Lighting

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UK - Leading production companies and individuals contributed skills, equipment and resources to make the 2009 Barnes Charity Ball, staged at St Mary's Church in London, a memorable fundraiser for the Under Tree Schools project in Sudan.

Richard Lambert was asked to help with the lighting, and a few conversations later, he'd enrolled the help of some of the industry's finest to help too. These included Noreen O'Riordan of Entec Sound & Light who provided the lighting rig, and Michael Althaus of MA Lighting who supplied the control system. Production management was undertaken by Ryan Brown of Entec and programming by Liz Berry, with additional help and operations by Jonathon Lyle.

The overall lighting design was completed by Richard, who said: "People and companies in the lighting industry are truly amazing! It's great to be able to help with something like this and incred

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UAE - Look behind one of the main broadcast desks at television studio CNBC Arabia and you will see a flexible, animated and visually professional backdrop courtesy of Martin LC Series LED panels. The semi-transparent, modular system of LED panels - praised for its brightness and set-up ease - is floor-mounted and creates a customizable graphics backdrop and one-of-a-kind set piece.

CNBC Arabia, which broadcasts live coverage across the Middle East and beyond from Dubai Media City in the United Arab Emirates, is the region's first 24-hour Arabic language business TV channel. The channel's Head of Operations, Nick Turner, was looking for an alternative display to augment a range of changeable and moveable 'light-boxes' that would display backlit graphics for a range of new shows.

"We needed something to simplify operations and replace one of the virtual sets we had been us

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Australia - Located in Australia's capital city Canberra, the Australian War Memorial's newest galleries "Conflicts 1945 to Today," aims to preserve and convey the experiences of Australian servicemen and women on overseas deployments from Korea and Vietnam through to Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the age of the virtual theme park it was a major challenge for the AWM to present these epic stories.

Bruce Brown from Mental Media who was heavily involved in a variety of aspects of the design and delivery of the project, says the design process selected the key elements from the Vietnam era to include an Iroquois helicopter, an Armoured Personnel Carrier, the operations bridge from the guided missile destroyer HMAS Brisbane and the Long Tan AV Theatre, together with a diorama and "The Trench Experience" from the Korean War. Fitting all of this and the assignme

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USA - Robert Juliat Quincy profiles play a key role in the new Hall at Patriot Place, a unique sports and educational experience showcasing the history of the New England Patriots and housing the team's Hall of Fame.

The venue includes four 30ft (9.14m) high Magink pylons whose digital displays highlight the careers of each Hall of Famer via video, still images and text information.

As lighting consultants on the project Salem, Massachusetts-based Available Light was tasked with lighting the two-sided, Israeli-made Magink pylons. "They have no light source of their own; they're essentially like a giant LED screen which has to be externally illuminated," explains designer Matt Zelkowitz, a principal designer at Available Light.

In talking to the manufacturer Zelkowitz learned that each pylon needs approximately 300ft candles (3229 lux) of illumination and a 3:1 max

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World - grandMA are plugged into the excitement of AC/DC's long-awaited Black Ice World Tour which takes its theme from the new AC/DC track, Rock 'n' Roll Train, with the stage featuring five curved trusses reminiscent of a railroad station's roof beams.

The Black Ice World Tour marks the first time that the band's lighting director Cosmo Wilson has toured with the grandMA. A main system and backup are on hand to control the extensive lighting package required for the large set and AC/DC's over-the-top performance.

"I've used a lot of different consoles, but I started using the grandMA on some one-off dates for other artists and have done a lot of corporate shows with it," he points out. "This is my first chance to tour with it. That's when you really get to learn it. I've always liked a lot of grandMA's features, and I'd been thinking I wan

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UK - ITV1's successful 4th series of Dancing on Ice - a live competition in which celebrities and their professional partners 'figure skate' in front of a panel of judges - attracts an impressive 9.5 million viewers every Saturday night.

The lighting and projection media servers for the 4th series are controlled by two Vector Greens from Compulite. Lighting designer for the series is Dave Davey with assistance from Dave Hallet and console operators Bill Peachment and John Ford.

"Bill's desk features all the set and effects lighting as well as a Hippotizer media server to project onto the ice. John looks after lighting the people (contestants and judges etc) with a mixture of conventional lights and automated wash and profile lamps," says the company.

