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Following official introductions in Rimini and Frankfurt earlier in the year, production of Studio Due's top of the range spotlight - ‘XS’ - has entered full scale production, in both the XS600EZ version (with HMI 575 lamp) and the XS700 version (with HTI700 lamp).

The fully-featured units include numerous combinations of metal gobos, standard and grey scale dichroics, glass, and the innovative use of artistic glass. The XS also includes five different wheels of colours and prisms, providing a wide range of possibilities for lighting designers. At the centre of this equipment is the very efficient optical system which consists of a lens system, condenser and dichroic mirror reflector. Combined with zoom and focus capability, these produce an intense and uniform light beam. Tw

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When Urbis opened to the public on 27 June it was set to become not only one of the most innovative visitor attractions in Manchester, but also an impressive facility for corporate functions. Urbis has been marketed as a 'new kind of museum' and the philosophy behind the city's newest addition is to challenge visitors to 'see their world differently'. Using cutting-edge technology, coupled to hands-on interactive sections, audio-visual displays and moving video footage, Urbis tells the 'people's story' of cities from Sao Paulo to Los Angeles - the histories and experiences of the individuals who have shaped the urban spaces in which the majority of the world's population now lives.

Urbis has its roots firmly planted in urban soil in every way, from the Latin origins of the word urbis, meaning 'of the city' to its location in Cathedral Gardens, a new green space in Manchester's Millenni

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Currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity, summer music festivals are alive and well in both Europe and North America. Six days of sunshine and a great atmosphere in one of Europe’s most beautiful countries is just the ‘cure’ for those summertime blues. On 25 July, British rock legends The Cure played before a vast audience at Switzerland’s largest open-air festival, the Paléo Festival Nyon. Gaining in popularity, the Paléo Festival is attracting some of the biggest names in music.

Lighting rental company Cameleon supplied a full Martin rig consisting of eight MAC 2000 Performances, 16 MAC 2000s, 14 MAC 600s and 18 RoboColor Pro 400s for the performance with a lighting and stage design completed by company Sérafin Lampion. As one of the headlining acts, The Cure’s performance on The Grande Scene was a much-anticipated event with a large part of the

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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!

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Mackie Designs Inc has announced the arrival of Baby HUI into its growing family of high-performance touch-sensitive control surfaces. Baby HUI is the first affordable control surface that supports the HUI/MIDI-mapping protocol, allowing it to work right out of the box with any HUI-supported digital audio workstation (DAW) on PC or Macintosh platforms. The growing family of HUI-supported DAWs currently includes Mackie Broadcast Professional Soundscape 32, Mackie Mixtreme, Digidesign ProTools and Digi 001, MOTU Digital Performer, Steinberg Nuendo, and many others.

Baby HUI joins the emerging group of Mackie control surfaces designed to improve workflow and creativity by allowing users to interact with their favourite DAW through a familiar analogue style interface rather than a mouse. "With Baby HUI, users will no longer have to rely on a mouse to delicately move a fader or rotate

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Gary Fails, City Theatrical’s founder and President, has earned his Masters of Business Administration degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City, and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma honour society for academic excellence. Fails took a leave of absence from Columbia in 1971 and went out on the road with touring shows for 10 years, then continued working on Broadway before founding City Theatrical in 1986. "For the last 30 years, I said I would go back and finish school; this is the completion of a lifetime goal. I look forward to using my MBA skills to grow and improve City Theatrical and to make it a larger and more vital part of our industry."

(Lee Baldock)

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Interactive lighting specialist Optimusic is launching the new OptiBeam the OB2 at PLASA 2002. This latest interactive light unit boasts a very high light output and comes with focus function. Furthermore, due to changes in design and increased demand, Optimusic has announced that the price of the the OB2 is priced some 30% less than the OB1! Also on show is the latest version of the company’s OM-CS Control System - now 20% lower in price. The Optimusic stand will feature new and exciting applications for the innovative interactive lighting system - visitors can see the latest beam games such as BeamBowling and BeamFootball, the latest BeamDJ setting and more.

Optimusic can be found on stand J22.

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Hz International will launch its brand new amplifier - the DPX-15 Lite - at the PLASA Show. The DPX-15 Lite, which replaces the DPX1500, provides 750W per channel into 4 ohms and features total short circuit protection with continuous clip limiting - without compression. The unit also includes two-speed fans to cater for varying workloads. Furthermore, the weight has been drastically reduced from 16 kilos down to 8.5 kilos. It also has massive headroom, say Hz, thanks to its extremely high damping factor - almost twice that of the existing DPX1500.

