Lighting

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USA - PLASA Focus: Orlando 2015 opens in one week, taking place on 17-18 February at the Rosen Plaza Hotel.

The two-day event kicks off Tuesday at 9:00am with Richard Pilbrow's educational seminar titled Light and Theatre? 50 Years of Change. Additional seminars follow and the exhibition hall opens at 10:00am-5:00pm with over 60 regional and national companies exhibiting the latest in entertainment technology. On Wednesday, the exhibition hall and seminar programme runs from 10:00am-4:00pm.

"We are thrilled with the incredibly high pre-registration numbers that we've seen so far, and can't wait for an extremely successful PLASA Focus event," said Laura Hoepker, PLASA Events sales executive. "Between the show floor and educational seminars, we are providing access to the best in the industry to everyone who attends."

Free registration to both the sh

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Italy - There was a strong turnout at the convention organized by Clay Paky for their international distributors. No less than 130 representatives from 53 countries around the world met in Bergamo on 3 and 4 February 2015 for an update on the future strategies of the company, which has recently become part of the OSRAM group.

The convention was held in Bergamo, in the splendid setting of the Teatro Sociale, Città Alta. There was a striking contrast between the wooden structures of this ancient theatre and Clay Paky's futuristic computerized equipment.

The Convention's motto was Today Tomorrow which clearly expresses Clay Paky's strategic aim of always looking to the future, ready to accept new exciting challenges. Clay Paky CEO Pio Nahum however, pointed out that future development is founded on past success and that the corporate mission remains permanent innovation a

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UK - A stylish and harmonious combination of intelligence and impact was the lighting vibe for the latest UK tour by rising stars Swedish folk rock duo First Aid Kit, of which the final section featured their largest toured production to date. Matt Waterfield is their LD and the lighting equipment was supplied by west London based Colour Sound Experiment.

Matt has worked with the band since 2013, and this itinerary of UK theatres was the latest section in their Stay Gold album campaign which started in May 2014.

As with most tours, the design has developed over the course of time, and earlier on Colour Sound had supplied a floor package, so when it came to upping the production they again offered an excellent deal that ensured Matt had the tools he needed to make the show rock!

The stage design started with a large semi-transparent gold Joel Flex backdrop upstage, sup

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UK - Musician, music producer and DJ Bonobo finished his marathon North Borders world tour with a mix of classical and electro beats - complete with 18 piece orchestra - at London's Alexandra Palace, featuring lightshow designed by Will Thomas. This utilized over 100 Robe moving lights - all supplied by Southampton-based GLS.

The design process for the end-of-tour extravaganza began whilst Will was out in the US lighting Bonobo's DJ set, and he became struck with the difference that good lighting out in the room could make to the whole vibe of the show by involving the audience. So to make this show particularly memorable, he evolved a plan to pull the audience into the show as much as everyone onstage.

Adding the audience trusses, effectively made the cavernous, stark venue feel more like an intimate and atmospheric club. The space became intimate and personal, and a far more

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UK - Lighting designer Nick Gray of Renegade Design has created an exhilarating and slick show for Kasbian's major UK arena tour. Bringing power, reliability and vibrant colour to the design, Gray uses an array of Clay Paky Sharpys and Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures, which he says never fail to feature in his rig.

The tour has so far visited major venues including Manchester Arena, Belfast Odyssey Arena and London's O2 Brixton Academy. Supplied by Neg Earth, the Sharpys and the Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures are positioned high in the overhead rig to flood the stage with intense colours and provide dynamic, audience embracing aerial effects.

"Both the Sharpys and the Sharpy Wash 330's range of saturated colour is fantastic," says Gray. "They're also really reliable. Important considering we were going into big arenas and we didn't have a huge budget. We had to choose our fi

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South Africa - MJ Event Gear has made a bold step as the first South African investor of 24 Robe BMFL Spots. They celebrated by inviting some of country's top LDs to view the impressive lighting tool.

"It's a big winner," said Mike Jones, owner of the Johannesburg based rental company, MJ Event Gear. "With a bit of time and as more people use it, I believe it will be the number one specified light on riders."

Before making the final purchase Jones did his homework and also contacted a few designers for their respected opinion. "Everyone was very enthusiastic about the product and no one had anything negative to say," he said. "It is the brightest light in the world and there is a lot of hype. I think it will do very well."

