Lighting

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UK - Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical The Phantom of the Opera, opened in London in March with an ETC Eos control desk and a plethora of ETC Source Four Revolutions and Source Fours.

Control for the rig as a whole is from an ETC Eos control system, including an Eos 8K desk and RPU backup together with a remote video interface (RVI) complete with X-Keys keyboard, in order to provide video to the lighting designer, Paule Constable. Well known for her work in the fields of opera, drama and musicals, Constable has specified 48 ETC Revolutions among the moving lights in the rig, which also includes 40 ETC Source Fours of varying beam angles.

Commenting on the Eos, she says, "I'm the world's biggest fan; it does everything I want it to do. As well as running the lighting, I also had it running a Hippotizer media server and F:light s

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Festivals Boost - The popularity of festivals has helped fuel a rise in the fortunes of live music events, new figures show. UK fans spent £1.45bn on gigs in 2009 - up 4% from the previous year, according to songwriters' body PRS For Music. Some £275m of that was spent on festivals, up about £50m - a sharper rise than any other area of live music. "This seems to be a UK phenomenon," PRS chief economist Will Page said. "I don't think anywhere else in Europe has seen the same explosion in festivals."

There are more than 670 events being held in the UK in 2010, according to efestivals.co.uk guide. PRS For Music put the boom down to promoters appealing to all types of music fan by offering a wider variety of events, with innovations including crèches for families. "They're growing this market with incredible acumen," Mr Page said at t

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Jordan - Robe lighting has appointed a new Jordanian distributor - Tarkeeb AVL - based in Amman.

Tarkeeb AVL is a new division of leading rental company Pro4 that has been set up to supply lighting, video and audio solutions, design, consultation, sales and installations for all types of projects and venues, including restaurants, hotels, multi-purpose and live entertainment venues.

Robe's Middle East regional sales manager Elie Battah explains that he had been looking for a distributor in Jordan for some time as the market is strong there.

Pro4 has been using Robe moving lights exclusively for the past eight years, and so the brand already has a track record in the country. "When they decided to set up the new division, it made real sense to offer a distribution deal" confirms Battah.

Through their work with Pro4, the Tarkeeb team had also already received all t

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UK - Designer Baz Halpin and show producer William Baker have created a new, sophisticated set for Westlife's Where We Are arena tour. No fewer than 80 GLP Impression moving LED's have been incorporated into the set - positioned on ladders above the video screens to accentuate the height of the overall backdrop.

Halpin has become a devotee of the Impressions, specifying them on Alicia Keys' recent Freedom Tour. "I was impressed with their power, flexibility and reliability," he stated. "Given their compact size and speed they can be placed in areas where most traditional fixtures cannot."

Explaining the design rationale, he added, "For the Westlife tour, William was keen to create a feeling of height akin to city skyscrapers. The Impressions were the obvious choice and I constructed a series of 10ft and 20ft custom ladders to peer over th

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USA - Hollowell Church had to make some tough financial choices when faced with a major capital expenditure. The Pennsylvania congregation had outgrown its main worship facility and needed more space. But the expense of constructing a new, larger facility would have seriously cut into the church's budget for its all-important community outreach programs and other essential activities.

Thanks to some help from Maryland-based Gadget Media and Elation Professional lighting, Hollowell Church was able to convert its existing gymnasium into an adequately-sized part-time worship centre at a fraction of the cost of constructing a new facility.

"The church had initially drawn up plans to build a larger worship facility, and it would have been a very nice building, but construction costs were skyrocketing at the time. What they conveyed to me was that if they built it, they wouldn'

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UK - Since its launch as an independent UK company at ABTT 2009, Goboland UK has seen increasing business and flourishing sales in both custom and catalogue gobos. The company's award-winning Black Steel gobos, glass gobos and custom and Credit Crunch gobos will all be on Stand 125 in the Lawrence Hall of ABTT next month (June 16 -17, Royal Horticultural Halls, London).

Vicky Fairall comments: "Our Credit Crunch Gobo, which we launched last year to celebrate the formation of Goboland UK, has been so successful that we have decided to continue the offer indefinitely."

(Claire Beeson)

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UK - London-based control, lighting and test equipment manufacturer, Artistic Licence, exhibited for the first time at PLASA Focus in Leeds with very favourable results.

