Mongolia - ProLights LED fixtures are helping Mongol TV meet the balance between creative and financial needs for their production of talent TV show, The Voice of Mongolia. Officially syndicated in 62 countries and with a global audience of 650m viewers, The Voice is Mongol TV's follow-up to their successful production of the Got Talent franchise for the past two years. Mongol TV CEO Nomin Chinbat chose to bring these two talent show franchises to Mongolia as part of a long-term goal to deliver local content which meets international TV standards. Set inside a Soviet-influenced indoor circus venue, UK lighting designer and consultant Tom Kinane, who had worked on Mongolia's Got Talent, was brought in to oversee the lighting production. He comments: "Given Mongol TV's long-term goal to focus on producing popular international show
Painting with Light has produced a vibrant, inventive visual solution for Zoo of Life, a production directed by Luc Stevens to celebrate 175 years of Antwerp Zoo, being staged at the new Queen Elizabeth Hall venue in Antwerp. The team from the Genk based creative practice was led by Luc Peumans. Painting with Light’s project manager, Wouter Verhulst comments: “Normally you might have two weeks to build a production on this scale and ambition, but we had just three days and nights.” With this time restriction in mind, the set is composed largely of digital scenic elements and was designed in conjunction with Carla Janssen Hofelt. The Painting with Light brief also included editing special video material shot by Mathieu Marck of Arendsoog (Eagle Eye) from around the Zoo, and combining this with new graphical content produced by Painting with Light’s Sina S
USA - Presented annually by the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, the Youth Evangelism Conference (YEC) recently celebrated its 50th anniversary during a two-day live event that draws in students and youth leaders from across Tennessee. Wanting a production design to match the occasion, event organisers worked with Atlanta-based Stacked Heart Productions who brought in designer Justin Kitchenman, Align Design Group, programmer Gavin Lake, and production partner Elite Multimedia who provided an expansive audio, lighting, LED video and live IMAG video design. Kent Shingleton, YEC executive producer, comments: “Throughout our history, we have produced the event in six different venues and each year we try to bring something new. I have been wanting to implement LED video into our design for a few years now, and when I spoke with Elite Multimedia they put together a grea
USA - More than 3,000 Future Farmers of America (FFA) members gathered at the 90th Annual Tennessee FFA State Convention to compete and receive recognition for their work throughout the year. Bandit Lites supplied the lighting for the event, including the stage that presented scholarship awards for accomplished FFA members. “Turning a convention centre ballroom into a theatre is always a challenge,” comments Bandit Lites general manager Giff Swart, “but Bandit has a talented group of folks who can work magic in any situation when given the right tools. John Lucksinger was our LD, and he was the right man to make magic with this rig. Wayne Lotoza was our crew, and he is unmatched when you want something to get done right and in record time.” Bandit Lites provided 110 minibeam downstage loaded with Bandit’s GRNLite Moving Washes for stage front-light alon
USA - Unlike all but a handful of other venues in Manhattan’s famed theatre district, the Broadway Theatre is actually located on Broadway. However, this is far from the only thing that stands out about this 1,760-seat theatre. Throughout its 94-year history, it has housed trailblazing productions, including the 1943 premiere of Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones, one of the first musicals to feature an all African-American cast. Years earlier, before it was dedicated exclusively to theatre, it was the site of the first showing of Walt Disney’s cartoon film Steamboat Willie, which introduced the world to Mickey Mouse. The theatre’s distinctive tradition continued recently, when it hosted a six-week run of Rocktopia, a concert that explores new artistic dimensions by weaving rock and classical music together and wrapping them around a free-flo
South Africa - For the second consecutive year, Robe Lighting and DWR Distribution sponsored a team in The Absa Cape Epic, an extreme mountain bike race hosted from 18 to 25 March 2018. Congratulations to South Africans Pierre Griffioen and Robert Izzett of Team MegaPointe. “Robe is keen to support local, regional and global sporting activities, with mountain biking among our favourites, so we really appreciate this great opportunity in South Africa,” says Josef Valchar, CEO at Robe. “We admire and appreciate the intense efforts, thorough preparation and sheer tenacity and stamina of riders involved in all categories of this invigorating sport. Particularly in meeting the challenges of the Cape Epic the toughest mountain bike competition in the world.” Covering 658km, to say this eight-day challenge is tough is an underestimate. This year a stomach bug hit man
