Lighting

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USA - The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis has found two markets in the Twin Cities for its Robert Juliat Topaze and Manon followspots. The Theatre not only uses a trio of Topazes and a pair of Manons for its own dramatic and musical productions but also lends them to the Minnesota Opera during its season.

"I have been a theatrical technician for 10 years and have used a wide variety of followspots at venues all over the country," notes Owen Moldow, lead electrician at the Guthrie. "When I started working at the Guthrie Theater in 2007 I got to use Robert Juliat Topaze and Manon for the first time, and I was floored. I've never seen a followspot so bright or that had such nice action. They are incredibly easy to use and maintain; I never thought that I would actually look forward to using a followspot."

When the Guthrie isn't utilizing the followspots, it len

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Italy - Robe DigitalSpot 5000 DTs and 45 Robe ColorWash 575E AT moving lights were utilised by leading Italian TV lighting director/designer and DoP Pino Quini for the latest series of RAI 1's I Fuoriclasse (The Campion).

The popular programme, presented by maverick Italian TV personality Carlo Conti and produced by Magnolia Productions sees non-celebrity contestants from all types of backgrounds and careers compete to become singing stars. It is recorded at RAI's Studio De Paolis in Rome, and lighting equipment was supplied by Rome based rental house, DI & DI Lighting.

For I Fuoriclasse, the moving lights - over 200 in total, along with 300 white light sources, were all mounted on aluminium trussing that followed the lines of the eye-catching set, designed by Marco Calzavara. The ColorWash 575E ATs were rigged behind the set and used for colouring and texturing

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UK - Speaking at the PLASA Annual General Meeting in London today, PLASA CEO Matthew Griffiths will call on the professional entertainment technology industry to support the new £15m National Skills Academy by donating £1m worth of lighting, sound, AV and staging equipment.

The National Skills Academy aims to significantly help to reduce skills gaps and shortages in backstage and off-stage skills. The NSA business plan, supported by PLASA and over 120 leading employers from theatre and live music, sets out in detail an ambitious vision to provide world-class training for the world's greatest stages. Working together with employers, freelancers, colleges and training-providers throughout the country, the NSA will deliver industry-endorsed training for young people and professionals. A proposed new state-of-the-art training facility in Thurrock, Thames Gateway, will pr

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UK - Peli Products has announced the acquisition of lighting manufacturer Blue i UK. This purchase will enable Peli Products to expand its presence in Europe, Middle East and Africa while continuing to develop new products and technologies, says the company.

The acquisition of Blue i complements Peli Products strategic vision to position the company as the pioneer in new lighting technology.

In 2003 the company launched Recoil LED technology. Now, through the acquisition of Blue i, Peli Products takes a further step towards the launch of its Advanced Area Lighting Group (AALG), a new line of products" bringing next generation Area Lighting Technology to market. The Advanced Area Lighting Group will drive primary R&D to bring portable, powerful, energy-efficient and environmentally responsible lighting technology to remote area applications.

"More than three decades

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UK - Kave Theatre Services, specialists in theatrical supplies and services, has increased their hire supply of ETC Source Four lanterns. Mark Larcombe, manager of Kave Hire Department, says: "We are delighted to have been able to increase our Source Four hire stock. We now have a selection of both 15°- 30° and 25° - 50° lanterns available. With over 60 Source Four luminaries in stock we are now proud to have the largest supply of these lanterns outside London, in the South East. We always listen to our customers and strive to connect them with the best products while offering great service and support. The Source Four is an excellent product and it is a lantern demanded by many in the entertainment industry. The addition of the Source Four will ensure we continue to meet the needs of our customers."

The new ETC Source Four lanterns wasted no time in Ka

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USA - Wybron has promoted John Sondericker III to director of technologies.

For the past 12 years Sondericker has been Wybron's senior electronics/software engineer, helping design almost every product the company makes. Sondericker served as the chief architect of Infogate, the software at the heart of Wybron's Infotrace system, which uses the Remote Device Management two-way communication protocol to let users remotely manage and address their lighting rigs.

In his new role at Wybron, Sondericker will help the company stay abreast of new developments in the lighting industry, including the continued emphasis on two-way communication protocols such as RDM and ACN (Architecture for Control Networks).

"Our industry is evolving at a remarkable rate. Lighting systems are becoming more and more complex every day," Sondericker said. "I'm grateful for the opportunit

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USA - The new 250,000sq.ft home of the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue was well received when it opened on 11 April. Located in Washington, D.C., adjacent to the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, the Newseum features seven levels of galleries, theatres, and event spaces that blend news history with cutting-edge technology and hands-on exhibits. Besides offering museum-goers a behind the scenes look at how and why news is made, they also produce and broadcast in their own television studios.

