USA - The Cincinnati Bearcats celebrated the end of a winning season with a 150-strong Verge Aero drone display, put on for the team by their sponsors and with fans invited to join the fun. Taking place at Cincinnati’s 38,000-seater open-air Nippert Stadium, which is the Bearcats’ home field, Verge Aero’s military-grade-manufactured drones were positioned high above the crowd to spell out the team’s 13-0 winning season and display their logo. Backing up the show were more than 100 lighting fixtures and 384 rooftop fireworks, creating a spectacular celebration show. Verge Aero’s Chris Lutts project managed the drones for the event, in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati Bearcats events team, their sponsor’s event team, and lighting and fireworks specialists. “We actually only had around seven days to get our drones programmed, transporte
Japan - Robert Juliat continues its collaboration with Japan’s Zepp Hall network of concert venues via its exclusive Japanese distributor, Sogo Butai Co. The latest project, supplied and installed by Sogo Butai, was for the 2,900+ capacity Zepp Haneda in Tokyo and consists of a full complement of LED fixtures across the whole range of Robert Juliat’s LED portfolio: profile, single lens, followspots and cyclorama lights. Sogo Butai lighting designer Yukiteru Hayashi chose the comprehensive selection of LED fixtures to include 24 Dalis 860 cyclorama lights, six Tibo 533CW 115W Cool White and four ZEP 664SX2 300W profiles, 28 Warm White ZEP 360LF2 300W and 10 Cool White ZEP 360LF2 300W Fresnels, alongside 6 Oz 600W LED followspots. Four of the Oz followspots are sited in front-of-house positions and two in side positions. The profiles are rigged to a movable ba
UK - Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and directed by Polly Findlay at London’s The Bridge Theatre last autumn, the European premiere of White Noise explored the subject of race in the 21st century from both a black and white perspective through a group of college friends. Working on an ambitious set design by Lizzie Clachan, lighting designer, Jackie Shemesh, chose six Ayrton Diablo LED profile fixtures to deliver some extremely precise lighting effects and ambient washes, and worked hard to sculpt the huge set despite some difficult rigging angles and ensure the skin tones of the diverse cast looked correct on stage. The 27m-deep set included a thrust stage, an overhead catwalk, a series of side wall flats arranged in perspective to frame the stage, and an angled ceiling flat which severely restricted hanging positions and lighting a
The Netherlands - The Harbour Club brand is known worldwide. The latest evolution in this successful concept is the just-completed The Harbour Club Theatre, a new 300-capacity purpose-built performance and event space located adjacent to The Harbour Club’s flagship restaurant Amsterdam Oost. It extends the opportunity of sampling exquisite food whilst enjoying top-notch entertainment, starting with the show Vegas, starring Dutch magician and illusionist Hans Klok, plus a cast of eight dancers, four singers, three acrobats and a live band. Lighting for this enew venue has been designed by Benny La Maitre, who put 24 Robe T1 Profiles, 28 LEDBeam 350s and six Spiider wash beam moving lights at the centre of the rig. This is part of an overall production design encompassing audio, video, staging, pyro and SFX, all planned and co-ordinated by The Harbour Club tec
USA - During the holiday season, Legacy Production Group of Minneapolis worked with Street Factory Media to present Nature Illuminated at the Minnesota Zoo, a magical driving or walking experience that featured displays of larger-than-life inflatable animals. Their second year working on the project, Legacy used a lighting package of Elation IP-rated luminaires to compose picturesque environments and controlled the lighting scenes using a large Obsidian lighting control network. The oversized animals - more than 30 specially crafted works of art illuminated from the inside with LED lights - were presented across five different zones on a nearly mile long loop, each zone with its own theme. Legacy’s Tom Gorman, lighting designer and production manager on the project, explains the role of the Elation lighting system. “We didn’t necessarily need to light the
USA - After more than nine years at ARRI - three of which spent as an executive board member - Markus Zeiler has decided to accept a new professional challenge, ARRI reports. Prof. Dr. Hans-Joerg Bullinger, chairman of the supervisory board at ARRI, comments: “On behalf of the supervisory board, I would like to thank Markus Zeiler for his outstanding efforts and accomplishments for the ARRI Group. We deeply regret this decision, but wish him all the best personally and professionally. We look forward to working with Markus Zeiler on joint projects in the future.” Zeiler came to ARRI as general manager business unit lighting in 2013. In this position, his responsibilities included the successful introduction of the LED soft light platform SkyPanel, for which ARRI was awarded an Engineering Emmy this past year. Zeiler was most recently in charge of the business units
