USA - BBC World News America recently underwent renovations to their high-profile studio in Washington, D.C. BBC is an iconic news brand known around the world. With a new set design, comes the need for new studio lighting.
Eastern Lighting Design worked closely with award-winning (broadcast) production design firm Clickspring Design to create a slick studio environment. The studio is a small space and the challenge was to create a clean and sleek design while giving BBC as much lighting flexibility as possible. While the entire studio was gutted and re-built, the lighting had to fit into the existing power load footprint.
“Small spaces can quickly become crowded with lighting fixtures,” explains Matt Gordon, lighting designer and president of Eastern Lighting Desi

USA - On 26 August, the voice of women shined on the exterior of the Columbia Museum of Art, as the sleek postmodern building was lit in radiant purple, gold and white for Women’s Equality Day and the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment’s passage.
David Sneath of ACS Sound and Light, organised the inspiring display with the city of Columbia. A collection of 30 Chauvet Professional WELL Fit fixtures were used to light the museum and the historic building across the street from it at 1530 Main Street.
Delicately balanced with varying degrees of saturation, and white light blended artfully with colour palettes, the commemorative lighting at the museum commanded attention as it played off harmoniously against the building’s exterior lattice work of columns and cross beams.
Denise Simpson, a member of the ACS team, was responsible for positioning the IP65

Thailand - To offer attendees an engaging training experience, the Panyatara Learning Service Centre hired Mahajak Development Co to design and install a Harman Professional audio-visual and control solution.
Established by the Charoen Pokphan Group to operate Thailand’s convenience store business under the ‘7-Eleven’ trademark, the Panyatara Learning Service Centre - part of the Panyatara Company - offers personalised training courses and seminars.
The facility features a training room with 45-90 seats as well as another that accommodates up to 200 attendees. Wanting to provide guests an enhanced learning experience, the centre equipped the training rooms with premium audio-visual (AV) and control systems that offer pristine sound as well as simple, intuitive operation.
“The client wanted an audio system that provides clear sound and music to keep traine
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Strictly FX, Pushing Boundaries

Strictly FX was founded in 1996 by industry veterans Mark Grega and Ted Maccabee. Our expertise and knowledge of the world’s leading pyrotechnic, laser, and flame manufacturers allows us to curate astonishing live events. With over 500+ shows performed a year, there’s good chance you’ve seen some of our work!

France - The famous Palais des Papes in Avignon came alive bathed in a vibrant collage of colours, shapes, and textures – thanks to 12 x Robe Esprite moving lights – which were part of a design by LD Fabien Chamakoff for the 2020 Helios Festival.
Launched in 2017, the event highlights – with silent projection / visual works and light art pieces – Avignon’s stunning architecture and rich, diverse heritage as the ‘City of Catholic Popes’ between 1309 and 1377. It remained under Papal rule until 1791 when it became part of France. The Palais des Papes (Pope’s Palace) is one of the largest and most important medieval Gothic buildings in the whole of Europe.
For Fabien – who works for the Helios Festival organisation – it was a great honour to illuminate the intricate and imposing architecture, one of seven key sites lit up this year.
The 10-minute

Russia - RCF provides coverage of more than 10,000sq.m with more than 500 speakers in the latest religious complex built in Russia. The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces (Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ) is a Patriarchal Cathedral in honour of the Resurrection of Christ, "dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, as well as the military feats of the Russian people in all wars".
The impressive 100m-tall building was completed in May 2020 in the Patriot Park in the Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast. The steps and other metal parts were cast from melted Nazi weapons.
The interior capacity of the temple holds up to 6,000 people. The church is located a few hundreds meters from the nearby open-air museum, celebrating the historical times of the Great Patriotic War. The temple’s main complex is 11,000sq.m.
“The task

