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Lighting

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GAM Products has extended the GamTube line to include as standards the new T-5s and T-8s as well as T-12 bi-axial lamps. GamTube is a colour sleeve that fits over fluorescents of almost any size and comes in 40 off-the-shelf colours.

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Australian-based lighting control manufacturer, LSC Lighting Systems (Aust) Pty Ltd, has appointed three new distributors for its lighting control product range. Socel Ltd in Santiago, Chile, has been operating in the lighting market since 1987. They have already placed their first stock order of LSC desks and dimmers. Tectronics of the United Arab Emirates has been trading since 1978 with offices in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi with one shortly to open in Egypt. An order has been placed for an Atom lighting desk and patch panel for a hotel project in Dubai. Stagetec Distribution Ltd, based in Slough, UK (see earlier news), has been created to import LSC and other international brands into the UK market. Their initial stocking order for Atom and Axiom desks, along with samples of LSC’s new dimmer range, has been delivered with further orders to be fulfilled prior to Christmas.
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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Lighting students at Rose Bruford College recently completed a project that allowed them to apply their design skills to a wide range of performance genres. Known as the ‘Related Fields’ project, third year students of the BA (Hons) Lighting Design degree course collaborated with Stage Management and Directing students to create a nightclub environment, an audio-visual performance, a son et lumière and a contemporary dance work.Each team of four lighting designers, two directors and a stage manager was responsible for taking their production from initial concept to full performance over a period of four weeks. With the first two years of the course focused on theatre, this project represented the students’ main opportunity to tackle other types of performance. The work was supervised by visiting tutor Nick Moran, highly experienced in both theatre and corporate events.

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PLASA has announced that Neil Darracott (pictured right), design engineer at Total Fabrications Ltd, has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Association following the elections which closed on 1 st December. The elections attracted 123 membership votes in total, compared with 104 last year. Mick Hannaford (Light Processor), the serving PLASA chairman, has been re-elected for his second three-year term, while PLASA Treasurer Sammy DeHavilland of Dare Pro Audio/Deco Leisure, has been re-elected for a three-year term. Newcomer Neil Darracott fills the other three-year term, while Paul Hinkly of LMC Audio, who was co-opted onto the PLASA committee last year, was elected for a further one-year term.Peter Walker of NSR, who was not re-elected, has served on the PLASA Committee for the past six years, and was for much of that time involved with membership issues, particularly related

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Fisher Productions were specially commissioned to organise the recent official opening of the British Museum's Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, in conjunction with the events department of the British Museum. The project involved the arrangement and co-ordination of the entertainment and technical support aspects of the opening, as well as the creation of a spectacular Son et Lumiere. The two-acre inner courtyard of the British Museum, hidden for 150 years and now transformed into Europe's largest covered square, provided an impressive setting for the four-minute Son et Lumiere, which was performed to a revised arrangement of Haydn's 'The Creation', by Stephen Warbeck. The finale involved shafts of light shining through the glass and steel roof from a specially-erected crane outside the building. The Great Court was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen.

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The first major event to utilise Martin Professional’s new MAC 2000 profile spot was the opening of Lotusphere 2000, a conference for software company Lotus Development Corp, which was held at the International Congress Center (ICC) in Berlin. Stage Electrics supplied 28 MAC 2000 profile spots for the event, which featured a large stage set created by Michael Woodage and lit by lighting designer Durham Marenghi. "The brief called for the set to change colour in symphony with the opening video sequence," says Marenghi. "The colour palette was able to match all the colors utilized in the video graphics and faded between them without the associated intermediate and unwanted colours, which was most impressive. The beam-shaping effect was used to light the tall 3D numeric figures at the rear of the set and allowed us to keep the beam completely off the screens. The adjust

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After a number of years at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, where the spiralling success of the event has seen more and more people literally squeezed into the hotel's Westbourne Suite, the 2001 Live! Awards dinner will be held in the Great Hall of Alexandra Palace. The change of venue offers the twin benefits of easily accommodating the large numbers who now wish toattend the Awards, while allowing much easier access to exhibitors and visitors to the Live! Show. The Live! Awards dinner takes place on the evening of Wednesday 7th February 2001, the first day of the Live! Show. In addition, this year, for the first time, you can register online for the Live! Show at the web address below, which also features comprehensive Show information.

