Germany - Ayrton MagicPanel-FX, AlienPix-RS and MagicBlade-R fixtures starred alongside the catwalk models during the grand finale of Germany’s Next Top Model on 25 May 2017. The spectacular, full-scale production – now an eagerly-awaited climax to the annual competition – was broadcast live from the König Pilsener Arena in Oberhausen by Germany’s ProSieben channel, and presented by the show’s regulars, supermodel Heidi Klum, and judges Michael Michalsky and Thomas Hayo. Expectations for the finale remain high and this year’s show did not disappoint. The set featured long, serpentine catwalks that wound from the main stage into the audience to accommodate the final fashion show and ‘Walk-Off’ runway challenges for the competitors. The whole was brought to colourful, dynamic life by an impressive lighting design from the imagination of Manuel da Costa,
UK/Australia - Mandylights has announced the company’s expansion into the UK, with the opening of a new office headed by UK designers Liam Tully and Tom Edwards. Operating since 2006 from Sydney, Australia, Mandylights has delivered lighting, visual and production design projects in over 50 countries across touring concert, broadcast, special event, theatre and corporate markets. The company’s recent touring and Vegas residency designs for the Backstreet Boys are recent additions to an impressive list of credits including multiple tours for artists including Ricky Martin, Taio Cruz, Cats - The Musical, China’s G.E.M. and numerous others. Mandylights has also designed shows for Dubai’s Burj Khalifa New Year’s Eve celebrations and the 15th anniversary main stage of Ultra Music Festival in addition to countless festivals and special events around the worl
USA - Slightly Stoopid may have two decades of touring under their belts, but the genre-busting band still keeps shows fresh and energetic for audiences around the country, pulling from their 12 albums including their recent release Meanwhile… Back at the Lab. Bandit Lites is providing a lighting package for their current tour. Lighting designer Scott O’Connor created a stellar design for the funk, reggae and punk rock band by capitalizing on equipment that would fill the stage with dynamic, audacious looks, while still allowing for versatility across the various venues and emphasizing a ‘less is more’ mindset. “Bold, solid and minimalistic looks are what the band is looking for this summer,” O’Connor said. “More textures and shapes using angles and colour have been the ultimate goal for this project. I’ve been having a lot fun fulfilling that
UK - As Blind Date returns to prime-time television, illumination specialists LED Creative is supporting the crews at the legendary, iconic dating show and the Big Brother’s themed housemate challenge. Filmed in front of a live studio audience at ITV London Studios the new Blind Date stays faithful to the winning formula of the original. Hosted by Paul O’Grady and featuring the sliding panel and three question format, the show pits three hopefuls against each other, fighting to win the attention of a mystery date. Created by scenic designer, Chris Webster and lit with LD Oli Richards, the suitably fabulous set balances a blend of cool neonesque LED against a warm tungsten glow provided by an array of cleverly housed LED practical fixtures that form the backdrop. LED Creative’s Alpha 60 RGB system has been put to good use, adding crisp accents
Namibia - Walvis Bay, an extraordinary city on Namibia’s coast, with the contrast of sand dunes on one side and the ocean on the other, was the location for the 2017 Namibia Annual Music Awards which was both a livestream and live broadcast on the NBC platform. Micky Lehr from EventPlus has headed the technical production for the NAMAs since 2015 and had a clear vision of what he wanted the show to look like in 2017. A substantial amount of Robe gear, with 12 Robe Squares being a predominant feature, ran off a grandMA2 control system. With over 42 years’ experience, Micky Lehr is a leading technical producer, production manager and designer to the live event and entertainment industry. “This year’s production design relied heavily on lighting as the set mostly consisted of scaffold structures,” Micky explained. “I believed that Joshua Cutts from Visua
Germany - GLP’s subsidiary for The Americas, GLP Inc., has been experiencing continued growth since starting its operation eight years ago. As a result, they have recently moved to new, and larger premises in the Los Angeles district of San Fernando. With a total area of 37,000sq.ft, the new building is around three times the size of the previous location, also in Los Angeles. According to GLP Inc. president, Mark Ravenhill, “This represents a big step forward for us as a company and increases our commitment to our markets in The Americas.” Already fully operational, the new facility has given GLP the opportunity to expand on the administrative side in order to support its customer base at a higher level, and the company is currently in the process of adding more personnel. There are also plans to increase the warehouse, service and support areas in order to impr
UK - Aurora lighting has partnered with automobile manufacturer, BMW, to carry out its first smart lighting pilot scheme following the recent announcement of its new enterprise connected lighting platform, AXiO. BMW is focusing on challenging and testing new experiences in which customers select, enjoy and purchase ‘the ultimate driving machine’. With a customer’s lighting design experience needs at its core, Aurora’s projects and IoT division will be working in partnership with BMW to develop and test a customer-centric retail lighting hardware platform and IoT experience, all powered by Gooee, to help BMW achieve its goals. With the AXiO lighting platform, BMW will receive much more than just a bespoke lighting design. The car manufacturer will have the ability to manage and deliver an engaging end-to-end customer experience that immerses the user at the leve
