Lighting

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UK - Liverpool's third HUB Festival - a mix of art, music and extreme sports staged at the Pier Head - expanded and featured several new elements this year.

The event is the brainchild of the Council's Liverpool Culture Company and included music, skateboarding and BMX competitions, graffiti art exhibitions and music performed by many excellent local bands

Kirstie Blakeman, event manager, explained that they had created a new look main stage under the cover of a single king pole, purple membrane tent supplied by Wangos, which was chosen for its aesthetics. She added: "With the event being held at Liverpool's waterfront World Heritage Site we wanted something unique and different looking, something really special and dynamic for the music zone this year - not just another standard stage or marquee."

The same was true for the DJ tent, compared by Spykatcha - which sa

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Denmark - The Xhibition Bar is the new casino floor bar at the Harrah's Casino in Atlantic City.

Opened on President's Day weekend the 360 degree bar features the customary slot machines and table games, but it's a color coordinated lighting and video system that gives the bar its character.

Surrounding more than 300 towering bottles on the interior of the bar are sixteen 50" plasma screens that reveal sensual video content set to pulsating Top 40 metro music. Further in are two rows of Martin Alien 05 color changers - an outer row of 24 plus an inner row of 24 - illuminating liquor bottles on vertical liquor racks. Added to this are four circles of colour changing Color Kinetics LED fixtures surrounding the bar. In a touch that gives the bar its stylish feel, the LED and Aliens are colour coordinated with the video on the plasma screens.

The Alien 05 lighting was desig

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UK - Washington D.C.-based Presentation Services is an outside lighting vendor for the largest hotel in the city - the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, and the Zero 88 Fat Frog is their console of choice. Presentation Services won the contract for lighting events at the hotel in January 2004. In their first year competing against outside vendors, Presentation Services won almost $3 million in lighting and video equipment contracts alone. "We go after every group that comes into the hotel," says technical director and lead technician Aaron Kramer. "A lot of the groups that come in here, however, have national contracts, but we've still handled events for the Big Brother Big Sister program - where Laura Bush spoke in support, corporate Marriot events and others."

In 2004, Presentation Services invested $176,000 in new lighting equipment and purchased a Zero 88 Fat

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Ireland - Bandit Lites supplied Production North with full lighting production for the first Cork Festival of Music, titled Live at the Marquee, and staged by Aiken Promotions in a near-5,000 capacity big top at the Monster Showground, Cork. The event, part of the City's year as European Capital of Culture, has been so successful that moves are afoot for it to become a regular fixture on Cork's annual entertainment calendar. The two weeks of live music featured a diverse line up of national and international artists, ranging from Christie Moore to the Gypsy Kings, Ronan Keating to Nick Cave.

Production North came onboard to supply the entire technical infrastructure, with the unflappable Steve Levitt at the helm, production and site managing. With some fast back-to-back changes needed, he wanted to ensure that all bands received their own required standards of lighting, a

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UK - When Faceparty, organizer of London's Big Gay Out festival in north London, wanted lighting for its dance tent, it gave the brief as "to create an 80s-style rave environment." With the help of PRG Europe - who also supplied lighting for the main stage and the alternative music tent - they did just that.

The event, held on Saturday 23 July, is the successor to London's Pride festival, and hosted 20,000 people at the Big Mutha main stage and 11 other stages and tents in Finsbury Park.

"For the main stage, we created a big automated lighting rig, to cater for all requirements, and offer greater flexibility live," said lighting designer Mike Sobotnicki, contracted by PRG Europe from Imagination. "Until we saw the rehearsals, we had no idea what would be needed. We had three overhead lighting positions, to create symmetrical patterns of beams through h

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UK - For the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II the Ministry of Defence engaged Unusual Services to provide production services for a weeklong programme of events.

The main focus of the week was on Sunday 10 July with an event staged on Horse Guards Parade for 11,000 veterans. Edwin Shirley Staging built a 40m x 25m stage with sound supplied by Wigwam, lighting provided by PRG Europe and a 160m scenic wall from Centrestage. Other key suppliers included Search, Power Logistics, Arena Seating, Unusual Rigging, Screenco, Show & Event, Dobson Sound, Delta Sound, Thorns and National Radio Bank.

