Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

Lighting

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UK - Sunday night was the annual Oscars Ceremony and Richard Martin Lighting (RML) were on hand to provide the lights and more than a little sparkle to the Sky Movies coverage hosted by Alex Zane.

Joining Alex on the sofas were a panel of celebrity guests from different sectors of the entertainment industry, giving their thoughts and opinions on fashion, the night's winners and any celebrity gossip that was circulating.

Malcolm Reed designed the lighting show which worked around an impressive set made to resedmble the Hollywood Hills. It's not a vast studio and there is so much already going on that you don't need a big lighting rig.

After many years of lighting the show, Malcolm knows this only too well and chose a simple yet effective spec including Sharpys, Alpha Spot 700's and XTC 1.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - The night of 25 February 2015 was a celebration of innovation in the LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) industry sectors with the awarding of the LEDs Magazine Sapphire Awards.

Being named Illumineer of the Year continues an impressive streak of both recognition and breakthroughs for Lumileds. In addition to this award, Lumileds recently won a prestigious LFI Innovation Award, introduced the world's first hot colour targeted LEDs, and announced the world's first chip-scale packaged LED that can be directly surface mount reflowed onto a luminaire board. LUXEON CoB with CrispWhite Technology is another quality of light breakthrough in the Lumileds portfolio.

"This is extraordinary validation of the tremendous work we have been doing here at Lumileds. I could not be more proud of our entire team. 2014 was a historically good year for Lumileds - and with all the excitin

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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UK - Martin Manufacturing UK has been crowned champion of skills investment at the Semta Skills Awards 2015. Martin Manufacturing UK, which employs 48 people in Louth and makes a range of smoke boxes for the entertainments' industry, won the SME Investment in Skills category, sponsored by Pera Training.

They were presented with the award at a gala dinner in London's Park Plaza, Riverbank at an event hosted by TV presenter Michael Underwood and where Minister of State for Business, Enterprise and Energy, Matthew Hancock, gave the keynote address.

Jason Andrews, general manager of Martin Manufacturing, said: "Skills are important to our business - competing in the international marketplace we need to stay ahead of the game so we need the most skilled workforce we can muster.

"Some of our employees have worked for us for over 20 years and we need to ensure their knowl

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Qatar - W-DMX by Wireless Solution and lighting fixtures by Griven are now on display on one of Qatar's premier five-star hotels - the Sheraton Doha Hotel & Resort. This hotel structure has been a landmark in Doha for more than 30 years, so when it was time for renovation, every detail was considered to bring the building up to the highest technological standards while still maintaining its original look and charm.

In addition to the interior, the upgrade involved the exterior lighting design of the hotel that would not only enhance the waterfront skyline but the three-sided pyramid shape of the hotel as well. The close Al Majlis Congress Centre, a secondary lower building with four-sided pyramidal section, needed a complementary lighting scheme. Its smooth, concrete surface proved to be quite difficult to be evenly lit up as the lighting fixtures could only be installed at a ve

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USA - 48 of Robe's LEDWash 1200s are in action on the current Garth Brooks US tour, specified by the country megastar's longstanding LD Dave Butzler, and purchased specially by leading rental house Bandit Lites. Brooks - whose staggering popularity continues to pack out arenas - has released his first studio album in 13 years Man Against Machine to coincide with the tour.

Butzler explained that Brooks was fully involved in creating the stage design, and while he wanted to wow the crowds for this one, he wanted to keep the music - rather than the production - centre stage. To satisfy ticket sale demands and remain close to his audiences - for which he is famous - Brooks elected to play multiple dates in more intimate medium-sized arenas, rather than massive stadiums.

The starting point for Butzler's lighting was a large centre cluster of audio, so he designed around this

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Italy - The show Illusion, with several Salamanders from Le Maitre entertained visitors at the Rainbow MagicLand in Valmontone close to Rome throughout the summer 2014.

The attraction combines music, fantasy and projection. With hundreds of lights installed on the fountains and special effects enhancing the show, Illusion had nine dancers interacting with the fountains and the projections.

One of the world's leading companies for aquatic shows and an internationally renowned video designer participated in the realisation of this show.

Mr. Bonsanti, technical representative at MagicLand, commented, "The show went on two to three times a night for a duration of 25-30 minutes and could accommodate 300 people. Thanks to a series of effects, the organisers were able to create true illusions with pirate and jungle themes.

"The stage on the water with the castle built o

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Czech Republic - Robe welcomed 13 students and two lecturers - Phil Hughes and Clive Davies - from the University of South Wales, Glamorgan, to its HQ and factory in Valasské Mezirici, Czech Republic, all from the BSc Honours Lighting Design & Technology and Live Event Technology courses.

