France - The Arlette Gruss Circus is well known for its love of technology and reinvention, constantly keeping their shows fresh. This year, when they changed up their old Big Top for a new model, they embraced a new Robe RoboSpot system. Lighting designer Arthur Oudin had created a new lighting scheme for the circus in January after receiving a brief from director Gilbert Gruss and technical director Julien Lhomme. With the new Big Top, he adapted the lighting design to the new truss points and integrated the RoboSpots. Arlette Gruss Circus opted for a radically different tent, Le Privilége, designed by Gilbert and Julien and manufactured by Italian canvas specialist F. Greco SRL with no inner pole. This allows a completely enhanced visual experience for the audience with an unhindered 360-degree view. The Big Top is effectively anchored in place by its o
World - Lighting designer Ben Inskip is using the new Vista 3 by Chroma-Q lighting & media control system to deliver his dynamic design for fast-rising British rock band, Don Broco's current international tour. Following the release of the album, Technology, the group has been touring prolifically for the past year. This has included a sold-out date at London's Alexandra Palace and other headline shows across Europe; festival gigs at Reading & Leeds and the Vans Warped Tour; and high-profile support slots on massive arena shows in Europe and the US for Thirty Seconds to Mars and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park. A Vista user for the past six or so years, Inskip has been impressed by the platform's simple approach to lighting control whilst still enabling programming of complex shows. As well as upgrading his Don Broco core lighting design of bright and
UK - Celebrating the world of entertainment, the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards recognises some of the UK’s unsung heroes alongside stars of music, sport and screen. The live event, held at the SSE Wembley Arena, fronted by Greg James, Mollie King and Maya Jama, featured a host of acts including Little Mix, 5 Seconds of Summer and Sigrid. Working alongside gaffer Richard Gorrod and PRG, LED Creative assisted in building the vast ‘neon’ archways and circular truss system that spanned the areas above both the stage and the audience. The installation allowed the team to create a truly immersive viewer experience that extended beyond the main performance stage to fill the entire venue with a spectacular array of shape and movement. LED Creative also provided a range of proprietary products, including the company’s Pulse Wands and Sigma Fairground fixtures paired with BYT
South Africa - In Die Kollig (Afrikaans for In the Spotlight) is a new TV music show in South Africa produced by one of the country’s most famous TV personalities, singer and entertainer Johan Stemmet, recently broadcast on SABC 2. The first series’ episodes were produced by Stemburg TV and recorded at the Urban Brew Studios at Randburg Waterfront, and the show was creatively lit by Ryan Lombard, head of lighting at Blond Productions, using around 100 Robe moving lights and other fixtures. All the lighting and video equipment was supplied by Blond Productions. Each show featured a local music artist whose story was revealed thorough a series of 12 songs, which included a tribute, a ‘legend’ song, a duo, and other variants. The intense seven-day shoot schedule entailed recording two episodes per day, so Ryan had to light 24 songs - each one l
Europe - Lighting and production designer Mitchell Schellenger has been using an Elation lighting rig to put a mark on the Imagine Dragons worldwide Evolve tour throughout 2018. Schellenger, who joined the tour early in 2018 in time for the first European leg, has been lighting several legs of the tour using Platinum Beam 5R Extreme moving heads, ZW19 LED wash lights, and Protron 3K Color strobes supplied by Christie Lites. Inspired by artist Beeple’s colourful Evolve album art, Schellenger’s setup features eight angled video screens of varying sizes, five high res upstage and three blow-through screens on the floor. Lined vertically along the sides of the upstage video screens, on finger trusses, on wings and on a free-standing B-stage used for an acoustic set are Platinum Beam 5R Extremes, which Schellenger calls the workhorse of the gear. “They are a g
Europe - Walking with Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular (read report in LSi November) is a $20m production based on the award-winning TV programme of the same name. The show benefits from major improvements to animatronics, which have enabled the life-like dinosaurs to 'eat' and 'breathe' - and live arena experience has already been seen by over nine million people in more than 250 cities globally. Experience and expert technical knowledge has been essential in executing the brief, and South Wales-based Sonalyst was called upon to deliver. The audio, lighting, BlackTrax system and comms for the production were all provided by Sonalyst. Project manager George Pakenham explains: “Being a