Aruba - Too often, events that receive a lot of accolades don’t seem to live up to their press clippings. This was most definitely not the case at the 2017 Soul Beach Music Festival in Aruba’s capital, Oranjestad. The five-day event exceeded even the highest expectations this year, serving up a plethora of charismatic performances from superstars like Usher, The Roots and Mary J. Blige in a paradisiacal setting. Adding extra sizzle to the proceedings was the seemingly endless variety of intensely coloured big looks that Erik van Oorsouw of Elite Productions created with help from over 100 Chauvet Professional fixtures. “I have been the designer for the Soul Beach Festival for some years,” said van Oorsouw. “It is a wonderful festival with so much talent on stage. The challenge from a lighting design standpoint is to create different looks over the course of t
Belgium - Painting with Light renewed its long-term working collaboration with the Summer Opera at Alden Biesen, a 16th century castle in the village of Rijkhoven, Limburg, eastern Belgium, just a 20-minute drive from the creative design practice’s own HQ in Genk. Paco Mispelters from Painting with Light was tasked with lighting this year’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s well known comic opera Don Pasquale, celebrating 20 years since the start of the successful annual opera event. In keeping with the light-hearted and animated rhythm of the piece, Paco wanted to keep the lighting upbeat and vibrant in style and feel. The production is staged in the gardens of the castle - now a cultural and conference centre - and this well-tended, leafy green environmental setting provided the inspiration for Philippe Miesch’s set design, which extends the gar
Slovenia - Teamwork is a great thing, and this was clearly evident for Slovenia’s 2017 PopRock Festival, a high profile national TV live event broadcast from Ljubljana, where lighting designer Crt Birsa and set designer Greta Godnic worked their creative magic in a special collaboration - with the help of 200 plus Robe lighting fixtures! The PopRock Festival, now in its second year, was staged at the Gospodarsko Razstavisce exhibition centre for the first time, bringing an interesting mix of pop and rock artists and bands who had battled it out to reach the final twelve. The aesthetic requirement was for a high-energy environment with enough latitude for all to look different and cool - both on camera and onstage - where they were appreciated by 700 excited music fans packed into the venue to catch the action as it unfolded. The 12 contestants performed and we
The Netherlands - Built in the 1920s, the domed and eye-catching Majella church in East Amsterdam is a large, imposing building. Its design was inspired by the Byzantine churches in Palestine visited by its architect, Jan Stuyt. From the very beginning of the church's life, its sheer size presented the parish with expensive maintenance issues. Having first found a use hosting the Institute for Women's History, in 2012 it became home to the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Dutch Chamber Orchestra (NedPho/NKO). NedPho/NKO had for some time been seeking a new rehearsal space and with Stadherstel's expertise, the heart of church was altered to create an ideal facility. The space is also used for small-scale concerts, lectures and receptions and the NedPho Dome, as it is commonly known, is highly regarded as an important cultural hub. To further enhance and improve th
Germany - As Ascension Day is a traditional day off for Germans, what better way to spend it then at Tanta Mia tanzt, a one-day electro dance music festival with international and regional DJs. Held in the town of Vechta in northwest Germany, Tanta Mia tanzt debuted in 2016 and was back in 2017 with a line-up of EDM and house beat artists playing across multiple stages. The all-day EDM party with its unusual name (Aunt Mia is dancing) attracted more than 16,000 visitors this year. Elation Professional’s new German distribution partner, LMP Lichttechnik Vertriebs GmbH, who began distributing Elation Professional products in Germany in April of this year, worked with production services company Multi Media Marketing & Event GmbH. Dirk Möhlenbrock from Multi Media, responsible for the entire show design, took over the creative and technical project management this
Europe - “How do we set up the control system to accommodate everything we need for a huge show including capacity for different festival rigs?” Matt Arthur, lighting director for System of a Down’s current European tour, and festival appearances asked Jack Moorhouse, Jands product manager from A.C. Entertainment Technologies. Rob Sinclair’s ambitious creative design for the headline European tour by the American alternative, Grammy-winning rock band contained over 800 individually controlled elements, including a touring floor package, festival house rig and a large hybrid video wall. The wall incorporated embedded RGB pixel “lights” alongside a traditional video screen. The lighting pixels themselves required 2,128 DMX channels. Matt originally planned to run the video and pixels from two separate media servers, with overall control from Jands Vista.
