USA - Creating a more camera-friendly stage became a pressing need for many churches during the pandemic, as they turned to livestream services to reach worshippers during lockdowns. Marysville Christian Fellowship was no exception to this rule.
This dynamic, small church, which serves a rural community in northeast Kansas, also shared something else in common with many other houses of worship: it had only a limited budget to devote to making its space more well-suited for broadcasting services.
Marysville Christian was able to navigate its way through this issue with help from Stark Raving Solutions, which recently completed a lighting and video upgrade at the church. Taking a holistic approach to this project, the Lenexa, Kansas based company provide a comprehensive solution that involved far more than the installation of new gear.
“We did a lot of upgrading

Finland - Ilmatar Windpower is dedicated to the supply of clean and affordable wind power as part of the drive to transition to renewable energy sources. The company has recently made their own transition to new headquarters in Helsinki, designed according to sustainable practices with the aim of achieving optimum efficiency and wellbeing. AV solutions experts 4Business Oy were called in to design and implement all the AV technologies for the new premises, which included a Smart IP audio solution from Genelec.
One of the biggest issues to be addressed from an audio point of view was auditory comfort in Ilmatar’s open workspaces - an integral part of any modern, activity-based office today. However, one of the inherent problems of any open plan workspace is a lack of privacy and disruptive noise coming from elsewhere in the environment. Ilmatar was determined to create the

UK - Creative Technology supported the live broadcast of a ‘secret’ event from one of the UK’s leading motor racing circuits.
The event would be streamed to a small number of top clients for the manufacturer, with security of the broadcast being of utmost importance. CT proposed the use of its Eden platform which enabled two-factor authentication for the invited attendees to maintain a high level of security, ensuring confidentiality of the product. CT were on hand to collaborate with the end client’s IT department and Sprout, throughout the production process, to ensure that all protocols were observed and minimise any issues on the day for the invited audience.
CT’s involvement with the project further extended into the ‘live’ environment following Sprout’s decision to broadcast the event on-demand over the weekend of 13-14 March.
The on-site e

USA - When the Seattle Symphony orchestra wanted to explore the realms of music through audio and visual representation, they envisioned creation of a space that would immerse the audience into ‘a music experience unlike any other’.
The Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Centre is named after Seattle philanthropists James and Sherry Raisbeck, who donated $2m on top of the various public and private donations to transform the former Soundbridge Seattle Symphony Music Discovery Centre into a musical experience to remember. Fusing music and technology, Octave 9 was designed to stretch the boundaries of creative possibility and immerse the viewer in new worlds created with the orchestra’s music.
With this in mind, the technology implemented in this immersive space needed to be fully adaptable to match the variety of genres and eras recreated by the orchestra, and able to chan

UAE - Bla Bla Dubai - which boasts 20 Bars, three Restaurants, and a Beach Club all in one venue - was created to offer a full day-to-night experience for visitors, all with views of Bluewaters Island and Ain Dubai, the world’s largest observation wheel.
Located at The Beach opposite JBR, Bla Bla Dubai is set to be at the forefront of the city’s bustling social scene, and as a result every area of the venue required an audio system to match - or even exceed - the region’s high standards.
Pulse Middle East was trusted with the job of integrating this system after Bla Bla Dubai’s management was impressed by Pulse’s extensive portfolio of work with other venues across the city including Nikki Beach Club, White Beach at Atlantis, LSB, Brass Monkey, and Wavehouse.
Pulse opted for a complex three-zone audio configuration driven by Powersoft amplifier platfo

USA - Now in its ninth season, the Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family showcases crafting, cooking, home improvement, car repair, and all things DIY. Multiple cast members interact with celebrity guests throughout the many rooms of a full-sized house set.
This makes the need for many wireless channels and glitch-free reception a top priority, which is why the show recently upgraded to Lectrosonics all-digital D Squared wireless mic system. It comprises four DSQD four-channel receivers, 16 DBu belt-pack transmitters, a DHu handheld mic, and six ALP690 high-performance antennas.
“We had been using three Lectrosonics Venue racks and SM-series transmitters since the show started in 2012,” says audio supervisor Mike Dooley, whose CV includes The Biggest Loser and The Price Is Right. “I loved how well supported they were. But when we changed re