(Lee Baldock)

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ETC Halcyon Silent

High End Systems Halcyon Silent builds on ETC’s legacy of fanless automated fixtures by incorporating features from the highly sought-after Halcyon family. Halcyon Silent perfectly balances silent operation with brilliant output of 18,400 lumens and high-impact features. 

For more information visit us at www.etcconnect.com

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Clay Paky, the Italian manufacturer of intelligent lighting products, has relocated to brand new premises near Bergamo, with effect from 26 August. The company’s new contact details are as follows: Clay Paky S.p.A., via Pastrengo 3/B, 24068 Seriate (Bergamo). While the telephone and e-mail contacts remain unchanged, the company does have a new fax number - to fax Clay Paky you must now use +39 035 301876. More details of the company’s new facility will follow shortly.

(Lee Baldock)

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Martin Professional is showing a number of new products at PLASA this year: the MAC 2000 Wash is a powerful new 1200W MAC Fresnel fixture, with a number of notable features including extremely high light output from an HMI 1200W source, full CMY colour mixing and variable CTC filters, multiple front lens options for various beam spreads, a fully motorized zoom system and more. For increased flexibility, an optional motorized barn door module allows you to cut the beam wherever desired.

Next up, the MAC 2000 Performance is a powerful 1200W profile framing spot and animation projector, featuring a 4-blade framing system for precise stage lighting and gobo animation wheel for extraordinary theatrical effects. The gobo animation system has been further enhanced with a set of six new animation wheel designs giving lighting designers an unparalleled range of artistic effects with which to en

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Flintshire-based Apple Sound has recently supplied the BMW Group plant in Oxford with a complete Tour Guide system from West Sussex based pro-audio distributor, beyerdynamic. The BMW Group Plant has a long tradition of manufacturing and since their investment in the new Mini production facilities earlier this year; the facility has undergone a £230 million investment program to make it one of the world's most sophisticated car production systems.

Working closely with BMW's communications manager, Lynda Boodell, Apple Sound's Tourguide product manager John Scott helped specify the details of this system to meet BMW's precise requirements as an extremely effective wireless communications system for their guided tour presentations around the new factory. Delegates on the tour are able to listen clearly to commentary at a distance and in the noisy areas where it would otherwise be impossi

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Japan recently became the site of the first official Wholehog III training seminars organized for customers, when two 2-day sessions were held from 6-9 August at Ushio U-Tech's Koiwa Studio in Tokyo. Sales and R&D professionals in attendance were mostly from Ushio U-Tech, C&C Electronics Co and Theatre Engineering Co Ltd - although one production person came a long way from the National Theatre School of Canada.

High End Systems' Brad Schiller instructed the classes, which were translated simultaneously into Japanese by Hitoshi Nakamura, chief of the international sales division of Ushio U-Tech. Of particular interest were the ‘guts’ of the console. As the attendees would need to know how to both service and program the Wholehog III, they were satisfied upon opening the unit to see how easily interchangeable parts would be.

The first formal classes for Wholehog III in the

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Hand Held Audio, specialists in wireless and in-ear technology for over a decade, has supplied all of the wireless and in-ear monitoring systems for the series of Radio One Big Sunday events that have taken place up and down the country. Hand Held has also been responsible for the licensing requirements at each venue. Tens of thousands of fans have already attended events in Swansea, Ipswich and Falkirk with another due in Leicester on 8 September. Audio contractor for One Big Sunday is Britannia Row who have been using their recently acquired X-Line line array system from Electro-Voice.

Although the requirements vary from show to show, Hand Held's Nick Bruce-Smith says that typically they have supplied around eight headsets, eight hand-helds and eight in-ear systems per event, mainly from Shure. These plus whatever the bands bring of their own gear and the BBC's own radio systems mean

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Ryger, the well-known UK manufacturer of lighting controllers and effects, has relocated to Wales. Under new management and with radical restructuring, Ryger Ltd will continue to manufacture its comprehensive range of lighting controllers for the small club and mobile DJ market, as well as expanding into the live music control market. "Our Footlight 4 lighting controller for bands has been a great success," said Karen Phillips, marketing director. "We’ve recently made it stronger to endure the most testing of applications and plan to extend the range further in the near future."

The new improved Footlight will be on display at PLASA 2002 along with the rest of the Ryger range. Also showing at PLASA will be the newest version of the Ryger Showlite system, a fully interactive comprehensive lighting control system run from a PC or laptop. Ryger also maintains its

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The American National Standards Institute is now offering electronic copies of ESTA's ANSI-approved standards and other technical publications for sale on-line. Ordering electronic copies on-line gives members of the entertainment industry almost instantaneous delivery of needed documents.

