmed from the back of the stage.

Supplied by P

UK - Coldplay's lighting designer Nick Whitehouse and show designer Bryan Leitch specified a Diamond 4 Vision console to control all lighting, video and visual effects for the current Coldplay Twisted Logic world tour which is now in full swing on its summer UK and European outdoor leg.

Rental company Siyan in partnership with Dutch company Flashlight is supplying all lighting equipment and Siyan ordered the two brand new consoles for the occasion. Whitehouse, who is also operating, says: "The D4 is my console of choice now - I use it for all my work, it's a massive step forward for integrated lighting and video control but retains all Avo's trademark hands-on features."

The D4 is running eight universes of DMX to lighting and assorted video sources triggered via the new Radical Lighting NG1 high definition digital media server. Avolites worked closely with Wh

UK - Summit Steel is supplying a 45-way Kinesys Elevation 1+ vari-speed automation and control system to the current Oasis stadium tour - as specified by lighting designer Andi Watson. It is the largest ever Kinesys Elevation variable speed chain hoist system used to date.

Lighting contractor PRG Birmingham, and account handler Robin Wain contracted Summit to supply the system which is being used to move 12 lighting 'Quads' customised frames each holding 4 MAC 2000 moving lights and lined with PixelLine LED battens on the top rail and DJ Flash rope. There are two motors per quad, and these glide seamlessly in and out and up and down to create different patterns and configurations - effectively making a constantly moving stage set.

There are four further moving trusses taking up thirteen points, each of varying lengths and containing a total of 12 Syncrolite SX 3KW moving light

UK - Bandit Lites is supplying lighting production for Brian McFadden's first solo UK tour, during which he is promoting his Walking Disaster album. Bandit's Lester Cobrin is working with Production North and lighting designer Arturo Ollandini.

McFadden's musical direction has changed considerably following his move from Westlife and Ollandini's lighting brief was left wide open, apart from the fact that he was asked to make it a bit rocky and raw, to suit McFadden's gritty new style and his dynamics as a solo performer. "There's plenty of creative scope," he says. "The set really rocks out one minute, gets bluesey and ballady the next and also gets stripped right back at times to just him and his acoustic guitar."

Ollandini and lighting technician Martin Garnish are using a two truss rig. The front one features Martin MAC 2K performances to light an

World - Martin Professional gear, including the Maxedia Digital Media Composer, MAC fixtures and Atomic strobes were integral factors in the production of several of the Live8 shows.

All lighting equipment for the Hyde Park concert was supplied by PRG London and included 50 MAC 2000 Wash, 35 MAC 2000 Profiles, 20 Atomic strobes with Atomic Colours, LEDs and conventionals.

In Philadelphia, lighting designer Thomas Beck had MAC 2000 Wash, MAC 2000 Profiles and Atomic strobes at his disposal while a Martin Maxedia digital server provided wallpaper and animation effects onto multiple screens in combination with IMAG and other pre-built content. Maxedia effects were controlled from a Martin Xciter off a touchscreen with 60+ songs programmed in two days. Lighting gear was supplied by Light Action of Delaware.

At the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, Johannesburg, Gearhouse South

France - French audio visual company, Lumison, reports a "spectacular" first half to 2005 with a plethora of high profile events featuring Lighthouse LED screens. These include corporate functions for major banking institution BNP Parisbas and French television producers union Espace Clacquesin, plus a fashion show in the Lagerfeld Gallery of the Paris Carrousel Du Louvres.

BNP Parisbas holds its annual conference at the Palais Des Congres De Paris each year for 5,000 of its employees. For this year's event, Lumison supplied 50 panels of Lighthouse R10 10mm pixel pitch LED video screen strategically positioned to provide an eye-catching effect.

"The set was quite unusual looking," explains Lumison's CEO and owner Pierre Heyligen. "We stacked LED panels on the stage in a variety of configurations - as single panel, 2x2 panel, 4x4 panel and 4x6 panel scr

USA - On 9 June, the 2005 NBA Finals kicked-off with Game 1 of the Detroit Pistons versus the San Antonio Spurs championship series in Dallas. Lighting designer Randy Nordstrom, and the rest of the NBA production team, utilised a lighting package supplied by Bandit Lites.

"My hat goes off to all the production staff involved in the NBA Finals," says Bandit Lites vice president Mike Golden. "Watching the NBA production team go through the scramble of surveying the final team venues and then detailing their equipment needs and lighting plan was truly impressive."

The lighting package for the NBA Finals consisted of 26 VL3000 spot luminaires, 6 VL2500 spot luminaires, 28 Mac 2000 wash units, 8 Mac 600 units, 54 ETC Source Four units, 2 Grand MA lighting control consoles, along with Electrol and CD80 digital dimmers.

"For the finals, we used what we call

UK - The PAI Group (PAIG) has completed the design, specification and installation of full sound, lighting and AV system at the Media Centre Arts Hall, University of Wales in Lampeter. The project included the supply of a full live stage sound system, stage lighting and video equipment to the Arts Hall adjacent to the Media Centre.

The project required flexible and easy to use systems to enable the students to stage a variety of performances from fashion shows to live concerts and stage shows, plus conferences and media presentations.

The PAIG team, led by project manager Steve Timlin chose Logic System loudspeakers, for their ruggedness, quality and cost-effectiveness. They reconditioned and re-used the college's existing cabinets for side fills. The system is powered by QSC amplifiers, and the FOH desk is an Allen & Heath GL3300.

"It was also important to give the stu

UK - DPL Production Lighting, working for Richmond Event Management and Dick Tee, architecturally lit Nelson's flagship, the HMS Victory and supplied stage lighting systems for several stages and other areas at the 2005 International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth.

Admiral Nelson's famous vessel was lit initially for the Trafalgar 200 bicentennial celebrations, for a high ranking military function aboard the ship that also involved the Band of The Royal Marines 'Beating the Retreat' in the courtyard beside Britain's most famous warship. DPL also lit a life-size model of the X-35 Joint Strike Fighter airplane that was located there for the same event, providing a contrast between old and new military technology.

The Victory illuminations then continued all week into the Festival of The Sea, which started a few days after Trafalgar 200 ended. The Victory lighting scheme was d

USA - Color Kinetics has introduced new products and technologies designed to support greater adaptability, ease-of-use, and streamlined installation for both white and coloured light applications. The new offerings range from an architectural control interface to versatile power/data supplies, say the company.

iW Translator is a hardware interface that allows widely used architectural control systems to communicate with Color Kinetics' IntelliWhite series of white solid-state lighting systems. Conventional light sources in commercial and residential environments are commonly controlled by master control systems such as those from Lutron and Leviton. iW Translator provides a simple means of interoperability with these third-party control systems, making IntelliWhite products widely adaptable to existing environments, say CK. The compact device translates commands from third-part

UK - Sunday 10 July saw the culmination of a week of events marking the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, including a Commemoration Event of Reflection and Reminiscence, held in Horse Guards Parade in the presence of The Queen and members of the royal family and an invited audience of 10,000 WWII veterans and their families.

With a speech by Her Majesty, the event was hosted by Simon Callow and featured readings, humour and music from World War II, with a choir of 150, an 80 piece orchestra and a host of celebrities including Bruce Forsyth, Petula Clark, Claire Sweeney, Laura Michelle Kelly and a special - and surprise - appearance by Dame Vera Lynn. Beginning at 3pm, the event was broadcast live on BBC1 and displayed on large LED screens to the crowds lining The Mall. Working for Unusual Services to supply the lighting was PRG Europe, with Alan Thomson and Loz Wilkin

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