The trip was co-ordinated by Robe UK's sales director Ian W Brown with USW course leader Stuart Green, and it has become an annual date on the calendar. As usual, it was also completely over-subscribed, so the number of applicants had to be whittled down to those who would be likely to benefit the most.

Ian, whose relationship with the university started a few years ago, commented, "Both courses produce a high proportion of graduates who progress on to very successful industry careers - and that is what first prompted me to look further.

"The courses are based on equipping

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UK - Another year has flown by, and it's time to start nominations for the Technical Theatre Awards 2015.

The nomination period is now open on the new website - head to www.technicaltheatreawards.com now to put your colleagues forward.

Says the organisation, "We have a great year planned ahead, including streamlining the voting process and bringing together a committee of industry leaders to finalise our shortlists.

"We are also heading to Europe for Stage|Set|Scenery, as well as our annual visits to PLASA Focus and the ABTT Trade Show.

"Our awards ceremony will be taking place on 5 October 2015, and all our nominees and sponsors will be invited to join us as we announce this year's winners.

To make all this possible we are putting together a bigger team than ever. We are currently looking for more sponsors to support our awards, including some brand new a

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Sweden - The opening of AF's new office building in Gothenburg was marked by a spectacular light show, putting the 66m high building on the map. For one evening the façades of AF's new domicile were staged with a combination of colours, graphical patterns and images expressing AF's values in a festive manner.

Being Skanska's third most eco-friendly building in the Gothenburg region, and having received Platinum environmental certification by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), it was important to AF Lighting to further communicate and demonstrate its green values. Selected for this purpose as the newest and most energy efficient LED fixtures on the market were the P-5 wash light and G-Spot moving head from SGM.

"Through lighting calculations in DIALUX, we were able to determine the optimum placement of the fixtures. The combination of the P-5 wash light

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Finland - Kullervo, Op. 7, is a suite of symphonic movements by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Although often referred to as a "choral symphony", the work avoids traditional symphonic structure, and its five movements constitute a set of related but independent tone poems.

Based on the character of Kullervo in the epic poem Kalevala and using texts from that poem, the work premiered to critical acclaim on 28 April 1892. Now lighting, screen and set designer Miki Kunttu has given the work, currently being performed at the Finnish National Opera, Helsinki, a completely new look.

Kunttu explained, why the grandMA2 was his favourite choice for the project: "grandMA2 and MA 3D were the perfect tools for the production. All the way from design table to the final cue lists. All lights and media servers were programmed and operated via the grandMA2 light.

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The Netherlands - Visual Productions is technology partner of the 2014 Amsterdam Light Festival. For the third year in a row the Visual Productions' Solid State lighting controllers helped visualise the lighting designs of worldwide artists during this 10 week-long festival. The CueCore, IoCore and DIN Rail DMX Splitter were used to control the lighting for 12 exhibits of the festival. Light-works in both the Water Colors route and the Illuminade utilised the Visual Productions control solutions. These consisted of exhibits from around the world including, 'Water Fun' from New Zealand designer Angus Muir; Russian architect Vasili Popov's 'Rebicycledome'; 'House of Cards' designed by Israeli designer Gaston Zahr; and - back to the home territory - Dutch-based Frank Tjepkema's 'Light Bridge'.

For installations 'Intrepid' and 'Campfire' product and programming support was via the V

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UK - London based events production company PR Live ensured the Warner Music 2015 Brits After-party really rocked for 1,100 guests at the Freemason's Hall in Covent Garden, supplying all elements of the design and technical production - sound, lighting, video, rigging, set and staging, assorted custom built props - complete with lighting and sound design and bespoke video content.

The project - managed for PR Live by Justin Hammond - included spectacular large format projections onto the exterior of the building to welcome the guests, and pixel mapping a wall of LED battens in the main room, as well ensuring the seven different themed areas inside the building each had their own distinctive vibe and style, including private areas for double Award winning Ed Sheeran, Warner executives and VIPs.

PR Live designer Jenny Willard initially took a detailed brief from the client and t

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Denmark - Martin Professional has announced the availability of the Rush Gobo Projector 1. The new member of the install-oriented Rush family is now shipping.

The Rush Gobo Projector 1 is suitable for permanent installation in club, bar, restaurant and shopping mall applications. Gobos can be changed quickly easy adjustment of focus, speed and direction make running the static fixture smooth and intuitive. It's also non-intrusive thanks to its silent operation and compact size, measuring 215 x 135 x 152 mm and weighing only 11 lbs. (2 kg).

