China - PR Lighting has announced a new addition to its successful IP65-rated Aqua range, which has been launched at key trade shows around the globe this year. The waterproof and dustproof Aqua 350 Beam moving head features a 350W lamp (6800K colour temperature), and thanks to its advanced optical system delivers a precise, tight and powerful 2.1° parallel beam. This makes it suitable for all outdoor situations, particularly where an outdoor searchlight and big air looks are required. The fixture is fully-featured as would be expected, and includes 12 dichroic colours (including CTO and White), two Gobo Wheels (one fixed and one rotating) and three prisms. The fixed wheel contains 16 gobos plus open and the rotating wheel 12 interchangeable gobos plus open. The three prisms offer eight-facet, 16-facet and linear, with bi-directional rotation plus CTO, Frost and Open.
UK - HSL supplied lighting, trussing and rigging equipment to the two main arenas at the 2017 Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) for event producer and artistic director Nadia Raibin and her company, The Production Team. Nadia and The Production Team have been involved with HOYS for over 20 years, bringing together the best imaginative and technical solutions. Their brief to HSL included providing theatrical lighting for a number of equestrian-based entertainment and display acts as well as lighting for the main international show-jumping competitions, working hunter and driving classes. Nadia explained that when she first decided to bring a rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere and ‘entertainment experience’ to the main International Arena – there was some trepidation from the horse fraternity! “This is the pinnacle of the horsing calendar so the idea of addin
Europe - Robert Juliat’s Lancelot followspots are joining Ed Sheeran for his 187-date world tour. Supplied by UK-based lighting hire company Lights Control Rigging (LCR), the two Lancelot followspots were specified for the tour by production designer, Mark Cunniffe, who has worked with Sheeran as lighting and production designer since the star first broke onto the music scene in 2011. Robert Juliat’s Lancelot is a 4000W HTI followspot designed for very long throw applications, with a 2°- 5° zoom and an innovative optical train that delivers an extremely flat beam and improves on the power of its smaller counterparts. It was clear Cunniffe needed a quality fixture to pick out the singer to his best advantage against the massive, video-heavy set that surrounds him. “I chose the Lancelots for a number of reasons,” says Cunniffe. “Firstly, I love the opti
USA - Canadian superstar Celine Dion’s lighting designer Yves Aucoin has added Robe’s new MegaPointe multi-purpose moving light fixtures to the rig for her popular Celine show at the Colosseum, Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. This is the first live concert show for MegaPointe in North America. The Grammy Award-winning artist plays around 70 shows a year in Las Vegas in a series of three-week stints, and tours other territories in between. Yves has worked with her since 1989, and Montreal based lighting supplier Solotech, represented by Richard Lachance and François Desjardins, has also been involved since Celine’s shows first started carrying a production. Yves jumped at the chance to add MegaPointes to the Vegas spectacle! He likes to keep the long running residency looking fresh by introducing new elements. The 4,296 capacity Colosseum was in
USA - KDKB 93.3 radio celebrated alternative music with a star-studded Dia De Los ALT show at the Mesa Amphitheatre. Featuring Top Ten alternative recording artists from around the world, like New York’s Bleachers, London’s Bishop Briggs, and Denmark’s New Politics, the event served up a nightlong smorgasbord of music done in a seemingly endless array of quirky and highly individualistic styles. John Garberson of Creative BackStage reflected this quixotic music in light as it wove its way through a free-flowing stream of creative interpretations. Aiding him in this undertaking were his assistant LDs Rita Assi and Chris Brodman, as well as a very flexible rig that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures. Key to creating this immersive visual flow were the rig’s eight Maverick MK2 Spot moving fixtures. Flown four apiece on midstage and upstage truss,
UK - The Association of Lighting Designers (ALD) has announced its 2018 sponsored student scheme is open for applications. The scheme offers students, who have not previously been members of the ALD, the opportunity to enjoy free ALD membership until the end of March 2019. Student members benefit from the increased opportunity to network with lighting and video production professionals at insightful events organised by the ALD, such as their monthly members’ socials and visits to shows and theatres. Membership provides vital interaction and connection between established figures in professional lighting and video design, and the next generation of talented designers, programmers and technicians. Member benefits for students also include complimentary copies of the ALD magazine, Focus, as well as full access to the ALD web site and the members’ own micro-site. Memb