USA - Gerry Dintelman recently lit I Watched Music On The Internet, a four-part six-hour livestream marathon featuring 11 different bands shot in St Louis.
Dintelman created a design that gave each band a different look. He accomplished this with help from a large collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures that included Nexus 4 x 4 and NXT-1 panels along with Rogue R2 Beam and R2 Wash moving fixtures, all supplied by Arch City Audio Visual Services.
“This series was created by Arch City and the Sinkhole a local live music venue, as a means of showcasing different bands during the pandemic,” says Dintelman. “My co-designer Kevin Kwater and I knew that we would have to create a variety of looks to reflect each band’s personality. Since the videos were shot at the live stream space Arch City created in its warehouse early in the pandemic, we had a lot of f

Germany - L'Osteria is a branded gastronomy company founded in 1999 with over 130 locations in eight European countries. The operation is based on a three-pillar principle: company-owned restaurants managed by FR L'Osteria SE; joint ventures; and franchise restaurants.
According to their own statement, it is “a bit loud [and] lively” in the restaurants, which places high demands on the individual sound systems.
Audio installation company i:TECS from Dessau-Rosslau specialises in the gastronomy sector and undertakes all planning and design, based around high quality sound.
At L’Osteria they looked to the Martin Audio portfolio, distributed in Germany by Audio-Technica. “We were given the impression right from the start that special focus needed to be placed on premium quality sound,” says Thomas Neumann of i:TECS. "Great value is placed on the standard o

Vietnam - Vietnam's first ‘sleepless city' has officially opened on Phu Quoc Island, aiming to become an international destination. Phu Quoc United Centre, developed by Vingroup, took a total investment of $2.8bn and aims to attract visitors from all over the world.
Visitors will be able to enjoy multimedia shows, including the Vietnamese flowers, 32,000 bamboo tops, travelling the canals of Venice surrounded by coloured buildings that play homage to the Italian capital, among other attractions.
Prolights plays a part in the lighting design, with fixtures installed in the centre lake where the Venice canals are. Every night, the performance of Sac mau Venice (The colour of Venice) dazzles visitors with a light show. Vietnamese lighting designer Mr. Trong created all the looks, while Pro AVL, Prolights' distributor for the region, supported with t

Australia - Written by Australian playwright, screenwriter, and composer Yve Blake, Fangirls is a co-production with Belvoir, Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival, in association with Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP). It is the chronicle of 14-year-old Edna, a diehard fan of the world’s biggest boy band, True Direction.
Currently touring Australia, the multi award-winning musical recently played to full capacity audiences at Adelaide Events and Exhibition Centre’s Ridley Pavilion, as part of the Adelaide Festival. To deliver all the punch and clarity, music producer and sound designer David Muratore and sound designer Michael Waters had envisioned, Novatech supplied an L-Acoustics system for the festival dates.
While Fangirls creators Blake and Muratore, had spent five years developing the production with musical director and vocal arran

UK - After events for the London Climate Change Festival were postponed in 2020, the festival returned for 2021 with a televised broadcast. The specially created concert, titled Song For Nature, debuted on Sky Arts on Earth Day, 22 April. Paul Smith of Apex Acoustics provided audio equipment for the performance and mixed sound using a DiGiCo SD10 console.
“The concert grew organically into a much larger event with performances by Brian May, Rob Brydon, Nathan Evans, Kerry Ellis, Janie Dee and Wayne Sleep, and many more along with the ENO Orchestra and choir,” says Smith. “Brian May and Kerry Ellis were only confirmed a few days before the show.”
The concert was filmed over three days at an audience-absent London Coliseum, both on stage and in other areas of this storied London venue. The atmospheric theatre hosts the English National Opera as well as bei

Sri Lanka - Dynamic AV Technologies recently outfitted Ceylon Theatres Regal Cinema Dematagoda with a complete Harman Professional cinema audio solution to provide immersive sound quality for moviegoers.
Ceylon Theatres is a Sri Lankan theatre chain with an 85-year history that currently operates six locations throughout the country. The latest location is a three-screen facility in Dematagoda which also houses a KFC restaurant and Food City supermarket. In order to ensure an immersive cinematic experience with clear and balanced audio quality for moviegoers, Ceylon Theatres Regal Cinema Dematagoda required modern sound systems for all three screens. Ceylon Theatres hired Dynamic AV Technologies to equip each theatre with a complete Harman Professional cinema audio solution including JBL loudspeakers and Crown amplifiers
“Working on a cinema project with Harman is ea