USA - Obsidian Control Systems has expanded its team with two experienced members tasked with providing support, programming advice and training capabilities for customers. Matthew Gerardi will lead Obsidian Control Systems’ Technical Support division with focus on Onyx, Netron and Capture, working out of Obsidian’s HQ in Los Angeles. Gerardi comes to Obsidian with an extensive background as a technical director and lighting technician. In his new role, he will work alongside Obsidian users to evolve Onyx, and will focus on Onyx and Netron training sessions throughout the US, in person and online. Meanwhile, Hector Rojo joins Obsidian’s Latin American team to lead the Onyx support division for Mexico, Central and South America, along with other Spanish-speaking areas across the globe. He brings with him an extensive technical background as a lighting designer, li
USA - Tributes have been paid to Juan ‘JC’ Faxas, who passed away unexpectedly on 12 February. A former employee of the ADJ Group of Companies, he leaves behind a devoted wife, two daughters, and many friends who were drawn to his outgoing personality and keen sense of humour. Juan Faxas, known to his many friends and colleagues as JC, was born on 21 February 1962. At the age of six, his family fled communist Cuba for the US. Settling in California, JC attended South California Military Academy, Long Beach, as well as Warren High School, and graduated in 1980. Music was a passion for him from an early age; JC enjoyed singing and playing guitar as well as playing other artistes’ music as a DJ. In 1977, while still at High School, he founded Discomania and performed at weddings and parties throughout Los Angeles. He quickly exp
India - Naveen Deshpande, founder of Ground Control, is an award-winning lighting designer. He and his creative team are working on progressive and futuristic lighting design and audio-visual experiences for artists, festivals, corporates and other large-scale events across the globe. He speaks with admiration of the Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders and uses 12 of them in one of India's biggest touring acts. The Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders fitted well into the 2021 Prateek Kuhad India tour. Prateek is a noted singer-songwriter, creating independent music in Hindi and English. Last year he performed in places such as Bangalore and Pune, where the Showtec fixtures were used on stage. The tour was led by production company WMS Online and the lighting inventory suppliers were Star Dimensions India Pvt and J Davies Pro Sound and Lighting. Naveen Deshpande describes the Sho
Sweden - Woodlite Sweden AB, a lighting and stage equipment rental company with offices in Karlstad and Stockholm, has been among the first firms to invest in the Claypaky Xtylos. Last year, they took delivery of 200 Claypaky Xtylos fixtures, the Claypaky moving head light with a laser light source. “For the last several years we have enjoyed a good relationship with Claypaky and their Swedish distributor, Interlite,” says Woodlite CEO, Magnus Jansson. “Niclas Arvidsson, who runs Interlite, is very proactive in introducing us to new fixtures, especially those that have great potential. We considered buying some Xtylos fixtures, but then we were approached by Ampco Flashlight, a significant client of ours in The Netherlands with a request for 200 Xtylos for a major upcoming event in 2020. Everything was paused due to COVID-19 until the beginning of 2021, but at that t
UK - The joys of lighting pantomime are many. High on that list is the opportunity it affords a designer to unfurl a rainbow of colours and transform the stage into a playland that delights actors and audiences alike. Johanna Town, award-winning designer and chair of the ALPD, notes: “Panto is all about being bold with colour. It also has some big traditions of happy good fairy and wicked bad fairy, so it’s a lot of fun to reflect this in colour by doing things like making dramatic transitions, such as going from golden rich pinks, to menacing magentas and greens.” Town, who has worked at leading theatres throughout the world, got to spread her colour-rendering wings recently when she lit a panto production of Beauty and the Beast at Theatre Clwyd in Mold, Flintshire. Working with a collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures, she impishly mixed bold prim
Belgium - The high-profile Belgian Golden Shoe Awards, produced by DPG Media and Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN), is a prize given to the Belgian First Division A’s best male and female football players based on performance over the preceding year. Broadcast live on the national television channel VTM, this year for the first time, the lighting design was taken by Thomas Boets of LDP. Thomas made sure he scored plenty of aesthetic goals with the choice of lighting fixtures, which included 162 Robe moving lights installed at the Avenue venue, Antwerp Expo Centre, right in the heart of Belgian port city, where the 50 Robe T1 Profile, 60 LEDBeam 150s, 40 Pointes and 12 Spiiders were supplied together with other lighting kit plus all the audio and video production by rental company, Lust for Live. Thomas worked closely with creative director Steven Segers and producers S