During the week leading up to the celebrations, images of previously unseen World War II photographs were projected onto the façade of Buckingham Palace. In addition an 85m x 30m tented Veterans Centre was installed in St. James's Park along with a Living Museum, Press Centre, a BB

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USA - Greg Norgeot, Paul Sharwell and Angus Sinex of the lighting design partnership Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design recently lit the Oprah Winfrey Live Your Best Life workshop tour in multiple locations across the US.

Hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine, the Live Your Best Life tour was billed as "A day with friends, an afternoon with Oprah." The all-day workshop consisted of a morning of motivational entertainment and esteem-building exercises, followed by a presentation featuring Oprah Winfrey herself in the afternoon. UVLD's Greg Norgeot designed the lighting for the event; Paul Sharwell, assisted by Angus Sinex, was charged with recreating the design on each stop of the tour.

"This was quite different from most of the shows that we light," remarked Norgeot of the Live Your best Life tour. "Whereas most events we design

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USA - Hilary Duff has seemingly done it all at the ripe old age of nearly 18. Stage actress, film and television star (she was Lizzie McGuire on the TV show of the same name), she even has her own clothing line. And oh yes, she also finds time to sing.

Hilary Duff kicked off her Still Most Wanted tour in LA in July and will be touring the US through September. Teaming up on the tour are the Martin Maxxyz lighting console and Maxedia media server along with MAC 2000 Wash, MAC 300 wash lights, VL3000s and conventionals, all in the hands of lighting designer Seth Jackson. Tour lighting supplier is Bandit Lites.

"The plot was changing up until a day before the truck loaded," Jackson commented. "If it weren't for the flexibility of the crew (Sam Harden, BK Waggoner and Billy Willingham) and the endless amounts of drawings and input from Dizzy Gosnell, I doubt

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A variety of theatre products from manufacturers SGM, LDR, LightProcessor and Wireless Solutions were shown by Lightfactor Sales. From SGM, the Palco LED colour-changer (IP65), the Ribalta - a batten style LED fixture (also IP-rated) and the Giotto 400 CYM - a new moving head projector. Italian theatrical lighting manufacturer LDR launched several new products at the show including its new line of Xpress Scrollers. LightProcessor's new Dimension 3000 19" rack-mounted dimmer was seen at ABTT for the first time. Finally, also on show was Swedish company Wireless Solutions' award-winning W-DMX, a wireless DMX transceiver system, broadly based on GSM (mobile phone) technology.

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Italy - Italian commercial TV broadcaster Mediaset struck a winning vein eight years ago, when it launched a comedy show from Milan's legendary Zelig cabaret club.

Since 1997, when the first of 100 shows was given late-evening screening, the program has grown from a niche show into a true media phenomenon, with its comedians' by-lines becoming part of day to day jargon throughout the country, and the popularity of the live show exploding to such an extent that the producers (Canale 5 and Area Zelig) were obliged to stage the latest edition - aired in a prime-time slot on Canale 5 - in an 1,800-seat marquee on the outskirts of Milan, renaming the show Zelig Circus.

The weekly comedy show ran for three months, followed by a series of 'specials' featuring the highlights. The hosts were actor, comedian and author Claudio Bisio (at his fifth consecutive year on the show) and beauti

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Germany - Showlight, the quadrennial conference about lighting design in all its manifestations, took place in Munich in May. Under the guiding hand of chairman John Watt, the Showlight committee brought together designers, business-people, technicians, educators and students to talk about lighting. There was no grand theme; the constant clash of ideas was, in fact, the point. Thanks to the stimulating topics, the good companions, and the excellent German beer, a good time was had by all.

Sunday, 22 May opened with Mark White, regional manager or ETC UK and Eire, chairing the opening sessions. First, Australian lighting designer Nick Schlieper presented 'Four Years on Wagner's Cycle', his epic tale of how the smallest opera company in Australia (official staff number: five) took on the first locally-created staging of Wagner's Ring Cycle. The result, a strikingly sleek, modernis

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Germany - Two of the biggest players in the laser display market have announced a joint venture. Lothar Bopp, president of laser show market-leader Lobo, and Rüdiger Müller, founder of the global Tarm empire, have announced that the Tarm building in Bochum, Germany, will host a Lobo representation as a centre for installation and rental projects in the near future. Bopp and Müller have expressed their confidence that this association of former competitors will prove a successful model.