UK - St John's is a Romanesque chapel, located in the heart of the Tower of London. It was built between 1077 and 1097 of French stone imported by William the Conqueror and constitutes not only the best-preserved interior in the White Tower but also one of the finest examples of Anglo-Norman church architecture in England. Historic Royal Palaces had wished for some time to improve lighting provision in the chapel to achieve an improved experience for visitors and congregational acts of worship. Architects Carden & Godfrey, retained architects for Historic Royal Palaces at the Tower of London, recommended James Morse for the project. Morse specialises in the interior and exterior lighting of historic buildings and had recently worked with Carden and Godfrey at Rochester Cathedral. There was to be strictly no disturbance of the ancient fabric and with this in mind,
UK - Storyhouse in Chester is a new theatre, cinema and library, housed in a renovated art deco Odeon Cinema building. Located in the city centre, it is the biggest project of its kind outside of London. (A detailed report on the evolution of The Storyhouse features in the latest issue of LSi - plasa.me/lsidigital). The £37m renovation has seen the building revitalised and it now houses an 800-seat auditorium, a 200-seat studio theatre, a restaurant, two bars and a 100-seat boutique cinema. Leading production solution specialist White Light was contracted to supply all of the loose entertainment equipment, which included lighting, audio and video. Jonathan Haynes, WL’s business development manager and William Bray, business development support at WL, brought Doughty Engineering on board to supply a range of IWB boxes. Jonathan commented: "For the Storyh
World - Ed Sheeran is currently engaged on an extensive world tour, featuring an eye-catching production design by Mark Cunniffe with a networked grandMA2 system specified to control lighting and playback video. Cunniffe has worked with Sheeran and his technical team, led by production manager Chris Marsh since 2010. That was right at the start of the artist’s impressive career trajectory which started unobtrusively and steadily grew – keeping all the best cool and slightly underground elements - to the supersonic proportions it is today. For this tour, Cunniffe’s brief was to make the stage space really dynamic, so he created an elaborate video set and a highly versatile lighting rig which includes 142 moving lights and 17 LED strobes together with two MDG theOne stadium hazers and 10 Kilometres of DMX-controlled RGB LED tape which is lighting the set very effec
Germany - The Cameo ZENIT B60 battery-powered PAR spotlight is on its way. The first production run of the two models is already completely sold out. Boasting IP65 classification and W-DMX control, this spotlight is designed for demanding lighting tasks, both indoors and outdoors. The ZENIT B60 is available in black (CLZB60BLSD) and chrome (CLZB60CLSD) versions. This spotlight is equipped with high-quality components to provide safe operation, long life and the highest efficiency, says the company. When fully charged, the powerful lithium-ion battery from LG Chem delivers a reliable operating time of up to 24 hours in RGBW mode. In single colour mode, the run-time can be up to four whole days, i.e. 96 hours. An intelligent battery-management system protects against overcharging and deep discharging, ensuring long life. With a service life of 50,000 hours, four 15-watt
South Africa - The most recent RMB Starlight Classics concert, staged at the Vergelegen Wine Estate in Somerset West, Western Cape, South Africa was lit by Chris Bolton of Keystone Productions with a little help from some Robe moving lights. It was Chris's second year in the creative hot seat - working directly for organizers Jam Events. Last year he and Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier produced a lighting co-design – and the two are now partners in their brand new visual design venture, Collective Works – however when Starlight came up this year, Josh had other commitments, so Chris added the lighting magic working with his assistant Jade Manicom. For the first time, the 2017 event was also recorded by MNET for broadcast a couple of weeks later, bringing a different dimension and set of parameters for lighting. The talented South African line-up includ
China - The Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts, located at the Olympic Sports Centre in Jiangsu Najing, is the largest modern theatre in China, second in size only to the National Grand Theatre located in Beijing. It was designated as a world-class exhibition of works of art, the international exchange of arts activities platform and a public education platform for the promotion of arts. Its Opera Hall is equipped with two grandMA2 full-size, two grandMA2 light and two grandMA2 fader wing whereas its concert hall relies on two grandMA2 ultra-light and two MA 2Port Node as well as two MA DMX Booster. Xu Zhi Yong, project manager for ACE – Advanced Communication Equipment Co Ltd., MA Lighting’s exclusive distributor in China, commented: “The choice for MA was an easy one. Not only is it a well-known brand in China, it has a great reputation to be extremely sta