The main funder of the operations of the Newseum is The Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation. Jim Updike, vice president of technology for the Freedom Forum and for the Newseum, points out, "doing the outside news broadcasts and programmes from here is an important part of our mission. We have done any number of television shows here from network newscasts all the way to our o

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USA - Bandit Lites supplied lighting production and crew for the UK leg of guitar hero, Joe Satriani's Professor Satchafunklus & The Musterion Rockadelic World Tour, which has just kicked off in Europe. The lighting designer is LA-based Ernesto Corti who is enjoying his third tour with the band.

The tour primarily plays large theatre venues, and the rig is based around four trusses - front, back and two mid-stage, that were subtly angled into a V-shape.

The upstage truss is used to hang a 33ft wide by 16ft drop of SoftLED cloth, adding a new dimension to his powerful performance, and nine ColorKinetics ColorBlast 12 LED wash lights are also over-rigged on the top rail of the back truss for stage depth.

The two mid-trusses are made up from pre-rigged sections - chosen for the larger spacing between the two rails.They vary slightly in length - the stage right truss meas

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UK - Swindon town centre is set to play host to the first BBC Big Screen in the South West of England as a giant Lighthouse LED screen, installed by TMC screen specialists, is officially switched on.

'Big Screen Swindon' is the first giant, permanent BBC Screen in the South West of England. It forms part of the Wharf Green development - the first area in Swindon to be redeveloped since The New Swindon Company unveiled plans to regenerate the town centre.

Following the approval of designs for the Wharf Green by LDA Design, the large screen specialists TMC was appointed to install the giant 7 x 5 panel (7.14m x 3.8m) P16i/o Lighthouse LED screen, which has been placed along the North Façade of the Brunel West car park. It is housed in a freestanding structure, which camouflages the car park, and is controlled by a Lighthouse LIP-DX, an X-Drive Pro and an auto brightness control

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UK - In the first two months since its March launch, over 1,000 panels of Lighthouse's R7-Enhanced Resolution (ER) LED panels have been sold, reports the company. Using the same advanced digital processing technology as R12-ER and R10-ER panels, R7-ER's enhanced resolution doubles the effective resolution on the same-sized panel as its 16mm counterpart.

Creative Technology (CT) placed an early order for 163 panels. "We decided to invest in a new generation of outdoor screen and wanted a product which would raise the bar on the current generation of products, providing improvements in performance, weight and functionality," says Dave Crump, business development director for Avesco Group, parent company of CT.

The R7-ER panels were put to immediate use, after acceptance testing by CT staff being shipped straight from the Lighthouse factory to Bahrain for use at that co

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UK - PSL creativity and technology helped generate the appropriate pizzazz for the after-show party for Speed Racer, the new movie directed by the Wachowski Brothers, famous for The Matrix trilogy.

Speed Racer was described by one critic as "hyper-stylised, primary-coloured and taking on the aspect of a glamorous cartoon", and PSL worked with production designer Amanda Davies from AD Events to create a suitably sensational environment for Sir Ian McKellen, Christina Ricci, Emile Hirsch and others who had attended the film's premiere.

The party's unusual location was an edgy new space in central London called P3, once a 14,000 sq.ft concrete testing facility belonging to the University of Westminster, and only recently opened as an exhibition area and venue.

With its 30' high ceiling and mezzanine gallery floor, P3 offers interesting possibiliti

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UK - XL Video is supplying equipment and crew for the successful Boyzone reunion tour, which sees the Irish boyband take to the stage again for the first time in eight years.

The stage concept is that of a giant video box, with the floor, ceiling and walls all utilised to create a fast-moving, dynamic and constantly changing performance environment.

This features over 1000 MiTrix tiles which are lining the 12-stepped stage set making up the floor of the performance area, and bordering six staggered overhead trusses on three sides, creating a mirror-image effect to the stage below. The truss mounted MiTrix was made up as custom lengths for the tour.

Upstage centre is the back wall, comprising a 22.5sq.m Barco ILite 10 LED screen. The side walls feature a total of 128 Element Labs VersaTUBES, mounted on special frames, and arranged in horizontal lines.

All these video elemen

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UK - Projected Image Digital (PID) will once again be exhibiting at ABTT - and will be displaying Catalyst Digital Media software Version 4 this year, which is being used extensively for theatrical productions including the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Opera House, Royal and Derngate Northampton, UK Tour of Oh What a Night, West Yorkshire Playhouse and The National Theatre of Scotland.

