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Business

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UK - Stage Technologies make the 'hills come alive' in the new production of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium, literally moving mountains. In this case it is a 12 tonne automated mountain (26 tonnes including mechanics), one of the focal pieces of scenery in this highly acclaimed production in London's West End.

Stage Technologies worked with set building company Scena to create this scenic piece which is raised and lowered from the grid and also rotates along horizontal axis, all of which is controlled by an Acrobat control console.

As well as beautiful mountain backdrops, the story of the problematic Maria unfolds amidst the stone walls of an abbey and the beautiful Von Trapp family mansion house. Large automated trucks bring the house on stage in four sections. The synchronisation and millimetre positioning of these trucks is vital to bring each piece toget

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USA - Color Kinetics Incorporated and Super Vision International, Inc. have announced a joint settlement agreement ending all pending litigation between the two companies. Through the agreement, Super Vision will pay Color Kinetics a set fee as settlement for all past claims Color Kinetics has against Super Vision, including the amount awarded to Color Kinetics by the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Super Vision will drop its pending claim of infringement against Color Kinetics with respect to US patent #4,962,687, known as the '687 patent, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Color Kinetics will drop its declaratory judgement claim of non-infringement of the '687 patent filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Color Kinetics will grant Super Vision a royalty bearing license to its worldwide patent portfolio,

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Germany - The PUR tour Es ist wie es ist (It is like it is) marked the return of the German band after a break. Two concerts, including the official dress rehearsal, in the Gerry Weber Stadion, Halle/Westfallen, marked the start of the tour. Other dates included Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund and Basel in Switzerland.

During the pre-programming phase, lighting designer Günther Jäckle and his team used grandMA 3D. For the actual shows, 3 x grandMA full-size, 1 x grandMA ultra-light, 2 x grandMA mediaPC with grandMA video and 7 x NSPs were employed. Connected via fibre optic cable they controlled the complex network. In total 24 x VL3500 and VL3000, 24 x VL2416, 8 x Robert Juliat Aramis, 15 x 8-Light Blinder with Rainbow Colour Changers, 6 x Publitec beaMover and a wide range of high-class LEDs were used.

The set consisted of two centre-stages connected b

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UK - 5 Star cases has supplied Professional & Broadcast Digital Systems (PBDS) with a selection of flightcases to complete the building of a flyaway television studio for a client in Russia. The order comprised three 17u and three 10u Tour Grade specification racks.

Rack 1 is used for video, Rack 2 for the VTRs and Rack3 for audio - the 10u racks provide all the monitoring. Each of the 17u racks has a sliding tray which provides a control surface for the three operators - camera control vision mixer / director and sound engineer. The system provides four broadcast cameras, audio and video for two VTRs together with full communications and monitoring.

PBDS, part of the Wescom group of companies, provides custom system engineering solutions from outside broadcast vehicles to major studio systems. This is the second order PBDS has placed with 5 Star - following a series of cases

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USA - JR Clancy's PowerAssist counterweight automation system was awarded both the 2006 Live Design International Product of the Year in the Rigging and Staging category and the ESTA Dealers' Choice Product Award at LDI in Las Vegas.

"This year at LDI we were honoured to receive both awards on top of the extraordinary feedback from attendees on the show floor. We were very happy with the response at the show before Saturday night's awards, but we were really happy on Sunday morning," says Tom Young, vice president of marketing for JR Clancy. "We're particularly pleased by these awards because the LDI award is from judges who are end users and specifiers of the product and the ESTA award is from dealers, who we consider our partners."

The PowerAssist allows the user to automate existing counterweight rigging sets, as well as add motorised rigging to new proj

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UK - Utopian Leisure has just completed its third new venue launch - in the spectacular Odyssey complex situated on the riverfront of Belfast City opposite the famous H & W (Titanic) Shipyards. The Box is a two tier nightclub and bar venue offering a diverse selection of style, imagery and music. Following on from their successful openings of Sam Jacks and Bar 55 in Newcastle and Love Shack in Durham, MD Bob Senior and operations director Carl Hornsby called in Andy Austin-Brown of KV2 Audio to specify a new sound system to match the standards that had been installed in the previous venues.