Console operator John Ford comments: "Coming from a background of controlling conventional/people lighti

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UK - Cheltenham-based rental company CSS has recently invested in the new ColorSpot 700E AT from Robe Lighting to add to its extensive portfolio. "The exciting designs that can be created from moving head fixtures with this advanced piece of lighting technology is incredible. The new Robe 700 will add an extraordinary element to any event," the company says.

CSS reports "huge demand" for the hire of the new Robe 700E AT, which they describe as "one of the most sophisticated devices in the present market". CSS have used the moving heads on the London Women's Conventions at Excel, Cheltenham Folk Festival at Cheltenham Town Hall and large Christmas parties at Cheltenham Town Hall.

Lee Dreezer, the company's head of operations says: "The new Robe 700E AT has given us the chance to develop our designs on events due to the variety of settings that

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UK - Leading UK lighting rental company HSL has made a substantial investment in Robe's new Digital Series products - including 6 DigitalSpot 7000DTs and 36 REDWash 3-192s along with 16 REDBlinder 2-96's - primarily for the Pussycat Dolls' European Doll Domination tour, for which they were specified by LD Scott Warner.

HSL is supplying all lighting equipment and crew for the tour which also includes 60 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 2500E AT moving lights, 40 Martin Professional Atomic strobes, a 12 way Kinesys automation system with Vector control plus over 60 motors and rigging. HSL also designed and commissioned several pieces of custom metalwork that were fabricated by TFL for the tour which is project managed for them by Mike Oates.

The slick, high-energy show is a colourful and fluid amalgam of classic pop lighting with plenty of attitude and dynamics. Warner makes

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USA - Vibrant colours from Wybron's Nexera colour-mixing luminaires enhance worship services at Woodmen Valley Chapel, a 6,000-member church in Colorado Springs.

Ten Nexeras, in both profile and wash models, paint the back of the church stage, including the fabric draped dramatically on either side of the main projection screen.

"It brings life to the stage. It enhances the senses," says Mark Shrimplin, Woodmen Valley's director of technical arts.

The Nexera combines a powerful light fixture and CMY dichroic colour changing in one unit. The Nexera's compact size and quiet convection-cooled operation make it popular among churches and small theatres.

Shrimplin likes the Nexera's smooth colour changes. Having the colours morph seamlessly into one another helps the church's volunteer lighting crew, he says. The Nexeras also provide quality light for the church's tel

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Denmark - In order to create a stronger, more effective European sales structure, Martin Professional A/S is optimizing its European sales subsidiaries by creating a regional sales organization, Martin EMEA.

Martin EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), will be based at Martin's headquarter office in Aarhus, Denmark. During 2009, Martin's current European subsidiaries will be integrated into the new structure while Martin's distributors within the area will be served by the new European regional organization at a later stage.

Heading the new sales organization is Villads Thomsen, Vice President EMEA. Thomsen, previously Managing Director at Martin Professional's Scandinavian subsidiary, assumed the new position on January 1st. Steen Matthiesen, currently CFO at Martin France, will serve as the new organization's CFO.

Christian Engsted, Martin Professional A/S CEO, commented

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China - PR Lighting has launched the new StarBrite LED cloth and dedicated PR-8710C controller, which comes complete with flightcase.

IPX3-protected (against spraying water), the StarBrite comes with 12 preset programmes for insurance and contains a total of 144 LEDs (18 x 8 sequences), with a lamp life of 30,000 hours.

Outputting 150cd brightness with all the LEDs emitting white light, it also offers strobe, white colour channel (for colour testing, and with strobe and dimming), DMX or manual control. There is also a key-press lock for avoiding improper operation.

The LED StarBrite's power consumption is less than 30W, while the Controller (input 200W, output 150W max) can drive four separate StarBrite cloths.

The product comes in 6000mm x 4000mm cloth sizes with the controller measuring 190mm x 320mm x 87.5mm. The cloth, incorporating 15m signal connection cable, weighs

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Middle East - Lighting control and automation group, Dynalite, has added the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan to its global network of technical and sales support centres. Servicing the Middle East and North African markets, Dynalite's new offices complement the company's existing domestic distributor and channel partner network, and extend its global reach.

The new offices provide the industry with access to the company's comprehensive range of lighting control and automation solutions. Dynalite's new UAE office is located in the Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZA), with the new Jordan office in Amman and the Kuwait office in Kuwait City. "With this strengthened presence in the region, the Dynalite team is well positioned to support local projects and provide fast response times to inquiries from Pakistan, through to Morocco", the company says.