It is also in action on a myriad of tours and live events, including James Blunt's 2008 world tour (LD Paul Normandale), Boyzone (LD Peter Barnes), the recent Kaiser Chief's homecoming gig at Leeds Elland Road stadium (Video director Jon Shrimpton/LD Richard Larkum) and will be used on the upcoming Coldplay world tour (LD Paul Normandale).

Catalyst is flexible, configurable and adaptable to suit productions of any size or budget, says the company. The latest PRO version, when coupled

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USA - Bandit Lites is touring with Carlos Santana on his current Live Your Light world tour.

Featured equipment includes Vari*Lite 3500 Washes, 3000 Spots, Coemar Infinity Washes, Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes, MAC 600s, American DJ LED Pars, and Lycian M2 Spots. Lighting was controlled by two grandMAs.

The tour's lighting director, Lee Gipson programmed the US. leg of the tour at Bandit's Nashville facility with Bandit programmer, Trevor Ahlstrand. Additional Bandit crew includes crew chief, Chuck Hastings and lighting technicians, Paul Holst and David Hauss.

Santana is currently playing shows in Europe. He will continue touring throughout Canada and the western United States before closing out the world tour in mid-October.(Jim Evans)

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UK - LD Paddy Sollitt is using Robe moving lights for the UK section of the Pigeon Detectives world tour. The energetic Leeds indie rockers have just released their new album Emergency.

For this tour, Sollitt's design is based on multiple layers of lighting, the idea being that he has an infinite variety of beam patterns and effects at his fingertips to deal with the sharp, punky, flashy nature of much of the set. It's a heavily back-lit show, with a 'wall of death' upstage. This style of lighting is very much suited to the band's frenetic set which has no dull moments, with lead singer Matt Bowman engaging in some spectacular acrobatics particularly on top of the monitors.

This tour is also a big step up for Pigeon Detectives in terms of it being their first with a proper full production, kicking off in style with two gigs at Millennium Square in their hometown of Leed

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Belgium - Barco has partnered with IBM Global Financing (IGF) to develop a new lease offering to help rental and staging companies more easily acquire Barco projector technology.

The new CLM Lease Offering, backed by IBM Global Financing, gives companies the opportunity to access Barco's CLM line of projectors, designed and built specifically for the demanding rental and staging market.

"For years, large concert promoters and event planners have relied on the Barco name to bring high-tech visualization and lighting technology to the stage," said Paul Foulkes, vice-president, vendor financing, IGF. "Thanks to the CLM leasing programme, smaller rental partners will also get the chance to acquire Barco's state-of-the-art CLM projection technology. We are delighted to incorporate a financing programme with Barco to support those companies grow their business."<

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Serbia - Eurovision lighting designer Per Sundin once again controlled the TV spectacular with a sophisticated grandMA system. Four grandMA full-size at the FOH were joined by an equal number of consoles as backup. 23 MA NSPs (Network Signal Processors) spread the commands to a massive lighting rig.

The show used, besides many others, 136 Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE, 24 BigLites, numerous Martin moving lights, approximately 120sq.m of Barco OLite 510, 24sq.m of Barco SLite 10 and a number of Martin LED screens. A giant stage construction was built on the arena floor which was 25m wide and 27m deep. 72 tons of light equipment were mounted to nearly 2,500m of truss.

Procon Event Engineering Germany, was the general technical supplier and provided lighting, sound, video, stage building, rigging and power. Production designer was Goran Joksimovic. Sven Stojanovic worked as art direct

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UK - The radical remodelling of a Council-owned Hertfordshire swimming pool between 1989-1991 resulted in a new type of building geometry, topped off with a giant hyperbolic roof which at that time was the largest of its type in the world.

During the first quarter of 2006, The Finesse Leisure Partnership, who manage the Hatfield Swim Centre for Welwyn Hatfield Council, completed a £750,000 council-funded refurbishment of the technical infrastructure for the local authority.

At that time the facility's system integrators Clarity in Sound, Light and Vision introduced Finesse to the idea of LED lighting to enhance the discharge lighting in the high-humidity environment.18 months ago the integrators specified and fitted 12 of Pulsar's ChromaFlood 200 fixtures (each containing a combination of 66 Red, Green and Blue LEDs).

Finesse's health & fitness manager, Amanda Morris,

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UK - Servicing a client located on the other side of the Atlantic can be a challenge for an event services company, but London-based PSL has forged a successful working partnership with American production company A Caspian Production.