"We designed the RUSH Gobo Projector 1 with ease-of-use in mind," said Mark Buss, product manager, Rush products. "Speed and direction are controlled by easy-touch buttons and it only takes a few seconds to change gobos with the magnetic gobo holders."

The fixture uses E-sized gobos with a maximum image diameter of 30 m

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USA - Industry leaders from around the world descended into Nashville 21 February for the 26th Annual Pollstar Awards, where Bandit Lites received its 22nd Lighting Company of the Year Award.

Hosted by comedian Ralphie May, the Pollstar Awards occur during Pollstar Live and celebrates the music industry's movers and shakers. This year's event took place at the historic Ryman Auditorium, which was also awarded Theatre of the Year.

Bandit chair and founder, Michael T. Strickland accepted the award, crediting Bandit's wildly successful year to both its employees and clients, and dedicating it to the late Bob See of See Factor. The award was presented to Bandit by Cinderella lead singer Tom Kiefer.

Strickland said, "To again be named the best in the business by our peers is too much for words. The entire staff at Bandit Lites works tirelessly to deliver the highest quality

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UK - Events production supplier White Light has announced the appointment of Alicia Earls as business development manager for events. Alicia joins White Light after more than seven years as communications manager for the Science Museum Group, where she helped develop the successful #StrictlySW7 event showcase involving the Science Museum and neighbouring venues the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert museum.

Alicia joins the White Light Events team from April 2015. In her new role, she will focus on expanding the company's relationships with corporate clients and strengthening links with key events venues. She brings to the role more than a decade of experience in the events industry working with a broad range of clients including Coca-Cola, EE, Virgin Media Business, Friends of the Earth, Siemens and Condé Nast.

Having worked with White Light over the ye

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China - PR Lighting has made an addition to its expanding XRLED series, with the announcement of the XRLED 700 Spot. This is due for shipment this month.

The fixture boasts a number of attributes, embracing all the features you would expect from a moving head spot but with a particularly impressive white light.

It has also been engineered to produce an even beam spread - and also a powerful one, as the output generated from the 320W white LED module equates to more than 700W from a conventional discharge lamp.

Other design criteria that the XRLED 700 Spot meets include light weight (just 24kg), compact and quiet operation. Low power consumption and low heat dissipation are further advantages, as you would expect from an LED source.

Specifiers will also notice that this fixture is fully featured, with a colour wheel incorporating six colours (plus white); fixed and rotating

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UK - Lighting designer Louis Oliver of Okulus has used an array of Showline SL NITRO 510C fixtures as part of his colour-rich and punchy lighting design for You Me At Six's UK arena tour.

Specifying 29 of the powerful LED units from Zig Zag Lighting, Oliver rigged 18 on spines of truss in the air. Eleven of the strobes also made up his floor package upstage, where they lined the bottom of the vast video screen.

"I really like the SL NITRO 510C, it's my LED strobe of choice," says Oliver. "My design for this show was very video-heavy, however the units held their own against the 58' wide 20' deep video wall, as well as the other lighting in the rig."

Oliver's design was based on the band's previous touring campaign for the Cavalier Youth album. However he magnified it for the arena run, commissioning the slick video content from Pablo Beckett of Bry

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South Africa - Within just six hours of ticket sales opening, the Pretoria leg of the show Afrikaans is Groot was sold out. The Cape Town leg followed suite with its three performances selling out by the end of that day. With artists like Juanita Du Plessis, Theuns Jordaan, Steve Hofmeyr, Bobby van Jaarsveld, Bok van Blerk, Robbie Wessels, Lianie May, Karlien van Jaarsveld, Jay, Riana Nel, Jannie Moolman, Arno Jordaan, Jak de Priester, Corlea Botha, EDEN, Dewald Wasserfall and more, the show promised to be a hit.

Featuring this amount of talent meant that the set and production had to be on point. Designed by Michael Gill and built by Gearhouse SDS, the set was a balance of light and metal finishes. The lighting was conceptualised and programmed by Mauritz Jacobs of Dream Sets. Jacobs thoroughly enjoyed the task. His basic objective was to light for a live show that had f

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USA - Vail Beaver Creek in Colorado recently hosted this year's FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 2015, with athletes representing 68 nations participating in this grand event, which was viewed by an estimated television audience of 1 billion. This is the third time the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado has welcomed the Championships, which are spread over 13 days and two weekends of events and races.

