Lighting

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USA - Lynyrd Skynyrd and 3 Doors Down are currently together on the Double Trouble Tour - with the show on 23 June at Trump Taj Mahal being filmed for broadcast on VH-1. Bandit Lites is supplying the lighting for this pairing. The lighting design is a collaboration between long time Skynyrd LD Steve Owens and 3 Doors Down LD Matt Mills.

Each band has a distinct look due to clever masking, drapes and truss movement between sets. While Skynyrd is more of a theatrical, old-school look, 3 Doors Down is a straight ahead 2006 rock look. Both Owens and Mills have also programmed their shows to give the audience the most bang for their buck from a shared system.

The tour spent a week at Starwood in Nashville fine-tuning the show before they hit theroad. The equipment utilised includes three grandMA consoles, A.C. Lighting's Chroma-Q Color Web, High End Systems' Turbo Cyberlights and S

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UK - National WiseUp2Work Day will be held on Wednesday 30 August 2006. WiseUp2Work is a major initiative by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) to address head-on the issue of safety for the under 21s when they are starting work, apprenticeships or work experience. On average, 10 young people are killed and 2,500 badly injured every year.

The aim is to make employers, trainers, youth workers and teachers, and young people themselves, aware of the risks they face in the workplace and what they should be doing to mitigate them. WiseUp2Work is sponsored by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and supported by the National Youth Agency and the British Chambers of Commerce.

National WiseUp2Work Day is being staged at a time when many young people are embarking upon their careers or starting work experience placements, and are at the highe

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Serbia - The European Agency for Reconstruction has delegated ETC to furnish the lighting systems for Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade.

Radio Television Serbia (RTS) has had an eventful past. Established in 1929 as Radio Belgrade, RTS was expanded to a television institution in 1956 by the Serbian government. In the following decades, RTS acquired an excellent reputation with the production of documentaries, sitcoms and quiz shows.

Under the regime of Slobadan Miloševic, the broadcast station entered dark times. Journalists who did not want to be utilised as instruments of the regime were fired, and RTS devolved into the megaphone of Miloševic's propaganda. The tragic climax came when 16 people were killed during the bombing of the studio headquarters on 23 April 1999, by NATO troops.

Since then, Serbian television has been privatised. Thanks to support from the Europea

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UK - HSL is again supplying a complete stage lighting and sound system to the high profile nine-week Opera Holland Park season, together with site-wide lighting and electrics, power distribution and full public address and announcement audio.

The completely sold out event features six full-scale productions, each run two at a time in repertory for three weeks, and is promoted by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

This year's shows includes: The Merry Widow, Fedora, Manon Lescaut, Cosi Fan Tutte, Rigoletto and The Queen of Spades, all accompanied by the Grammy Award winning City of London Sinfonia.

The technical production is overseen and co-ordinated by the Council's operations manager Mike Harth, working closely with his team of technical staff including chief LX Gary Cooper, deputy chief LX Andreas Atkinson and master carpenter Brendan McEvoy.<

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USA - Indiana-based Apollo Design Technology has introduces the Smart Move Vertical, its latest addition to the Smart Move family of gobo movement products. Featuring motion, time, and speed presets that create vertical movement of patterns or text, the Vertical's special gobo offers multiple image areas that, when combined with the vertical movement, allows one image at a time to be placed in the focal path of the fixture. While fitting conveniently into the iris slot of an ETC Source Four and Altman Shakespeare, additional effects can be created by placing another gobo in the fixture's gobo slot.

Ideal for subtle movement of corporate logos and other retail, architectural, and theatrical applications, the Smart Move Vertical offers designers new creative opportunities, say Apollo. A DMX model is also available.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - United Visual Artists has used 240 Chroma-Q Color Blocks to provide a curving LED screen of lighting and video effects for Massive Attack's Collected 2006 international tour. The Color Blocks have been bought by Blackburn-based rental company HSL, main lighting contractor for the tour.

The group, currently touring Europe to promote their tenth anniversary 'Best Of' compilation, recently returned to the UK to play high-profile headline slots at the Wireless Festival 2006 in London and Leeds. For this, the third successive tour collaboration between the band and lighting designer Vince Foster, UVA wanted to create an entirely new, more organic and audio-responsive show for their onstage visuals, whilst still retaining the essence of the last two tours.

