AC Lighting has appointed Paul Biggerstaff to its growing UK sales force. Paul has been with the company for three years and was previously, managing the UK Goods Out department of the company's warehouse facility in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Paul will be reporting directly to AC’s recently-promoted sales manager, Kevin Coker.
Rosco has appointed Andreas dessloch as its new development manager for German-speaking and former Eastern-bloc countries. Previously sales manager with Lightpower in Germany, Dessloch brings extensive experience of Rosco and ETC products, and of the German marketplace. Before working with Lightpower, Dessloch was also one of the organisers of the Frankfurt MusikMesse exhibition.Other recent changes at Rosco include the appointments of Kirsty Third to the UK sales team and Zoe Castle, previously scenic product specialist, taking overall responsibility for Rosco’s sales in France and Benelux, while continuing her specialist role in scenic products.
Lighting Unlimited has appointed industry veteran Mick ‘Jaggie’ Scullion as sales director, following his six years as sales and operations director with Spot Co. Scullion will be responsible for the company’s new business development programme, as well as account handling and management. At the same time, Lighting Unlimited has appointed two new project managers - Tony Fagan and Theo Cox - both also ex-Spot Co employees.
Multiform Technology Group has announced the availability of the Elip-Scan from Meteor Lighting. The Elip-Scan is a low-cost DMX-controlled pan and tilt mirror attachment for ellipsoidal spotlights. The mounting plate fits on standard 6.25" colour frame holders. Motors employ 16-bit stepping, with real-time speed-sensitive tracking for continually variable speed. In addition, the independent pan and tilt speed settings allow for flexible variations in design.
Pulsar has announced that the Lighting Technology Group has been appointed a new Clay Paky and Pulsar reseller. Following the amalgamation of existing resellers, Cerebrum Lighting and Sound Electronics, becoming part of the Lighting Technology Group, natural progression has led to this appointment. LTG's sales and marketing director Garry Nelsson told PLASA Publishing: "Lighting Technology is moving into the next exciting period of its evolution and we are thrilled that a closer working relationship with Pulsar has been developed. The two companies are industry thoroughbreds that will learn, gain and profit from one another."
Lighting designer Ken Billington has recently used the award-winning Selecon Pacific on his latest Broadway triumph - Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings. Billington used the 90 degree Pacifics on the show, and commented: "As well as everyone else working on the show, I was blown away by the Pacific's performance." Popular for its cost-effective, safe and reliable qualities, the Selecon Pacific recently won the Entech 2000 Innovation in Lighting award in Sydney, Australia, and is gracing venues all over the world including City Recital Hall, Sydney; The Promenade Shopping Centre, Singapore (architectural version) and in the UK, the Blackpool Grand Theatre.
Colin Jones, one time director of Chameleon Lighting Ltd, and freelance lighting designer, has announced plans to launch a web design service, called rather originally 'Colin Jones Design', particularly aimed at entertainment-based business on the web. Jones has 26 years' experience in lighting rental and design and plans to "focus his design talents on website design". The new service is launched on April 1st.
Several heats have now taken place in the technical studios at Melton Mowbray College. So far 10 students have come forward to battle it out and win a place in the Finals. Heats will continue through April, May and June. Tony Anagnostopplos, a student from the Performing Arts Degree Course at De Montfort University, commented: "I soon picked up the capabilities of the Masterpiece 218 and was quickly applying theatre techniques of fading between scenes. I particularly like the colours variants of the Stagecolor 300, they create real atmosphere."The finals have been arranged to take place on Monday July 17th at 7.30pm. Professionals from the industry are currently being approached to form a panel of judges who will decide upon a winner - the student who most creatively uses a range of Pulsar Intelligent luminaires to light a piece of theatre.
Selecon UK Ltd has added Stage Electrics to its UK dealer network. Stage Electrics has branches in Bristol, Birmingham, Exeter, Plymouth and the NEC in Birmingham, plus sister companies, Theatre Vision, Cardiff and Theatre Direct in Cambridge. It also recently announced the establishment of a London office at the premises of DHA Lighting. The appointment of Stage Electrics means that Selecon now has over 25 dealers across the UK.
When Bluetones tour LD Mark 'Video' was looking for a way to colour change the white belisha beacons that were a feature of the set for the group's performance at Shepherds Bush Empire, he turned to tour lighting supplier Brian Leitch of Art of Darkness for an answer. He, in turn, called in Tony Kingsley of Ambient Lighting to demonstrate the AVR Colourmaster. Following the demo, AOD subsequently purchased a number of CM50 heads for the tour which were then mounted to the globes projecting upwards from the base with the 40 degree lamp providing full coverage. The fact that the AVR central colour changer motor control accepts DMX meant that programming into the show was easy. A new 150W discharge lamp version has just been released and the higher light output compared with the MR16 units increases the range of potential applications for the AVR system.