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Further to our news story of 27 October, Group One of Farmingdale, New York has officially announced the appointment of Keith Dale as International sales and marketing manager for its Elektralite, the company’s lighting control division. Dale, the founder of lighting control manufacturer Celco, has worked with Group One in a manufacturer/distributor capacity for some 15 years. He told us: “It’s great to be working with the Elektralite team, they’re a great group with an expanding range of control products that deserves a wider international audience. My mission is to increase brand awareness on a global basis and introduce the many advantages of the product line to international distributors and end-users alike.”Dale will be based in London, and can be contacted on: Tel: +44 (0)20 8467 5421, or via the e-mail address below.

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Martin Professional has given its website a new look, in order to give its visitors a more customized experience. Martin has segmented the website into the various lighting industry segments. There are also separate areas for Jem smoke machines and Mach loudspeakers.Users logging on to the site for the first time can customize their visit by choosing a lighting industry sector, and language, so that users are always directed to a sub-site reflective of their background and interests. The 10 different sub-sites cover the following segments: DJ, Club, Touring, Theater, Architectural, TV, Commercial, Leisure, Jem Smoke and Mach Speakers. Each sub-site contains products and case stories relevant to that particular sector, as well as company information, a comprehensive distributor directory page and support area, as well as some fun extras.

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Coe-tech, UK distributors for Coemar and TAS intelligent lighting products, has ended the year on a high note in the live concert and touring market, having enjoyed a high degree of success in establishing the new Coemar CF7 moving light as a must-have tool for many top lighting designers. The award-winning CF7 has now been supplied to top touring artists including Robbie Williams (LD Liz Berry), Steps (LD Vince Foster), Mel C and 5ive (LD Peter Barnes), Sarah Brightman (LD Patrick Woodroffe), the Beautiful South (LD Dave Byars) and Radiohead (LD Andi Watson). The CF7 HE (hard edge) luminaire’s profile was further boosted by winning an LDI 2000 Award.

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Early November saw the final concert at Wembley Stadium before the venue is demolished and redeveloped. Quietly publicised, it passed off with little note in the Nationals, but nevertheless raised a substantial amount of cash for the NSPCC thanks to a host of stars.

Keith Morris, under the auspices of CSS Productions, managed the event, reassembling the team he used so successfully for the British Gas, Maritime Museum New Millennium’s Eve event (strange how little we hear of the Millennial events that succeeded). Being November and rather nippy around the towers, this dinner and music show was staged on the pitch, but under cover. Serious Structures provided its Space Building, a giant derivative of the classic Orbit roof, being a curved ‘tunnel’ 92 metres long, 40m wide, with a max height at centre of 15m. The main feature of the Space Building is the totally transp

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Stage Light Design supplied creative lighting design and equipment for the Cal IT conference, held in the Fleming Room of the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster. The company was called in by production company Dynamic Range to light the event, a major symposium for Californian IT companies visiting the UK to promote their products and seek new investment.The event’s fast-moving format allowed for 10-minute presentations to be given by the different companies. They did this on stage, backed by a large central screen, flanked each side by two auxiliary video monitors. Stage Light Design’s Alastair Crooks designed the stage lighting and operated the show using a LightProcessor QCommander console. A front truss was fitted with assorted fixtures including Golden Scans, Stage Color 300s and conventionals. Onstage lighting fixtures included more Stage Colors, Codas and other