Jones saw the Robe BMFLs for the first time when demonstrated by DWR Distribution, the South African Robe distribu

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UK - Bristol-based lighting, visuals and rigging specialist Fineline supplied lighting and rigging equipment and expertise in a series of creative solutions for the world premiere of Walking The Chains, an ambitious circus / theatre production staged in the historic Passenger Shed at Bristol Temple Meads station.

Celebrating 150 Years of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Clifton suspension bridge, its spirit and impact as a landmark of Victorian engineering from conception to completion, the narrative also recalled how the bridge integrated into the community and industrial history of the region. The show was a collaboration between Bristol's Show of Strength Theatre Company and circus / physical theatre performance company, Circomedia.

The show's designer James Helps contacted Fineline on the recommendation of several others - to provide the solutions needed to stage the show

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The Netherlands - Martin Professional announced at ISE 2015 the availability of the Rush Gobo Projector 1, part of Martin's comprehensive offering of new lighting fixtures. The new member of the install-oriented Rush family will be shipping at the end of February.

The Rush Gobo Projector 1 is designed for permanent installation in club, bar, restaurant and shopping mall applications. Gobos can be changed quickly easy adjustment of focus, speed and direction make running the static fixture smooth and intuitive. It's also non-intrusive thanks to its silent operation and compact size, measuring 215 x 135 x 152 mm and weighing only 11 lbs. (2 kg).

"We designed the Rush Gobo Projector 1 with ease-of-use in mind," said Mark Buss, product manager, Rush products. "Speed and direction are controlled by easy-touch buttons and it only takes a few seconds to change gobos wi

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UK - If you find yourself in the London area next week, do drop-in to Ambersphere Solutions. Their newly refurbished showroom features all the latest products from Ayrton, Clay Paky, MA Lighting and Robert Juliat. The showroom is open from 16-20 February with snacks and refreshments available throughout.

Highlights include Robert Juliat's latest follow spots, the Merlin and Roxie which are coming straight from ISE in Amsterdam, along with the R range from Ayrton, the latest offerings from Clay Paky in the form of the Mythos, Super Sharpy and Stormys and the full line-up of MA2 Lighting consoles.

The days will be based around a relaxed format, with guests welcome to drop-in anytime between 11am and 5pm on Monday and 11am to 7pm Tuesday through Friday. The technical sales team will be on hand all week to discuss the products and offer help with any specific projects or challenge

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France - Lyon's municipal council chose to set the opening of the magnificent Schuman bridge on the river Saone to music and lights, and asked the event agency Tetro to deal with the artistic direction.

The lighting designer Yves Caizergues and musician Christophe Goutes produced an astounding show with a lighting system consisting of 30 Clay Paky SuperSharpys provided by Magnum and expertly managed by the lighting designer himself.

The aim was to let all the citizens of Lyon know in no uncertain terms that there was a new bridge and strongly enhance the construction's image.

Yves Caizergues and his SuperSharpys were therefore there to "glorify the bridge by enhancing its architectural qualities and make sure the event was seen by the entire city." He worked together with sound manager Christophe Goutes to make the most of the lights. Caizergues integrated the surr

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Czech Republic - Robe has announced that it is a sponsor of team Czech Republic in the 2015 Fed Cup tennis - the premier international women's tennis team championship.

Continuing its theme of 'Working With Winners' - first embraced with the Olympic spirit of 2012 - Robe is one of five major sponsors to the Czech team who are the defending champions, and have been hugely successful in the tournament, winning the Championship an impressive eight times.

Currently some of the Czech Republic's women's tennis players are ranked among the best in the world, and the quarter finals of the 2015 Fed Cup saw a robust performance by the team in Quebec City, Canada at the weekend, defeating the hosts without dropping a single set.

Robe's CEO and general manager Josef Valchar was there and commented, "We are extremely proud to be supporting our world class women's tennis team. I witn

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USA - The Lightconverse and High End Lighting Challenge continues until 31 March 2015.

The organisers comment: "We truly believe that the most creative and advanced lighting specialists deserve to be recognized and awarded for their hard work. In order to do so, we have created the Premier Challenge contest in which you can submit a video of your work created in Lightconverse.

There is no particular theme for the Premier Challenge except that the design must be original.

First prize is a High End HedgeHog4 N console and Lightconverse Unlimited; second prize is Lightconverse Trace, with Lightconverse Media packages for third place and Popular Choice winners.