Zero 88 Lighting has appointed Graham Eales as sales and marketing manager. He joins from Selecon New Zealand, where he has been instrumental in raising its profile and performance throughout Europe. Eales has over ten years’ experience in the production and theatrical environments and having run a hire company in South Africa and been responsible for Selecon NZ’s sales in the Pacific Rim, Europe and North America. His takes on his new role in May.
The London Hippodrome has recently installed a new Pulsar control system. The state-of-the-art console features four new Masterpiece 216s and is capable of controlling the vast 1,500 channel Clay Paky and generic lighting rig. Each Masterpiece has a specific section of the lighting linked to it making programming extremely logical and structured. A MIDI keyboard and MIDI enabled PC communicate with the Masterpieces to synchronise powerful lightshows that can be programmed and recalled instantly for any occasion. The rig houses seven huge motorised satellites, each with six moving petal arms. The control of these has been integrated into the new system via five Masterpiece Replay Units. The complex articulation of the moving rig is accessed through a Touch Screen PC, that commands and mimics the massive structure.
Strand Lighting's new 300 Series consoles, combining Pentium-class processing and the essential featureset of the flagship 500 Series, is set to make its UK debut at the ABTT Show in London (5-6 April). Modules may be arranged in any order or pattern and may be detached up to 100 metres apart. Interconnection between modules is via Strand S Buss communication system over Cat 5 cable, with RJ 45 connectors for simple low cost connectivity. Starting with the 24/48 and 48/96 memory manual desks, the series progresses through the 125 and 250 channel memory systems, designed to meet the needs of small to medium facilities. Completing the 300 Series consoles is a family of four Showcontrollers. An extension of the powerful 510 Showcontroller, the new 310s offer full support for MIDI, ASCII and SMPTE show control.
TMB Associates is about to move its London operations to a 12,000sq.ft facility in Brentford's dockland. Paul Hartley, general manager of TMB UK told PLASA Publishing: "Over the past couple of years our sales have really grown in the British, European and World markets. The new building has lots of room for extra stock and more people, to help us better serve both our existing and new customers." As most of the industry knows, TMB Associates is a distributor of entertainment lighting equipment, supplies and services, not to mention socks, and has been serving the professional lighting industry for 17 years. The new UK office will be open for business on April 3 at 2 Commerce Road, Brentford, Middlesex TW8 8LR. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8560 9652 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8560 1064
The new Vari-Lite Virtuoso control console, previewed throughout 1999 and already working on major shows in the USA, is making its European touring debut this spring with six weeks of shows by Dutch chart-topping artist Marco Borsato. VLPS Amsterdam is supplying a substantial Vari*Lite rig for the shows. Central to the rig is the Virtuoso console, officially launched at PLASA and LDI last autumn, which is in command of both the Vari*Lite and conventional lighting systems plus 12 VL7, 12 VL6B) spot luminaires, 26 VL5 wash luminaires. Conventionals (supplied by Focus Showequipment) include nine 4-Lite Molefays with Wybron Scrollers, 12 ETC Source Four Profiles and three smoke machines under DMX control. The current tour is playing 1,500-2,000 seater theatres but in October a string of large arena dates including the Ahoy in Holland and the Sportpaleis in Antwerp has already sold out.
White Light has been appointed by producer Cameron Mackintosh to supply the conventional lighting rig to his new musical The Witches of Eastwick, which will open at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in July. The Moving Light Company will supply much of the automated lighting rig to the production. Howard Harrison is in the lighting designer's chair and working alongside him will be assistant lighting designer Oliver Fenwick, production electrician Alistair Grant and lighting programmer Rob Halliday. Harrison's conventional rig will include over 200 units including ETC Source Four profile spotlights, Strand SL Zooms, Par 64s and various battens, as well over 100 Rainbow scrollers and Cadenza EP effects projectors with custom disks in White Light's VSFX motor units. Control will be from a Strand 500-series console. The Moving Light Company will be supplying the production with 12 Strand Alto Pi
Gearhouse plc have set up one of the most powerful lighting production companies in the events industry with the merging of two of their subsidiaries, Lighting Unlimited (UK) and Kent-based Gearhouse XTC. The operation, headed by Nick Whitehead, will be known as Lighting Unlimited UK and will be based at the company's existing facility in north-west London. Lighting Unlimited already enjoys a major share of the corporate conference and product launch market, while XTC predominantly specialises in the exhibition markets. In anticipation of the increased workload, and as we reported earlier, Lighting Unlimited has already responded by recruiting three senior personnel from the Spot Co, including former sales and operation director Mick 'Jaggie' Scullion who becomes sales director. He is joined by project managers Tony Fagan and Theo Cox.