Artistic Licence managing director Simon Hobday reports, "It was our first time at PLASA Focus and I was very impressed with the organisation, venue staff and general atmosphere of the show. We met a lot of new customers and discovered the potential for many more. We also gained very valuable feedback, not only about our products but what is missing in the industry.

"The new DALI products, Rail-DALI-DMX and Rail-DMX-DALI, generated a good deal of interest. The received customer feedback has already given rise to another new product which we will release within the next six months."

Artistic Licence also showed products across the Art-Net and DMX Distribution range. This gave the customers nort

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China - Martin Professional and the Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI) at Aarhus University, Denmark, in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) architects, have designed, developed and installed the façade and auxiliary areas for the Danish Pavilion at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

The Pavilion is a spiral-shaped structure that curls the exhibition space in a double loop, with pedestrian and cycling lanes and a central harbour bath as the main features. A colour-changing architecture that pulsates with life as art, the media facade gives a new form of expression and experience for the visitor as a communicative and interactive facade.

More than 3500 full-colour LED lamps have been installed in holes in the Pavilion's perforated external walls. The lamps are controlled by day lighting and temperature sensors installed in the Pavilion, which combined

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South Africa - The Fugard Theatre, with performances by the Isango Portobello theatre company recently opened in the District Six area in Cape Town. The theatre has been named in honour of Athol Fugard. The Train Driver, written and directed by Fugard, had its opening night at The Fugard on 24 March, and is being met by sell-out houses and standing ovations.

Thanks to UK based producer Eric Abraham, who established Isango Portobello in 2006, The Fugard Theatre is equipped with some of the best possible equipment and DWR Distribution, MA Lighting's distributor in South Africa, were privileged to contribute a grandMA2 ultra-light console along with backup support.

Mannie Manim, executive director at The Fugard and formerly the CEO at the Baxter Theatre has lit shows across the globe. "grandMA is the state of the art lighting board of this time," he said. "T

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UK - Lighting industry veteran Guy Merchant has returned to Multi-Lite (UK) after a short period of time working for a Scottish lighting distributor. In his new position as sales manager he is now responsible for acquisitions, customer relationship and customer service to lighting professionals not only but emphasized in the entertainment industry.

Guy Merchant and his team will be at the at ABTT show in London next month (Lindley Hall Stand 7.)

(Jim Evans)

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Taiwan - GlacialTech is launching the T8 low-power Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting tubes under the GlacialLight brand. The T8 LED tubes are an improvement as well as innovation of the existing models, says the company. The main advantage is that the tubes are extremely low in power consumption with under 10W for a 2ft tube, and under 20W for a 4ft tube.

The T8 features an inbuilt Over Temperature Protection (OTP) that automatically shuts down the tube at a relatively high temperature as well as starting up the tube at a relatively low temperature. When the input voltage does not fall within its specified range, the OTP shall be triggered. The T8 LED tubes are designed to replace the equivalent Cathode Fluorescent Tubes (CFT) currently available in markets. Using a relatively lower wattage, the T8 has the same structure and style of traditional CFTs but delivers a brighter pe

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UK - On 12 February Enter Shikari played the last date of a UK tour at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. Lighting designer and programmer Steven Bewley's brief was for a 'big, brash, in-your-face' rig that could keep up with the breakneck pace of an Enter Shikari show and he turned to some of Martin Professional's newest MAC luminaires.

"This was the last show in the UK for a while so the band wanted to go out with a bang so to speak," Bewley reports. "The show had to be quickly rigged and be totally flexible as the tour stretched over a week with venue sizes ranging from big to small. These had to be shows the audience would never forget; they had to walk away feeling hungry for more, which I feel we achieved with the rig chosen."

Bewley created the feel with an arena style set up that fit comfortably within the confines of venues like the Hammersmith Apol

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UK / USA - The spring season has seen a number of high profile new plays and musicals choose to use FocusTrack to give them a complete, accurate record of their show lighting. In New York, these shows include the musicals Come Fly Away and The Addams Family and the play Red.

Come Fly Away, the Twyla Tharp show based around the music of Frank Sinatra lit by Donald Holder took the showfile from their grandMA console into FocusTrack to work out which focuses were used by which lights in the show. The lighting team, including associate lighting designer Jeanne Koenig, assistant Caroline Chao, programmer Joseph Allegro and head electrician Brad Robertston then used FocusTrack to control the console to bring each light on in each position in turn to take a photograph, which was then incorporated into the show's FocusTrack.