Japan - Tempest has helped to produce an eye-catching projection mapping installation at Kumamoto Station. At Aso Caldera Hike near the busy station, visitors were able to walk through the representation of a circular caldera - a large volcanic crater - and experience a spectacular show of light and imagery in a relaxation spot in the city. A custom Tempest Cyclone outdoor projector enclosure installed high up on a nearby building balcony protects a Barco UDX-4K32 projector with a Dynamic Projection Institute Mirror Head, enabling mapping coverage of the entire caldera. The project was carried out S.C.Alliance, with technical direction from Bassdrum. S.C.Alliance has used Tempest outdoor enclosures successfully for several years in a variety of installations, and the Cyclone enclosure was supplied by Tempest’s Tokyo-based distributor TSJ. “At the ISE exhibition, we
Austria - Earlier this year, Viennese BMS Production Group, a client of German Follow-Me partner LMP, was responsible for the technical production of the live ORF broadcast from holiday village Kirchleitn Kleinwild in St. Oswald. “Since we had already covered the stage situation with a Follow-Me 3D TWO system in summer 2021, we decided to integrate the entire site into the system in winter 2022,” explains Fritz Staudinger, managing director of BMS. “We installed the camera on the top floor of an adjacent building, protected from the weather, so that we could capture the entire area, including the open-air stage.” Director Fabienne Pinter made good use of the newly created 360° situation. In addition to the classic open-air stage, that the Follow-Me 3D system was originally based on, new viewing angles and performance areas were introduced throughout the locat
USA - AMPD Lighting and Audio Visual in Spokane, Washington has purchased 24 Ayrton Diablo-S profile luminaires and a grandMA3 light console to add to the company’s rental inventory. AMPD Lighting and Audio Visual offers high-end production, rental, sales and installation services to a wide range of markets in the Pacific Northwest. The company’s investment in the Diablo fixtures and grandMA3 light has been paying dividends since the products arrived. ACT Entertainment exclusively distributes both brands in the US. “We saw the Diablos at a trade show and had our eyes on them for a while,” says Justin Haas, owner of AMPD Lighting and Audio Visual. “They checked a lot of boxes for us: a compact and lightweight form factor that can fit in cars; an easy-to-navigate menu; great output; a full feature set, including framing shutters. Plus, they have a low cost of o
France - Comedian Maxime Gasteuil’s show Arrive en Ville is playing to sold out houses and is now the subject of an Amazon Prime programme. The show is more a comedic narrative than a standup routine, as it contrasts Gasteuil’s life in his hometown, with its historic Romanesque churches and famous vineyards, to the fast pace of 21st century Paris. Helping this entertaining narrative unfold is a richly textured theatrically flavoured lighting design by the G!theimagineers team of Vincent Rautureau and Andreas Monschauer that was powered by a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M console. Involving close to 300 fixtures and 50 universes when it debuted at Casino de Paris for nine sold out shows, which were recorded for the Amazon Prime, Arrive en Ville reflects the various situations, humorous and thought provoking, that Gasteuil finds himself in on his cultura
Italy - The new Harley Davidson Bergamo building extends 2,000sq.m, with showrooms, offices, rental spaces, and a customer service shop. The style of the new structure includes architectural elements that combine steel details with wooden elements, giving it an exceptionally bright atmosphere. The new headquarters building also features a spacious relaxation area that is available to its customers. Shared spaces and the showroom feature new RCF audio systems, with over 20 high-power speakers installed in the ceiling. All speakers, part of the RCF Business Music Series, are two-way wooden cabinets with 10-inch woofers in white, perfectly discreet, and suitable for the style of the environment. “A brand like Harley Davidson trusts RCF when it comes to power and acoustic detail,” comments Yuri Casi, RCF Installed Sound Italy sales manager. “With our range of options
USA - The Seattle Space Needles’s New Year’s Eve fireworks and light show is arguably the most notable NYE celebration on the West Coast. This year, in spite of a recently-upgraded lighting system, organisers called upon Illuminate Production Services (IPS) and Elation Professional products to once again illuminate the legendary NYE show. IPS were the first worldwide to debut Elation’s new Proteus Excalibur beam moving head as part of a larger Elation lighting package and were excited for the opportunity. “We received the first 12 units in the country and put them to use two days later,” says IPS president, Rick Franke. “Supply chain issues caused it to be a close connection between product arrival, QC and deployment but Eric Loader and his team at Elation made it happen. We could not ask for a better partner.” After two years of cancellations - high win