UVA had discussed the idea of surrounding the group with LEDs capable of displaying images and text, but which also doubled

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UK - Entertainment lighting supplier White Light is continuing its close and successful working relationship with both European Events and Private Drama supplying the lighting for European Events' latest series of events and parties at the Honourable Artillery Company grounds in the City of London. The rig was also expanded on for one particular event organised within the HAC Marquee by Private Drama.

White Light have been working with European Events on their HAC Summer events for a number of years; White Light's Jason Larcombe says: "Every year we have built upon the design to offer more dynamic and stylised lighting, keeping a fresh appearance to the marquee interiors. This year our theme was 'summer in the city', and we made use of the latest automated and colour changing technology."

These changes have been well received by European Events, with the company's Ad

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UK - It is with great sadness that PLASA Media has learned this morning of the death of Tony Gottelier, who passed away peacefully at home at the weekend, following a long illness.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Tony was one of the most influential lighting designers working in the nightclub and leisure industry, with his ground-breaking design for the famous Camden Palace among his achievements. From 1983 onwards, with Peter Wynne-Willson, Tony was a partner in the innovative lighting design and engineering firm, Wynne-Willson Gottelier (WWG). The company was responsible for many entertainment projects for the leisure and cruise ship industry, and for creating products such as the Razorhead moving searchlight, the Fantôme - an automated version of Robert Juliat's 2.5kW zoom profile, and of course the Catalyst system with its 'orbital movement' mirror-based projection arrangement

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UK - Lighting designer Mark Kenyon has used 207sq.m of Chroma-Q Color Web for the set of new Ant and Dec TV gameshow PokerFace - the largest single application of the LED webbing system to date.

The show is produced by TalkbackThames in association with Gallowgate Productions for ITV. Set design is by Dominic Tolfts. Lighting and video design is by Mark Kenyon, assisted by console programmer and operator Roger Williams.

The big-budget production features the very latest LED lighting and video effects technology to bring a dramatic, visually exciting look and feel to the gameshow format. Central to this look is a series of slow moving video clips running on highly visible LED display surfaces throughout the show.

In addition to outputting these clips in standard video resolution to a large centre-stage LED screen behind presenters Ant and Dec, Mark Kenyon wanted to dre

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Italy - In the impressive framing of the Circo Massimo, the first stadium in the world, built by the Roman Emperors and used by them for the horse racing, the World Football Champions received the warmest greetings of their life.

The event broadcast by RAI and Sky Sport, was realised also thanks to the rental company Di & Di Lighting of Rome.

30 Coemar iWash Halo were used and the quality of light and colour perfectly suited to the TV application, says the company: the green, white and red colour created the Italian Flag, while the optical system of the projector together with the TXO Halogen lamp offered an extremely bright light output. The emission spectrum of the TXO lamp enables the user to obtain saturated colours.

(Chris Henry)

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USA - Entertainment lighting manufacturer High End Systems is today debuting its new podcast program, developed and produced in its in-house marketing department.

Those with iTunes, a video iPOD or podcasting software such as Juice, iPodder or iPodderX can now tap into these fresh feeds, which will include interviews, product demonstrations, tutorials, new technology 'sneak peeks' and more.

HES has a history of producing its own videos, which are posted on the HES website and transmitting these videos via an iPOD will now offer a portable convenience not offered by traditional web services. It also allows the ability to produce exclusive episodes, campaigns or podcast contests.

Tim Grivas, HES director of creative services, says: "Offering our videos through podcasting gives our dealers, sales team, techs in the field and lighting professionals an immediate access. It c

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Australia - Luxeon LEDs from Lumileds have been used to light the InterContinental Executive Club Lounge on the 32nd floor of the InterContinental Hotel in a project which provides a lounge for guests along with a viewing deck of Sydney's Botanical Gardens and Harbour.

Ndylight specified Megabay Lighting Enterprises, a certified member of the Luxeon Lighting Network, to create a relaxed, stylish environment through the creative use of light, while taking advantage of the stunning views of the city.

As the new lounge is surrounded by glass on three sides, lighting design director, Susan Lambert, had the challenge of minimising the amount of interior light being reflected back into the lounge. To achieve this, Ndylight's solution for the Executive Lounge incorporates Luxeon LEDS on both the interior and exterior. These are used to highlight individual elements of the design.