From now on, Tarm laser and showtechnik OHG will not depend on its old-fashioned Tarm technology, but can configure a product line together with Lobo which unites the high-tech solutions of Lobo with parts of the former concepts of Tarm. The new range of special device configurations will, say the companies, withstand the globalization of the laser show industry in regards to performance and pr

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Strand Lighting introduced two products - the EC21 dimmers and the OneLight range of daylight luminaires - both of which were recognized in the awards. The EC21 dimmer racks offers up to 96 Sinewave dimmers in a single rack. Users can mix and match both Sinewave and conventional dimmers, say Strand. The OneLight range includes a 575W Par and Fresnel with an integrated head and ballast design, allowing users to rig a single piece luminaire rather than a separate head and ballast. The fixtures offer remote start at power on, or control from any DMX console using the optional plug-in DMX control module.

Also perched on the Strand stand was FocusTrack - a new database system for tracking and documenting the use of moving lights for theatrical productions, developed by Rob Halliday - a leading moving light programmer and, of course, a contributor to L&SI. For more, see our Technical Focus f

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Stage Electrics showed new products from Prolyte, Apollo and Teclumen, plus its own brand, Encore. The company reported a good response to Prolyte's trussing, staging and chain hoist ranges after its appointment as distributor earlier this year. Apollo's colour scrollers are also a new product to Stage LX, as is the wingnut spanner, which incorporates a handy bottle opener and is new to its own Encore range. It's designed to be used on 10, 12, 17, and 19mm wingnuts.

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On the show floor, A.C. Lighting showed the latest additions to the Jands Vista and Chroma-Q Color Block product ranges. Color Block accessories now include new Pixel Cap and 30-way power supply - making the flexible LED fixture suitable for an even wider range of effects lighting applications, say A.C. Designed for Color Block applications under studio lighting conditions, where lens flare can appear on the TV camera image, Pixel Cap will fit over individual RGB LED cells on the front of Color Block units to eliminate camera lens flare. The new 30-way PSU offers a more cost-effective solution for controlling large Color Block systems - providing power and effects for up to six times as many units as the standard PSU. With built-in programming features, it's also ideal as a stand-alone unit. It comes with nine pre-programmed looks and users can store up to 42 custom looks on board. 64 ti

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Ever present at ABTT, Avolites showed a variety of products including its most popular performance and live entertainment consoles. It also demo'd the ART 2000i installation dimmer and its eDMX wireless control system, plus the Azure Shadow 2000 console - a variation on the Azure 2000 which, for theatre users, incorporates a new suite of theatrical programming and playback functions.

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XL Video was promoting its increasingly active role in scenic projection for theatre, including recent productions such as The Woman In White (see L&SI November 2004). Malcolm Mellows drew attention to the company's involvement with the forthcoming stage adaptation of Lord of the Rings. The US$22m musical production will preview in February 2006 at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre; the London debut is set for autumn 2006. Thomas Gray and Yuri Tanaka of the Gray Circle, whose previous work includes His Dark Materials at the National Theatre (see L&SI February 2004), will design and direct the moving imagery. Music is by Bombay Dreams composer, A.R. Rahman.

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High End Systems was showing the Wholehog 3 lighting control system, which now offers direct Ethernet connectivity to the ESP Vison lighting design visualizer, developed by ESP Studios in Las Vegas. Among its features, the software emulates some very effective moving smoke effects, and can cope with up to 16 universes of DMX. Optimized for the Hog 3, this version of ESP Vision includes exclusive features such as direct access to raw DMX data, remote focus, autopatching and blind preview - which allows the allows the user to look ahead to the next cue. Also on show was Hog iPC - a mid-range controller which uses the Hog 3 OS, but is also backwards compatible with the Hog 2 OS for maximum flexibility. The iPC includes an integrated PC motherboard running Windows XP Embedded.