Denmark - Holstebro Musikteatret in Denmark has invested in 24 new Robe LEDWash 600+’s which will be used throughout their facility, making the production lighting options more dynamic and flexible and saving valuable time during changeovers and technical time. The Musikteatret includes three main venues: a 1,200-seater main auditorium; the Black Box, a flexible space which can accommodate up to 1,700 people standing and is where the fixtures will primarily be deployed - and The Hall of Fame bar which is also used for concerts, comedy, dining and events. The venue is a truly multi-purpose concept, built in 2006 on the footprint of the old Holstebrohallen. The Black Box was added in 2008 expanding the capacity to stage more and a greater diversity of shows. The Black Box is also the home to its own Black Box Dance Company which produces several works annually and tour
UK - This year’s Glastonbury Festival was “the best yet” according to organiser Emily Eavis. A star-studded procession of artists from Radiohead, Ed Sheeran and the Foo Fighters to The Sleaford Mods, The XX and Katy Perry appeared on its stages. These superstars weren’t the only crowd pleasers at the five-day event, however, also attracting a lot of attention was the 20m high multi-coloured ribbon tower set against the brilliant light produced by 10 Maverick MK1 Hybrids from Chauvet Professional. Simon Marcus, MD at Enlightened Lighting specified the 10 powerful 440W moving lights to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tower and the park area that surrounds it. In addition to creating an aerial lightshow, the Maverick fixtures fit harmoniously with the tower uplights, and add drama and presence to the structure. Installed in weather proof domes, the MK1s were
UK - The Association of Lighting Designers has announced the launch of the 2017 Michael Northen Awards. This year, following extensive research by the ALD’s student working group, a total of four awards will be presented under the Michael Northen Award scheme. The awards are open to current students – not limited to those on vocational theatre course – as well as affiliate members of the ALD. The awards are a celebration of imaginative and creative lighting and video design and represent a chance for young designers to showcase their talent, bringing their work to the attention of experienced lighting and video designers, as well to the wider reach of industry professionals. Awards are presented to those who demonstrate strong, imaginative and creative lighting or video designs. The winner of last year’s Award was Rory Beaton, who has since held the role of l
UK - Theatre lighting designer Andy Webb has specified an Avolites Tiger Touch II as the house-desk at The Griffin Centre, a new £3.3m performance venue at Cotswold educational establishment, Rendcomb College. Webb has been involved in the build as technical consultant since 2013, having worked alongside the college for over a decade, supporting the theatrical department and teaching A-Level lighting design. "It was great to be involved in the project from the ground up," says Webb. "I was able to work with the architects to solve any design problems from a technical perspective before they were even engineered into the building." The Griffin Centre will be utilised as a hybrid professional space for live events and as a training centre for the college's theatre students. "From the start of the process, Rendcomb College made it clear that the theatre was t
USA - Daryl Hall and John Oates kicked off their 2017 summer tour last month at the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The whirlwind tour across America’s heartland includes 30 dates through July. The lighting design team of Matt Geasey and Jesper Luth specified 140 Solaris Mozart fixtures, as well as 600 IMS Mk2 RGBW lamps on 12 110-foot festoon strings, all provided to the tour by Morris of Nashville. “Daryl and John were looking to add a lighting effect that would bring the audience closer to them, thus creating a more intimate setting,” explains David Haskell, president of Morris. “To achieve this, we deployed strings of IMS colour-changing festoon lamps over the audience from downstage to front of house. With six IMS Mk2 Universe Drive controllers mounted in the downstage truss, the network is simple to operate and keeps our work areas tidy. We are happy to r