The Contest Winner will be announced at Prolight + Sound, held from 15-18 April in Frankfurt, Germany.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - There were plenty of good reasons for the people at NBC to feel good about Super Bowl XLIX: the ratings were astronomical, advertising sales were record breaking and the company's onsite party directly across the street from the University of Phoenix Stadium was nothing short of spectacular, thanks to some inspired event planning by Angel City Designs and a stylish lighting rig by James Schipper of Kinetic Lighting.

Schipper called on a plethora of LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional to strike a visually pleasing sense of casual sophistication at the NBC pre-game party tent. With 800 VIP guests, including a good representation of on-air talent, this was definitely not your typical Sunday tailgating party. Yet, Schipper's design conveyed a relaxed retro atmosphere while still emphatically stating that this was indeed a very special event.

"I enjoyed this project a

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Australia - Sydney's Luna Park has a new ride that raises you 50mabove sea level for a bird's eye view of the magical city before unceremoniously dropping you over 80 km's an hour back to earth via an edge of your seat, white knuckle experience. Appropriately called the Hair Raiser, the ride has been lit in spectacular style acting as a beacon in the night sky.

Luna Park approached Show Technology for some ideas to light the ride in an innovative and creative manner, rather than just flood lighting the structure.

"They were also interested in the possibility of integrating the control of the lighting into the ride's control system," commented Mike Gearin, Show Technology's NSW technical sales manager. "We produced a few renders for them and they loved our concept."

It was decided that there was no better product than the Martin VC-Dot 4 lightweight string

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Russia - London-based creative technology expert Realtime Environment Systems Ltd (RES) has provided the know-how for a spectacular visual event to mark one year since the Sochi Winter Olympics.

The ambitious event at Sochi's beautiful Ice Palace featured a dramatic ice show and was staged by Russian TV company Channel One.

RES co-founder and project manager Mark Calvert and established freelance Ai technician Martin Harvey used two S6 Ai Media servers to bring pixel mapping, video playback and realtime generative patches for LED screen media, with one DVI output controlling 70848 Pixels @ 328 X 216 to control the 41 LED stems suspended above the rink. The show ran from an S6 Ai Media Server, with master slave hot backup S6.

"RES was challenged with providing the technical know-how, creativity, and server technology to realise the stunning celebration, which is exactly

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Singapore - Martin Professional reports that the MAC Viper family is now widely available throughout Southeast Asia via several of the region's largest rental houses. Singapore-based companies CSP Production, Trio AV and Highlight Systems as well as Malaysia-based Orange Events have added more than 170 MAC Viper fixtures to their portfolios, putting the latest in intelligent lighting at the fingertips of lighting designers throughout the region.

Designed for use in a wide variety of events and entertainment productions, Martin's MAC Viper family is a complete series of high-performance moving head light fixtures that features intense light output and a slender body for fast movements.

Singapore's Trio AV has been working with Martin Professional for more than 15 years, providing regular support for regional trade shows, government and corporate conferences and a host of other

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UK - The UK's Lighting Industry received a boost this week as the Lighting Industry Association received a share of the Government's Regional Growth Fund to further develop its laboratory services (LIA Laboratories) and new Lighting Training Academy.

The funds will help the Lighting Industry Association create a new Lighting Testing Laboratory to cope with increased demand, which will house a unique R&D centre that will be available for UK manufacturers to use and develop new lighting products.

Alongside the new laboratory, the Lighting Industry Association will also build a Lighting Academy that will provide education, learning and awareness services for the whole lighting supply chain. Being sited at the Lighting Industry Association's HQ in Telford, means that the courses will have a distinctly 'hand-on' feel and will help drive the introduction of new lighting technology a

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Sweden - Lighting company Aura Light has acquired Zobra, a Swedish lighting company that develops and manufactures luminaires for public areas. This acquisition is an important step for the company to become a complete supplier of energy efficient lighting solutions.

Zobra develops, manufactures and markets luminaires for public areas. The company offers a wide range of luminaires and focuses on innovative product design. Zobra's head office is situated in Vimmerby in Sweden where they also have their production. The company has been growing rapidly the recent years and has received external acknowledgement for their performance.

"This acquisition is an important part of Aura Light's growth strategy and we have seen an increased demand of complete lighting solutions amongst our customers. This is important for us in being a complete lighting supplier, offering light sourc

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China - The 135 year old Shanghai Symphony Orchestra now has a new home in the Shanghai Symphony Hall, which celebrated its long awaited grand opening in September. The Hall has a full complement of ETC equipment, including a Sensor 3 Power Control system with ThruPower modules, Source Four PAR fixtures, and an Eos family lighting control system.