USA - The pop-up Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) continues its celebrated tour across the nation, with locations such as Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles all getting a glimpse at this special attraction. Production company Envizion provided the lighting for the travelling museum, with their lighting designer Will Chandler choosing the impression X4 atom as one of the key fixtures for the lighting of the exhibit. “With the locations only being temporary, and with the exhibits inside each one continually changing, it's been important to have fixtures on hand that are adaptable,” Chandler said. And the X4 atom is precisely that; with its small size and powerful capabilities the fixture lends itself perfectly to this format. One of the key aspects behind the choice of the X4 atom was the importance of the museum being camera friendly. Chandler made good use of the
Indonesia - The 2018 Asian Games Opening Ceremony, staged in Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Main Stadium, saw LD Yves Aucoin to deliver an impressive lighting design. The OC of Asia’s largest sporting event featured a general cast of around 4000, produced by Scott Givens and Libby Hyland working with Indonesian creative director Wishnutama Kusubandio. Staging direction was by Michael Pena working with Indonesian choreographers Denny Malik and Eko Supriyanto, and the breathtakingly visual extravaganza was produced by live event specialists FiveCurrents. Montreal based LD Aucoin specified 270 x Robe BMFLs to be a major part of the lighting rig. “It was BMFLs or BMFLs,” he says. “They were the only fixture option for a selection of key positions around the venue.” These high-powered fixtures once again proved their ruggedness and reliability as
Sweden - Each year in October, the Swedish town of Alingsås near Gothenburg turns into a fun lighting event, attracting more than 80,000 visitors from around the world. For this year’s Lights in Alingsås, six groups of talented lighting and electrical students created beautiful light installations under the professional guidance from seven established lighting designers using over 50 fixtures from SGM Light. The almost 400-year-old Swedish town Alingsås started off mainly as an iron trade city, which later turned into a city for the textile industry. In the city river, the manufacturers would wash out the colour of the textiles, giving the name for the first site for this year’s Lights in Alingsås, Färgeribron (Dyers’ bridge). Led by Nielsen and van der Velden, this team focused on the visible energy from the water as well as the communa
Canada - Lighting designer Karl Gaudreau has added a large complement of Claypaky fixtures to the lighting at Bell Centre for the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens. Gaudreau selected Claypaky SharBar advanced moving LED bars, Axcor Profile 900 LED spots and Axcor Beam 300s for the arena. Montreal’s Bell Centre is consistently one of the busiest arenas in the world. It is the largest arena capacity to regularly host an NHL team, the Montreal Canadiens who make their home at the downtown venue. “I wanted to increase the fan experience and be able to create different lighting effects during the games as well as for rock ’n roll shows,” says Gaudreau. “The design is mostly based on audience lighting that delivers a true 360º experience.” The lighting designer notes that when adding new lights to the arena, “the idea was to be fully green by using only LED fix
USA - Once counted among the South’s leading cinemas, the Miller Theatre in Augusta had sat boarded up and empty for over thirty years, until being reborn as a community performing arts centre in January with a sold-out gala featuring Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster performing with the Augusta Symphony. The theatre had undergone a $23m makeover. To serve the community that saved it, the theatre features a diverse mix of shows that offers ballet one week, and kick boxing the next, with shows by stars like Chris Isaak and George Thorogood thrown in for good measure. Helping the theatre support this eclectic mix of talent is a robust new lighting rig anchored by Chauvet Professional Rogue and Ovation fixtures. “I’ve been a big fan of Chauvet fixtures ever since I learned about the line from my friend John Berrett, who I respect a great deal as a lighting designer,
USA - Last year, LiteGear designated their LiteMat+ fixture to participate in the Behind the Scenes Pledge-a-Product Programme which resulted in a generous donation of $7,500. This year, owners Al DeMayo and Mike Bauman decided to take their support to the next level and designated sales of all LiteMat fixtures to benefit the charity. Recently, they presented a cheque for $15,000 to members of the Behind the Scenes Board of Directors, representing an incredible commitment by the company, its employees and its customers to care for their colleagues who are seriously ill or injured. On presenting the cheque, LiteGear CEO, Al DeMayo, states: “With decades of experience working in the business, my partner Mike and I have worked with lots of great filmmakers. We are happy to know the Behind the Scenes charity is behind-the-technicians should they need it.” Lori R
USA - For residents of the historic Buckeye-Shaker neighbourhood, the concerts that take place on the sprawling grounds of St. Luke’s Manor offer more than a chance to enjoy good music, they also serve as a celebration of their community’s rebirth. The impressive building that provides an emblematic backdrop to the concert series had stood empty and neglected for 14 years after the hospital that originally occupied it closed its doors in 1999. When the five-story structure reopened after extensive renovations in 2013 as a multi-use facility, it served as a catalyst for a neighbourhood-wide renaissance. Designer Brent Schmidt of B Productions reflected this hopeful spirit and accented St. Luke’s Manor’s memorable architectural features, when he illuminated the building in an array of colours. Helping him in this endeavour were 24 Freedom Par Quad-4 IP and six I
