UK - The spectacular large format projections that have graced Edinburgh Castle for the last 11 years creating a dramatic and dynamic backdrop for the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo season have just become brighter and even more visible with a new video projection system specified by digital artist Ross Ashton from The Projection Studio.

The 12 x Panasonic PT-DW17K2 projectors have been purchased by the Tattoo and are running for the first time during the 2016 programme which launched last week showcasing another exciting and eclectic mix of military pageantry, music, dance, technical wizardry and special effects which will enthral audiences from all over the globe.

The increase in brightness and clarity compared to the PIGI film projectors which had served the event for the last 11 years is substantial.

As Ross explains, "When the Tattoo first explored the medium of

Denmark - Customer service is a core value for any lighting designer visiting the 17,000 capacity Arena Stage at Roskilde Festival, one of Europe's leading music events, and this year which he co-ordinated for the fifth year.

These were supplied - together with other lighting including 24 x Robe Pointes - by leading Danish rental company, Comtech, based in Copenhagen which has invested heavily in Robe over the last year.

The Arena accommodated a wide variety of bands over the four-day festival - from breaking talent to established headliners likproduction lighting designer Sune Verdier used 40 x Robe BMFL Spots at the heart of the rige Slayer, PJ Harvey, New Order and James Blake, with a total of 21 acts, many bringing their own floor packages.

Sune and his team have put a serious effort into refining the rig and the options over the last four years, each year asking g

Rich Tapestry - West End show Beautiful - The Carole King Musical has extended its run at the Aldwych Theatre until July 2017. The show, based on the life of singer-songwriter King, was previously booking until November this year. The musical opened in the West End in February 2015, winning two Olivier awards for performers Katie Brayben and Lorna Want.

Going Underground - London's 24-hour Tube service could see some West End shows abandon their traditional 7.30pm start times, the Society of London Theatre has claimed. SOLT chief executive Julian Bird said the introduction of a 24-hour Tube service in London, which begins this weekend, would present "significant opportunities" for the theatre sector. He hinted that the 24-hour service, operating on Fridays and Saturdays, could see shows abandoning the traditional 7.30pm start time in favour of a later curtain-up.

USA - Dierks Bentley is hot. Not only has the country artist's latest album Black debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard and Top Album Sales charts this summer, he's been selling out his Somewhere on a Beach tour at nearly every stop and has recently added a second leg that will have him out on the road through October.

Lighting designer Chris Reade is in his 10th year with Dierks Bentley and for this year's summer tour has a large automated lighting rig at his disposal, a setup that includes Elation Professional's industry-standard beam light, the Platinum Beam 5R, along with the increasingly popular SixPar 200 colour-changing LED Par light. The Somewhere on a Beach tour is the largest touring production to date for the multi-Platinum singer and features a unique spearhead set design and large diamond-shaped drum riser. The large rig used to support the lighting includes a

UK - As part of the recent update to the Premier League television studio, lighting specialists LED Creative partnered with JHD Designs to add decorative highlights and bespoke illuminated sculptures to the set.

Designed by US based JHD Designs, overseen by UK Set Designer John Hemsley and constructed by Scenex, the Premier League installation at IMG's state of the art studio has been created with an industrial, modern feel featuring plenty of clean lines with intense colour used to edge the set pieces.

To create the colour blasts added to the background structures and main presentation area, LED Creative supplied their Alpha 60 RGB system, coupled with silent running BIT1200 controllers, which has been integrated throughout the design to allow complete control and instant switching across almost infinite combinations of colour and intensity.

A key design element withi

USA - For the first 122 years of its existence, the distinct looking building on 11th and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia was never an entertainment venue. Its new owners were quick to make up for lost time up for lost time, however, when they converted the former farmers' market turned Reading Railroad luggage handling station into Union Transfer, a red-hot music hall devoted primarily to emerging and cult-hero indie rock acts.

Less than two years after opening in 2011, the site was featured in Rolling Stone's Top 20 Venues in America and hailed by the BBC as "one of the hottest venues on the US East Coast".

A key part of Union Transfer's appeal (aside from its knack for booking passionately followed artists like Purity Ring, Beach House, and St. Vincent.) is an evocative décor that features sky-high ceilings, stunning chandeliers, stained glass throughout th

Bahamas - The 4th Annual All That Jazz Festival on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, is an annual fund-raiser for the local Haynes Library. Supporting creative thinking and problem solving through its many programmes, the Haynes Library values its responsibility to the wider community and holds a special place in the life of the island.

