UK - Award-winning UK manufacturer Global Design Solutions has announced the appointment of Simon Debley as the company's new production manager of manufacturing. Debley, formerly of Stage Electrics, has considerable experience in running and co-ordinating a busy manufacturing workshop and is bringing significant experience and skills to the operation.

This appointment coincides with the continual expansion of the company in both staff and offices in Europe and the US and the increase in demand for GDS product, the company says.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - MTFX has just invested in some new 5 way Firedance units. "MTFX's Firedance flames have been so popular with our customersthat I wanted to take them to their next level, which are these new 5 way compact units," says managing director Mark Turner.

"Each unit is light weight, compact and gives you a fantastic spread from such a small footprint. They are ideal for use on pitches and other sports arena and literally add a new dimension to flame effects. The other advantage is that the flames can now be coloured green, red, blue as well as the standard orange."

(Jim Evans)

UK - Zero 88 is extending its special offer for the Leap Frog 48 Lighting Control Package. to 1 March 2009.

The Special Leap Frog 48 package includes: Leap Frog 48 Console including Version 4.0 software featuring Colour Picker, direct links from offline editor to visualisation programmes and new low-light monitor options; 15" external touch screen; Light Converse Visualisation Software, and professional flight case for console and touch screen.

The Leap Frog 48 offers all the tools to create sophisticated lighting shows including control of 200 fixtures plus 48 generics, says the company. It features four opto-isolated DMX universe, multifunction keys for fast programming and provides a familiar syntax for users of Avolite, Strand, ETC and Whole Hog consoles.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Strand Lighting have confirmed their presence at evenTech Scotland 2009 in partnership with their Scottish distributor Audio Light Systems.

Audio Light Systems provide sales, installation project management and consultation for a wide variety of spaces that require audio, lighting, AV and specialist systems throughout the UK. The company says it is "set to make a serious impact on their debut at the second instalment of the exhibition - having booked the largest stand space by far on the show floor".

As well as Strand control desks and dimmers, Audio Light Systems will be exhibiting equipment from Crestron, EAW, QSC, NEC, Sennheiser, Tecpro, TOA and more for theatre, corporate and education markets.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Lighting designer/director Ali Bale specified an Avolites Pearl Expert console to control lighting for the current Kings of Leon Only By The Night tour.

Bale worked for KOL for the last four and a half years, since he was originally asked onboard by co-LD and the show's creative designer Paul Normandale. This latest tour is a co-lighting design between the two of them, on which Bale is also working closely with video director Phil Woodhead and live visuals director & Catalyst (digital media server) programmer/operator, Phil Haynes.

The lighting rig is based on 10 trusses, all moved into different positions throughout the set via a Kinesys automation system. This is operated by Yose Lawson and Andy Beller.

Each truss has a cluster of Element Labs VersaTUBE LED fixtures attached to the front of it which are driven by Hayne's Catalyst. The front trusses form a chevr

USA/UK - Bandit Lites has announced the recent additions of Shawn Lear as project manager at the Nashville location and James Prince as electronics technician at the UK location.

Shawn Lear's responsibilities as a project manager include organising and supporting clients' lighting systems for touring and television application. Lear has had a diverse and long career in the lighting industry and comments, "I'm excited to be a member of the Bandit team. Welcome to the Big Leagues! Batter Up!"

As an electronics technician, James Prince's responsibilities include repairing, servicing and maintaining Bandit's moving lights inventory. Before joining Bandit Lites, Prince was a freelance lighting technician for Disney in Virginia working in their dry dock programme. "With the recent move to the new premises and a fresh start of the new year, I'm really looking forward t

UK - LD Mark Kenyon wanted some new and extra special effects for the hugely anticipated final of the BBC's latest Strictly Come Dancing series and decided it was an opportunity to try Robe DigitalSpot 7000DTs.

Kenyon first saw the units in action at one of Robe's The Future is Digital roadshows in London, which he attended along with moving light operator and Catalyst (digital media server) programmer Roger Williams at the behest of Lee House from AC Video.

After this, Kenyon decided that he could make good use of six DigitalSpot 7000DTs to illuminate and add extra treatments to the dancefloor of Studio TC1 at the BBC's Wood Lane HQ in West London.