The Box represented another challenge, that of being able to contain and control sound without creating external noise pollution. In this case the Odyssey complex is surrounded by a multi screen cinema complex, an IMAX cinema directly above and several well know chain restaurants in the surro

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UK - Already with a reputation as one of the most luxurious cinemas outside the West End, the renowned Everyman Cinema Club in Hampstead, London, has nevertheless been getting a makeover, commissioning CGA Integration to enhance the technical facilities in its bar and private screening lounge.

Hot-foot from its recent project at the Dorchester Hotel, CGA has altered the identity of the Cinema's ground-floor, transforming the lobby into a cool bar seating area with the installation of an Electro-Voice sound system, using four wall-mounted EV S-40 ultracompact compact monitors together with a 50" plasma screen.

The space has been re-designed to include a cyc-type wall, new lighting, and shocking pink and orange furnishings. Says Chris Gunton of CGA, "even given the hot colours, it's a square design so I chose Electro-Voice's square S-40 cabinet, which sounded much warm

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UK - Lamp sales operation Just Lamps has been recognised by the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 listing, which placed the company seventh in the prestigious list. With sales at £387k in 2003 and at £9,926k in 2006, the projector lamp distributor achieved an outstanding 195% annual sales growth in this period, making them the fastest-growing company in the audio-visual sector. Published on Sunday 3 December, Fast Track 100 run in conjunction with the Sunday Times and Virgin Atlantic, ranks Britain's hundred fastest-growing unquoted companies by 2003-2006 sales growth. Established in 2002, Just Lamps identified a niche in the market, to meet the fast-growing and ever-urgent demand for replacement projector lamps. The company has fully exploited this niche, offering a high level of service via its award winning website. Over the last four years, the company has built a rep

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USA - To celebrate the season, High End Systems Inc is hosting a Holiday Open House on 13-14 December, from 2-8 pm at its Austin, Texas headquarters. All are invited to join the company for festive drinks, hors d'oeuvres and, of course, entertainment lighting technology featuring demos of its latest products. Anyone interested in attending is asked to RSVP indicating which day they would like to attend by emailing the address supplied below.

High End Systems is located at 2105 Gracy Farms Lane, Austin, TX 78758. Call 512 836 2242 for directions.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - The tiny Mediterranean island of Malta has always taken its dance music seriously - with more highly-specified nightclubs per capita for its 400,000 population than just about anywhere else. Stefan Farrugia of sound system distributor Futuretech, has set out to convert the island's top venues and DJs to Denon DJ playback devices and mixers - and now believes his coverage has extended to 70% of the island's fixed installs and rental houses.

"The breakthrough was caused by the arrival of the DN-S3500 CD/MP3 player," he says, and to date high profile venues such as Silk, Styx, Plush, Sin City and Places have given main booth space to the tabletop players - as has George Said's legendary La Grotta on the neighbouring island of Gozo.

Other Denon tabletop devices, including the award-winning DN-S5000, can be found in venues like Clique, Sugar Shake, 121 (the former Mo

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UK / Croatia - MC2 has announced the appointment Bo-Mah as its Croatian distributor. BO-MAH is a Zagreb-based company specialising in practical solutions offering complete customer satisfaction through direct sales, hire and installation.

MC2 report that the team at BO-MAH has a wealth of experience gained from their collective experience across the audio industry as company directors Marijo Suica and Boris Mahovli? explain: "This experience has taught us to understand what our customers needs are and to use only the best quality equipment. This in turn provides potential buyers with personalised customer service to obtain the best result and value for money."

BO-MAH is a licensed distributor for some of the top staging and pro-audio brands, including Sennheiser microphones, headphones and wireless systems; Coda loudspeakers; Europodium staging, mobile stages and alu

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UK - A new service called OnePlanet - sustainable event solutions, launched by Paragon Live Event Agency on 1 November, is offering who are paying more and more attention to the CSR (or 'Corporate Social Responsibility') credentials of the services they buy, with the choices and framework to stage more environmentally responsible events.

Through OnePlanet, Paragon offers options including sourcing venues and suppliers with proven eco-credentials, ideas for alternative methods of travel and CO2 offsetting, increasing energy efficiency and waste reduction (around 20% of waste produced in the UK is packaging, that's 4.5 million tonnes a year), use of reusable and recyclable materials in stage/set design, build and theming.

There are also opportunities to provide interesting local and global projects actively integrating into an event, say the company - for example, creating a tea

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UK - When the Barbican Concert Hall decided to integrate its four different sound system controllers with an AMX integrated sound control system, they were referred by AMX to Hawthorns to carry out the installation.