Just as the library works to continually raise the bar of education and technology access, after three years of simple lighting, this year's festival looked to increase the lighting production values for its Saturday night jazz sessions at the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve, which is located in the settlement of Governor's Harbour.

Ferri Lighting Design and Associates (FLDA) brought in lighting equipment from off-island to realize LD Bruce Ferri's design in the Preserve's outdoor pavilion. "We had a blast doing this show," said Ferri. "You

Australia - Yet again, SGM fixtures have participated in Splendour in the Grass. The sold-out festival operated for four days and nights with over 30,000 festival goers each day. Besides having a star-studded music programme, the festival also places a lot of emphasis on the artistic experience of the festival.

Following his 2015 work titled Programme One, Melbourne visual artist Sam Songailo was a major part of the festival with an installation suitably titled Programme Two. Evolving from the 2015 design, Programme Two involved an intricately painted structure covering approx 400sq.m, with 50 individual pillars placed in a Colosseum-like configuration.

Taylor Chadwick from ETA was again recruited as lighting designer and based on last year's success, he did not hesitate to use SGM fixtures. For this year's installation, he deployed eight P-5 wash ligh

UK / USA - Since its inception 40 years ago, ETC has come a long way. Now a global leader in the manufacturing of lighting and rigging technology, ETC employs over 1000 people, across 10 countries, in facilities totalling more than 10 football pitches in size. In recent years, the company's growth has been particularly remarkable; to keep pace and to allow for future developments, a global office expansion programme is underway.

ETC Ltd's London base is the latest of the company's premises to undergo a significant revamp. The recent construction work at the two-storey facility involved a complete overhaul of the upper level of the building, including the installation of a mezzanine housing multiple open-plan work areas, several individual offices and a meeting room. The lower floor has also been reconfigured to incorporate a dedicated R&D lab and new open-plan pods for the tec

USA - The 20,000-plus fans who turn out for the weekend Summer Camp Music Festival like it so much that every year about half of them turn up a day early for a giant 'Pre Party'. The assembled partiers almost double the population of the central Illinois hamlet of Chillicothe, but no one - neither townsfolk or visitors -- seems to mind; such is the laid back nature of this event.

In keeping with that spirit, the festival welcomes a variety of artists, as evidenced by the 2016 line-up that included Umphrey's McGee, Jason Isbell, Ani DiFranco and an array of EDM stars.

Each of these artists appeared on stages that supported their particular musical genre. For the EDM acts, this meant performing in front of an expansive, custom pixel mapped video wall on the Vibe Tent Stage that was created by Ryan Warffuel and Max Koehler of Antic Studios, using Chauvet Professional PVP S5 p

USA - Twenty One Pilots (T°P) are among the most exciting and original bands right now.

Production designers Daniel Slezinger and Justin Roddick have spec'd nearly 180 Robe fixtures for their current Emotional Roadshow tour.

Daniel and Justin's Nashville-based creative production company Concert Investor is coordinating lighting, sound and video for the tour together with special FX, fabrication, content creation and programming. The hyperactive pair also run Glow Motion, devoted to the development of esoteric tech projects and fun wizardry.

T°P's Tyler Joseph has always taken a creative lead in the shows explained Daniel, with the team around him interpreting this vision. Lighting director Tyler Shapard - who is on the road with the tour - and video director Chris Schoenmen from Tantrum who creates the show visuals, all evolved the aesthetic for Emotional Road

UK - Elation Professional has announced that as of 15 August longtime lighting professional David Martin has joined the company as key account manager serving the southern UK. David is a familiar face to many in the industry, having developed a wealth of relationships over his 27 years in the lighting and audiovisual industry.

"I have been watching Elation's progress over the last few years and am extremely excited and proud to be part of its drive forward," he stated upon starting in the position. "With innovative award-winning products they have a team who has a passion for lighting and a great work ethos."

David's new position as key account manager at Elation encompasses maintaining contact with lighting designers and rental/supply companies while developing and managing business in TV & film studios, theatres and night venues. He will also be responsible for managing

Croatia - To mark the first anniversary of the passing of Pierre Brice during Winnetou Festival 2016, a memorial service took place in Croatia at the peak of the massif Tulove Grede.

German lighting design company MBLightarts was tasked to put together a multimedia show - they sketched the setup based on satellite images and local maps, studied some of the effects locally and took equipment and staff to Croatia during the first week of June, having had their debut on 6 June.

