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Lighting

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USA - Robe's brand new StageQube 324 LED wall has won one of the LDI 2006 Debuting Product Awards in the projection category. The product was launched in September at the PLASA Show, and LDI saw it revealed to the American Market for the first time.

The LDI judges praised the StageQube 324 for its innovative engineering, integrating structural support into each display module. They were impressed with how easily and quickly the system was to set up and maintain by replacing any panel anywhere without taking the system apart.

The Award, announced on the second day of the three day Las Vegas event, was collected for Robe by international sales manager Harry von den Stemmen.

Robe's MD Josef Valchar SAYS: "It's a great honour to win this Award, and for our dedication to digital lighting to be recognised in such a high profile environment. We are expecting a very busy and po

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UK - Stagecraft reports a healthy increase in sales for its hire department during summer 2006. The combination of a prolonged summer of fine, dry weather and an increase in the number of outdoor performances and festivals has resulted in an abundance of new opportunities for the Salisbury-based company.

"It has been an excellent summer for hire this year and we have thoroughly enjoyed working on such a wide variety of projects," comments technical director Mike Naish. "Fine weather has also helped organisations to feel confident about staging outdoor events although we always build into our plans the possibility of a downpour!"

The company supplied Martin Mac 250s and Mac 500s for a private performance by the band Madness, the Arc Roof and stage for the Salisbury International Arts Festival, Art Asia and the Honey Pot charity appeal; Source 4 profiles and

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UK - The Engine Shed, the University of Lincoln's brand new £6 million multi-purpose venue, opened to great acclaim thanks to the entertainment install carried out by Stage Electrics. Stage Electrics worked with the University back in 2004 when carrying out the installation of the Drama Studio and were the obvious choice for this most recent project.

The Engine Shed, now the largest music venue is the East Midlands, has been built on the site of old railway buildings by Brayford Pool and retains much of the old brick architecture. The interior walls are decorated with posters illustrating the site's historic background as a major railway junction.

A comprehensive lighting and sound system was installed throughout the venue which consists of four main areas, the main room with a capacity of 1500, the Mezzanine Bar, the Tower Bar and the Sports Bar.

The main EAW loudspea

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Worldwide - Jay-Z's tour Global Express, could be described as open and empty. Everything is reduced to a minimum. To fill the visual void lighting designer Gary Westcott and his associate Matthew Button, applied three Barco LED screens, and lighting control is by grandMAs.

"The system is simple enough - three screens of Barco LED, one a wide-screen centre stage, flanked by two in portrait orientation - very narrow, side screens. There's a three-camera system for live shots, one front-of-house, one in the pit and one on stage," says Drew Findley, who is responsible for the video content. Findley controls the four used M-Boxes from a grandMA. "The show is event driven: what I like about the grandMA is the flying faders - having the ability to move quickly and easily between pages, and copy out of existing pages," he says.

Logistics have proved challen

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USA - If you get seven years' bad luck for breaking a mirror, imagine what you'd get for smashing a mirror ball. Arriba Cases has come to the rescue of superstitious DJs everywhere by introducing two new bags that protect mirror balls from damage during transit, the AC-70 and AC-71 Mirror Ball Protectors.

Part of Arriba's line of soft, padded lighting cases, the AC-70 and AC-71 are designed to securely hold an 8" and a 12" mirror ball respectively. Lightweight yet rugged, they can accommodate mirror balls from any major manufacturer. Made of the same durable synthetic material as Arriba's other lighting cases, the AC-70 and AC-71 will protect and help extend the lifespan of delicate mirror balls, one of the most popular and enduring special effects in any light show.

Ideal for DJs, musicians and mobile entertainers, the AC-70 and AC-71 Mirror Ball Protectors are ligh

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USA - Chauvet has released a distinctive LED blacklight fixture. The LED Shadow is an exclusive DMX blacklight combining high portability with the low power consumption and longevity of LEDs. It is fitted with 192 ultra violet LEDs averaging 100,000 hours of operation. The diodes are enclosed in a sleek, 2.5-inch thin plastic and aluminum panel. Total weight is less than 5 lbs (2.22 kgs).

Three channels of DMX control dimming and strobing capabilities as well as the activation of pre-set programs. All functions can also be triggered in stand-alone mode via dip-switches.