Germany - HK Audio has unveiled Polar 12, a full-fledged active full-range columnar PA system for musicians, entertainers, DJs, presentations, schools and audiovisual applications, and big brother to its bestselling Polar 10 model.
The Polar 12 system consists of a subwoofer and two columnar elements. The birch-ply subwoofer’s enclosure is acoustically shaped and sized to deliver excellent audio results in combination with a specially developed 12” long-excursion woofer. Driven by a muscular 2,000-watt power amplifier, this combination delivers an incredibly full bass response even at high volumes.
The midrange/HF column comes in two sections for easy transport. The top section is loaded with six high-performance 3” neodymium midrange drivers and a low-distortion, 1” constant directivity horn. The Polar 12 system delivers well-balanced, exceedingly natural soun
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The Many Looks of Zeo

Delivering ultimate brightness and unique looks, Zeo’s distinct face design is defined by a central LED monolith and four reflectors, backed by four RGBW engines. As a blinder or strobe, Zeo promises powerful impact with 30,000+ lumens. With its sheer brilliance and playful effects, Zeo is ready to amplify the energy on any stage.

USA - The newest Conference Controller from ClearOne is now available worldwide.
The Conference Controller’s 10-inch touch screen is designed for easy control of ClearOne’s Converge Pro 2 audio DSP mixers as well as Collaborate Live video conferencing room systems from a single device.
The Conference Controller functions can also be accessed from a personal mobile device, eliminating the need for touching shared surfaces by downloading the free mobile apps.
The Conference Controller can be paired with Converge Pro 2 DSPs, allowing users to make and receive VoIP and/or PSTN conference calls and multiparty calls with the easy-to-use, on-screen dial pad. When paired with Collaborate Live room video systems, users can make and receive video calls as well as manage content-sharing options.
A modern user interface makes controlling conferencing functions as

UK - London’s Southbank Centre has stood on the south bank of the Thames for nearly 70 years. A celebration of progress and modernity, Europe’s largest arts venue was built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain and, under normal circumstances, stages over 2000 performances of music, dance and literature a year, and more than 2000 free events.
Like all arts venues, the Southbank Centre is not immune to the economic and cultural upheaval caused by COVID-19 but, prior to lockdown, the Southbank Centre had, over the past two years, made a long-term commitment to LED performance lighting, with complete moving head installations in the fixed rigs of three of its performance spaces: the 2700-seat Royal Festival Hall, 916-seat Queen Elizabeth Hall and the 295-seat Purcell Room.
As part of this drive towards LED, the team at the Southbank Centre invested in Ayrton Ghibli and

France - To mark the re-release of his album Eden at the end of 2019, French singer-songwriter and pop star, Etienne Daho, embarked upon a 17-date concert tour of France's leading venues, including Philharmonie, Pleyel and Olympia. The final date took place in January 2020, narrowly avoiding the lockdown measures introduced by the onset of the Covid-19 crisis.
Victorien Cayzeele, a gifted young lighting designer, was determined to obtain the best possible interpretation for his artist, so he specified an MDG Atmosphere haze generator to materialise the light within his design.
"I had mostly washes and very few spot sources in my kit, so I needed a density of haze that was strong enough to materialise the colour that bathed the set. And, on this tour, we wanted to maintain a uniform and stable level throughout the show.”
Etienne Daho's music, with its ele

China - LED display specialist Absen has once again been recognised in Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies (BMC) programme.
The BMC programme is a global initiative that identifies and recognises private companies with advanced management ideas and excellent business performance. Key factors in the evaluation of a company’s management ability include strategy, capabilities, commitment and financial strength. This year, the selection criteria also considered resiliency towards the Covid-19 pandemic. Absen was deemed to have shown extraordinary competency in all areas, allowing the company to weather these difficult times.
With a reputation for providing high quality LED displays, Absen once again achieved the #1 global export position for the 11th consecutive year and will next year celebrate its 20th anniversary. Absen has a manufacturing facility with an annual pr

USA - High End Systems has announced the finalist teams for the 2020 Hog Factor USA Collegiate Lighting Programming Competition. First held in North America in 2015, Hog Factor has become one of the premier lighting programming contests in the United States and across the globe.
For Phase One, each submitting team provided a performance lighting piece, programmed on a Hog or Hog 4 PC. The collegiate teams were judged by a panel of High End Systems and ETC employees. The three Hog Factor USA finalist teams are The Ghost Lights from Webster University, Bacon Powers from Southern Methodist University, and Hamburglers from Texas State University.
With the LDI 2020 Exhibition now cancelled, this year’s contest will take place online as part of ETC/HES’ Study Hall events in October. Details on the contest date, format and judging will be announced soon.