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UK - When Avril Lavigne skated into London's Hammersmith Carling Apollo last month she did so with significantly less production than on earlier dates and tours. Lavigne came to London as part of the European leg of her extensive Bonez Tour, which included two sell-out shows at the Apollo.

This production was pared down in almost every aspect - lighting, sound and set - but for different reasons in each area. The show originally included a large video projection, centre stage, along with several scenic elements, but ultimately Lavigne thought it all too much: "Avril just wanted to get back to simple stuff . . . she decided that the scrollers had too many colours on them - she didn't want to see anything in the amber range at all," explained lighting designer, AJ Pen. The cuts have effectively created a harder edged, crunchier rock and roll feel; obviously the productio

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UK - As the creative design applications for the ChromaRange continue to expand and diversify, Pulsar has announced that the ChromaStrip2 is now available in custom colour LED configurations including the option of white.

With the Single Population option, a single LED colour is provided at the same intensity as when using a single channel of the standard RGB ChromaStrip2. This option is highly cost-effective when single-colour applications are required at light levels produced by the existing strip. Power and single-channel dimmable control is provided by the ChromaZone, up to 3.6m can be driven from each ChromaZone output.

With the Triple Population option, a single LED colour is provided at three times the intensity of using a single channel of the standard RGB ChromaStrip2. This option is cost-effective where single colour applications are required at three times the light

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France / Australia - Robert Juliat and SA Australia have announced a joint venture - SA Europe - which will build on the existing capabilities of both companies, in the entertainment and architectural lighting sector. SA Europe will focus on the sales and support of SA's extensive range of dimming, control and network products within the European market. "This is an exciting initiative for SA - it makes us a local player and represents a very significant undertaking in Europe," said Chris Bishop, owner of SA. "We are very excited about the opportunities this venture creates. The joint venture will have access to Robert Juliat's valuable distribution network throughout Europe and company reputation, plus SA's technology capabilities and skills as a global leader in entertainment and architectural dimming development."

"Robert Juliat has strong relationshi

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UK - An Avolites Diamond 4 Elite console was in action as the lighting controller at Somerset House, London, for their summer season concerts. It was chosen by Somerset House's head of lighting Nick Read and was supplied, along with the rest of the lighting gear, by rental company Siyan.

With headliners like The Doves, Super Furry Animals, Sigur Ros and Bloc Party, Nick Read designed a generic lighting rig for the venue's first series of summer concerts promoted by Somerset House themselves, and staged in the charismatic courtyard in central London. These will be followed by another series run by top UK promoters, Metropolis. Most band LDs used the D4, reports Read: "Because it's a great festival desk and this is essentially a festival-style set-up. It's highly 'buskable' and perfect for the job."

The main D4 programmer on Read's team was Dom Smith, himself a keen D4

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Among the major product previews was the brand new MAC 700 from Martin Professional. Ideally suited to the theatre market, its features include an animation wheel, CMY colour mixing and a 'Quiet Mode' option - all in thesame-sized package as the MAC 550. Boasting a 700W double-ended lamp and new glass reflector technology, the unit is aimed at filling the gap between the 575W MAC 550 and the 1200W MAC 2000 Profile - although it has more features than either. A switchable power supply which allows for tool-free selection of voltage settings. Also shown was the new MAC 250 Wash, as well as the new Patrick Woodroffe Gobo Collection for the MAC 2000 Profile.

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USA - Greg Norgeot, Paul Sharwell and Angus Sinex of lighting design partnership Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design recently lit the Oprah Winfrey Live Your Best Life workshop tour in multiple locations across the US. Hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine, the Live Your Best Life tour was billed as "A day with friends, an afternoon with Oprah." The all-day workshop consisted of a morning of motivational entertainment and esteem-building exercises, followed by a presentation featuring Oprah Winfrey herself in the afternoon. UVLD's Greg Norgeot designed the lighting for the event; Paul Sharwell, assisted by Angus Sinex, was charged with recreating the design on each stop of the tour.

"This was quite different from most of the shows that we light," said Norgeot. "Whereas most events we design are very busy, with challenging time constraints and he

  1. HSL Group
  2. ETC
  3. City Theatrical
  4. White Light
  5. Robe in the Kitchen
  6. Cooking up a PixelMix at Godskitchen
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