LED Shadow incorporates two sturdy brackets (for clamp and wall mount) and one extra power output to daisy chain units. For a more complete mobile show, this distinctive blacklight can also be linked to the newly released LED Techno Strobe featuring all white strobing LEDs and the LED Techno Strobe RGB with ful

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UK - As a result of their ever increasing success in the commercial and architectural lighting market, Dynalite Europe are expanding into other areas through the appointment of Nick Van Tromp as sales engineer to the audio visual market. Van Tromp comes from an HVAC and lighting controls background and with three years experience in the home automation industry, he is looking to work closely with custom installers who are wanting to distinguish themselves from others in this highly competitive market.

He says: "Dynalite not only offer a huge range of control products to suit virtually any lighting application but also have an array of user interfaces and integration techniques which are second to none in the market. Quite simply, what makes us stand out in this industry is our ability to do with ease the jobs that other manufacturers just can't do. We will be running a new

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UK - Leading UK lighting rental company Siyan designed and supplied a lighting rig based on SGM moving lights for the BBC's Electric Proms shows. These were staged at the newly restored Camden Roundhouse.

The rig was a co-design by Bryan Leitch and Nick Whitehouse, with Siyan in the demanding position of working for the BBC Electric Proms team and promoters Metropolis Music, the latter of whom brought the High Wycombe based company in to light the series of shows.

Up to three artists were featured per night including music from The Good The Bad and The Queen (one of Damon Albarn's new projects), The Who, Paul Weller, Young Tiger, The Zutons, James Brown, The Magic Numbers and many more artists and musicians who performed new, unique work and collaborations.

Leitch and Whitehouse utilised 126 SGM fixtures of various different types including Giotto 400 series Washes, Spots an

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USA - Bandit Lites is proud to be supplying lighting again for Montgomery Gentry's current tour. Released in October of 2006, their latest album Some People Change features twelve new tracks.

Lighting designer, Michael Shucher, said that the main objective for the MontgomeryGentry show was to portray a big look with a minimal amount of lights. The initialchallenge was to find lights that could compete with the arched video wall. Shucherneeded the lights to cut through the video wall while still being light in weight and not toobulky. He also wanted the lights to be hard edge and have rotating gobos. The Vari*Lite2500 achieved all of these requirements.

Shucher also found the High End Systems Studio Beams to be very beneficial. Heplaced them on the side towers to act as fans. The HES Studio Beams were also used towash various set pieces, which include anything from flyin

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UK - Lighting Technology Projects (LTP) has completed the installation, programming and commissioning of a large eye-catching light-wall containing 380 ColorKinetics iColor Cove MX fixtures, at 111 Buckingham Place Road, Victoria, London.

The wall graces the impressive atrium entrance to a shared office block, housing several high profile companies and organisations. LTP was recommended for the project to the site's main contractors Simpson York by Nick Tolkein of Architainment, CK's UK distributor.

Each of the 380 sections of Cove MX - the highest intensity member of the iColor Cove family - measures 320 mm and utilises the latest in CK's Powercore technology. This simplifies the installation by integrating power and data management directly within the fixture, eliminating the need for external low voltage power or data supplies. Inbuilt power factor correction also significa

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UK - The busy Avolites sales team has been boosted with the arrival of two new faces - Simon Harris and Chakir Mustafa.

Mustafa joins as sales executive and will be working closely with Avo's Steve Warren and Koy Neminathan in developing and promoting Avolites sales worldwide. Fluent in Spanish and also speaking Arabic and French (in addition to English of course!) Mustafa will be covering these territories as well as the UK.

Before joining Avolites, he studied Spanish and Business Studies at Queen Mary University, London, whilst also working in the retail sector. He brings enthusiasm and a great sense of humour to the Avolites equation, and is "really looking forward to working with a great team, and so many exciting and innovative products".

Simon Harris joins as sales engineer and will be putting his fund of technical experience gleaned from working with comms g

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USA - Since ETC's new Eos lighting control system made its official debut at LDI 2006 in Las Vegas and won the LDI 2006 Product of the Year Award for best debuting product in the lighting category, it has been drawing huge interest, the company reports.

In response to such a demand for information on Eos, ETC has introduced a new interactive graphic tour on their Web site - highlighting the innovative features and functionality that, they say, sets Eos apart from other control systems.

The Eos product tour allows viewers to see why this is the flagship system in ETC's new Complete Control line-up, says the company.

The European launch of Eos is expected in June 2007.