The Addams Family, lit by

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Italy - Outline now manufactures a third of its loudspeaker systems with the help of the sun. A few months ago, a modern amorphous silicon photovoltaic system for the generation of clean energy was installed on the roof of the Brescia loudspeaker system manufacturer's premises.

"Approximately a third of the energy necessary for building our loudspeaker systems is provided by this photovoltaic system," says Outline's Stefano Noselli. "We're at the beginning of the road but are rightly proud. The aim we're determined to achieve by 2015 is to considerably reduce the energy consumption necessary for our activities by means of a series of projects that have already been planned for some time."

In sync with the concept of maximum efficiency and respect for the environment, Outline and its R&D department have built up an expertise enabling it to achieve ambitious

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UK - London's Albany Theatre has invested in a new grandMA2 ultra-light console to replace their old lighting desk. The Albany in Deptford east London, is a busy producing and receiving house, and one of London's leading performing arts venues. The decision to go with grandMA2 was made by head of production Fiona Greenhill and technical manager Ben Wallace.

Hosting many one night theatre shows and a host of interesting music gigs, they wanted a multi-functional console that would be good for busking and fast programming 'on-the-fly' as well as for handling detailed pre-programmed shows.

grandMA was initially recommended to the Albany by lighting designer Lawrence Stromski, and originally they thought it would be beyond their budgets, but then Greenhill and Wallace took the opportunity to check out what MA had to offer at PLASA 2009. Here they saw grandMA2 in action and were se

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UK - Having enjoyed enormous success at the recent PLASA Focus Show in Leeds, entertainment lighting supplier White Light is now bringing the same extensive range of lighting products from the many manufacturers it distributes in the UK to the 2010 ABTT Theatre Show in London next month.

Making one of its first public appearances in the UK will be Robert Juliat's Aledin LED profile spot which will be shown alongside the award-winning RevEAL colour-mixing LED washlight that is already attracting great attention in this country, plus the JB A7 Zoom moving LED washlight.

Other LED technology on show will include the LDDE LedCyc9 cyclorama lighting panel, and the Coemar StageLite LED FX asymmetric floodlight. Both products will be shown alongside others from their respective ranges, including Coemar's Infinity Spot M, ACL M and Infinity Wash S moving lights, and LDDE's SpectraWow+

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UK - With his strong marketing background, Aztec Event Services MD, John Robson, immediately seized the opportunity to fill a gap in his company's rental fleet after seeing the Christie MicroTilesT launch at February's ISE Show in Amsterdam.

"I surround myself with good technical people, but my strength is seeing opportunities - that's my niche," he says. "There was clearly a buzz surrounding MicroTiles, and I could see immediately it was the product I had been looking for."

Aztec was originally formed in 1989 but Robson took over one of its divisions following a successful MBO in 2006. Around half their work is in the exhibition sector and while they see opportunities for MicroTiles in this area. Last year they also set up a creative arm, Aztec Digital, enabling them to develop their own media.

These two factors presented a compelling argument for invest

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Canada - Visual Productions has confirmed Montreal based Theatrixx as its distributor for the Canadian market. Theatrixx is known in Canada as both a distributor of lighting, video and audio equipment as well as an international manufacturer for its cable and AC distribution systems.

During Prolight+Sound, Theatrixx CEO Jacques Tessier began to envisage the potential for Cuelux - the platform independent software lighting controller - on the Canadian market and on his return to Canada placed his initial stock order, confirming the Distribution deal.

On Theatrixx' appointment as Visual Productions distributor, Tessier states, "This line of products is offering tremendous amount of possibilities for learning lighting programming for beginners as well as doing highly sophisticated programming for experienced designers; for both live and permanent installation. With the Visua

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USA - Lee Rose was the innovative lighting designer for the second annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards; an event that celebrates the best in hard rock and heavy metal. Featuring artists such as Rob Zombie, Slash, Dave Grohol, Lemmy Kilimister of Motörhead, and many more, Rose had to create an environment that matched the vigour of performances. To generate a vibrant force of energy he chose to use the MAC 401 Dual by Martin Professional.