The DT7000s were rigged 12m up in the roof of the studio and run via ArtNet protocol back to a CompuLite Vector console in the control room, operated by Roger Williams (for the Final) and Dave Bishop (the Xmas Speci

UK - Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, was celebrated from 22-29 December with a giant Menorah (9-candle candelabra) standing 9.5m high in London's Trafalgar Square. Designed in 2007 by Mendy Levy and built by Metallica, the Menorah had been lit last year with a temporary LED installation for the first night only.

This year, the Star Events Group had been tasked with modifying the structure for an easier install and removal, and to create a new base which would house permanently installed, upward-facing LED lighting. Their main lighting supplier, Paul Jones of Ethix Management, approached Ambient for an LED lighting solution. Ambient's Tony Kingsley proposed the relatively new AVR Osiris 48, which due to its compact size would just fit into the new Menorah base, and following a trial at Star Events, six of the Osiris units were ordered from Ambient. These were the IP65 48

USA - When Nissan unveiled its all-new 370Z sports car at the LA Auto Show, the company wanted to create a roar, since this marked the first major overhaul of the 'Z' since 2003. The revamped roadster was given centre stage in the company's booth, featured on a turntable under a circular canopy of bright, colour-changing lights.

Lightswitch, which designed the lighting in the Nissan booth, used Elation Professional's Impression RGB LED compact moving head fixture to spotlight the 370Z. Additionally, Lightswitch chose another Elation light to illuminate the rest of the booth, the Design Par 575D, a DMX-compatible discharge moving head fixture with a par reflector.

According to Lightswitch principal Chris Medvitz, auto shows present unique lighting challenges. The Elation products, he said, helped his company meet the design and technical requirements of its client George P. Joh

UK - City Theatrical has announced three training days for January and February in the UK. They are: Wednesday 21 January at White Light in Wimbledon, London SW19; Wednesday 28 January at White Light's West End office on Shaftesbury Avenue, London., and Friday 20 February at AC Entertainment Technologies North in Leeds.

The training will focus on the use of SHoW DMX, City Theatrical's wireless DMX system. The sessions will be 'hands on' and topics covered will include: Setting up a wireless DMX system, Advantages (and disadvantages) of wireless DMX, Avoiding other wireless users to reduce interference, Use of directional antenna to improve range and reception, Art-Net and SHoW DMX and Remote Device Management (RDM) using SHoW DMX.

There will also be a first chance to see other new products launched for 2009, and other existing City Theatrical products.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Elton John kicked off his Red Piano tour in the UK at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena, with lighting designer Kevin Bye operating the show using a grandMA console. Tim Routledge of grandPA - a new programming, training and control supply house dedicated to the MA Lighting platform - was brought in to assist Bye in programming the desk during the very short rehearsal period at Lite Structures' facility in Wakefield.

The tour is carrying two grandMA full-size consoles - one live and one for backup - and four MA NSPs, with the whole control system run on PRG's new fibre optic looms.

PRG's control systems engineer Gordon Torrington is overseeing all the FOH elements of the tour. All lighting kit is being supplied to the tour by PRG,

(Jim Evans)

UK - Two Catalyst digital media servers are being used to great effect on the Kings of Leon Only By The Night tour in an integrated visuals show created by live visuals director Phil Haynes, lighting co-designer/director Ali Bale, creative designer & co-LD Paul Normandale and live video director Phil Woodhead.

The Catalysts - running a pre-release version of the latest V4.2 software which gives 10 submixes on 16 layers - are outputting the nine-camera IMAG mix and assorted playback content to 1000 tiles of Barco MiTrix screen and 270 Element Labs VersaTube HDs.

These latest spec Catalyst machines were supplied by Catalyst's UK distributors Projected Image Digital (PID) to the tour's UK & European lighting contractors Lite Alternative. They are fitted with two Apple MAC 3.2 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon processors, 4GB RAM, an 8800 Graphics card, 128GB Solid State Drives and

Live in the USA - Beyonce, U2 and Bruce Springsteen are among the musicians who have signed up to perform at an inaugural celebration for US President-elect Barack Obama. Stevie Wonder, Usher, Mary J Blige and Sheryl Crow are also scheduled to perform at the event on 18 January at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Historical passages will also be read by singer Queen Latifah and actors Jamie Foxx and Denzel Washington. Mr Obama, who will be sworn in on 20 January, is expected to attend.