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Martin Professional UK is at the centre of a fraud investigation following the discovery of financial irregularities at the company. A statement posted on parent company Martin Gruppen’s website headed ‘Irregularities in Martin Gruppen’s UK subsidiary’ runs as follows: “At a meeting today, the Board of Directors was informed that fraudulent actions against Martin Gruppen and accounting irregularities have been discovered in the company’s UK subsidiary. These irregularities date back at least to 1999 and were discovered after a former longstanding chief financial officer and his close subordinate retired. Close examinations by KPMG, Martin’s auditor, of these irregularities call for provisions and write-offs in the amount of DKK 9-10 million (between £732,000 and £814,000) in the current financial period. Once the company’s auditor has ful

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Television lighting director John Allard has won an award for the development of a new fluourescemt lighting system based around a twin 36W PLL light tube. SunStar, now manufactured by AC/DC Lighting of Barrowford, Lancashire, is a cost-effective, highly portable tungsten or daylight balanced fluorescent light. With its hot light output, cool running and low energy consumption, this system is ideal for use with television film crews, photographers and exhibition set illumination. The light units are already in standard use with television companies GMTV and This Morning.

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It’s a show made by unlikely collaborators. Starting with the authors: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lord of the Realm, and Ben Elton, former scourge of the government?

Unlikely, but true; it seems that Elton’s enthusiasm for the musical form re-awakened the composer’s own excitement. To this mix, add the unlikeliest of subject material, a boy’s football team in Ireland in the heights of the trouble. The result is The Beautiful Game, hailed by some critics as Lloyd Webber’s best musical, and drawing comparisons with West Side Story from others.

A creative team was then assembled from the world of opera: director Robert Carsen, designer Michael Levine and lighting designer Jean Kalman. For those familiar with his work - summed up, if over-simplified, by describing it as a 4K HMI fresnel in each corner of the stage, plus some low Par cans from the circle front as

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Audio-visual and multi-media specialist DJ Willrich has been making dreams come true recently for one of the world's leading producers of computer-animated films for entertainment simulation. The 4DEX Themeport, which is currently being built in Brighton Marina, is the brainchild of Ian Williams; designed to 'take the visitors into the next dimension of human entertainment experience', the 4DEX Themeport is the airport of the future, transporting the modern time-travelling visitor into both the past and the future. Beginning with the technical design, DJW worked with Williams to develop initial simulation solutions that would 'transport' visitors from each of the terminals to the destination of their choice. The company then introduced Haley Sharpe Designers, with whom it has worked on projects such as The Big Idea in Scotland and the Children's Museum in Sharjah, to work on the conceptu

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Cause & Effect, the organisers of the 2001 Birmingham Fringe theatre festival, are looking at the possibility of holding collaborative projects with entertainment technology companies during the 2001 festival, in order to demonstrate the contribution made by them to technical theatre. Project director Derrick G Knight told us: "My motivation is to enhance Birmingham as a host city for performing arts. This will be achieved through the development of a network of performance venues in partnership with the performers, venue owners and production companies associated with performing arts." An initial idea is to include a sound and lighting exhibition alongside the festival, which takes place in July and August 2001, and Knight is currently exploring the availability of no-cost exhibition space at a number of venues adjacent to the reserved performance spaces. For further informati

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Bandit Lites Inc has appointed Bryan Dihigo to join its Nashville sales team. Dihigo, who previously worked for the Shop At Home Television Network as a floor director and as an independent representative of Excel Communications, is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University with a BS in Mass Media Communications. Bryan will be heading up the local sales efforts as well as being responsible for inventory management.

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Roxsett boss David Wilson has been sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court to eight years imprisonment for smuggling £4.27 million worth of ecstasy into Britain. Wilson, whose clients included the Spice Girls, was stopped in June this year with 125 kilos of ecstasy tablets as he drove a rental truck through customs at Dover. His young daughter was in the cab with him. In mitigation, Aidan Marron QC said Wilson was forced to smuggle the ecstasy into Britain by a "vicious" gang of "serious and professional criminals". "He was threatened with a sawn-off shotgun. He feared a loss of life if he didn't obey their orders," Mr Marron said. Wilson pleaded guilty to one count of importing Class A drugs but had smuggled the illegal cargo under duress, Mr Marron said.