O

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Europe / USA - Radiohead has gained a reputation as one of our era's most creative and eclectic bands. Musically, they keep their fans' affection with a mosaic of multilayered songs and continuous artistic evolution. On the road, the band maintains that cutting edge feel with a complementary lighting design by long time Radiohead LD Andi Watson.

As fans eagerly await the release date of a new album, Radiohead has begun debuting some of its new material on a European and North American tour. The tour also marks the debut outing for Martin's Mac 700 Wash.

Andi Watson, who helped beta-test the Mac 2000 Wash on a number of Radiohead's European shows in 2002, and subsequently used the luminaire on the band's Hail to the Thief tour, has real-world tested the Mac 700 Wash on this latest Radiohead tour. "I am incredibly impressed with the Mac 700 Wash," he says. "

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USA - Martin Professional Inc has appointed Brad Haynes as the regional sales manager for the Central region of the US. An experienced industry professional with a strong electronics background and a wealth of knowledge in sales, design, technical applications, installation and programming, Haynes founded Bright Ideas LLC in 2002, a successful professional lighting and sound company based in Missouri that specializes in sales, design and installation for theatre, theme parks and architectural installations. He has also worked as an on-staff lighting designer and programmer at Chameleon Productions since 2004.

Haynes starts his new position at Martin on 5 July. His responsibilities as RSM primarily cover Martin's Show, TV and Theatre segments in the central US region although he will also be involved in the Commercial and Public Spaces segments.

Brian Friborg, Martin US Preside

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UK - Leeds based Lighting rental company Zig Zag lighting has been supplying lighting to Pink Floyd Tribute band - Off The Wall. The band have been touring round the UK and Europe since February and now have an array of Showtec lighting products in their lighting rig.

The Showtec products used on the show are; 16 Showtec Explorer 250 Pro, 10 Showtec Explorer 250 Wash, two Showtec Shogun Green Laser moving heads, and an assortment of ShowtecLED Par 36 fittings.

Off The Wall are Performing over two hours of classic Pink Floyd, including a complete rendition of the album Wish You Were Here, and their aim is to recreate the spectacle of the biggest rock concerts ever staged with lighting and video effects to match the music.

All the Showtec Explorer Pros and Washes are supplied in pairs ready loaded into flight cases, Neil from Zig Zag lighting has been highly impressed w

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UK - A new £7m boutique hotel development in Edinburgh's fashionable West End has been equipped from the ground up with audio products from the Fuzion plc catalogue.

The Hudson Hotel, the latest addition to the 21-strong Festival Inns portfolio, is the result of merging a former post office, night club and office block into a complete leisure operation, including 31 technology-led bedrooms, The Hudson Bar and Hudson Club. To fulfil the brief of providing cutting-edge technology the company turned to Edinburgh-based Dynamic Productions.

Dynamic's project manager Graeme Anderson has brought all his expertise to bear over the three hotel room floors, ground floor bar/reception and basement nightclub, where he has worked magnificently to convert a space with restricted ceiling height into a vibrant, atmospheric dance venue.

Working within the confines of a Grade-B restrict

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UK - The British Bridal Exhibition, which takes place in the picturesque spa town of Harrogate, has since 1987 grown into the world's largest trade bridal exhibition, attracting key bridal buyers from the UK and overseas.

Rick Lawson of Funtime AV was the LD for the show and his brief was to design a series of distinctly different lighting states to enhance a catwalk show by a number of different designers. He explains: "We used a combination of Mac 250 Kryptons, Mac 250 Washes and Mac 550s. Among the benefits were high light output, sharpness of image and the speed and quietness of the motors. Also due to an extremely low ceiling all the units have to be situated on the floor, so the fact that all the units were part of the same range, gave a visual uniformity when it was rigged, which looked a lot tidier than using several manufacturers."

He added: "I chose th

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UK - 5 Star Cases will celebrate its 25th anniversary at PLASA 06, where it will show its diverse range of cases - and also have some fun. Marking the quarter century, 5 Star is holding the 'Speed Challenge' - where visitors can experience an exciting flight-cased racing simulation game - with prizes to be won.

The simulation includes high quality graphics and sound and the entire system is housed in a custom built 'Super Tour' flight case with racing seat, steering wheel and pedals. The 'Speed Challenge' will take the lap times from each hour of the show, and the visitor with the quickest time walks away with a 5 Star 25th anniversary, limited edition briefcase. More than that, the overall quickest time over the four days will receive a £2,500 voucher to spend at 5 Star Cases.

