USA - Immersive experience experts PixMob scored with both football and music fans alike at the Super Bowl LV Halftime Show featuring a performance by R&B star The Weeknd at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Following on the heels of PixMob’s success lighting up last year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show - which featured Jennifer Lopez and Shakira and drew over 104m viewers - PixMob were tapped once more (their third time overall) to provide an epic game-day experience. Employing over 22,500 LED wristbands for live audience members (and some 30,000 adapted LEDs for the cardboard cut-out ones), 500 ‘flares’ (ultra-powerful LEDs) for the performers on the field, 75 LED masks, and 150 ‘light-up eyes’ (on face shields) for the choir, PixMob demonstrated their ability to turn audiences into part of the show while creating a pulsating, colourful and entranci
UK - Distro Design has been working with long-standing customer BBC Studioworks to upgrade the dimming system for Studio D at BBC Elstree Centre. BBC Studioworks selected Distro Design’s most advanced dimming system for the project, which features GEN VI lighting controls from LSC Control Systems. This technology provides greater flexibility for the user. A permanent 400A Powerlock output panel, with variable and switchable RCD and rotary 400A MCCB, was designed by Distro Design for the initial installation to provide a new, clean power supply to the six dimmer racks on the gantry. Over two kilometres of new cables were supplied, with various connectors, from the incoming supply, via the dimmers right out to the lighting fixtures. The cables were built to BBC Studioworks’ exact specification by Distro Design. The system features 4 x 24 ways of LSC C
Mexico - Lighting designer Delher López harnessed the power of 50 Claypaky Sharpy Plus fixtures to create striking spot/beam lighting effects for a TD Bank commercial for the Mexico City region. An industry veteran with more than 19 years’ experience in lighting design, López has many live music credits, including the Juanes’ Mis Planes son Amarte tour, Maria Leon’s El Sargentour and Unbreakabletour and DLD’s Primary and Future tour. For the TD Bank spot, López chose a 50 Sharpy Plus to meet the request of the director and DP for lighting effects that gave depth and spot/beam looks to a minimalist set. He tested Sharpy Plus for their focus and functionality before making his pick. López says he selected Sharpy Plus “for their versatility, speed, solid colors, and uniform projection as well as their constant, stable light temperature. They could wor
New Zealand - Music fans in New Zealand kicked off their 2020-21 summer festival season with the Downtown Shakedown event in Wellington where a diverse line-up included Fat Freddy’s Drop and rising star singer-songwriter Benee who joined popular favourites L.A.B., Ladi6, Sola Rosa and Sunshine Sound System to welcome everyone to Waitangi Park. The new event – which celebrated being able to stage live music shows again due to New Zealand’s containment of Coronavirus – was organised by Precision Live which is run by Andrew Tuck who also produces Homegrown, one the country’s major annual music festivals. Stage lighting, rigging and site power was supplied by Wellington-based rental company Grouse Lighting, project-managed for them by Steve Sanders, and Robe moving lights were at the core of the production lighting system. The 350sq.m of stage space (incl
UK - Artists including Sir Elton John and Radiohead are putting pressure on the government to resolve the problems around post-Brexit EU touring. UK artists will face red tape and fees for visas to play in some EU countries. Sir Elton John told The Guardian: "Either the Brexit negotiators didn't care about musicians, or didn't think about them, or weren't prepared." But Culture Minister Caroline Dinenage said the government had "pushed" for a solution and the door was still "open". She told MPs on Monday that the government had put forward a "very straightforward" plan to allow musicians to travel without work permits, drafted "in consultation with experts from the UK to creative sectors". She added: "Quite simply the EU rejected this proposal." Brussels has previously argued the opposite, saying it was in fact the UK that turned down its offer. Mean
UK - LSi is sad to report the passing of respected lighting designer Jon Pope earlier this month. Having worked in rock’n’roll and corporate lighting, in recent years Jon was well-known for his work lighting productions for simultaneous live and TV audiences, including Crufts and the Windsor and Olympia horse shows. He leaves behind wife Barbara, daughter Sam and son Lewis. Jon’s son Lewis has issued the following statement: “Dear friends and colleagues, it is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of my father, Jon Pope. He passed on Wednesday evening after a sudden and catastrophic brain haemorrhage. His family were able to be at his side until he passed. “He was such a big man, not just in terms of stature but kindness and talent too, that there is now a great void left in all of our hearts. We know that he impacted many people