"This wasn't a straightforward AMX installation, as the Barbican use the system in a unique way and we enjoyed the technical challenge," said Simon Ling, installation manager for Hawthorn.

Hawthorns have done over 12 AMX installations, for a variety of clients in the UK, over the past 12 months: "When we were asked to recommend a potential installation company by the Concert Hall, we had no hesitation in recommended Hawthorns who have done superb installations for us in the past and our customer feedback on their performance has been glowing," said Sarah Chiappi of AMX.

Ingo Reinhardt, deputy technical manager at the Barbican said: "We ar

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Italy - Newly open for business in the town of Brescia, just an hour from Milan, La Nave di Harlock is a houseful of creative musical opportunity that defies description, including a recording studio, video editing facilities, gelateria, restaurant, live music venue and even an ice rink.

Owner Gianluca Renna has just opened the restaurant and live music venue at the Harlock, which has been equipped with a JBL PA system, Crown amplifiers, and a Soundcraft GB8 for front-of-house audio control. The venue is hosting live music four nights a week, and plans are in place to double its capacity by utilising the upper floor, which has a gallery overlooking the stage.

Renna already operates a tour sound rental company, which carries JBL Vertec line array in its inventory. His businesses also include a promotion company, running its own festivals and gigs, a commercial graphic design an

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Norway - Clear-Com, a Vitec Group Communications brand, has recently completed an installation at the renowned National Theatre in Oslo, Norway. The installation of a FreeSpeak 10 digital wireless intercom system, with 10 FreeSpeak beltpacks extends the capacity of the other Clear-Com equipment already in use at the theatre. The installation was managed and completed with the support of Clear-Com's Norwegian distributor, Danmon and its managing director, Oivind Iversen.

FreeSpeak 10 brings the power of matrix communications to the wireless environment, combined with the coverage flexibility of a local cellular network. Up to 10 beltpacks can operate from a single 1-RU base station via individually located Antennae, and users can talk beltpack-to-beltpack or in small groups. Each beltpack is registered with a User ID that the base station will recognise. This prevents interferenc

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Italy The Congress Palace in Bologna is using Cayin Technology digital signage to offer a flexible information platform for congress' participants and visitors. The Congress currently offers the use of five venues and more than thirty meeting rooms throughout the city.

Ten SMP-WEB players and 2 CMS-MINI servers are used together with large plasma displays of 42" and 50". Those screens are positioned at the reception, in conference rooms and in the congress cafeteria to deliver live information about hosting companies, meeting schedules and rooms usage. Due to the limited capacity of the auditorium, the platform is also used to transmit live streaming video from the main auditorium to other conference rooms to increase the number of viewers.

SMP-WEB is a scalable web-based networked digital signage system. It allows event hosting companies to display a variety of mult

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Australia - Coemar De Sisti Australia is celebrating 15 years in the architectural and entertainment lighting industry with a move to larger premises in the Melbourne suburb of Thomastown.

The company has been quietly building a formidable reputation in the local and international arena with several high-profile projects under its belt. Locally, they've been involved in the refurbishment of Channel 9 Sydney's Studio 1, the turnkey outfitting of the Channel 7 Melbourne Broadcast Centre, supplying a range of equipment for Foxtel's new Sydney studios and lighting the mast at 120 Collins Street in Melbourne. Much of the work follows on from the internationally prominent lighting of the Sydney Opera House during the Sydney Olympics. The company has also been involved internationally with huge projects such as the Hong Kong Harbour, working in collaboration with one of Australia's mos

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UK - The ABTT Theatre Show's organisers - The Association of British Theatre Technicians - have announced that its 29th edition is set to take place in six months time. With space already at a premium, the Show will again fill London's Royal Horticultural Halls to capacity on 13 and 14 June.

In 2006 the record-breaking show boasted a record attendance representing a 5% growth, and packed the venue's three halls to capacity with over 100 exhibiting companies. Over 2400 visitors including theatre and venue managers, technical directors, technicians, technical managers, heads of drama departments, architects, consultants, designers, and building services managers attended.

To maintain this level of growth, the organisers are committed to focussing time and money into an expanded PR and marketing campaign that will raise awareness of the show and have a drive into both the educati

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UK - The famous ITV 'Audience With' brand really shone on 2 December thanks to PRG Europe, when Take That appeared for the show's first ever live broadcast. An Audience with Take That Live saw Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard Donald perform a selection of their greatest hits plus some exclusive tracks from their new album.