According to Dynal

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USA - Following lengthy industry speculation, ETC is to enter the LED luminaire market, having acquired the Selador product line from Selador co-founders Rob Gerlach and Novella Smith.

"We didn't want to make a 'me too' RGB or RGBA product that didn't provide the kind of significant innovation in lighting we strive for," says ETC CEO Fred Foster. "With its exclusive x7 Color System, the Selador product line produces a far superior quality of colour and light to anything that we had seen before in LEDs. We also benefit from the brainpower of Selador LED experts Novella and Rob - great people who will join our ETC team."

The Selador x7 Color System finds its perfect counterpart in ETC's control products, says the company. ETC's marketing manager David Lincecum explains: "ETC brings to the table a unique capability to make the control of LED luminaires ea

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Australia - The X-band 300 from Coemar De Sisti is a wall washer with 36 high powered RGB or white LEDs featuring the latest RGB SMD technology and marketed as "the perfect solution for the dynamic illumination of facade structures and landscapes."

The beam angles of lenses available are 10°, 25°, 45° and 10x45°. With an IP65 rating, the X-Band 300 is suitable for indoor and outdoor applications, architectural wash applications and for high impact scene settings thanks to its "precise light distribution and even luminance".

(Claire Beeson)

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South Africa - Disney's musical, Beauty and the Beast, produced in South Africa by Pieter Toerien and Hazel Feldman, played to its first South African audience on 2nd October 2008 at the Montecasino Teatro Theatre in Fourways. The production made use of a grandMA full-size console.

Richard Knight, the associate lighting designer who came out to recreate Natasha Katz's original design in Johannesburg, was also the original moving light programmer for the Beauty and the Beast tour which successfully ran in the United States from 2000 to 2004. The show is based on the original Broadway production produced in 1994.

The South African contingent of Programmers included Glenn Duncan, DWR Distribution's Nick Britz, and of course the South African associate designer Denis Hutchinson who also did his share of programming.

Hutchinson commented that the rig was fairly conv

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UK - Solutions Group (UK) Plc recently opened the doors to its brand new product demonstration auditorium - The Solution - to a specially invited audience.

Bucking the current economic trend, Solutions Group has invested in excess of £100,000 in creating what it believes to be the UK's first club-sized room for the demonstration predominantly of professional sound and lighting equipment, distributed to the trade through its specialist operating division Impact Products (Europe) Ltd.

As the events of the day went on to show, however, the versatile 100sq.m auditorium will offer a host of other applications to the Company and its customers.

With the room laid out as a retro-style Bistro, the congregated crowd was literally led down the red carpet for the official ribbon cutting by the Mayor of Northampton, councillor Brian Markham.

With staff dressed as 1920s gangsters

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UK - The exterior lighting at Glasgow's SECC Clyde Auditorium was turned from its usual blue to red on Valentine's Day, to mark the start of Scotland's Red Nose Day 2009 campaign. Stage Electrics donated nine Studio Due 2.5kW City Color units and 10 Martin Professional TW1 80 volt units to create the dramatic change in colour for the charity event.

The units were installed and operated by technical director Tony Edwards, chief technician Iain Banks and the technical team at the SECC. Stars of BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing, Rachel Stephens and winner Tom Chambers donned their red noses and pushed the button in front of BBC TV and press to instantly change the colour of the outside of the building, known as the 'Armadillo' for the evening. The stars of the show were at the SECC as part of their UK Strictly Come Dancing tour.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - The PLASA Technical Resources Office invites PLASA and STLD members to forget the worries of the credit crunch for a day by blasting around the Silverstone race track.

The event is organised by PLASA's Technical Resources manager Ron Bonner: "If you have ever wanted to drive your own car above the legal 70 MPH limit to see what it is capable of without being snapped by a Gatso - then this may be your big chance. The PLASA Technical Resources Office has reserved Silverstone for a day to hold a day of fun on the track. Included in the day is lunch and if you need it, tuition on how to drive your car in this environment. (Additional tuition fees apply)

"The day is provisionally booked for Friday June 26th 2009 - just a week after the British Grand Prix has been decided - and it is estimated that the full cost of the day and lunch will be in the region of £210

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UK - In the few months since its opening, the Westfield London retail complex has already proved a success. And drawing on that success is large format exterior advertising specialist Ocean Outdoor, which has commissioned three large Lighthouse LED screens for Westfield, at a site close to the complex.