France - L-Acoustics and French theme park Puy du Fou have signed a privileged partnership agreement, joining the Puy du Fou Club of Partners. The partnership between L-Acoustics and the Puy du Fou represents the culmination of more than 10 years of collaboration between the two organisations. The first L-Acoustics system at the Puy du Fou was installed in 2000 for the Gallo-roman Stadium. Today, the manufacturer’s sound systems are in use throughout the park, most notably in Le Dernier Panache, which featured the first permanent installation of the new L-ISA hyperrealistic immersive sound technology by L-Acoustics. “Being a member of Puy du Fou Circle of Partners gives us a unique terrain to expand our creativity,” says Christian Heil, president at L-Acoustics. “It will allow us exclusive development opportunities to continue to apply our most cutting-
The Netherlands - Elation Europe gathered lighting professionals for a PRO Theme Day, a day of seminars and discussions on relevant industry topics and technological developments. Held on 10 October at the company's European HQ in Kerkrade, the event featured various presentations including a talk by Ola Melzig, head of production for the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. Elation Europe sales & marketing manager Marc Librecht said: “Thank you to everyone who shared a sensational PRO Theme Day with us. It was really a big success and perhaps the best PRO Theme Day we’ve ever had. Ola was as informative and entertaining as ever and our guests came away with a lot of valuable knowledge. It was a full house and a fantastic day!” Participants could engage with Melzig and network with other industry colleagues. Melzig shared the ins and outs of the biggest live
USA - Felix Lighting has significantly added to its rental inventory of ProPlex devices and cables. In addition to its ProPlex IQ Two 1616 and 416 Nodes, Opto-Splitters, hundreds of Ethernet cables and ten runs of ProPlex Fibre cable, nine EZ-LANs form the heart of the California company’s state-of-the-art portable networking systems. “ProPlex makes complex show networking easier and more reliable, and our lives easier,” says Ryan Herrera, VP of business development at Felix Lighting. “ProPlex EZ-LAN is our answer for complex networking productions,” says Ryan. “We use it for our larger gigs, from the Hollywood Bowl to the Las Vegas Convention Centre, and beyond. For stadiums, festivals, or corporate ballrooms, we can run multiple networks – consoles, video, and ArtNet – over a single fibre run using EZ-LAN’s VLAN capabilities. A parallel fibre
South Africa - Robe was the moving light of choice for the second season of The Voice South Africa. Multi-Media were again appointed as technical production company by TV producers AMPN, with Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier once again appointed as lighting designer. The show, aired on M-Net, moved from a 500-capacity studio to the 3000-seater Mosaiek Teatro in Fairland, Johannesburg, prompting series director Darren Hayward to “go for it” with more drama and excitement. Josh specified over 200 Robe fixtures across the series, a package co-ordinated by Multi-Media’s Chris Delancey. As well as lighting the artists, stage and set, Josh paid a lot of attention to the audience lighting, for which he adopted a subtle EDM-style approach. Lights were rigged on a set of ‘finger’ trusses running upstage / downstage, fanning out from the centre, faci
USA - Lighting designer Victor Fable turned to new generation LED fixtures from Elation Professional for the season finale of Survivor: Game Changers. “We wanted to move to more LED and try something different without taking away the success of past live shows,” said Fable, who has traditionally used a profusion of discharge lamp fixtures on Survivor finales. “We wanted to see how much could be rolled over to LED and see how much more bang we could get with the extra fixtures it allowed us to use.” “It’s the most LED we’ve had on a Survivor show,” Fable added. “The show looked as good as ever and the client was very happy.” The rig consisted of over 250 lighting fixtures, including 80 Fuze Wash Z120, 26 Fuze Wash Z350, 40 Colour Chorus 12, 10 Colour Chorus 48 and 16 Satura Spot LED Pro, all Elation LED fixtures, along wit
UK - The Prolight Concepts Group has been enjoying “a super exciting and busy year” following the release of its new 2017/18 catalogue and showcasing its full product portfolio at its busiest PLASA Show to date. “Not only has our 21st year seen the publication of our first comprehensive printed catalogue in several years, but we have also released an astonishing amount of exciting new products for the entertainment, professional installation, architectural and leisure markets,” reports the company. “This long-standing show has been in the limelight for 40 years now, giving us a great platform to showcase our innovative products. Speaking of innovate products, our eLumen8 LED Tour Batten TW was featured in the Innovation Gallery during the PLASA Show, and was entered into the PLASA Awards for Innovation “The footfall on our stand for all three days was pheno