Russia - On 24 June, a spectacular concert was hosted at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd in honour of the 75th anniversary of VE Day. One of the only concerts allowed during Russia’s COVID-19 lockdown, it featured artists from Russia’s vibrant theatre, opera and cinema worlds, accompanied by the All-Russian Youth Symphony Orchestra, which was conducted by Yuri Bashmet.
The concert was also broadcast live on the state-owned TV channel, Russia-1. Rental company Stage Audio was chosen as a technical support contractor for the show.
The audience was seated on the steps along the rectangular reflecting pool in Volgograd’s Heroes Square, with the artists performing in different locations during the concert, tens of meters away from each other. This necessitated special requirements for the mixing and routing system. Signals were received from four locations across the site

UK - sunDial quad, the PLASA Gold award-winning mains LED dimmer from Artistic Licence, offers smooth LED dimming with DMX512. Following a firmware upgrade, the product is now offering improvement in dimming resolution, achievable with many theatrical controllers.
The latest firmware is available free-of-charge and can be uploaded using DMX-Workshop.
DMX512 can control up to 512 channels and has an 8-bit native resolution. This means each channel can be set to a level between 0 and 255 and is encoded as an 8-bit number (256 levels). sunDial quad has a much higher native dimming resolution of 14-bit, so in normal operation a dimmer curve translation is used - in effect, sunDial picks 'sweet spots' on the response curve to achieve a nice fade.
However, some professional lighting consoles allow two DMX512 channels to be combined to provide up to 16-bit resolution (

Italy - Claypaky has introduced the HY B-EYE K25 Teatro, a special version of the HY B-EYE K25 that is designed for venues that need silent operation without sacrificing bright colours. This fixture is designed for theatres, television studios, conference halls, showrooms, corporate events, and more.
The HY B-EYE K25 TEATRO has all the same optical, electronic, and mechanical features of the HY B-EYE K25 with changes in the overall design to reduce the acoustical footprint. This luminaire has the same 37 powerful 40 Watt Osram Ostar RGBW LEDs, a zoom range of 4° to 60°, uniform light spread, a rotating front lens, an enhanced electronic engine for dynamic beam pattern design with digital accuracy and repeatability, individual control of each single LED to make spectacular kaleidoscopic projections and charming eye-catching effects.
The HY B-EYE K25 TEATRO is extreme

The Netherlands - West Side Studio is a creative partnership between four Dutch production professionals, specialising in post-production sound and offline editing for motion picture and television. Its most recent addition is a cinema screening room, where an Alcons Audio pro-ribbon 7.1 surround system has impressed the studio’s owners and clients alike.
Located in the busy port area just north-west of central Amsterdam, West Side Studio is the brainchild of Evelien van der Molen, Mieneke Kramer, Lennert Hunfeld and Vincent Sinceretti. Featuring several edit suites and an ADR studio, for the new cinema room they wanted 7.1 reference monitoring, but with the quality and flexibility for future expansion to full Dolby Atmos specification.
Cinema exhibition services specialists CinemaNext was contracted to supply and install the equipment in the new room and, after look

Germany - Bei uns ist immer was los - the words are written across the top of the homepage of the Stadthalle Delbrück website. Roughly translated into English, they mean “we always have something going on”. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has put this claim to the test, forcing the popular East Westphalian cultural centre to cancel its diverse schedule of shows, Stadthalle Delbrück lived up to the spirit of this motto recently by turning its idle stage into a broadcast studio so local bands could record professional quality music videos.
Taking place over a weekend, the safe, socially distant event (there was no live audience and minimal production crews), featured five different bands. Providing them with a dynamic stage setting was a power-packed fast-moving lighting rig supplied by LDT Veranstaltungsservice that featured over 25 Chauvet Professional fixtures.<