Executive producer of the show, George Stevens Jr, said he was taken by surprise by the eagerness of stars to perform once he was given the go-ahead by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. "On that first day, we asked Springsteen, Bono and Garth Brooks within a period of 45 minutes and got three 'yeses'," Stevens told the Associated Press. The artists have been asked to perform so

South Africa - ETC's sub Saharan distributor, T&A Lighting/Prosound hosted the region's first Ion control desk workshops in South Africa earlier this month. Held at the Market Theatre cultural complex in Johannesburg, the session was conducted by ETC product trainer Dave Whitehouse, with the heads of lighting for both the Market Theatre and the Civic Theatre in attendance with six other board operators. Market Theatre personnel were so impressed that they have specified the desk for a production in January.

Since its launch in South Africa, Ion systems have been installed at Durban City Hall, Port Elizabeth Opera House and TV station M-Net.

(Jim Evans)

South Africa - Johannesburg-based Sound Stylists supplied Robe moving lights for LD Andre Rossouw from SABC's Air Time for his design at the Highway Africa Digital Journalism Awards. The 2008 event was staged at the Guy Butler Theatre on the campus of Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, also broadcast live on SABC International.

The 36 Robes - a combination of ColorSpot and ColorWash 700 and 575E ATs - were at the core of the rig. They were all hung off the theatre's over-stage fly bars, with the 700s rigged on the downstage bars and used for stage washes. Eight of the ColorWash 575E ATs were positioned on the floor, with the rest in the overhead rig.

Sound Stylists also supplied AV, rigging and crew for the Awards, run in conjunction with a conference and hosted for the eleventh year by Rhodes University, sponsored by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC

Argentina - Fixtures from PR Lighting dominated the stage when the Argentine Magazine Awards were held recently at the Salon de Convenciones Metropolitano, in the city of Rosario.

In fact Pablo and Néstor Deligio, who run Deligio Iluminaciòn - the company responsible for the production - used exclusively PR Lighting pieces, as the country's most important artists were honoured.

Altogether, 36 x PR XL 700 spots, 12 x PR Wash 1200, 12 x PR 575 spots, 8 x PR Design 250s - and an Orland Follow 1200 were woven into Néstor Deligio's lighting design. These were controlled from two Avolites Pearl 2008 consoles.

Pablo Deligio commented: "We are consistently impressed with the performance of the XL700 moving head in particular - it meets all our requirements in the professional sector. We have been very surprised and impressed by the quality of the XL range

USA - Bandit Lites recently provided lighting for the Order of the Sword ceremony at the McGee Tyson Air National Guard Base in Knoxville, TN. General Craig R. McKinley was honoured at the formal award ceremony, which recognises individuals who have made significant contributions to the enlisted corps. The Order of the Sword is an honour awarded within the US Air Force.

To light the event, lighting designer Will Twork primarily chose to use Martin MAC 500s, MAC 2000 Washes, Performances and Profiles, Coemar iWash Halos, Chroma-Q Color Web Panels, and Color Kinetic I-Color Accents. Lighting was controlled by a Whole Hog II and wing.

The Color Kinetic I-Colors were used to rim the stage with colour. Twork used the MAC 2000 Performances to provide an American flag theme with American flag stars and stripes gobos. The MAC 2000 Washes lit the runway up to the stage while he used MA

France - In November and December French singer Raphael played several gigs across France beneath an Andi Watson (Radiohead, Dido) designed MAC rig that included Martin Professional's new 1500 watt MAC III Profile.

Lighting supplier for the tour was Arpège Son Lumière who, together with Watson, is the first in the world to put MAC III Profile production fixtures on a tour. Arpège purchased 14 of the new generation MAC fixtures via Martin France just in time for the tour's start.

"Although load in started 1 November, we didn't receive the fixtures on site until 4 November 4th with a first show on 7 November at the Zénith in Nantes," stated Jan Lambrecht of Arpège. "We purchased the MAC III Profiles because Arpège plays a big role in the touring market in France and across Europe and the fixtures will be useful on tours in early spring 2009. They will

USA - Synthe FX has announced the immediate availability of Luminair 1.1.5 for iPhone and iPod touch. This new version brings performance enhancements and other bug fixes, and is a free update for current users.