Rose has used the MAC 401's previously on both the ABC Disney Christmas Parade special and Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eveand stated, "For this show I had the concept of an updated 'wall of light,' like was done with PAR-64's in the heyday of heavy metal tours. I knew, from my previous experience, that I wanted to build this 'wall' with MAC 401's."

He created the spectacular look by hanging three rows of 14 fixtures

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Italy - A blend of rock, folk, classical and Celtic music is reviving the legend of King Arthur under the Infinity S lights by Coemar.

Excalibur, the Celtic rock opera created by Alan Simon, boasts a cast comprising icons from the '70s and '80s. In fact, there are over 100 international stars in this show including Alan Parsons, founder of the Alan Parsons Project, John Helliwell of Supertramp and Martin Barre, guitarist with Jethro Tull.

After the success of 2009 at Kaltenberg Castle in Germany with an audience of over 17,000, the show is now on tour in 12of the most important cities in Germany and Switzerland and is already scheduled to be performed in other European countries in the summer of 2011.

Swordsmen, knights and dancers in medieval costume perform on a stage with central dais designed in the form of the legendary sword. A spectacular lighting installation

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White Light reports that, following the recent changes at E/T/C UK and projection designer Ross Ashton's launch of his new company, The Projection Studio, White Light is now the sole supplier of the PIGI large-format projection system in the UK.

The PIGI system of high-output projectors and automated double rotating film scrollers has powered the dramatic projections seen at many of the most memorable public events of recent years, including the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War 2 (both projects involving projection onto the front of Buckingham Palace), the Edinburgh Military Tattoo every year since 2005, the 800th Anniversary of Cambridge University, and New Year's Eve in London. The projectors have also been behind countless other shows in the fields of advertising, concerts, corporate events, theatre, television and more.

These shows have been

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UK - White Light recently hosted the industry's first seminar on the application of the recent British Standard covering temporary power systems by Avitas Global. The 16-strong audience consisted of a diverse range of delegates including broadcasters, production managers, event electricians, video rental companies and even an engineer from a power station. The seminar covered the important aspects of the interaction between legislation and standards and went on to look at how the electrical industry's 'bible' - otherwise known as the IEE Wiring Regulations - and the new temporary power standard BS 7909 are entwined.

It explored a range of other issues such as the testing and certification requirements of BS 7909 and in particular showed how it is easy to complete if equipment delivered to site is all PAT tested. The seminar also exampled how current industry practice was

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USA - TMB will present free condensed Hippo School, AvoTraining, and DVI Parrot seminars in a dedicated Training Room at InfoComm 2010. Training sessions are open every hour, every day of the show.

Special guest Jon 9 of Holonyne Corp. will appear at the Hippo Schools, 10 and 11 June, for a brief presentation on the innovative video art display at the Tom Bradley Terminal, Los Angeles International Airport. This is the world's premier application for the new UberPan Hippotizer component. It is also the largest media server installation in the US, and probably the world, comprising 60 Hippotizers and 58 displays.

On the TMB stand will be not only Hippotizer, Avolites, and DVI Parrot, but other new products including: amBIENT XC immersive lighting control; Kinesys motor control and digital loadcell system; Tempest fixture and projector enclosures; Solaris high-powered strobes; D

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USA - Traxon Technologies reports that its e:cue Light-Drive Elite is the recipient of two LFI Innovation Awards, announced at Lightfair International 2010. The Light-Drive Elite was recognized for 'design excellence' and in the category of 'Controls, Daylight Integration and Systems'. These awards reinforce the company's commitment to flexibility, simplicity, and innovation in the development of cutting-edge technology for the lighting and controls market, keeping design and aesthetics in mind along with the ability to deliver dynamic and powerful lighting control to users with any level of skill.

Light-Drive Elite is a wall-mounted standalone DMX controller and interactive user interface for dynamic lighting. End-users can easily set up colour changing effects and control lighting using the device.

The user interface features touch-sensitive keys and wheel with colour LEDs f

  1. Latest CueSystem comes to ABTT Theatre Show
  2. Point Source Productions at ABTT 2010
  3. W-DMX Generation 4 in India
  4. ETC Elements in demand
  5. PLASA 2010 AGM - Don't forget to cast your vote!
  6. The Week in Lighting & Sound
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