UK - The Compulite Vector control system was recently used in St Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle for the service of blessing led by the Archbishop of Canterbury for The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles.

Lighting director Bernie Davis used his own Vector Green control system to control a discreet rig of conventional lighting, supplied by ELP, as the aim was for an unobtrusive installation and a natural look. Console operator Roy Adcock was using a Compulite desk for the first time, but reported no problems getting the hang of the Vector's versatile graphic user interface.

Davis comments: "While the effects engine and sixteen DMX universes were not used to their full potential on this occasion, the easy to read touch screen controlled groups made programming extremely quick and easy. The lighting control position was from the world's smallest Portakabin - only 12'

Australia - Established in 1881, The Three Weeds Hotel in Rozelle (or The Rose, Shamrock and Thistle to give it its official name) has undergone an exciting transformation. The hotel was purchased by Todd Salter of Investment and Development Corporation in 2002. He closed the large rear entertainment section while contemplating the re-design. Besides the extensive building re-development, the AV component was also of paramount importance. Salter therefore turned to Sydney-based Avsound Productions to deliver a top quality result. "Once we knew exactly what Todd required we recommended a high quality JBL speaker system incorporating Crown amplification and BSS Soundweb for all DSP," said Justin Lakerink, Avsound's project manager.

Rod McKinnon and Jeff Shoesmith from Jands worked closely with Justin to map functionality throughout the various audio zones of the venue. D

UK - When Production North approached LiteStructures to provide a Perspex sign and neon lettered sign suitable for touring, LiteStructures' Mark Jackson came up with the solution.

Briefed to create a signature stage piece for Westlife's recent No1s tour, it soon became apparent that neon lettering wouldn't be practical, because it's made of glass, but then Mark remembered seeing Neonflex at PLASA. Marketed by Batmink, Neonflex is a flexible PVC light tube which closely replicates real neon, but uses LEDs as a light source. Much more rugged and roadworthy than neon, it was the obvious choice. LiteStructures made up an individual Neonflex letter, which Production North and the band agreed was just what they wanted.

Although the original design, a 20x10ft Perspex signature, was intended to be invisible when not lit, it was then decided, by the band and Production North's S

UK - Large format projection specialist E//T//C UK added Somerset House to the list of famous London landmarks to receive its unique creative stamp, when Ross Ashton was commissioned to design and create a projection show by Dunhill for presentation to the Russian Economic Forum. The event saw 12.5 minutes of large-scale projections filling the entire Courthold Institute end of Somerset House's famous courtyard as part of the show set to a sound track.

E//T//C was initially approached by Event Lighting from Bermondsey to undertake the project, which needed a great deal of artwork produced with just 10 days of lead time. The show was an enjoyed by 350 guests after dinner, located in a translucent-fronted marquee in the middle of the courtyard. The guest list included businessmen, film directors, actors, musicians, designers and writers both Russian and English. "We wanted to

Canada - Due to popular demand and the fact that some customers did not receive notice of its previous promotion in time, Cast Software recently announced a four-week extension to the Upgrade to Unlimited Channels Promotion. Effective from 15April through to 15 May, 2005, upgrades from WYSIWYG Perform 500, Perform 1000, or Perform 2000 to WYSIWYG Perform with unlimited channels bundled with a 12-month subscription, will be offered at a 50% off discount.

"The response to our upgrade promotion was tremendous! Our customers have been asking us to entertain a further promotional period. It only makes sense for us to re-introduce this promotion ", says Gil Densham, president & CEO of Cast Software. "We've made the best lighting design package in the industry and are allowing our users to upgrade for the great price of only $639 US. Plus, these upgrades include a

Singapore - In 1996, a group of five Christians gathered for its first bible study meeting. Under the mentorship of another established church in Singapore, this small group and its leaders soon increased in numbers and grew to become Heart of God Church (HOGC), a church registered with the Registry of Societies in Singapore in 1999. Very much a part of the charismatic church movement in Singapore, HOGC recently made a bold decision to move to the city, right into the very heart of the Singapore shopping belt. On 12 December 2004, Heart of God Church held its opening service and opened the doors to its training and facilities centre in the city, focusing on reaching the next generation in an urban environment.