(Chris Henry)

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UK - Liverpool Culture Company's Special Events team excelled themselves with one of the most successful November 5th events ever, staging three spectacular firework displays city-wide which were enjoyed free by over 50,000 people. They have been staged in triplicate for some years to allow those all over the city and surrounding areas easy access to the displays. All three displays were designed and co-ordinated by Steve Boothman of Fantastic Fireworks, working closely with the Culture Company team including event manager Bill Howard.

Boothman put together a pacey soundtrack based on the theme of performance tying in with the city's Year of Performance. This encompassed dance music of all types - from Fatboy Slim to Swan lake to Ballroom Blitz - and a miscellany of sporting themes - all essentially 'performance' geared.

To add depth to the overall visual image and to enhance

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UK / Africa - Following on from the launch of their African Aid charity initiative in March this year, Zero 88 has been running a Teddy Bear Appeal in support of the AIDS orphanage they support in South Africa.

The 'Lean on Me' charity they support looks after babies orphaned by AIDS and tries to ensure all new additions to the centre and affected children in the local area get their own teddy bear.

Over the last few months they have collected bears from staff, customers and at tradeshows around the globe, and have just shipped in excess of 150 bears to the charity. Donations came in all shapes and sizes so there should be a suitable bear for each child.

On hearing about the imminent shipment of bears Tracey Jones, general manager of the 'Lean on Me' trust said: "This is wonderful news - thank you! We are truly blessed to have people like you and all involved in the Zer

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USA - Bandit Lites CEO, Michael T. Strickland, spoke to the Knoxville Chamberof Commerce on Thursday, November 2, 2006 in Knoxville, Tennessee. The BusinessRoundtable Live Panel Discussion is part of the annual Business and Technology Expo. This Roundtable's theme was Small to Tall- How local business people have made theirmark nationally.

Strickland and three other panel speakers addressed a distinguishedgroup of CEOs, presidents and upper management. Michael Strickland shared hisinsight of growing Bandit Lites into a global business in today's economy.People from throughout the southeast attended the event to network and learn from eachother in order to develop their own business' interest in today's fast paced globaleconomy.

The event was moderated by, Bill Brewer of the Knoxville News Sentinel and AmyNolan of the Greater Knoxville Business Journal.

The Roundtable

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UK - The extended deadline for entries for the Lighting Design Awards is now only two weeks away, at 5pm on Monday 20 November 2006.

The Entertainment Lighting Award category, sponsored by PLASA, recognises excellence and achievement in entertainment lighting. Entries are required from concerts, festivals, theatre, corporate events, exhibitions, temporary and one-off lighting installations.

Entry forms and criteria can be downloaded from the website address below, where you will also find more information on the awards. Alternatively, telephone Liz Morris on 0208 277 5501.

(Chris Henry)

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USA - Hailed as the greatest illusionist of our time, an icon of modern America who sets box office records wherever he goes, David Copperfield knows the importance of lighting to his one-of-a-kind show. "Each of my illusions takes two years of preparation and work," he states, "and lighting is a big part of that, not just for the look but also to make the magic work."

Although Copperfield tours the world, travelling up to 40 weeks a year and often performing several shows a day, he is all about excellence and state of the art. In 2002, Florida based Paradigm Productions swapped out Copperfield's aging lighting rig with an automated Martin lighting package that consisted of MAC 2000 Profiles, MAC 2000 Performances, MAC 600 washlights, MAC 250+'s, RoboScan Pro 918 scanners and Atomic 3000 strobes. Paradigm has provided ongoing support for the David Copperfield

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USA - Production company Stage Front Presentation Systems (SFPS) has supplied a Jands Vista S3 lighting console and 72 Chroma-Q Plus colour changers for the new Medieval Times Atlanta Dinner & Tournament.

Atlanta is the eighth Castle to be opened in a very successful expansion program across North America which has so far attracted attracted nearly 35 million guests to the show.

Georgia-based Stage Front is one of the most respected and successful performance and presentation contractors in the Southeast, and has been the design and build contractor for Medieval Times ever since providing the lighting and special effects for the original Florida Castle in 1986.

Lighting plays a key part in creating the mood and environmental setting for the 1,200-seater arena shows, which include equestrian events, tournaments and games, jousting, hand-to-hand combat scenes, a Wizard sequenc

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UK - i-Vision has supplied 144 modules of its Lumos Link RGB LED system and two of its new Lumos Drive 216 controllers to the RAF Museum in London.