Playlight has now expanded its lighting hire operation for customers based in the south west and London areas. Barry Hampson, Playlight's commercial director told PLASA Publishing: "Due to our recent large scale commitments to major film productions, we realised that our service to the television and drama production markets was under-resourced. To address this we have introduced additional lighting stock at our London base." The company now has an increased range of studio heads and moving lights, generators, ARRI HMI and MSR heads, Kino Flo heads and Joker light and socket Pars, plus a host of power distribution and cable.
Martin Professional will provide over 300 automated luminaires for the Eurovision Song Contest 2000 to be aired on May 13th from Stockholm, Sweden. Martin distributor, Oscar lighting, will provide over 200 moving heads, including MAC 600s, 500s, 300s and 250s, as well as other Martin luminaires. Belgian company Groupe Son Privé (through Martin distributor EVDV) will also be providing 60 MAC 600s for the Eurovision Song Contest. This is the second year running that Martin lights will be used for the popular talent show. Eurovision 1999 from Israel also boasted a huge Martin lighting rig. This year's event will take place at Stockholm's Globe Arena and will be aired by Swedish station SVT. An estimated audience of over 100 million viewers will tune in to the show. Lighting Designer for this year's event is Kristoffer Röhr and the massive lighting rig will be the largest intelligent ligh
Color Kinetics has introduced ColorBlast, which they claim to be the world's first digital lighting fixture designed to wash interior and exterior walls with rich, saturated colours and colour-changing effects. The product utilises Color Kinetics' patented Chromacore technology to generate over 16.7 million colours and colour-changing effects via microprocessor-controlled red, green and blue LEDs. The unit has built-in intelligence offering onboard control to run an assortment of pre-programmed lighting shows, including colour washes, cross-fades, random colours, fixed colours and strobes. The fixture also may be easily programmed and controlled externally by an industry standard DMX512 lighting console, a PC or Color Kinetics' own line of controllers.
Lightfactor Sales has completed the sale of High End Studio Spot 250s to Liverpool-based AdLite - the newly formed sister company of Ad Lib Audio. This is the first investment in moving lights by the new lighting rental and installation company, headed by Dave Platt, who also specified the fixtures after seeing them on the Texas world tour at the end of last year, for which Ad Lib Audio supplied the sound and Dutch lighting company Flashlight provided the lighting.The fixtures have now been used at a number of events, including an all-night dance event in the Isle of Man, and the slightly more decorous theatrical environment of the Stand By Your Man UK tour, for which Platt was LD. AdLite already have a busy summer festival season planned, and expect to be adding more Studio Spots to their inventory in the near future.
PLASA EXCLUSIVE:Danish financial newspaper Børsen has reported this afternoon that Peter Johansen, the former head of Danish lighting manufacturer Martin Professional, has received a three-month jail sentence following this week's high profile trial for company fraud. In addition, he has been fined a total of DKK 3.6 million (approx £300,000).The Danish newspaper Børsen, also reports today that Poul Schluter, the former Danish Prime Minister and chairman of the board of Martin Professional, has given notice of his resignation, and will leave the company on April 27th.
PLASA EXCLUSIVE:PLASA Publishing has this afternoon learned that US-based Matthews Studio Equipment Group - one of the largest suppliers of professional equipment to the entertainment industry, has today announced that it has filed a voluntary petition for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The NASDAQ-listed company supplies conventional and automated lighting, grip, transportation, generators, camera equipment, audio and video equipment and theatrical supplies via its worldwide distribution network.Carlos D. DeMattos, chairman and CEO, said: "We have spent the past several months attempting to come up with a proposal that would address the company's challenges outside of a court proceeding. Ultimately, the time required to complete a restructuring transaction and the uncertain cost of closing unprofitable locations were too great to overcom
A host of industry friends and colleagues from all over the world gathered in Cambridge on Saturday 8th April to wish Derrick Saunders, Pulsar's long-time sales and marketing director, well on his retirement. Colleagues who paid tribute included Pulsar MD Paul Mardon, Clay Paky's Enrico Caironi and Lightpower's Gunther Olbricht. Derrick won't lose touch with the industry altogether for he plans to work alongside wife Monica at Adda Super Cases. PLASA would like to take this opportunity to wish Derrick and Monica all the very best for the future.