Being in the heart of the city, the HOGC converted a whole floor of a prime commercial building into a beautiful new training and facilities centre for the church, allowin

Europe - Arup's Rogier van der Heide has been accorded the most prestigious award for Lighting Design - the Radiance Award, given by the IALD (International Association of Lighting Designers). The award, bestowed by a panel of design peers, was given to van der Heide in recognition of his contribution to lighting design, highlighting one of his most recent projects, the Galleria West Shopping Centre in Seoul. The judges described the project as: "State-of-the-art technology and design . . . a striking effect . . . a vibrant and scenic experience at night".

Together with Ben van Berkel of UN Studio in Amsterdam, van der Heide and his team developed a lighting scheme for the building skin that changes, chameleon-like, at night, and during the day reflects the subtleties of natural light on the opalescent façade of dichroic glass discs. At night, the discs are individual

UK - Marquee Audio has sold thirteen Midas Venice and Verona consoles in the first two months of the year, including a Venice 160 delivered to Jason Wood, rising musical star of one of London's increasingly popular entertainment venues, the Comedy Café.

According to Marquee's Spencer Brooks: "The reliable performance and audio quality of the Midas consoles keeps them in demand with our customers. Recently the volume of sales has been especially high for the compact consoles, first the Venice, and more recently the Verona."

Marquee has supplied Venice desks to Cloud One, Lost It, Blue Audio and AVE. Customers for the Verona model have included Entec, W.E. Audio, Thames Audio and Chaps PA.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

Denmark - Blackburn-based HSL Sales & Distribution - one of the HSL Productions group of companies - supplied all the pyro and special effects to Machine Shop for the opening event of HCA2005, the Hans Christian Andersen bicentennial celebrations. This massive show was staged at the Parken Stadium, Copenhagen, last weekend.

Pyro for the two-hour extravaganza titled Once Upon A Time, enjoyed in real time by 35,000 people and broadcast live on Danish TV and across Europe by the European Broadcasting Union, was designed by Paul Mann from Machine Shop. He collaborated on the task with whom HSL's Tom Owen: the two have enjoyed a long and fruitful working relationship. The overall Once Upon A Time show design team and production included some of the best names, suppliers and rental operations in the UK production industry. The special effects all had to be very big and v

UK - For three days in April the NEC in Birmingham was taken over for the Commercial Vehicle Show 2005, with exhibitors including Proton cars, who were showing the new Jumbuck range. Proton's stand was designed and installed by Embee Lighting and used 20 Pulsar ChromaCubes and 20 ChromaSpheres to decorate the back of two display vehicles.

A ground-supported truss was used to form the basis of the stand, before Lycra sails were stretched over the back wall and used as projection surfaces for the vehicle branding. Par 64s and ETC Source Fours were used to highlight the cars. Embee lighting's Mark Bailey used the cubes and spheres to attract people on to the stand. He explained: "The built-in effects were used to play random colour patterns and made a visual work of art for people to look at as they visited the show."

The feedback from Proton was extremely good, Bailey

USA - Mike Wood Consulting LLC has announced the addition of a free subscription service to its web-based database of entertainment technology patents. This database has been running for over a year and is updated weekly with US Patents relating to entertainment technology, with a particular emphasis on lighting patents.

After signing up to the free information service on the newly re-designed website, users will be automatically e-mailed whenever new US patents are issued that are interesting or relevant to the entertainment technology community. Subscribers will receive an e-mail from the system at most once a week and can cancel their subscription at any time. The e-mail will contain brief descriptions of the newly issued patents and links to allow direct downloading of full pdf files.

The patent database is fully searchable and currently contains over 500 US patents includ

China - Avolites' Diamond 4 Elite and Vision consoles were used to run lighting for the MTV Asia Awards 2005, repositioned as 'MTV Asia Aid' a global benefit concert to raise money for victims of the tsunami.

Staged at the Impact Arena in Bangkok in front of a live audience of 10,000 people and a TV audience of several million, the lighting design/direction team from the UK was headed by DOP Eugene O'Connor who also operated the key lighting console. Main stage LD was Theo Cox and Mikey Howard looked after stages B and C plus the extensive audience lighting. All were working with The Show Company from Singapore, MTV Asia's principal technical production contractor, and headed by Joseph Gan. In addition to supplying all lighting, the company also provided two Catalyst digital media servers for the video clips, and both high resolution and 'break-up' LED screens for the event.