The fixtures were specified and purchased by Sean Penn, the Museum's AV engineer after i-Vision was recommended by The Society of TV Lighting Directors, who staged an event at the Museum.

Penn was looking for a lighting effect to enhance the Milestones of Flight building, which tells the story of flight and from balloons and the first powered flights, complete with some impressive pieces of military hardware, right up to the Eurofighter.

The hangar has an arched tensile roof is also used for corporate events, dinners, awards ceremonies and functions of all types. They wanted a permanent lighting installation that would add a touch of subtle elegance, warmth and panache to the general evening ambience for these events. &quo

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UK - James Ussher wanted to produce something totally different on the dancefloor at Oxford's most popular clubbing destination - The Bridge - when he was asked to co-ordinate a recent technical revamp. His decision to do this with Element Labs VersaTiles, supplied by Projected Image Digital has resulted in the first UK club installation of the product.

Ussher and his company Ussher Productions have been capacity, independently owned venue for some time. He keeps a keen ear and eye to the ground vis-a-vis industry trends, aiming constantly to keep The Bridge one step ahead in terms of looking, sounding and feeling interesting, fresh and contemporary.

The dancefloor now features three sections of VersaTiles a 6 x 1m strips of VersaTiles along the end wall of the dancefloor, flanked by two, 2m by 0.5m strips on the side walls. Ussher specified, designed and installed this new sc

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Italy - A complete range of pole operated fresnels has been recently introduced by LDR.

The Pole operated products are built around the well known LDR Fresnles (Nota/Tono and Soffio/Suono D) and can be offered with four different lamp wattages (1/1.2 and 2/2.5 kW halogen - 150W and 250W discharge).

Setting a new standard in this category, LDR offer the PO Fresnel range in white, silver and black as standard. By special request, LDR is also capable of handling any colour based/ref. from the RAL range.

"Our customers were demanding affordable and easy to use Pole Operated products," says LDR's Fabiano Besio, "The professional features and the great light performances of the traditional LDR theatre/architectural fixtures can now be offered to the TV market and to all those applications where a full and precise control of the pan and tilt is required."

(Chr

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USA - On October 19, the much-anticipated international communications standard E1.17 Architecture for Control Networks (commonly known as ACN) received certification from ANSI (the American National Standards Institute), achieving the last needed step in its full ratification process. The Board of Directors of ESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association) approved ACN on October 5, 2006. The Control Protocols Working Group and the Technical Standards Committee of ESTA approved the new standard on July 15, 2006.

Like DMX, ACN allows equipment from different manufacturers to operate together and function seamlessly within the same control network. Unlike DMX, ACN works over Ethernet, using Internet standards, greatly increasing opportunities for product innovation and performance. ACN has already arrived in lighting control systems. Manufacturers like ETC debuted ACN-e

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UK - Production, event and entertainment management company Production Plus has boosted its stock of Robe Show Lighting moving lights with the purchase of 16 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 575 AT fixtures - eight of each type.

These have been added to the existing hire stock which already includes over 60 Robe fixtures, incorporating Spot 250 and Wash 250 XTs and Media Spinners. "We'd been looking at the 575 AT Series for some time," says Production Plus's technical director Andy Miller, who's relationship with Robe UK goes right back to the start of the company. "The optics are great, it's a cost effective product and the service and support from Robe UK is very good," he concludes.

One of the first outings for the new 575 AT fixtures was a gala ball event at the Hilton International Hotel, Park Lane, London, for the Hilton Community Foundation Ball charity.

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Greece - Lighting Effects Distribution have supplied a major order for LED effects to a television studio in Greece. Because of the fast set changes involved, Skai TV needed a constantly evolving scenic infrastructure in their Athens studio and turned to London-based ITN Consulting (a division of ITN) for assistance.

The company's senior lighting director, Roy Newman, was first alerted to the LED X-Chip and Ayrton Moduled 318 on the stand of Lighting Effects Distribution at a trade show, and knew they would be ideal for his purposes. "The company was clearly a one-stop shop for LED effects," he noted.

"One of the main reasons for preferring LEDs over tungsten was the rapid turnaround between various programmes, and of course the infinite number of colours instantly available." The lack of maintenance and gel changing, he commented, had been another determin

  1. The effects of light explored
  2. Last Call - Candidates for the PLASA Election
  3. Clay Paky at Nights of Light 2006
  4. Syncrolite goes Dichroic
  5. Les Mis Returns To Broadway
  6. LDR introduces white Canto followspot
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