USA - More than 82,000 individuals and corporate donors gave to the University of Tennessee’s 1.1 billion dollar Join the Journey campaign, which focuses on making the overall cost of earning a degree more affordable, with funds going towards undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, faculty support, athletics and other university initiatives. Bandit Lites was honoured to donate the lighting for the sophisticated soiree, which culminated with a private event at the Knoxville Convention Centre. On campus, LED Light cubes gave each individual college programme a modern and fresh look to highlight aspects of the school along the concourse, from nursing students with lifelike babies to law students holding court with judges and juries selected from the audience. Additional lighting was provided for a small reception honouring Peyton Manning, with an elegan
USA - Over 200 Robe lighting fixtures supplied by Solotech are on the rig of Lady Gaga’s Joanne world tour. With Gaga promising that lighting was going to be a “big thing” in her show, creative director LeRoy Bennett’s brief included set, lighting and visual design, with custom video playback material produced by Madison Vine. A staple of the show are three flying bridges that descend from the three 45ft long pods in the roof above the audience, creating a pathway below, flopping sideways and transforming into projection screens. This is designed to allow Gaga to embark on a physical journey across the venue, stopping at two satellite stages and the B stage adjacent to FOH, and engage close-up with different sections of audience throughout the set. The journey ends on the B-Stage where she plays a heart-shaped Plexiglass covered piano with dichroi
Europe - Cate Carter needs little introduction as one of busiest and most successful LDs over the last decade, with a long and illustrious portfolio featuring the likes of Editors and Ellie Goulding currently out on tour. Carter’s company, Bryte Design is a design production house run in conjunction with her business partner, lighting designer Mike Smith and visual producer Pablo Beckett. Even before the company’s inception, Carter had been employing the talents of Specialz to realise her design concepts. “The ethos at the heart of Specialz is the company’s completely open nature to a designer’s ideas and concepts. Backed up by a breadth of experience, skill and, what could be best described as industry savvy, Dave and his team offer a unique service to us as a client.” “I think it was back in 2011 when we needed to adapt a piece that we rented
USA - America’s oldest continuously-running summer theatre, the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, MA, is staging of the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents classic Gypsy, with a collection of Chauvet Professional Ovation fixtures lighting the show. Supplied by Boston-based High Output, the lighting was taken to task by dramaturgical storyteller Zach Blane, who had to set up a Broadway scale production in only one 10-hour day. “Lighting ,I>Gypsy is a tall order, doing it in one day is an even taller order!” said Blane. “I approached the tech process as I would a festival show (as far as time management is concerned). I sat down with director Michael Rader and choreographer Jason Sparks beforehand, and mapped out every beat of the show. I like to know what every second of the show should feel like, which inevitably manifests into what it should look lik
Europe - To complete its offer for the fixed installation market, Barco is extending its F-series platform with a flexible new projector, the F80. Billed as “the silent F”, it brings three powerful assets to museums and venues that require under 10k lumen 24/7: superb 4K resolution; the efficiency and economy of laser; and silence, or the ability to host the projector in the same room as the audience. “For the F80, we really focused on users that require quality together with long-term reliability,” says VP Events Carl Rijsbrack. “Typically, this could be in closer settings such as museum displays or corporate meetings. So the question of noise levels is important. These users can now have the image quality they require based on the latest projection technologies inside a compact unit.” The F80 builds on the fundamentals of the other Barco F-series phosphor
UK - The two stages of Solihull Summer Fest 2017 were lit by full service production company Stage Production Co. using Elation Professional lighting. The event, which took place at Tudor Grange Park near Birmingham during the August bank holiday weekend, is in its second year and has just expanded to two stages. Stage Production Co., who supplied the 2016 event and have stocked Elation lighting for several years, handled all staging, lighting, rigging and power and are scheduled to supply the event again in 2018. Stage Production’s Jordan Lake, who handled production design on the event, says: “We choose Elation because of the reliability – they work! They are also sensibly priced and once clients see them in action they tend to request them.” The festival’s Main Stage, an effective four-line overhead horizontal truss configuration with