The show's lighting designer Al Gurdon has worked with PRG Europe account managers Mick Healey and Jon Cadbury on several live broadcast events recently, including the MTV Europe Music Awards in Copenhagen and the UK Music Hall of Fame at Alexandra Palace in north London. The Take That set included some 100 Vari-Lite luminaires, which PRG Europe supplied along with a Wholehog II and expansion wing.

"The concept of the show is to introduce the band to a celebrity-packed audience," says Cadbury. "In between major production

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USA - Located in downtown Chicago's busy River North district, Spy Bar is a smaller venue that stands out from the crowd by offering patrons an intimate club experience that is big on style and sound quality - using a Dynacord Cobra line array system installed by Audiolines.

"Spy Bar's owners chose the Cobra as their new main room system after the DJ booth was renovated earlier this year," says Eric Dahl of Audiolines. "The Cobra has a small footprint, yet pumps out huge sound into the 30ft by 30ft room. Two stacks of two Cobra Tops and two Cobra PWH subs are ground stacked either side of the booth, standing about nine feet high, tucked in nicely under the 12ft basement ceiling. The Cobra hardly takes up any space, but it's taken the sound Spy Bar to another level."

"The Cobra is simply a great club system," Dahl continued, "one that opens up

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UK - This Bedford club needed a face-lift - so the whole club was torn to bits and restarted from the ground up.

Designer Craig Trotter specified all the lighting for the venue - including the two main dance floors, the bar lighting, the VIP room, the ambient lighting, the lights on the outside of the building and even the lights in the toilets. An enormous amount of LED lighting was used to provide the ambient lights in each of the areas with LED fixtures utilised on every pillar.

Control of the lighting in the club is realised entirely using ChamSys MagicQ software and ChamSys MagicQ control wings. ChamSys MagicQ is a complete network system enabling multiple lighting and media systems to be interconnected via standard networks, Ethernet cables and routers. This makes a very low cost solution (network equipment is readily available from computer stores) with the significant

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USA - In the decade since Trans Siberian Orchestra (TSO) debuted, this is the first year that they incorporated a video element into their tour and they turned to XL Touring Video to implement it. TSO runs two identical tours simultaneously and XL provided each tour with 88 Element Labs 1m VersaTubes which illuminated and accented four pieces of truss that were used overhead. Lighting designer Brian Hartley says: "I knew I wanted Versa Tubes from the beginning, they are the coolest things."

John Wiseman, President of XL, says: "I've been watching from afar as the TSO phenomenon continues to explode onto the scene. From a few theatre dates to two simultaneous sold-out arena tours. When the chance came up to support the design for Brian Hartley, and support Craig Redden at Q-1, we jumped at it. This tour(s) will do nothing but continue to gather steam as it becomes

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UK - Adlib Audio has supplied lighting and sound equipment the brand new music and drama building at Maricourt Catholic School in Maghull, Liverpool. Lighting equipment has been supplied to two identical drama workshop/studios on the first floor, and full audio to a full sound recording and studio set up on the ground floor.

Adlib has worked on many educational and schools projects over the years, gaining a great reputation for supplying appropriate kit that's practical for students and their teachers to use. The company is renowned for its policy of not over-specifying.

The overall installation project was overseen by Adlib's Roger Kirby. He also drew up the recording studio spec with Mark Burnley, while Adlib's head of lighting Pete Abraham, sorted out the visual elements. The Adlib team worked closely with Sean Back, Maricourt's head of music who also runs the recording stu

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UK - FOH sound engineer Giles Woodhead has turned to the Digidesign Venue to mix recent one-off broadcast spectaculars by the currently double chart-topping Take That.

Replacing Gary Bradshaw, who piloted the band's European live tour from the front-of-house position this Summer, Woodhead set up the sound on Venue for the band's exclusive concert at Abbey Road Studios (for a Radio 2 taped broadcast), followed by a one-hour live television recording on London's South Bank for the ITV 1 show An Audience With Take That Live! the following week.

In the first ever live An Audience With, Take That performed hits from their back catalogue - including Relight My Fire - and latest single Patience before a host of celebrity guests.

The sound engineer had first been introduced to Digidesign's live sound environment by one of the system's early adopters, award-winning soun

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  4. RCF's TT+ debuts in Lisbon
  5. Light As Art success for PID
  6. ETCP announces exam administrations
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