Croatia - The MS My Wish offers ‘a deluxe, intimate experience’ for its 38 guests. With an advantage due to its a smaller, yacht-like size, the ship can navigate narrow waterways and explore not only Croatia’s medieval cities but also its smaller, quieter islands hardly explored by bigger vessels.
Boasting an onboard restaurant, a large sundeck, a rooftop hot tub, and a swimming platform for access to the Adriatic ocean, the MS My Wish needed an audio system that could match its design.
“The Mezzo 324 and Mezzo 604 were perfect for the job,” said Captain Marin Crncic of the MS My Wish.
The Mezzo series is Powersoft’s answer to providing the same sound clarity, reliability and build quality in a smaller install amplifier – just half of the rack unit form factor. All models come with state-of-the-art built-in DSP. It has two power sizes with a two or

UK - London fringe theatre returned to the capital, as the first socially distanced and fully Covid-compliant live musical production of post-pandemic England 2020 was staged in a specially renovated garden space at The Eagle pub in Vauxhall. Fanny & Stella, a sharp-witted com-romp through some extraordinary events gave theatre fans a snapshot into the real lives of two eccentric Victorian Londoners - Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park.
Based on the book and lyrics by Glenn Chandler (creator of hit TV series Taggart), the show was directed by Steven Dexter and produced by Peter Bull and Richard Lambert of Lambco Productions. Richard also designed and operated the lighting using his Zero 88 FLX S24 console.
“It was perfect for the job,” enthused Richard about the console, “totally portable and fitted easily onto a fold-out table, and just

USA - With live events at a slow trickle, those venues that have been able to open up, albeit with restrictions, are elated and generally selling out. Madlife Stage & Studio, a 284-capacity live music venue and recording studio in Woodstock, Georgia, which like other live venues in the U.S. was forced to close earlier in the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, re-opened in late July with a full lineup of acts on the schedule.
“Madlife re-opened over a month ago at half capacity as one of the few places around holding live events,” said local lighting designer Caleb McClesky, who often helps at the venue, supporting house LD Brendon Rosenbaum and frequently supplementing the house rig with his own Elation lighting gear. “Patrons have to sit at tables so everyone is socially distanced. Staff is required to wear masks and the venue is sanitised between shows. It’s b

Austria - As Vienna’s Rabenhof Theatre prepares to reopen its doors, audiences will soon be enjoying an audio upgrade, including a new 64 channel Allen & Heath Avantis mixer.
Built as a workers’ assembly hall in the 1920s, the Rabenhof was converted into a theatre in 1990 and underwent a complete refurbishment in 2008, during which much of its art-deco character was restored. The theatre has earned a reputation for serving up an eclectic mix of experiences, ranging from contemporary theatre and musicals to puppetry and baroque opera.
Almost every day brings another new performance to the Rabenhof Theatre, so head of sound, Josch Russo is accustomed to working with tight setup times and a high throughput of guest engineers. When the venue decided it was time to retire its aging digital mixer, speed and ease of use were high on the wishlist.
Following demo

Indonesia - Opened late last year, the JIExpo Theatre is the new crown jewel of the Indonesian capital city’s Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) centre for meetings, events and arts performances. Among first events was a concert by illustrious cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose dynamic performance proved an appropriate showcase for the venue’s Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system.
Constellation and the complementary direct reinforcement system - based on Leopard line array loudspeakers - were provided through Meyer Sound national distributor Mega Swara and installed by Jakarta-based integrator Kairos Multi Jaya. With a capacity of 2,500, the JIExpo Theatre now ranks as the largest venue in the Asia Pacific region to offer the programming flexibility and superlative acoustic qualities afforded by Constellation.
Jakarta International Expo is a private enterprise, owned by

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