Germany - Over the past six months, two German production companies have been working together to simultaneously keep their creative juices flowing during the pandemic-inflicted hiatus on in-person events and lift the production value of livestreams.
The Wharf is the latest in a series of three increasingly ambitious dedicated livestream studios that they have created using primarily ADJ lighting and video equipment. This latest project combines a series of 3D cubes, lined with ADJ Pixie Strip pixel-mapped LED fixtures, and a water tank, illuminated by ADJ Hydro Series IP65-rated moving heads, to create a stunning visual backdrop for both DJ sets and full-on live performances to be captured on video.
LaserFrame, based in Cologne, and its owner Guido Schütz, specialises in lighting for clubs, lounges, and electronic music events. Meanwhile, Creative Sounds, from nearby

UK - Thirty-eight Robe MegaPointe moving lights were an integral part of the lighting rig used by LD Chris Kempton for the UK’s 2021 Comic Relief biennial Red Nose Day telethon event which harnessed the power and inspiration of humour to raise funds for good causes.
The event was staged in March at D Studio in the BBC Elstree complex in Hertfordshire, UK, and broadcast live on the BBC.
The telethon was hosted by Sir Lenny Henry alongside Davina McCall, Paddy McGuinness, David Tennant and Alesha Dixon. It was the first Red Nose Day event to have a virtual audience - onscreen behind the presenters - due to COVID restrictions.
Lighting equipment was supplied by JLLighting Ltd., together with power distribution infrastructure and media servers to run all the playback visuals.
Chris has lit the show several times in the last few years, and this year he took

The Netherlands - Ayrton reports that its MiniPanel-FX, Huracán-X and Karif LED lighting fixtures will form a major part of the lighting design for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest which takes place at the Ahoy Arena, Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Lighting designer Henk-Jan van Beek of Light-H-Art design has chosen significant numbers of each fixture for the main ambient and effects lighting for this annual music extravaganza. The full requirement of Ayrton fixtures - 386 in total - will be supplied by Eurovision 2021’s lighting, audio and rigging supplier, Ampco Flashlight.
The stage design for Eurovision 2021 by Florian Wieder is being kept under wraps for now, but those in the know at Ampco Flashlight have hinted at a wall of MiniPanel-FX which they describe on their Eurovision blog as ‘a cute little fixture that is fierce and powerful’ - and that’s ju

Belgium - Game shows are more fun when they’re challenging. Perhaps that’s why Game of Talents has been such a runway success. The show, which originated in Spain and quickly spread to other countries to debut in the US on 10 March, asks two teams of contestants to use their intuition and wits to figure out the hidden talents of performers based on only a few carefully selected clues.
Game of Talents presents an interesting challenge for designers who must often simultaneously key light the contestants sitting in their chairs as well as the performers on stage, all while fitting within the parameters of a broadcast application.
Michiel Milbou and his team at Never Fear Shadows met this challenge in winning fashion when lighting the Belgian version of this show, thanks to some adroit key lighting accomplished with Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Pro

Australia - The first Robe T2 Profiles to arrive in Australia went to Perth-based lighting and visual rental and production company What Noiz and made their debut on the lighting rig designed by Matt Marshall for West Australian Ballet’s As One: Ballet at the Quarry.
This was performed as part of the 2021 Perth Festival at the Quarry Amphitheatre, an outdoor rock quarry in Perth’s coastal suburb of City Beaches.
What Noiz’s founder and owner Benjamin Fry explained that they had been looking for a powerful LED profile for some time. They loved what they saw in terms of features and functionality with Robe’s T1, but wanted something with just a bit more brightness and then along came the new T2 Profile.
The purchase was completed in time for the West Australian Ballet’s 2021 summer season with its three dynamic works combining ballet and contempor

Russia - On 12 April 2021, the Baikonur Cosmodrome hosted a gala concert to celebrate the spaceflight of the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The festivities were broadcast live by the Russia TV network.
The concert’s ‘X-factor’ was a beam of light shooting out from the pit of the launch complex that sent the Vostok-1 spaceship into orbit 60 years ago. The light beam was created by TDS, a full-service production company.
The design concept called for the light beam to be so powerful that more than 60 high-power light projectors would be needed to create it. Another way to accomplish the task was to use augmented reality technology.
“Our team landed at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 9 April,” reports TDS. “We had only four days to prepare the equipment for filming, install special marks, calculate precise distances using industrial-grade range meters, calib