The venue contains two separate performance spaces: the Main Hall with 1,200 seats, which serves as a performance and rehearsal space, and the 400-seat Chamber Hall, which is used for recording and broadcasting.

ETC Sensor3 power control racks dim both halls' stage lighting. "You can always expect a smooth and natural dimming curve from ETC dimmer racks," says Xingxing Dou, the lighting director at the Shanghai Symphony Hall. "They deliver maximum reliability with a minimal failure rate compared to most brands on the ma

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USA - Masked rockers Slipknot are making headlines with a fifth album release, the addition of new band members, their Knotfest concert series and the launch of the Prepare for Hell tour - and Clay Paky Stormys are along for the wild ride.

The band just marked the debut of their fifth studio album, .5: The Gray Chapter which was quickly followed by performances 25 and 26 October at their own Knotfest in San Bernardino, California. They began headlining the Prepare for Hell North American tour afterwards.

Trevor Ahlstrand, lighting designer/production designer for Slipknot, is using a package of 30 Stormys CC, obtained from Christie Lights, on the shows. The new Stormy uses the latest LED technology while retaining all the charm of the classic strobe. He has positioned a few on each piece truss and several in a row on the floor.

"The show is very asymmetrical with

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UK - Sheffield metalcore rockers Bring Me The Horizon played a one-off show at London's Wembley Arena closing a phenomenal year, celebrating the conclusion of their 18 month global Sempiternal album cycle ... and their 10th anniversary.

The band's lighting designer Ben Inskip chose 70 x Robe moving lights as the backbone of the show - because he knows the products and knew they would deliver the results he wanted. He needed multi-purpose lights that could perform several tasks and that all balanced well together as an integrated package.

Ben has worked with the band since 2009. He has a great rapport with them and they trust him implicitly to come up with interesting design concepts for their live work, which in this case also included upstage video projection. Being a one-off, possibly the most important parameter was that the design was practical and quick to load-in

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USA - When designers are faced with the biggest lighting challenges they turn to the industry's brightest lights. This is just what Dall Brown Lighting, with the support of Chroma Designs, did when given the task to light the exterior of the University of Phoenix Stadium for this year's Super Bowl. Dall Brown and Troy Eckerman teamed up to tackle the job of bathing the aluminium skin of the stadium in colour for the NFL's annual week-long celebration and season finale.

As has often been the case Syncrolite LLC was the company relied upon to meet the huge task at hand. This year, for Super Bowl XLIX, Syncrolite supplied 19 XL 8K xenon moving lights with their patented OmnicolorTM system that allows for true additive or subtractive colour mixing and incorporates VFL lightshaping diffuser film lenses that provided the beam spread and control elements necessary to pull-off this supe

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USA - Katy Perry's glittering halftime show at Super Bowl XLIX in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona was an eye catcher. Lighting designer Bob Barnhart of LA-based Full Flood chose a large array of amongst others Clay Paky Sharpy, Mythos and A.leda B-EYE K20 fixtures for the 12-minute show. Jason Rudolph, the lighting director in charge of the video system, used a grandMA2 light console to control the projection and inflatable, illuminated orbs.

Super Bowl XLIX marked Barnhart's seventeenth big game and his fifth as the primary or sole lighting designer. He served as lighting designer on last year's Bruno Mars halftime show at Met Life Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey.

Even before the halftime talent is selected, the venue sets the scene for the production and lighting design. "It all depends on what creative options the stadium offers," says Bar

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UK - To mark the end of 2014's F1 season Sky Sports created a film called The Ballad of the Duelling Drivers that told the story of the intense battle between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. To enhance this special project, lighting director Richard Bowles chose Clay Paky Mythos and Alpha Beam 700 fixtures to deliver stunning effects and sharp beams of light throughout.

Bowles specified three Mythos and eight Alpha Beam 700 fixtures from Richard Martin Lighting for the film, which was created and directed by Sky Sports F1's Alex Rodger, performed by talented composer and pianist Tokio Myers and narrated by actor Peter Guinness.

"My original brief was to recreate the look I'd previously come up with for a live music show earlier in the year, with a mixture of strong beams of light and large format tungsten lights against a strong black background" explains Bow

  1. International Year of Light gets bright start with SGM
  2. SGM lights up Finnish Ski Championships
  3. PR Lighting XR 1000 Framing starts shipping
  4. Ayrton celebrates New Year's Eve at Nippon Budokan
  5. Chauvet and School Stage at Lees Brook School
  6. Enlightened Lighting invests in Showline
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