Under the direction of A Caspian, PSL delivered the full staging solution for this year's 2008 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, an annual forum and Awards ceremony to mark the distribution of more than $30 million of grants by the Skoll Foundation, the largest foundation for social entrepreneurship in the world.

For a two-night programme culminating in the Awards, A Caspian Production booked one of Oxford's architectural gems, the famous Sheldonian Theatre. More than 700 people attended the ceremony, which boasted former US President Jimmy Carter as one of its speakers, as well as Jeff Skoll, first president of Ebay and founder of t

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UK - On 1 June, during excavation work in preparation for the 2012 Olympics, an unexploded WW II bomb was found in a river less than 50 yards away from the Three Mills Studios in Bromley by Bow. The 1,000kg bomb was the largest discovered in the past three decades. Bomb disposal experts from Royal Engineers went to work on making the device safe, and on Friday 6 June at around 6.00p.m. a controlled (yet bigger than planned) explosion was finally carried out.

Working under instructions from the Army, Police officers evacuated the area, whilst a 200m cordon was put in place, forming an exclusion zone around the bomb. This effectively resulted in the immediate closure of the entire Film Studios, affecting all current productions in 15 stages totalling 114,000sq.ft and resident on-site businesses plus 200 production offices.

One of the oldest tenants in 3 Mills Studios, Rigging Se

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UK - A.C. Lighting's stand at the ABTT show will highlight a selection of the many products and services available from the supplier's dedicated Lighting, Rigging, Audio and Video sales divisions, and sister Special Projects company.

As the exclusive UK distributor for the Chroma-Q, Jands and Spotlight brands, A.C.'s lighting area will feature recent additions to each range. The Chroma-Q LED range includes the new Color Punch compact IP65 fixture, and Color Split fixture with dual side by side RGBA LED cells for twice the lighting possibilities.

The Jands range includes the Vista lighting console with graphic based user interface and the FPX/WMX portable/wall mounted, professional touring quality 12x2.4kW channel dimmers. The Spotlight range includes the Cyclorama Domino RGBA LED floodlight with optical system for uniform light distribution, Vedette 12HCC LV followspot with lo

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On the eve of what is predicted to be a buoyant and well-attended ABTT Show in London, we have to report that console manufacturer Cadac Electronics has gone into administration. Managing director Bob Thomas said: "It is heartbreaking to see this great company go under at this stage. Although additional bank finance had been put in place to complete the S-Digital development and to get its production under way, the sudden slump in forecast analogue sales over the next few months meant that Cadac would be unable to maintain the underlying cashflow necessary for its survival." Sad news indeed.

The announcement that L-Acoustics has signed an Icelandic distributor, Nyherji, is further evidence that this North Atlantic outpost has established itself as a leading player on the international live sound circuit. Many international tours now include Reykjavik in their itineraries, whi

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UK / Belgium - UK-based media server specialists Green Hippo have teamed up with Barco to offer an integrated media server for the recently released Barco DML 1200 digital moving light. The DML 1200 is a very bright digital moving light, with a wide zoom-range and integrated CMY colour-changer that also has powerful projector capabilities. Barco says the new unit "tears down boundaries between projection and lighting."

This amalgamation of video and lighting capabilities combines Barco's projection technology with Green Hippo's widely recognised and user friendly Hippotizer V3 software technology.

According to Barco: "With its brightness, unlimited image selection and instant switching between light beam and video projection, cue by cue, the DML-1200 provides lighting designers with pure creativity at their fingertips. With its on-board media player, lighting de

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UK - Two new automated fixtures, previewed by PR Lighting at the recent Pro Light&Sound Show in Frankfurt, are now available through distributors.

With the XL250 the company has managed to pack a full range of features into a restyled chassis. Available in two versions (with Magnetic or Electronic ballast), the XL250 combines a 250W lamp - and all the features of the established XL series - with a highly-efficient optical system, making the fixture sufficiently bright for any small-to-medium sized venue as well as theatre and television studios, says the company.

Highlights of the XL250 are the interchangeable colour gobos, 15°-23° linear zoom, LCD display and an energy-saving design for both the electronic (XL250) and magnetic ballast (XL250M) versions.

The XL250 also contains an energy-saving design, reducing lamp consumption to half power at shutter closing status

  1. Artistic Licence do it with Candle-Power
  2. Loz Wilcox joins Essential Lighting's Systems team
  3. Gunnar Loose deploys GLP on Kool Savas dates
  4. HSL at ABTT 2008
  5. High End Systems sells to Barco
  6. Diane Grant teams up with Artistic Licence
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