UK - Aurora Lighting supported lighting designer Gurdip Mahal and gaffer James Tinsley for the 2018 Stand Up to Cancer live show. Hosted by Alan Carr, Maya Jama and Adam Hills in front of an audience at Central Methodist Hall, Westminster, the evening featured appearances from John Legend, Liam Gallagher, Little Mix, Michael Bublé and James Corden taking part in celebrity versions of some of Channel 4’s most popular shows to help build awareness of the fight against cancer. To help set the stage for the show, Aurora provided a mix of automated fixtures, tungsten and LED which the crew used to great effect, creating a stylish contemporary look that contrasted perfectly against the grandiose interior of the venue. Martin MAC Auras delivered intense colour washes to the performance areas, matched with ProLights Smartbat and SGM P5 LED uplighters plus GLP X4 Bar20
USA/Columbia - Columbian interdisciplinary architectural and events company Sonic Design recently designed and built a multi-sensory Art Car, Jaguara - a project that portrays a jaguar emerging from the Amazon River. The scheme, which was presented this summer at Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, incorporated Elation Cuepix 16 IP LED matrix panels in the design to help spread its environmental message. Sonic Design’s director, Leo Vilar, comments: “Through this artful celebration of the jaguar, we want to raise awareness about the vulnerability of the main refuge of the jaguar, the Amazon Rainforest. “Jaguara is inspired by the symbolism and powerful spirit of the jaguar, which represents, for most ancestral American tribes, the connecting force between the world of gods and the world of men. In a time where our trends of living are disrupti
UK - On 6 November (Tuesday), A.C. Entertainment Technologies’ specialist film & TV sales team will be showcasing its broadcast lighting solutions at the KitPlus show, MediaCityUK Studios, Manchester. Chroma-Q’s Studio Force II high intensity tuneable white (2,800K - 6,500K) wash light will be shown for the first time. The fixture is specifically designed for broadcast and film applications. Studio Force II complements the Cine Gear Expo award-winning Chroma-Q Space Force tuneable white (2,800K - 6,500K) LED space light/soft light source, which has been adopted by leading television studios and specialist rental companies, including the Marjan Television Network, Aurora Lighting and Pixipixel. Quasar Science's Q-LED Crossfade Linear fixtures have the benefits of a self-ballasted variable white LED source in a compact, low profile form factor. Q-LED Crossf
UK - Tasked with providing supporting visuals for a recent theatrical run of at the Bournemouth Pavilion theatre was LD Ryan Joseph Stafford, who specified a number of Chauvet Professional Ovation E-910FC and Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures in support of his lighting concept. “A lot of the audience coming to see the show are people that know and love the classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang film, so it was important for us to recreate the feel of the original film,” comments Stafford. “To keep pace with the complex location and set changes during the show, the Ovation and Maverick combination gave us the flexibility and versatility to adjust to all manner of scenes.” Thanks to the 910FC’s full RGBA-Lime colour mixing and colour temperature pre-sets of 2800 K to 6500 K, Stafford was able to provide a number of effects on stage, including low face light from the
Estonia - The Ugala Theatre in Viljandi is one of a number of state-funded theatres and a major premium quality producing house. The most recent round of refurbishment at Ugala in 2017 resulted in a new stage machinery system for the 300-capacity main house, which also means they can now configure the space in any format. With this new versatility, they decided the time was also right for some new moving lights in the rig, and after a lot of consultation, decided on 10 x Robe DL7S Profiles and 10 x BMFL Blades. The town also has the only technical theatre training facility in Estonia which is a department of the Tartu University, and happens to have a Robe moving light rig! Mari-Riin Villemsoo is one of the venue’s four person lighting technical team, who are all also lighting designers in their own right, and she reports that having these new moving lig
USA - When two members of Swedish House Mafia - Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso - played a one-off show at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco recently, it was seen by fans as a precursor for a band reunion (along with third member, Steve Angello) in 2019. Charged with maintaining dynamic visuals, with spectacular effects throughout the performance was Sam Tozer of Vision Factory, who once again drew heavily on GLP’s catalogue for his serious ordnance. He had three key goals: to create a shape onstage that reflected the artists’ logo; to thrust the two artists out into the middle of the auditorium, and to immerse the audience in video and lighting. He succeeded spectacularly on all three. To meet Tozer’s design, Christie Lites supplied 40 of GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 battens and 58 of the JDC1 hybrid strobes, while video effects came from PRG.