A full programme of events was preceded by a magnificent opening ceremony. Theatrical Media Services Inc. (TMS) provided a full service package consisting of lighting, truss structures, staging and LED video floor. Selected for this ceremony were 37 Q-7 flood/blind/strobes and 16 P-5 wash lights, each chosen for their applicability in the lighting design.

Lighting designer and operator from TMS, Aaron Stinebrink, explains, "The idea for the opening ceremony was to make a ve

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USA - Scottsdale is some 260 miles from Las Vegas, but for four nights in early February, visitors to this Phoenix suburb could have thought they were on the Vegas Strip; at least if they were among the 8,000 fans who turned out for The Coors Light Birds Nest.

A four day festival held in conjunction with the Waste Management Open, Birds Nest is one of the most eagerly anticipated 19th hole events on the PGA tour. This year's edition didn't disappoint, bringing in acts like Kid Rock, Capital Cities, Darius Rucker and Afrojack who performed in a 50,000sq.ft tent shipped in from Germany that resembled a hot new Vegas club thanks in part to a dynamic lighting design from Creative Backstage using gear provided by Valley Production Services.

Creative Backstage set off the event's DJ stage with a cross- hatched "birds nest" design made with pixel mapped EPIX 2.0 series fixt

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Israel - You would expect an impressive and memorable show to accompany the launch of the newest and largest expo hall in the Middle East ... and that was exactly the brief received by lighting designer Eran Klein of Tel Aviv based creative design practice Cochavi & Klein from show producers The Gallery.

Eran rose to the occasion, adding a generous helping of his visual magic to the occasion assisted by around 160 Robe moving lights - including 28 x BMFL Spots, 36 x MMX Spots, 24 x LEDWash 1200s, 54 x Pointes, 16 x MMX WashBeams and 16 x LEDBeam100s.

The gala opening show, directed by Amit Fisher, needed to deliver a breath-taking immersive experience for thousands of VIPs, celebrities and invited guests, and an event to establish Pavilion 2 - 'Hall of the Universe' - at the Tel Aviv Expo as a multi-purpose venue.

Cochavi & Klein worked with a hugely talented creative team i

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The Netherlands - As a way to better serve the Dutch market, ETC is changing their sales structure in the Netherlands from a distributor based model to a dealer based model. That means that beginning on 1 March 2014, a sales structure will be set up where ETC will handle promotions and sell through a dealer network.

Lightco Nederland B.V. has been ETC's distributor for many years and has done great work promoting ETC. However, ETC's continued growth and product family expansions make it a challenge for distributors to promote the complete ETC product portfolio. "It's a very big job to promote all ETC products across different segments of the market. This responsibility is a lot to ask of our distributors, but is a necessary job to do," says Tim Stokholm, ETC's regional sales manager for Northern Europe.

Lightco will continue its relationship with ETC as a dealer. Lig

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World Music - De La Soul will be the headline act at this year's Womad, the festival's organisers have announced. Other highlights at the world music festival will include Tinariwen and folk music band Bellowhead. Festival director, Chris Smith said: "I'm really excited about De La Soul, hip hop is a big thing for Womad." Last year the event sold out for the first time since it relocated from Reading in 2007 to Charlton Park near Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

Hearing Health - People should listen to music for no more than one hour a day to protect their hearing, the World Health Organization suggests. It says 1.1 billion teenagers and young adults are at risk of permanently damaging their hearing by listening to "too much, too loudly". It said audio players, concerts and bars were posing a "serious threat". WHO figures show 43m people aged 12-35 hav

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The Netherlands - The Theater de Flint, in Amersfoort is a renowned performing arts theatre, hosting a variety of musicals, dance, cabaret and classical ensembles throughout the year. As a venue with more than sufficient space to host conferences, exhibitions, trade shows and other public events, the theatre recently shut its doors for a complete overhaul of the foyers, restaurants and other public areas in order to bring more flexibility to the space.

As a result of the renovation which also included an upgrading of new intelligent light armatures, the theatre's technicians, Flint Sjoerd Wierda and Ad Slotboom, realised that the theatre needed to extend and change its technical infrastructure in order to deal with the demands of the new system. Working together with Rolight, the exclusive ELC Lighting distributor for The Netherlands, they designed an ELC network into the re-fit

  1. Entec finds Pale Green Ghosts with John Grant
  2. PLASA Technical Standards in action
  3. Upstaging's Saber IP65 LED Video Strip
  4. Clay Paky illuminates Milan's Piccolo Teatro
  5. Magic Blades cut it with DPL
  6. Nordeon-Group acquires Griven
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