Europe - Creative Technology (CT) UK has announced the formalisation of its new dedicated systems integration team for the UK and European integration market. This long-term planned expansion that CT UK have been working towards over the last few years was accelerated by the rapid growth in customer demand for support in implementing permanent solutions and strengthened with the acquisition of Ion Solutions (now CT Ireland) back in 2019, says the company. Graeme Bunyan and Jack Strong are joining the CT team. As director of technology, Graeme led the design development and technology strategy on major international projects including the UAE Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015 and the Opportunity Pavilion at Dubai Expo 2020, V&A Dundee (2019) to name just a few. “Joining CT is an opportunity of a lifetime,” says Bunyan. “I am looking forward to working with so
USA - Shoreline City Church (SCC) held a fully social distanced and masked Covid-safe Christmas Eve service and celebration at the American Airlines Center (AAC) in Dallas which featured a diversity of performances by multiple artists and a flurry of different vocalists from the church, all backed by their house band. The church asked Josh Beard and Jacob Vanvlymen from Houston, Texas-based production design specialist Visual Edge to create a memorable production design. They chose Robe BMFL moving lights – a mix of BMFL Blades, BMFL WashBeams and BMFL FollowSpots – to be at the core of the lighting rig. Visual Edge was initially asked to present some design ideas which would incorporate lighting and video by SCC’s technical director Jeremy Hix. Three concepts were presented and one selected in which automation was also central to the design. Taki
UK - SLX, specialist technical supplier to theatres, touring productions, broadcast and live events, worked alongside young artist, Cameron Flynn - a member of New Adventures dance company on tour with Matthew Bourne’s production of The Red Shoes until the pandemic hit – as he created a digital performance that would speak to the challenges faced by artists nationwide. The performance, titled Unskilled, is available to watch online. Cameron says: “I was determined to use this time to do something meaningful. I didn’t want to moan about it but I wanted to convey a world where dance, performance and theatre didn’t exist yet all around were individuals trying to fit uncomfortably into other jobs, with their performative skill invisible and dreams to perform bursting to get out of them. It certainly has parallels
UK - On 21 April 2007, The Grove Theatre in Dunstable held its opening gala hosted by actor Brian Blessed. The following day, its first show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, began a one-week run. From that point on, the 750-seat venue looked like it would never slow down, staging over 5,000 shows and events in a 13-year period. Then the COVID-19 pandemic brought its busy schedule to an abrupt halt. Although the theatre had to close its doors to the public during the lockdown, activity within its walls didn’t stop. With the popular venue empty, its technical director Richard Shrubb and his team were more readily able to upgrade its lighting rig by adding 16 of the new Chauvet Professional Force series fixtures supplied by its long-time vendor 10 out of 10 Productions. “Grove Theatre was opened well over a decade ago, and was still using a sizeab
World - Following the postponement of Showlight 2021 which had been set to take place this May in Fontainebleau, France, its organisers have announced that a one-day Virtual Showlight will be held in its place “as a temporary interlude”. The live online event will take place on Tuesday 25 May 2021 between the hours of 15.00 – 23.00 BST. The date coincides with the final day of the original event and the time has been chosen to best accommodate a global audience. Virtual Showlight will host an online presentation of papers, each up to 30 minutes in length, from international keynote speakers, plus a live Panel Discussion. Q&A sessions will follow each paper with delegates able to message their questions via the chairperson. The remainder of the time will stay true to the spirit of Showlight with scheduled breaks between sessions providing opportunities for d
USA - Billy Bob’s bills itself as ‘the world’s largest honky tonk’. The former World War II airplane factory in Fort Worth’s Stockyard District, covers over 100,000sq.ft, features a 2,000sq.ft dance floor, 20-acre parking lot and 30 bar stations. This information is shared in an introductory video near the venue’s entrance narrated by George Strait, one of the many superstars who has performed at this Goliath of a club. Despite its massive size and stellar pedigree, the stage at Billy Bob’s is relatively small. Mason Felps was aware of this “limitation” when he signed on to design two recent socially distant concerts at the club for Josh Turner. He was able to meet this challenge and create big looks for the chart-topping country artist with help from the Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 Spot. “This is a great venue, and it’s an honour to work