5 Star will also show a selection of cases from its various ranges, including the recently upd

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USA - Dating back to the beginning of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bandit had often attempted to become the legendary bands lighting company, each time coming close but never actually sealing the deal. This year Bandit has finally completed the task. Ross Shilling at Vector Management, designer Steve Owens and tour manager Steve Voudouris chose Bandit Lites as the official lighting supplier for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Bandit C.E.O. Michael T. Strickland Says: "It is really a dream long overdue. I know all the guys in the band personally and haveworked in and around them since 1972. Bandit was almost Skynrds lighting company on manyoccasions through the years, but it never quite worked out. It is great to finally have these two starcrossed entities together."

Long time Skynyrd designer Steve Owens has designed and programmed a show that isperfectly suited to a band that is globally revered.

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Singapore - IIR and Unusual Productions have announce a merger of their respective international professional sound and lighting exhibitions for the South East Asian region. Under the agreement, Unusual Productions becomes an Associate Partner of PALA Asia and will no longer stage its annual IPALS exhibition. Instead, IIR and Unusual Productions will be jointly associated with PALA Asia, which will be held in Singapore in 2007 at Sing Expo.

Commenting for IIR, group exhibition director Darren Brechin states: "The merger of IPALS and PALA Asia is great news for the region and for the industry, providing for one definitive professional audio, lighting and entertainment technology exhibition. This is something that will greatly benefit the regional market and overseas exhibitors, providing a bigger, better show in a bigger, better location.

"The move to Singapore's Sing

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Benelux - In a pan-European collaboration, sister companies Flashlight Rental of Holland and Flashlight-APR of Belgium provided the complete audio, lighting, rigging and trucking production for the recent European tour by Frank Zappa's son Dweezil.

The arrangement was a development of the relationship between LD Bryan Hartley and Flashlight that began on last year's successful tour with Lenny Kravitz. "I was delighted with Flashlight's service," says Hartley, "so I recommended them for the Zappa gig."

The tour - entitled Zappa Plays Zappa, Tour de Frank - included a sold-out night at London's Royal Albert Hall on 2 June in which the venue's refurbished organ was pressed into service for one number, Louie Louie, just as it had been when Zappa Snr. played the venerable hall.

Tour manager Maryjo Spillane and production manager Glynn Wood headed the crew. Woo

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UK - The Professional Lighting and Sound Association (PLASA) was one of the main bodies representing the architectural, creative and live events sectors at the recent Olympics Business Summit, held in Leeds on Wednesday 19 July.

During the course of the Summit, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) - the body responsible for delivering the new venues and infrastructure for the Games, launched a draft version of its Procurement Policy - which outlines how it will manage the whole procurement process, including its selection and award criteria.

With the UK Government spending £3bn on the physical infrastructure for the Games, PLASA is keen to profile the creative and technical expertise of its membership and is preparing a guidance note for members to help them maximise their chances of winning key contracts. It will also be working with them to ensure they are fully aware

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Australia - LSC Lighting Systems has been appointed the exclusive Australasian distributor for the Pharos Architectural Controls range of products. The award-winning Pharos Lighting Playback Controller (LPC) is ideal for architectural, retail and themed entertainment environments that require sophisticated control of colour mixing, dimming, moving light and LED sources. Its advanced timeline-based lighting control, versatile triggering options and rugged solid-state construction make it the ideal all-in-one control solution for fixed installations.

These qualities make the Pharos LPC the ideal partner for the LSC range of EKO architectural dimmers and ePlate wall station remote controllers, say LSC. All devices integrate together seamlessly, say the company, allowing the LSC ePlate wall stations to activate memories in the EKO dimmers and control the playback of LED fixtures, mo

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Worldwide - ETC has launched a new Source Four 'mini-site' - featuring everything you need to know about the popular lights, in an interactive graphic mode. The mini-site's Home page gives viewers a concise end-to-end tour of the Source Four - all of the unique physical features that make it a leading fixed focus spotlight for entertainment and architecture.

The History page tells the chronological story of the Source Four family - when each light was introduced by ETC and the technical innovations that have made it an award winner.The Photometrics page is an invaluable tool - just click on a lighting-throw distance, choose a Source Four luminaire, pick a lamp, and see both the field diameter and the footcandle / lux readings for that luminaire at that distance. A handy short cut for lighting designers, a learning tool for newcomers.

And finally, people who have had a real-wor

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