UK - Christie's RGB pure laser projector D4K40-RGB has been installed at the Legoland Windsor Resort, the company has reported. The Christie D4K40-RGB is a key part of the technology set-up for the resort’s newest attraction, The Flight of the Sky Lion. The Flight of the Sky Lion is billed as the UK’s first ‘flying theatre’ ride and is the main attraction in Legoland’s new £20m imaginary land Mythica: World of Mythical Creatures. Inspired by the ideas of children, the focal point is the Sky Lion that is created out of 685,530 Lego bricks. The ride itself stands 25m tall and visitors are transported below the Sky Lion’s wing to Mythica, where Lego creatures, such as the two-headed Hydra and Fire and Ice Bird come to life. The adventure is projected onto a 20m high concave screen, and the gondola, in which the audience sits, is capable o
USA - ESTA has released six documents for public review on the TSP website. The publications are free to download and read, with comments due by 21 March. E1.26, Entertainment Technology - Recommended Testing Methods and Values for Shock Absorption of Floors Used in Live Performance Venues sets out the energy absorption requirements for floors in venues used for live performances, and the methods for testing them. This document is to be used in conjunction with all applicable local building codes and requirements. The existing American National Standard is being considered for reaffirmation. E1.36, Model Procedure for Permitting the Use of Tungsten-Halogen Incandescent Lamps and Stage and Studio Luminaires in Vendor Exhibit Booths in Convention
Belgium - ChamSys has grown its business in Benelux in recent years, with more programmers and designers choosing the company’s products for festivals like Reverze, as well as at clubs and on tours. In response to this demand, the company has joined forces with AVL, its long-time distributor in the region, to form ChamSys Benelux. The ChamSys product line is now available for sale in Belgium directly from the company’s affiliate, Chauvet Europe BVBA (ChamSys Benelux). In the Netherlands, ChamSys will continue to be distributed by Aukes Theatretechniek, with the support of ChamSys Benelux behind them. Industry figure Luc Buytaert of AVL has joined ChamSys Benelux and will be the primary contact point for the company in the region.
The Netherlands - Utrecht’s majestic TivoliVredenburg music complex hosted a live session by celebrated Dutch musician Niels Broos recently, with an effects-rich lighting design by Jolijn van Iersel using the features of Vari-Lite VL5LED Wash, VL10 Beamwash and VL6500 WASH luminaires from Signify. Niels Broos’ performance saw renditions of some of his biggest hits as well as improvised, immersive sound design pieces. It was part of the Gaudeamus festival – staged for young music pioneers – and was streamed to fans. “Niels wanted something special for the show, so we tried to look for some interesting new ways to light his performance,” says LD Jolijn van Iersel, who is also a lighting technician at TivoliVredenburg. “The VL5LED WASH and its LED ring gave us the visual extra we were looking for. It was able to not only be a fixture, but also create a déco
Singapore - For the second consecutive year Singapore welcomed the new year with Shine a Light, an inspirational light display that illuminated the Marina Bay skyline and this year featured 60 Claypaky Mythos 2 spot and beam lights arrayed in a circular formation around The Promontory. Shine a Light was part of the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown 2022 presented by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in support of the Singapore Together movement. It is also a collaboration with local philanthropic organisation The Majurity Trust to raise funds for people struggling in the community. The light display represented strength in diversity as Singaporeans supported one another during the pandemic. It also shone the spotlight on frontline workers, ground-up groups and charities meeting the needs of communities during these difficult times. Each week in
Poland - As hip-hop group PRO8L3M returned to the stage last December, the Prolights Astra Wash7PixIP and Astra Wash19Pix made their arena debut at the COS Torwar in Warsaw. The production was supervised by lighting studio Źle i Tanio, who usually deal with highly complex productions. The project included fixtures including the Sunblast 3000FC, the Astra Wash19Pix and Astra Wash7PixIP. “We knew these were solid fixtures,” explains the team from ŹiT, adding: “We used the 19Pix as the main wash on stage, sometimes using it also as a beam thanks to its large zoom range and high output. We also used the pixel ring as a standalone effect during some blackouts.” The 7PixIP fixtures were placed on each side of the stage to create beam and colour effects. “We were surprised by their performance as well as the speed of movement,” says ŹiT. “It is a relati