UK - A.C. Special Projects (AC-SP) supplied lighting and control for a feature within the new Silverstone Experience, which is an educational 4000m visitor attraction, overlooking the Silverstone racetrack. The project to create an educational centre for British motor sport began in 2012 with the charitable mission of creating a museum to exhibit and preserve precious motor racing artefacts, archives and collections. The seven-year project of turning a former Second World War RAF hangar into an impressive experience for motor sport enthusiasts cost in excess of £20m and required multiple teams of specialists to pull it all together. AC-SP was approached by M4 Electrical and worked alongside them and designers Max Fordham to deliver a range of lighting and control solutions, including for a bespoke cut out replica of the historic Silverstone track to run at high level
Belgium - Creative lighting and multimedia design specialist Painting with Light (PWL) was commissioned by the city of Leuven to imagine and realise an eye-catching, living, breathing light artwork to tie in with popular Belgian Radio station StuBru (Studio Brussel)’s 2020 De Warmste Week (Music for Life). Usually, a highly visible charity fundraising extravaganza, this year’s De Warmste Week concept was reinvented and presented in a more subtle format due to pandemic restrictions. While the city of Leuven broadcast StuBru from 20 ‘warm places’ around the town for this week, the light art display became a visual focal point that tied in with this action. The designated site for the lighting feature was the front of Leuven’s Catholic University Library. The building features neo-Flemish-Renaissance architecture and holds over 4m books and manuscripts.
Cyprus - A virtual charity event recently took place on the island of Cyprus to help families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Featuring local DJs and performers, United We Can was filmed on top of one of the tallest buildings in the city of Limassol. A lighting rig comprised exclusively of ADJ fixtures was used to not only illuminate the performers, but to fill the whole sky above the city. Cyprus relies heavily on tourism to fuel its economy, which means that it has been seriously impacted by COVID-19, resulting in many families struggling to pay their bills and feed their children. In direct response to this situation, the United We Can fundraising livestream took place last Friday evening (29 January), which not only collected donations for those in need but also provided entertainment for a community under strict lockdown measures. Broadcast by Cyp
USA - When the new Biden-Harris administration asked New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander to play You Get What You Give at their 20 January virtual Parade Across America, producers ESM Productions and A/V provider Synergetic stepped in to help make it happen. “Scott Mirkin, president & CEO of ESM Productions, had seen our new studio streaming space and called just a few days before the Inauguration as he thought the stage would be a good setting for the New Radicals performance,” comments Jason Weldon, president and CEO at Synergetic. “When he came in to refresh his memory, as soon as he walked in he said he knew the space would be perfect.” Last summer, Synergetic converted a portion of their warehouse in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, to a professional studio for live streaming complete with a full Elation Professional lighting system. As the tra
USA - Utah-based tenor trio Gentri recently performed in a socially distant livestreamed concert at Salt Lake City’s Maverik Centre, where Nicolas ‘Murph’ Murphy supported their evocative cinematic-like performance with an artful blend of bold light and shadows. Relying on sharply focused beams and a variety of light angles, Murphy sculpted the three tenors on stages, amplifying their charismatic qualities. He also endowed the stage with greater depth by balancing bold swaths of light with shadows, and mixing reds and greens with vivid ambers, blues and other hues. Murphy, the owner of Murphy’s Production Services, pre-programmed this 11-universe, 82-fixture show, which he ran on his MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console, in a few hours with help from his ChamSys MagicVis software. “The group’s production manager is an old high school friend of mine,” he sa
South Africa - The South African State Theatre in Pretoria’s 550 seat Drama Stage hosted both the rounds and finale of the 2020 edition of Idols SA, complete with a lighting design by Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier and technical production delivered by Dream Sets for SIC Entertainment. This, the sixteenth series of Idols SA was directed by Gavin Wratten and broadcast on the Mzansi Magic network. The show would usually have shifted to the 3000 capacity Carnival City Big Top Arena in Johannesburg for the finale, however this time, due to COVID-19 restrictions, everything remained at the State Theatre, and Josh drew on some imaginative and original lighting techniques to keep all the broadcasts looking fresh, interesting, and spectacular. He devised a selection of special visual treatments, some of which were based around utilising Astera Titan Tubes which Josh