USA - Events United helped Fortune 1000 company Connection create a memorable setting for its annual kick-off meeting in Manchester NH, despite the limited space and unusual room dimensions at the site where the event was held. The meeting, which was live streamed to Connection offices throughout the US, took place in the Armory, a venue in the Radisson Hotel near the corporation’s headquarters. Although the room presents some striking images with its steel beams and sloping ceilings, it also poses serious design obstacles for anyone hoping to create a professional lighting, video and audio presentation within its confines. Events United met these challenges to create a stunning panorama at the kick-off event with a clever design plan and help from over 100 Chauvet Professional fixtures. “Our client gave us a few initial concept ideas that included projection and
USA - The Savannah Music Festival, the largest musical arts event in Georgia, features more than 100 productions over its 17-day run each spring. And at all four of the major venues at the festival, which this year runs from 29 March to 14 April and features artists including the Pat Martino Quintet, Rhonda Vincent & The Rage, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, there is a DiGiCo desk at both front of house and monitors. For nearly a decade, as long as Atlanta-based Rock N Road Audio has been the festival’s audio systems provider, DiGiCo consoles have grown to become the primary mixing engines of this world-renowned event. This year, at the 1,200-seat Lucas Theatre, an SD12 is at front of house and an SD10 is being used for monitors at the side of the stage. The semi-enclosed, 700-seat North Garden Assembly Room at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum uses one SD9 co
USA - An Allen & Heath dLive S Class S5000 with DM64 MixRack played a leading role on the tech crew for the Million Dollar Quartet’s recent North American tour. Part theatre, part rock-and-roll concert, the show tells the story of the day in 1956 when Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley performed together at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio. Chris Wilson mixes both FOH and monitors on the tour. Wilson says, “I’ve mixed theatre and I’ve mixed rock-and-roll. But, this show is different because it goes from theatrical dialog to full rock-and-roll. So, I have to marry the two for the audience while I manage monitors for the cast.” Wilson requested the dLive for this tour from equipment provider Epicenter Productions of Bedford, Texas. “I ran three big metal stages with dLives at the 2017 NAMM,” he said. “They outperformed any
USA - Empire of the Sun’s 23 March performance at Ultra Music Festival offered all the visual magic that fans crave from this Australian electronic music duo. But for Davey Taylor, the band’s long-time lighting designer, their appearance on the popular Live Stage represented something of a challenge, since the festival rig did not have his customary complement of colour mixing fixtures. Taylor was able to meet this challenge, however, with help from his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium. Drawing on his console’s networking features, cue stacking and visualiser, he created a stunning and immersive 32-universe 162-fixture lightshow that enhanced the visually rich Empires of the Sun experience. “Ultra Miami was a little different from the other shows that we have been doing for Ultra lately,” said Taylor. “The festival rig on our stage had a large percentage of bea
USA - Being located in the heart of Nashville, it’s only natural that The Belonging Church would count quite a few musicians as congregation members. On any given Sunday, the music that resonates through this former-warehouse-turned-house-of-worship rivals an arena concert. The lightshows that accompany these performances are equally impressive. Andy Rushing, the lighting designer for Grammy Award-winning worship music stars Lauren Daigle and Kari Jobe, is also a member of The Belonging. Rushing’s artistry was on full display recently, as he created a dazzling lightshow anchored by Chauvet Professional fixtures at a special fourth birthday party held for the church at the Tennessee Centre For The Performing Arts. Marking the fourth anniversary of The Belonging, the two-hour event combined worship services with a commemoration of the church’s accomplishments and a
UK - A new venue in London’s East End is reinvigorating UK clubland with a refined focus on technical perfection and substantive musical experiences. Blazing onto the capital’s live electronic music scene at the beginning of 2018 with a 27-hour New Year’s Eve launch party, E1 blends simple industrial minimalism with cutting-edge technology to provide the perfect backdrop for a quintessential clubbing experience. Occupying a two-room converted warehouse space, E1 is a location-turned-destination. The brainchild of Yuval Hen and Oren Arush, the venue is an evolution of the founders’ existing Studio Spaces facility – an events and high-production photo shoot destination catering to global brands and the biggest names in fashion and film. Having already run a series of successful warehouse style parties over the past few years, the team wanted to hone their offe
UK - British metalcore band Architects recently played their biggest show to date at London's 10,400 capacity Alexandra Palace as part of their current European and North American tour. Long-term lighting and show designer, Paul McAdams, designed the production's high-energy 'lunar' lighting and set, selecting the Claypaky Mythos and Claypaky A.leda B-EYE K10 fixtures as key tools in his lighting arsenal. McAdams has worked alongside the band for four years and for the current tour design drew inspiration from the band's latest album. All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us is the seventh studio album from Architects and features ethereal, burnt-out lunar imagery that McAdams brought to the stage through a series of clever light landscapes. "The band are really involved in the show design and we have a great relationship where we're able to discuss ideas openly," says Mc