Luminair allows users to wirelessly control, view and manage intelligent DMX lighting fixtures and consoles, straight from iPhone or iPod touch using Art-Net over a Wi-Fi connection; control intelligent lighting equipment through touch-sensitive fader and innovative channel-layout controls, or analyse incoming data packets in realtime.

"Luminair has been extremely successful in its first six months on the iTunes App Store," says company founder Ryan Hisey. "Customers worldwide are using Luminair in a wide variety of markets, from theatre and stage, to architectural and studio. We are extremely happy to be able to offer our users a significant discount of

UK - On 5 January 2009, Bandit Lites moved its European operations into a new, larger facility. The building is located on Ampthill Road, very close to the Bedford bypass allowing access to the A1 and M1 motorway.

The 50,000sq.ft facility includes 6,500sq.ft of office space. The remaining space is divided between the Technical Services Department, LED & Special Effects Department and the Generic & Rigging Departments, as well as a virtual programming suite, storage space and a substantial amount of system prep areas, allowing Bandit to prep multiple lighting systems simultaneously.

Parking for numerous trucks is available in the rear of the estate with acreage for future construction when it is needed. There are offices and a full kitchen available for visiting lighting designers as they work in the virtual programming suite within Bandit to programme their creations before th

Germany - Lighting designers Andreas Ellmerer and Thomas Brügge used nearly 180 Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs for the high profile TV event, Pro 7 Stock Car Race. Lighting equipment was supplied by Ellmerer and Brügge's Cologne based company, Cape Cross Studio & Filmlichtgesellschaft who were working for show producers Brainpool.

Staged at the LTU Arena in Düsseldorf, the latest Pro 7 event, the TV Total Stock Car Crash Challenge saw about 30 VIPs - including singers, TV and sporting personalities - competing to demonstrate their driving skills in the race that was recorded and broadcast on German TV channel, Pro 7.

Of the 177 ColorSpot 1200E ATs, 40 were placed in the pit lane of the track, 72 were on a stage in the middle of the track mounted on the floor and 72 were on trusses in the ceiling of the indoor venue.

These were programmed, along with other moving l

UK - The Production, Operations and Artistic teams of Cirque du Soleil are currently looking for passionate individuals of all levels of experience to fill upcoming positions in a wide range of theatre-related technical fields, including automation, rigging, sound, lighting, carpentry, props, wardrobe, video/projection, stage management, artistic direction, technical direction and project/production management.

In an effort to attract the right people to fill these many roles, the company is hosting a recruitment event in London on Tuesday, 3 February 2009. This 'Red Curtain Recruitment Event' will provide an opportunity for those interested in working with Cirque du Soleil to meet its recruiters and managers, have a drink and a quick bite to eat with current employees, and generally learn more about the company and its many career opportunities.

Anyone wishing to attend can r

UK - Artistic Licence has launched a redeveloped version of its Cata-Lynx DMX512 to Art-Net converter.

"The original Artistic Licence Cata-Lynx converter was initially designed just as a handy widget," says Artistic Licence technical director, Simon Hobday, "but since its release it has proved very popular, especially amongst those needing to bridge the gap between lighting and video control technology."However, with the new Art-Net technology Artistic Licence has been developing, re-designing the Cata-Lynx range means that the product will benefit from many of the new features seen in Data-Lynx, while retaining the high specification and functionality of the original Cata-Lynx."

The result is a choice of two products in a standard 1U Rack Unit: the Cata-Lynx I/P and the Cata-Lynx O/P.

Cata-Lynx I/P is a rack mounted DMX512 to Art-Net Ethernet conver

UK - Impact Products (Europe) is stocking the updated version of the Par38 lighting system from Chauvet, now fitted with LEDs. Suited to mobile and touring installations, the pack comprises four Par cans with adjustable mounting brackets, and comes complete with lighting stand, footswitch and chaser.

With robust black metal casings, the single colour red, green, blue and yellow pars are each fitted with 96 LEDs and are sound controlled with simple connection to the four-channel, fully automated chaser. The fixtures can also be controlled using the included footswitch.

The lightweight tripod stand has a more than generous 20kg load capacity and is height adjustable to over 2.1m, with the mounting bar providing a width of 1m. All mounting screws are, of course, supplied.

With a total pack weight of less than 8kg, the one-box LED Par38 System is portable and is quickly assemble

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