Facing the major Holland Park roundabout, the three large 12 by 4 panels (12.24m (w) x 3.04m (h) each) R16i/o 16mm outdoor screens, housed in a gigantic, standalone rectangular structure, provide an eye-catching display to a captive audience of thousands of drivers per day.

A wide range of exterior signage types compete for attention throughout London, so this installation demanded the ultimate in what is currently available. Lighthouse R16 combines the ideal image resolution for the site with 5000 nits brightness, 2000:1 contrast ratio, superior colour reproduction and Lighthou

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UK - Italian lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has donated intelligent lighting fixtures to the BA (Hons) Lighting Design programme at Rose Bruford College.

The fixtures - four 1200 Stage Zoom and six Golden Scan units - will be added to the programme's teaching and production stock of generic and intelligent luminaires. Rose Bruford College's BA in Lighting Design, together with the new BA in Lighting Programming, are among the UK's leading specialist lighting degree programmes, and students are taught in a wide variety of lighting applications, from live performance to architectural and event lighting.

"The Clay Paky units will be of invaluable use to us, both on teaching seminars and production work, and my students are already using them on several shows this term, as well as learning new skills in moving light control in our lighting labs," says Hansjörg Schmidt,

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UK - As reported on LSI Online last week, fears over the future of the entertainment and broadcast industries' use of radio spectrum continue, in the face of Ofcom's vague and inadequate assurances of protection and compensation.

At a meeting on 13 February, representatives of the programme making and special events (PMSE) sector agreed their common position on Ofcom's latest proposals for the future of the 'Digital Dividend' spectrum. These stakeholders included equipment manufacturers, end users, rental users and trade associations.

Alan March, representing manufacturer Sennheiser, is a member of the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group (BEIRG), the sector's campaign group formed to represent the interests of PMSE users to Ofcom. He said it was "unfair, unreasonable and impractical" of Ofcom to expect the industry to move to "new spectrum which is undete

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USA - When more than a million people turned out on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama, it was perhaps less well known that 11 Zero 88 Fat Frogs were there too, controlling fixtures from Christie Lites, which, last November, supported Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park.

"We were very fortunate to have two career-milestone gigs," says Robert A. Roth, of Christie Lites, about the victory speech and Mall events. "They were very rewarding personally and professionally."

Once again Christie Lites teamed with event producer C3 Presents of Austin, Texas for the Mall lighting. "There was a series of tower positions along the Mall; some of the ones on the east end of the Capitol were set up in a reasonably symmetrical array," Roth recalls. "Initially, we were led to believe we could establish wired DMX

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USA - MA Lighting's grandMA full-size console is accompanying Metallica's 2008-2009 coffin-clad concerts. The show theme, echoing the coffin motif of the 25-year-career heavy metal wizards' latest release, Death Magnetic, boasts 82-ton lighting structures, courtesy of lighting designer John Broderick. Programmer Troy Eckerman reflects that on the current tour, everything is "zero time cue - fast and furious. It's all about horsepower and intensity, full-on and in-your-face."

With full-size tracking backup in line for every show, the original lighting design had entailed a hard-edge, all wash light array, to be controlled by grandMA. "We'd needed lots of power to make a big statement," says Eckerman. "And it takes lots of lights, almost all on all of the time." The lighting rig comprises 56 x Vari*Lite VL3500 washes as well as several Coemar a

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UK - Since originally opening in 1996, Lush has been a hot destination for the dance community right across Northern Ireland. Now clubbers have an additional incentive to flock to the northern holiday destination of Portrush in County Antrim, following the latest £1.5m technological upgrade of the 2,000-capacity venue.

Lush is within the Kelly's entertainment complex (which includes a hotel, restaurants, bars and holiday chalets). Managing director Peter Wilson asked his technology specialists Light & Sound FX (LSFX) to create a wow factor by delivering advanced LED media displays that would allow the venue's posse of resident VJs to show off their creativity.

Proprietor Darren Gardiner opted for a complete PR Lighting solution. He specified the high-resolution Marveon LED screen P12 Indoor, with 12mm pixel pitch, as the main display above the stage, with a 37.5mm V-LED

  1. ES Projects - Flying Angels in Zurich
  2. The Week in Lighting & Sound
  3. PixelArcs light Gaylord National Resort
  4. LEDtronics launches narrow beam bulb
  5. ETC offers Russian language option
  6. Catalyst animates the Krypton Factor
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