Ireland - Lighting controls expert Artistic Licence has been appointed official technical partner of The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art at Trinity College Dublin. The Lir Academy was established in 2011 to provide students with the highest standards of training for careers in the theatre, TV and film industries. The academy’s director of technical training Barry Conway explains: "I have been very excited about expanding our technical offering in our three-year programme - I am from a lighting background originally. Network control is now such a fundamental component of lighting that Ireland needs to be able to train this to the next generation of techs." He adds: "Having a company like Artistic licence be on board at the creation of this training module is a really exciting prospect.” The Lir approached Artistic Licence with a proposal that woul
UK - Written by Mel Brooks White Light is providing the lighting equipment for Young Frankenstein, a musical comedy based on the Oscar-nominated hit film of the same name. Following a run on Broadway in 2007, this show has now made its way to London and opened this week at the Garrick Theatre. The lighting designer for the show, Ben Cracknell, comments: “I have always been a huge fan of Mel Brooks’ films so was thrilled when I was approached to light this. Both Susan Stroman, the director and choreographer, and Mel felt that the humour of the show would work much better in a more intimate Vaudeville style so the show was designed around this concept.” Young Frankenstein features a set design by Beowulf Boritt that is centred around a series of painted cloths depicting the locations from a medical school to a deserted railway station.
Canada - Canadian band Arcade Fire have embarked on the first leg of their lengthy North American Infinite Content tour, which incorporates fixtures from GLP. Operating the lighting on tour has been Chris Bushell, working under the creative direction of Tarik Mikou from the Canadian production company Moment Factory. Having been LD for the band back on 2014’s Reflektor tour, Bushell was delighted to be invited back, and became closely involved throughout the development of the show design, which incorporates a larger number of fixtures from GLP. To promote the new album Everything Now, the band had wanted to play in-the-round with a strong sporting event feel - based around a live, visceral video and lighting production that formed the scenography over and around the boxing ring stage. “Lighting-wise, we wanted to be able to create struct
USA - The light show during the performance of alt-rock group Big Something at Big What Festival in the Shakori Hills Park featured a range of Chauvet lighting fixtures. Designed by Daniel Thibault of Life Is Art Studio and Big Something LD Cameron Grogan, the show featured 36 Chauvet DJ luminaires, including 12 Intimidator Scan LED 300 scanners, eight Intimidator Spot LED 350, eight SlimPANEL Tri 24 IP and eight COLORband PiX LED linear fixtures, as well as four Hurricane 1600 foggers. All of the lights in the rig were called upon at one time or another to provide audience lighting. “Given the nature of this festival, we wanted to engage the crowd as much as possible with lighting,” said Thibault. “Big Something has a very loyal fan base and has some strong ties with that base. The band wants to see their fans, and the fans want to see the band, so audien
Keeping Music Live - Campaigners fighting to preserve Cardiff’s live music scene have heralded a breakthrough after plans to develop flats in the heart of the city’s entertainment district were withdrawn. A campaign to protect the city's grassroots music scene has been underway since the start of this year, with campaigners fighting in particular to preserve the entertainment venues on Womanby Street, which is home to several live music venues but has seen a string of closures in recent times. The campaign attracted thousands of signatures, and calls on Cardiff Council to protect the area as a cultural hub. Venue owners and music fans also condemned a planning application to create a hotel to be built above a Wetherspoon’s pub on Womanby Street. Plans for a residential housing development comprising six flats had been submitted for the street, however these
USA - Nashville-based lighting design company Ardee Design Group (ADG) was contacted to relight Plaza Mariachi, a former supermarket converted into a 60,000sq.ft multi-purpose facility. ADG chose to use Elation Professional dynamic ellipsoidal, Par and moving lights. “The Plaza Mariachi project is a mix of entertainment techniques in an architectural application, and we utilized quite a bit of Elation equipment to achieve our goals,” said Richard Davis, president and senior designer at ADG, the 30-year design collaborative that combines years of experience in entertainment lighting with a practical knowledge of architectural lighting techniques. The Plaza’s main courtyard and five streets, each storefront with a themed, theatre-like façade, all required illumination. ADG uses colour, contrast and lighting effects to enhance the space, focus attention and c