UK – Version 2 Lights are back on board with lighting director Oli Richards for the second series of Sounds Like Friday Night. Returning to Studio TC1 at BBC Television Centre, the show is broadcast live on BBC One in a series of five half-hour episodes featuring live performances from some of the biggest names in global music. A core feature of the show is its stage architecture, designed by the creative Misty Buckley. The mammoth set takes up the entire footprint of the flagship TC1 studio, with its trim height soaring up into the impressive grid level at some 34 ft. above. The design provides an amphitheatre for the audience with its contours drawing influence from the iconic doughnut design of the Television Centre building. Using Buckley’s installation as his canvas Richards utilises Martin Viper Performances to give shuttered animation to the va
UK - This month sees one of Audient’s USB audio interfaces, iD14-LE take to the stage in the capable hands of theatre sound designer, Kenan Trevien who is working on Pericles, Prince de Tyr at the Barbican. This Cheek By Jowl production is an adaptation of a rarely seen Shakespeare play directed by award-winning Declan Donnellan in collaboration with Nick Ormerod, and performed in French with English subtitles. Kenan explains the setup he’s used in the run up to this latest production: “I have one laptop dedicated to the cues on the PA, and the iD14-LE is plugged into the laptop I keep for designing new sounds. As the monitor outputs and the main outputs are independent, I can easily choose to work quietly with my headphones or to test new sounds on the PA whilst the actors on stage.” The play follows the hero, Pericles on a journey involving pirates, m
UK - The Harrogate Convention Centre has been evolving as a conference and events venue since what was then the Spa Rooms hosted the British Medical Association in 1884. The first purpose-built halls were added in 1959, and today HCC is recognized as one of the country’s leading multi-use venues with 147,000 sq ft (13,700 sq m) of completely modular exhibition/event space across nine flat-floored, interconnected halls. In order to bring the venue fully into line with modern standards and expectations, HCC has recently invested in a brand new distributed, networked audio system with a Symetrix DSP backbone and Dante audio networking supplied by CUK Audio and installed by Acoustic Solutions. “We clearly needed to replace our old system which was becoming unreliable,” explained HCC’s technical manager, Ross Simpson. “The site has grown considerably over the year
UK - There’s something out of the ordinary about doing a gig in a cave. However, when Jonathan Stafford of Cornish band Haunt the Woods approached Plymouth music technology college dBs Music to supply a PA system for their much anticipated EP launch gig, it seemed like a perfect challenge for dBs Music’s team Live Sound. The complex nature of trying to optimise a sound system which would cover the audience area equally throughout the cavernous 500-capacity space outside Liskeard, meant that careful thought was required ahead of the show to ensure the right equipment was specified. However, the newly supplied Martin Audio MLA Mini system was a perfect solution to achieving this. According to dBs music lecturer and live sound technician, Olly Wickes, discussions regarding a next generation PA system had begun more than a year earlier. It was Simon Honywill, one of
UK - Rick Wakeman recently recorded a live version of his successful 2017 Piano Portraits release in front of an audience at Lincoln Cathedral. Longtime Wakeman studio engineer / producer Erik Jordan employed an Allen & Heath dLive system for the project, comprising an S7000 surface with M-Dante card, DM64 MixRack and DX32 Expander, supplied by Tech-Serve Audio Consultants. Jordan found that dLive’s ease of use and fast, flexible routing made it the perfect choice for a challenging live recording scenario. “I knew from Ian Barfoot, Rick’s FOH engineer and a longstanding dLive user, how flexible and intuitive the system was to use and although this was my first real dLive experience, it took very little time to become familiar with. We had around twenty mics for Rick’s vocal, piano, audience and ambient pickup and – because the show was filmed
The Netherlands - Don’t Let Daddy Know (DLDK) is one of the biggest international EDM parties taking its Ibiza roots and transitioning into a worldwide dance phenomenon known for spectacular production values. The 2018 Amsterdam edition, produced by Dutch7, returned to the renowned Ziggo Dome for two nights, for the first time with creative lighting designed by Bas Knappers from Netherlands based creative practice, Live Legends. Live Legends has previously provided programming and operating teams for the event and in the design ‘hot seat’ Bas specified 122 x Robe Pointes and 40 x MegaPointes as part of a large lighting rig? supplied by Rent-All together with video and sound. An all-star line-up included Axwell Λ Ingrosso, Steve Angello, Nervo, Nicky Romero, Timmy Trumpet, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano, Headhunterz, Wildstylez and much more superlative music.