To order ESTA's standards and other technical documents from ANSI, simply go to the website shown below and then click on the pull-down menu under the instructions ‘Please select a standards category below.’ Select ‘ESTA: Entertainment Services and Technology Association’ from the list of standards developers, and then hit the ‘Go’ button. That will present a page listing all ESTA's publications available through ANSI, including ESTA's free publications.

Paper copies of ESTA's documents are available from ESTA Publications Orders, offered by the United States In

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Lightfactor Sales has chosen the PLASA show to launch several new and innovative products and services. This year Xilver, the Dutch architectural lighting manufacturer, joins Lightfactor’s list of major brands, which also includes Apogee Sound, High End, LDR, LightProcessor, Par-Safe, Morpheus and SGM.

The Xilver Droplet LED moving light is an entirely new concept of an automated luminaire using the latest high power LED technology, is housed in the most expediant design yet seen in entertainment, display and architectural lighting. This curvy, compact luminaire provides full control of beam position, effects and colour selection. The high brightness diode light source offers the ability to create fluent and lightning-fast colour changes.

A new division at Lightfactor - the Cut Colour Company - opened in August and is officially launched at PLASA 2002. The Cut Col

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Delta Sound Inc, the London-based sound company, has made a substantial investment in BSS Soundwebs, adding 25 units to its inventory which were specifically brought in to allow it to handle its contract for the recent Commonwealth Games in Manchester (L&SI will be running a full report on the Games in the October issue).

Delta’s head of technical Mark Underwood, the Stadium project manager for the Ceremonies and the Games, used a total of 32 BSS DSP units within a fibre optic infrastructure to create one of the most extensive temporary Soundweb installations ever designed. From the hub at the front-of-house position, Soundwebs provided the signal distribution highway for Delta's audio installation throughout the City of Manchester Stadium, distributing to six remote amplifier sites via fibre optic cable, and managing all the matrix routing and outboard processing.

"If we

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Martin Professional has produced ‘A Guide to Animation Effects’ for the MAC 2000 Performance, designed to illustrate the effects possible from the profile spot’s gobo animation system. Released earlier in the year, the 1200W MAC 2000 Performance’s animation feature has proved instrumental in the fixtures’ popularity among lighting designers. The system offers lighting designers new projection possibilities through the use of animation discs - fire and flames, sky and clouds, waves and water, snow and flurries, and more. The gobo animation wheel system was recently enhanced with the launch of a set of six new animation wheel designs.

The guide explains the theory behind gobo animation and offers tips on how to achieve a wide variety of effects. It explains each animation disk in detail and how it is best used. Further in the guide are some specific examples

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PLASA 2002 will see the first European showing of Pioneer's new CDJ-800 product. This brand new addition to Pioneer's Pro DJ range, built around the company's world-renowned Jog Wheel (first seen on its flagship CDJ-1000 model), also benefits from many of the functions that make the CDJ line-up so popular. Roger Sanchez and Smokin' Jo will be performing in Pioneer's live DJ Booth: they will be joined by Seamus Haji - all performing on Sunday 8 September.

Pioneer can be found on Stand D40.

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Nexo is to restructure its international sales team, following the departure of Mick Anderson, sales director of the company. After six successful years with the company, Anderson has announced that he will be leaving to explore fresh challenges. Managing director Micky Johnson was keen to acknowledge his achievements at Nexo. "In the last six years, Mick has accomplished a great deal for Nexo, notably the creation of a first-class global distribution network and support infrastructure. Although we are all incredibly sad to see him go, we wish him the best of luck in finding a new and rewarding mission."

Following Anderson's departure at the end of September, Nexo will close its UK office. All international sales will be centralized through one department at the factory in Paris, under the guidance of Denis Baudier who, after nearly 10 years with the company, will be promoted

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PLASA, the Association, will feature at the heart of its own annual trade show in London next week.

The Association will have a major presence in the New Technology Gallery on the Top Deck, as part of the central feature area of the Show, which focuses on the products nominated for the PLASA Awards for Product Excellence.

PLASA ensures that the money raised from the awards is fed directly back to the industry by donating the proceeds to a number of charities allied to the markets it serves.

As part of this initiative, PLASA is once again sponsoring the first 15 applicants to complete the PLASA BTEC Award.

The General Theatre Technician course was first run as a pilot at Loughborough College in June 2000. Course development had been paid for via a European Social Fund grant, with the AETTI playing a major role in the course’s development and delivery. Following the delive

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Following our numerous and varied pieces advising readers not to waste any time on e-mails from people who promise large sums of money in return for a safe place to store it, we now learn from a PLASA member that yet another sting has been added to the tail. It seems several PLASA members have had e-mails asking them to arrange letters of invite which the e-mailer can then present to a country’s VISA department, and once in, disappear.

If you’ve got any money to waste or time to spare, call us instead we’ll think of something to do with it.

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