T

Denmark - Drapes and rigging specialist Blackout was appointed by Endemol UK to supply all the soft goods for the stunning set at the opening event of HCA2005 - a celebration of the bicentennial of Hans Christian Andersen's birth. The event, staged in Denmark's national football stadium in Copenhagen, attracted 35,000 spectators, including a host of celebrity VIPs and members of the Danish Royal family. 600 artists performed 13 Hans Christian Andersen fairytales, celebrating the life of the legendary storyteller and poet.

Blackout's project manager Kevin Monks collaborated with Nick Levitt, and set designer Bill Laslett to help transform Parken into a magical fairytale environment. Working to Laslett's exacting specifications, Blackout supplied over 3km of silver voile. Specified for its silky texture and semi-translucency, it played a major role in his design, used by Blackout

Australia - When Pete Koole, senior lighting director for Channel 10 NSW, had the job of relighting a totally new set for the channel's 5pm News and Late Night News shows, he wanted to add RGB LED changeable coloured lighting, so contacted CDA to see what was the latest available.

The set involved a lot of timber panelling which had thin perspex strips fitted into it. "I wanted the flexibility of having the RGB LEDs as I could not access these perspex strips once the set was placed together," said Koole. The perspex was lit and fitted with 600+ of CDA's Covelight 100mm RGB colour changing LED strips, running from DC-8 controllers.

Koole also used the CDA Trio 3W high powered luxeon 6° LED fixtures in yellow to high light some vertical equipment panels in the background of the Late Night News. In addition, he used CDA's Solar M100 RGB high-powered colour changers to

UK / Dubai - LTM - Lift Turn Move, the company set up by John Jones in September 2004, will attend its second PALME show next week (24-26 April, Dubai), and will be highlighting examples from its comprehensive range of CM Lodestar motors. A range of lifting and rigging equipment is available for sale from LTM, including Lodestar and Prostar electric chain hoists. Lodestar is now the entertainment industry standard hoist and can be found on most tours, events and festivals and in many venues around the world.

High integrity hoisting systems are also available, including equipment to BGV C1 German safety standard. Special features include double brakes, load sensing and multiple limit switches. Variable speed units and manual or computerized controllers are available to monitor safety features and drive the equipment. LTM has more experience of BGV C1 than anyone else in the UK. L

UK - Arena Structures supplied over 23,000sq.m of temporary structures to this year's John Smith's Aintree Grand National, with sister companies Arena Seating supplying 1,250 grandstand seats around the course, and Arena Events managing corporate hospitality packages. Arena Structures first became involved with the event 10 years ago, and projects director Ron Smith still oversees one of the largest temporary structures installations seen at any sporting event.

Arena Structures installed a number of structures at Aintree including The Aldaniti Pavilion, The Sky Pavilion, The Red Square Vodka Mood Bar, The Cottage Pavilion and The Aintree Pavilion. Each pavilion was individually designed and built to cater for different needs such as varying hospitality arrangements, preferred situation along the course and each companies individual tastes and corporate identity. The Aldaniti Pav

UK - In a blaze of publicity, live music venue Koko in Camden was recently given a whopping technical refit. However, the last pieces in the jigsaw have now been put in place; new Midas consoles for front-of-house and foldback, including the first Siena to be installed in a live music venue.

"It's the comfort factor," says Santi Arribas, the technical manager at Koko. "Live promoters and engineers see the Midas desks and they know they are getting quality, it's very reassuring for them."

Midas dealer Glen Smith from GSA has supplied Koko with a 40-channel Heritage 1000 for front-of-house, and a 32-channel Siena for stage monitoring. Santi Arribas has had full responsibility for choosing and commissioning the new equipment, and says that both he and his clients are much happier now that the Midas boards are in place."Despite all the excitement about the

Hungary - In Budapest, the Palace of Arts opened to international acclaim, featuring four Studer Vista digital consoles in both studio recording and front-of-house mixing applications.

The Palace of Arts is an arts complex that promises to change the landscape of Hungary's cultural life, and its technical specifications are world-class. Opening just in time to celebrate the 2005 Budapest Spring Festival, the Palace of Arts covers a ground area of 10,000sq.m in southern Pest, adjacent to the National Theatre. The centrepiece of the Palace is the National Concert Hall, the largest of its kind in Hungary, seating 1700 with standing room for an additional 200. Distinguished by outstanding acoustics and equipped to welcome international orchestras and virtuosi, its programming will also represent the wider scene of Hungarian culture, particularly its rich folk tradition.