Australia - When Ben Hunt, head of lighting at the Empire Theatres, Toowoomba, in Queensland first fired up their new Robert Juliat Dalis LED cyclorama lights, his first impression was “finally we’ve found something up to the task”. “It’s no secret that to light a cyclorama with conventional asymmetrical floods is going to require some serious power along with its consumable lamps and colour filters – especially when you’re lighting a 14m by 9m cloth,” commented Ben. “That task had been dealt with by sixteen, four cell Selecon Aurora cyc floods and you could hear the power meter groan every time we flicked the switch on!” Ben added that the theatre had been looking at the LED cyclorama light market intently for the last few years waiting for the right product to pop up that would allow them to light their cyclorama with a quality light, but also giv
Portugal - Portuguese National Broadcaster RTP, in a joint initiative with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), selected the combination Ampco Flashlight and local Portuguese partner Pixel Light as supplier for lighting, rigging and motion for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon. The combination of Ampco Flashlight’s international experience and local Pixel Light’s professional knowledge proved a winning team for one of the most demanding and popular live TV shows in the world, with a live TV audience of over 200 million. Dennis van der Haagen, CCO/COO Ampco Flashlight Rental comments, “For years we have been the supplier of motion systems through our CyberMotion technology. The experience we have with this production and our international acclaimed status as a full-service company convinced us that we should apply for the lighting and rigging packa
USA - The North Carolina Museum of Art amphitheatre has used various PA systems over the years but has now settled on a Martin Audio MLA Compact, deployed by RMB Audio. Asked to describe the current system, RMB’s Tobias Cannady says: “We’d originally used speakers stacked but then negotiated for the ability to fly MLA Compact for an improve the Joseph M. Bryan Jr. Theatre is known for its summer concert series. “The set-up includes eight flown MLA Compact cabinets per side with four Martin Audio DSX subs ground-stacked on each side of the stage and CDD-LIVE 15’s for side fills and delays. “There’s been a significant improvement in several areas with the new system,” Cannady continues. “Even though the stage is lower than most of the seating, the MLA Compact system is able to throw much further, with a more cohesive sound quality while cleaning
China - Hong Kong-based Cosmo Pro AV partnered with AV Stumpfl to deliver a media server solution for Ocean Park’s new theatre, the Applause Pavilion. Ocean Park, Hong Kong’s most impressive theme park, merges education with entertainment. With 44 rides and 7.7m visitors on average annually who come from all over the world to see its attractions, the park first deployed AV Stumpfl’s systems in 2016 for its Cyber Illusion Show, when it rented the Wings Stage Engine and RAW Engine from Cosmo Pro AV. Such was its success that Ocean Park decided to invest beyond renting and instructed Cosmo Pro AV to design a comprehensive, permanent video system using AV Stumpfl technology for its Applause Pavilion. Jason Yeung, sales engineer at Cosmo Pro AV, who project managed the installation from start to finish and trained the staff, explores Ocean Park’s special r
USA - When singer-songwriter Cole Swindell announced plans for his 2018 headlining tour, it was easily his largest to date. Swindell has continued to grow both as an artist and as a touring phenomenon. Looking to now build a high-energy, yet intimate storytelling experience for his first arena headlining tour, Swindell’s production team once again teamed up with the Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia for lighting, LED video, and live IMAG video support. “We have done headlining tours before, but nothing on this scale with our own opening acts for an extended arena tour run,” began production designer James ‘Mo’ Butts. “As an artist, Cole will give us broad stroke ideas, but then will leave a lot of the technical aspects up to us to sculpt into the final design. Going into this tour design, we really wanted to showcase Cole’s evolution as an a