UK - ITV’s This Morning is one of the longest running daytime programmes on British television. The show is broadcast from Television Centre in White City, West London, and is hosted by some of the UK’s leading presenters. Airing live, This Morning features a wide spectrum of topical material, from current affairs to showbiz, health, style and beauty, food, gardening and more. The show attracts around one million viewers per day, and this year reached its highest ever audience share of just under 30% of viewing. During the first few weeks of December, the show featured a number of segments broadcast from outside locations at Television Centre. Head of Lighting for ITV Daytime, Matt Carter and his team used ETC fos/4 Panel lights (launched early in 2020) for the first time and were very impressed. He comments: “We had two 24 x 24 size with the Daylig
China - Hundreds of GLP’s JDC1 hybrid strobes were deployed by lighting designers Mat Stovall and Trevor Stirlin Burk at the new Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai for the League of Legends World Championship 2020 Finals - the pinnacle of the eSports community and the concluding event of the season. Organised by Riot Games and ConCom Inc, the event took place on a massive scale. ‘The Worlds’ was broadcast in 16 languages and across 21 platforms setting a new record; an indicator of eSports’ increasing appeal. The live event saw 888 active JDC1 heads in use - corresponding to a lucky number in Chinese numerology. All pieces were sourced from Christie Lites, and were supplied via main contractors, CT Asia Pacific. Christie Lites’ account executive was Robert Roth, and senior project manager was Bobby Braccia; both worked closely with CT Shanghai’s Aaron Ross
UK - The popular children’s Christmas show at Salisbury’s Salberg Theatre went ahead thanks to the efforts of the Wiltshire Creative team. Moving the holiday production from its usual 149-seat studio to the 517-seat Salisbury Playhouse Main Theatre, and cleverly rearranging the audience area, the creatives at Wiltshire were able to offer local youngsters the chance to enjoy this yuletide tradition in comfort and safety as they staged a production of Little Robin Redbreast. “Because of the devastating effect of COVID-19, we were unable to put on our usual pantomime,” said Matt Bird, senior lighting technician at Wiltshire Creative. “However, we were determined to provide families with entertainment this year in a socially distant and safe fashion, so we moved to the larger space and limited seating to 148.” The move to the Salisbury Playhouse Ma
USA - Nautilus Entertainment Design, Inc. (NED) has announced that after 30 years in business, the company founders Laura and Jim Tetlow, are selling their stock to the company ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan.) With this sale, the company will become 100% employee-owned. Jim Tetlow will continue in a consultancy role as principal consultant and lighting designer for select shows and projects in an effort to provide NED’s clients with a multi-year seamless transition. Jim Tetlow comments, “When we started the business 30 years ago, our focus was on lighting design for TV and live events. At that time, it never occurred to us that we would expand into so many more disciplines including architectural lighting design, A/V system design, and theatre consulting. One of our proudest achievements is the fact that we have built a team of professionals that excel in their wor
UK - If you’ve ever fancied owning an industry-relevant personalised number plate, now’s your chance! The plate, which reads A1 DMX is currently owned by a prominent lighting director, who would prefer to remain anonymous. It has been kindly donated to LSi to be auctioned in order to raise funds for the #WeMakeEvents campaign. The LD says: “Some of us working in TV and film studios are fortunate enough to have kept some of our work since the COVID pandemic closed the majority of our industry last March. So many of our friends and colleagues, particularly in music, events and theatre, haven’t had any work at all during that time and have had little or no support from the government.” “I would like to try to help out in a small way. I know many reading this in LSi will have homes and offices cluttered with old equipment and industry memorabilia. Some
USA/China - The World Championship (Worlds) is the crowning event of Riot Games’ League of Legends. Last year, like many other productions, the world’s most watched esports event migrated to the virtual realm and was broadcast live for over 240 hours using the most advanced and pioneering XR (Extended Reality) and MR (Mixed Reality) technologies, relying heavily on Brompton’s Tessera 4K SX40 LED processors to ensure quality image reproduction on its LED video set. League of Legends tournaments have traditionally featured a host country, with teams touring different cities for each round of the games. However, with the challenges posed for both travel and live audiences, Possible Productions, a creative developer agency that has been working with Riot Games since 2016, looked for a solution that would give a sense of evolution to the tournament while broadcasting the e