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Secreted deep in the hostile recesses of Doom Island, the Master of Misery presided over his evil masterplan to destroy planet earth . . . all hopes were pinned on Federal Agent 451 to defeat him.

So went the narrative for Thorpe Park’s end-of-season spectacular, a stunning, action-packed amalgam of lighting, sound, lasers and fireworks.

Lighting designer Dave Gibbon (pictured) designed a massive 216 Par can matrix for the project (36 x 6-lamp bars). This was rigged on the island on a tower above his operating ‘bunker’ which also contained six 48-way Avolites ART dimming systems, Dave himself, his trusty Avolites Pearl console and his right-hand rigger-in-chief Chris Henry (Carrot) and Avolites’ John Snelling.

Avolites wrote custom software for the Pearl to allow Gibbon to programme letters, numbers and text for the matrix on a PC - using a mouse and a grid

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Henry Butcher International has been appointed to dispose of the contents, owned by NMEC, that went into creating The Millennium Dome, following the planned closure of the Dome on December 31st. The Dome houses an enormous range of assets, including lighting, audio-visual, broadcast & sound equipment, restaurant and catering equipment, stage equipment, office furniture and equipment, golf buggies, battery-powered scooters and vehicles. Even the equipment from the world famous Millennium Show, which currently employs 350 people, will be for sale, including stage and acrobatic props, costumes and circus rigging. Henry Butcher will be disposing of all assets owned by NMEC over the next three months by Private Treaty and Public Auction. The Private Treaty sale process is already underway and includes many of the themed Zones, audio-visual and broadcast equipment from some of the most sophist

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Tom Scharff has been appointed the new general manager for the United States Institute for Theatre Technology. Scharff joins USITT from Cornell University where he was general manager of the Cornell Center for Theatre Arts. His career as a theatre administrator includes work as managing director of the new Repertory Theatre in Boston and business manager for Theatre and Dance at the University of New Hampshire.

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It would appear that the world of opera is trying to take over the world of the musical: London in early autumn saw two directors best known for their operatic work in action in the West End. Robert Carsen created The Beautiful Game at the Cambridge Theatre, while up the road at the Shaftesbury multiple-Olivier award winning director Francesca Zambello was pulling together Napoleon, an epic new musical charting the love of Napoleon Boneparte for Josephine through troubled times in France.

To help her, Zambello turned to regular collaborators, notably set designer Michael Yeargan and lighting designer Rick Fisher, who won the 1998 lighting Olivier for his work on Zambello’s Lady in the Dark at the National Theatre.To stage the show, which covers a huge range of locations and times, Yeargan designed a spectacular floor capable of rising, falling, twisting and tilting to provide lan

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Explorer of the Seas, the latest addition to Royal Caribbean International’s Voyager class cruise ships, showed the world her colours on her first cruise out of Miami on October 28th, 2000.

The Explorer, the second in the Voyager class which debuted with Voyager of the Seas in 1999, could actually be considered a destination in itself, boasting a wealth of facilities, activities and entertainment. Perhaps one of its most arresting features is a 60ft by 40ft ice skating rink (the only one at sea) which can be converted to a 900-seat concert venue or TV Studio.

At the heart of the vessel is the Royal Promenade - longer than a football field and wider than three lanes of traffic anchored by two atria that are marvels of marble, trees, greenery and sculptures. Diversions along the way include the Crown & Kettle - a traditional English Pub, a 24-hour cafe, a sports bar and more sho

  1. Michael Northen Awarded MBE
  2. Schacherl Resigns from High End Systems
  3. Strand Wins Eddy Award for Lighting Product of the Year
  4. Autopilot II Released
  5. Playlight’s Mike McMullan Dies
  6. Lighting Technology for ARTTS
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