The

UK - Stockport-based LED lighting specialist Moodmaster Ltd reports that it has been inundated with requests for its LED dancefloor range. Using a Moodmaster LED Panel 600 system as its core, dancefloor contracts as large as 48 panels have recently been completed, say the company.

Moodmaster offers to dancefloor options - a four-panel module for rental and hire applications and individual floor modules for permanent venue installation.

The latest fixed installation is The Nightclub Company's brand new Bamboogy bar in Brighton, which has a 36-panel dancefloor provided by Bradford-based TMC. The Moodmaster dancefloor provides an eye-catching centrepiece for this, the first of a series of 70s-themed retro bars for the operator. Other venues using a Moodmaster LED dancefloor include two of Mitchell & Butler's latest 80s-styled Reflex bars in Preston and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where

UK - The networking architecture of Australian Monitor's DigiPage matrix switching system is proving a winning formula for AV company, Selecter, in its installations for health club group Holmes Place.

Set up two years ago, Trevor Montgomery's company has been upgrading, fitting out and maintaining the Holmes Place audio visual systems for over 12 months. He remembers finding a lot of custom-built equipment within the estate - "expensive to build and maintain, with a lot of relays which were highly space consuming and proving to be unreliable."

After experimenting with another system, his desire for something "more PA-oriented" led him to the 8 x 8 DigiPage zoning system; and it has remained his preferred matrix device ever since. "We first used it at Barbican, which was a difficult site, and required something reliable and robust," he said. "

UK - Following a merge in the last quarter of 2004, Audiolight became TEC International. TEC International provides specialist corporate entertainments services, and are the sole dealers for the Aurora Whitelight, Emerald, Saffron and Aqua lasers, produced in the UK.

Rob Fisher, of TEC told us; "We looked at the corporate and consumer markets, and discovered that where other companies provide the mainstream sound, lighting and other associated equipment, that's really where it stops. We actually produce the whole event, from supplying the main equipment, through to high quality catering, and the final touches, such as gifts, and the exact colours for the table cloths and flowers!"

He continues; "We are focusing our attention in these market areas, because nowadays people have less and less time to spend on organizing and planning the finer details of a private (

Australia - When planning for GTV9's StarStruck program was underway, several misconceptions about the availability of LED product were laid to rest, say Coemar DeSisti Australia (CDA). Lighting director Rohan Thornton and set designer Mark Dyson had previously had experience with other LED products, but what they wished to achieve on StarStruck appeared to be only possible via a very costly solution.

A number of ideas included the ability to create selectable colour changing in a variety of set pieces. These included very large pieces on either side, referred to as "waffle flats" which consisted of a matrix of lycra panels with webbing in-between. At the intersection points of the webbing, they wanted a "starry light" RGB effect. Fortunately, CDA was able to offer a unique, cost-efficient solution in the form of two custom ShowLED looms manufactured with 200

Russia - The latest production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats opened in Moscow's MDM Theatre on 18 March. Produced by Carmen Pavlovic with associate producer Sam Burgess, this is the first Russian language version, and has seen PRG Europe expanding its presence in the Russian capital, after recently providing the rig for We Will Rock You.

PRG Europe provided the lighting for the Madrid production of Cats, and as the show closed in January, the most practical solution for lighting the Moscow production was to use the same rig - albeit re-configured to suit the new venue. Under the direction of lighting designer Howard Eaton, the revamped rig includes 81 moving heads, a range of conventionals, six strobes, two hazers, two followspots, 72-way and 48-way Avolites dimmers and two Wholehog II control desks - one as a spare.

Alan Thomson, managing director

UK / Worldwide - News from Funktion One, the British manufacturer of professional loudspeaker systems, which has informed PLASA Media of the addition of a number of new companies to its international distributor network: 100% Puro Design, based in Naples, is the distributor for Italy - contact Gino Passarella ; Macrosound Construction, based in Moscow is the distributor for Russia - contact Andrey Kremenchugsky, and Seesound in Barcelona is the distributor for mainland Spain - contact Nacho Alberdi. At the same time, Funktion One has also announced that it will be represented in Vietnam through Fantasie Show Light, based in Hanoi - contact Dinh Viet Hung.

Funktion One also rep

Latest Issue. . .