Berlarus - Mozyr Ivan Melezh Drama Theatre in Belarus celebrated its reopening last summer after a major renovation. The building was originally built between the late 20s and early 30s of the last century, though it was seriously damaged in a fire in 2013, destroying most of the cultural monument.
Over the past few years, the building has gone through reconstruction, and Cinemanext Bel designed, supplied, installed and commissioned all the stage lighting and sound system of the large and small halls, and provided training to the newly hired staff.
“As part of the technical tender for the new equipment acquisition the theatre requested that the new fixtures had low power consumption, low heat and noiseless operation,” says Ulyana Barkova, Deputy Commercial Director at CinemaNext, adding: “With that in mind, we chose Prolights' Ruby and Jet Spot4Z for their LED so

USA - Global nutrition company Herbalife honoured its top performing sales force and distributors in an awards event staged at the Los Angeles Convention Centre in March, a streamed show that was executive & technically produced by Raj Kapoor Productions & Steffan Jones for CG Creative Studios.
Tom Sutherland from DX7 Design designed the lighting and Julio Himede from Yellow Studio was tasked with the scenic design, and Tom’s lighting design featured 1,145 Astera AX5 battery operated wireless LED PARs - one of the largest Astera installations worldwide. The luminaires were amassed by lighting vendor Felix Lighting..
Tom’s starting point for the lighting was Julio Himede’s production design which featured a 160ft-wide black gloss stage and four massive modernist style moving LED video arches.
Tom decided to surround and accentuate this epic look wit

Estonia - Rental company Strikken supplied the lighting design and production design and equipment for the Power Stage Live TV podium, which welcomed the 2020 winners of Rally Estonia event - part of the World Rally Championship - and was set up close to the final stage finish line, near Rally Estonia’s HQ in Tartu.
They relied on the power and versatility of Robe moving lights including LEDWash 300s, LEDWash 800s and MMX Spots to deliver spectacular looking results. The luminaires were picked for their compact size, light weight, and brightness, and all rigged on the stage ground support structure together with some outrigged pipes facilitating the front positions.
The event was broadcast in 155 countries worldwide, and the Power Stage podium featured a 20m-deep by 30m-wide platform with two drive-on / off wings at the front and a substantial LED screen upstage. Li

Costa Rica - The elegant Teatro Nacional Costa Rica in San Jose, completed in 1897, is the jewel of the nation’s capital city and one of the most beautiful concert halls in the Americas.
Leading up to this famed structure, the visitor can gaze on sculptures of poet Calderón de la Barca and composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Further down the entry walkway are statues of Frédéric Chopin. The message delivered by this external artwork is clear: inside is a venue that treasures artistry from around the world!
Recently, the Costa Rican Philharmonic Orchestra reaffirmed this commitment by performing a virtual concert at the site. Supporting their performance and making it more vivid to viewers was the colourful light from the theatre’s newly installed Chauvet Professional COLORado 3 Solo fixtures.
The 60W RGB LED fixtures were installed just prior to the show, when

UK - Dream is a multi-layered mix of movement, music, visuals, cool technology and narrative magic, an immersive digital performance fusing the drama of Shakespeare with the dynamic worlds of gaming and theatre in a production by the UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast, and the Philharmonia Orchestra (read a full production report in the upcoming issue of Lsi, out early May).
Staged physically in the Studio at Portsmouth Guildhall and inspired by the classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the characters were played by six real actors utilising Vicon motion capture cameras, their avatars and effects appearing onscreen - centring around the antics of cocky and capricious mischief-maker Puck. They run amok in the virtual Midsummer forest, hellraising and spoofing four other sprites during

USA - Audio quality is a difficult challenge to solve in any video conferencing application and meeting that challenge was a top concern for Charlie Fiddler, technical events specialist at Asbury Theological Seminary when he undertook the task of upgrading the seminary’s conferencing system. To meet this challenge, he turned to ClearOne.
Asbury Theological Seminary is an evangelical Christian seminary located in Wilmore, Kentucky. It is the largest seminary in the Wesleyan tradition and advocates for egalitarianism, giving equal status for men and women in ministerial roles and for ordination.
“We wanted to be able to capture the voices of instructors, with or without lapel microphones, based on individual preferences and the questions from students, regardless of whether or not they are located on campus or calling in from other locations,” Fiddler explains. “

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