USA - Originally built in 1963, the Guardian Angel Cathedral has been serving both residents and tourists in Las Vegas for more than 50 years. With a multitude of stained-glass mosaics created by world-renowned artists Isabel and Edith Piczek, the sanctuary inside is a stunning showcase of colour and architecture. Desiring an updated LED lighting system to more effectively illuminate their worship environment, the church worked with lighting consultant Bill Brennan, principal with Just Lighting, Inc., and 4Wall Entertainment who supplied the design with Gallery and Spectra Cyc 100 luminaires from Altman Lighting. “This was the first time that 4Wall had worked with the church which was originally built in the 1960’s, and it really is a Las Vegas landmark,” began Barbara Brennan, 4Wall senior account executive. “Their existing lighting system was about 10 years o
World - Foo Fighters have recently wound down their 18-month Concrete and Goldworld tour which launched back in May 2017 at BottleRock Festival in Napa Valley in support of their 9th studio album released in October 2017. The Concrete and Gold tour has played literally every size and type of venue: stadiums, arenas, amphitheatres, surprise club gigs and festival headlines, including the famous Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. “I think we’ve done somewhere around 120 shows all told,” says the band’s long-term lighting designer and director, Dan Hadley. “We even had a week in April where we did an amphitheatre followed by a stadium, followed by a festival, followed by an arena!” Foo Fighters are well known for the length and dynamism of their shows and this, often, three-hour long extravaganza is no exception. The responsibility falls to Hadley to
UK - SpotTrack, the specialist entertainment software tool for making, modifying and maintaining followspot cue sheets, is now supporting Backup, the technical entertainment charity. Since its creation eight years ago, SpotTrack has allowed lighting practitioners to give a little back while working on their latest show, with 15% of the purchase price - £6.75 - going to charity. Users have always been able to choose whether their purchase supported the lighting charity Light Relief in the UK, or Behind The Scenes in the USA. In recent times, Light Relief has evolved into Backup, which has a wider remit, offering support to those in need across all fields of entertainment technical production rather than just those working in lighting. SpotTrack now provides another way of supporting the charity, alongside the events ranging from comedy nights to kart-fests, allow
Brazil - Wireless Solution Sweden (W-DMX) has appointed Arte em Cena of São Paulo as its distributor in Brazil. Arte em Cena imports and distributes entertainment lighting fixtures from the likes of ETC, High End Systems and Chauvet. “We are extremely excited to be able to work with such a reputable company like Arte em Cena,” comments David Ferraz, international business development manager for Wireless Solution. “Brazil is an emerging market for entertainment lighting and wireless systems, and we’re excited to be working with a company with such an important market presence, and an outstanding reputation for their service and technical support.” “Wireless Solution’s products make perfect sense in our expansion plans, as we like to provide a complete solution to our customers,” adds Everthon Rosas, CEO of Arte em Cena. “The brand is already re
USA - Elation Professional has appointed Erich Meitzner as a regional sales representative for Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana. Meitzner, who hails from Kansas, has a broad knowledge of the lighting world and brings with him a wealth of real-world experience as a touring lighting designer/director for acts like Grouplove, Walk the Moon, Liz Phair, and Bleachers. John Dunn, Elation national sales manager, comments: “As an experienced touring professional, Erich brings important on-the-road insight to the position and knows what it takes to deliver a designer’s vision. He also has excellent hands-on product knowledge and is already well-acquainted with the Elation product line. He will fill an important role in helping support our dealer and customer network and we are excited to have him onboard as a valued member of the Elation team.” (Jim Evans)