The team took in total 34x SGM P5 RGBW washes to light up the rocks, split in eight groups, each with a 5.2kVA generator, as there was no power supply on-site. In order to control these fixtures, MBLightarts used W-DMX from Wireless Solution - six WhiteBox F-1 G4S transceivers were used, some with the standard 3dBi omni-directional antennas [where the distance was shorter], and the remaining with the O

UK - The Royal Shakespeare Company is one of Britain's most renowned theatre companies. Based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, it is dedicated to producing the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well as developing new work from living artists.

The RSC has three theatre spaces: the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Swan Theatre and the recently-opened Studio Theatre at The Other Place. Wanting to replace the existing tungsten units in their main Royal Shakespeare space, they approach White Light to supply them with the very latest LED lighting fixtures.

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a 1040 seat thrust stage theatre which first opened in 1932. The theatre is a 'one-room' space which allows the actors and audience to share the same space, as they did when Shakespeare's plays were first produced. The space was renovated in 2010 as part

UK - Robe's new Spikie fixtures - small, super-fast LED WashBeams - made their UK debut on a lighting rig designed by Paul Griffiths of Firebird Events for a UK sales conference staged in the Champagne Suite at the Novotel West London.

Twenty-four Spikies were installed by Firebird, the three-day event's technical solutions provider in the suite which served as the main plenary area.

The lighting brief for the dress jewellery and accessories company was to keep it up-beat with plenty of razzamatazz and drama, accents and big moments to match the tone and style of the presentation. This included lots of audience interaction as this season's new products were introduced to the enthusiastic and highly motivated sales force. A series of awards were also handed out to the last year's highest achievers and top sellers.

The stage was built at one end of the room which is a ch

Europe - Working with the Ayrton MagicDot-R luminaires proved to be a rewarding and pleasurable 'Weekend' experience for Litecom's designer, Mikkel Samuelsen, at the recent Weekend (WKND) Festival.

This exciting northern hemisphere event took place in Sweden, Finland and Estonia on the same weekend, at the start of August, with MagicDot-R debuting at the Swedish Festival in Stockholm. Topline acts in the line-up included Fatboy Slim, Ti

USA - Walk down North Jefferson Street in the historic district of Indiana's 'Lime City' and it's easy to become lost in time. Huntington earned its nickname because at one time it was a centreof limestone production, and the stately homes on Jefferson Street, many of which date back to the 1840s, bear witness to the city's solid traditions.

Not far from this historic district is another time-honoured part of Huntington's culture, College Park Church. Founded in 1897, the church's roots in the community run deep, but like the city of Huntington, which hosts a high-tech university and an acclaimed robotic auto parts plant, College Park Church has stepped into the future while continuing to honour its past. This spirit was at the heart of a recent remodelling project at the church that was done by CSD Group of Fort Wayne Indiana, using LED fixtures from Chauvet as key components

USA - Bandit Lites' massive touring inventory continues to grow with the addition of Martin's VDO Sceptron 10.

The linear LED video fixture provides easy setup, configuration and allows lighting designers a wide variety of looks for both indoor and outdoor looks.

Lighting designer Sooner Routhier specified the Sceptron for Shinedown's Carnival of Madness Tour, with the fixtures integrated within the set pieces to provide video content for the multiplatinum rock band.

The ease to which the Sceptrons could be daisy-chained together provided lighting director Carter Fulghum the ability to adapt the rig to fit the various venues while on tour.

"When we put them on our set carts, we made them angled, and gradually they would get longer and longer," said Bandit Lites lighting technician Elizabeth Weller who provided support on the tour. "They're also sturdy. We never had

UK - Rental company Fineline supplied lighting, video and rigging equipment plus crew to Duran Duran Live at Eden with BBC Music Day, staged at the Eden Project in Cornwall. The special concert was the finale of the BBC's 2016 Music Day - a nationwide celebration designed to unite different generations and communities through music.

Fineline was working with TAO Productions with whom they also regularly collaborate as a technical solutions provider for the annual Eden Sessions concerts. The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 2, aired a few nights later on the BBC 2 TV channel and available via The Red Button interactive channel.

Lighting for the band was designed by Vince Foster. He submitted a plot and a spec to Fineline who built the Eden production lighting rig based on this, with some fixture swaps related to their stock on consultation with Vince, explains Fineli

USA - Dove Award-winning and Grammy-nominated Christian band Building 429 has enjoyed considerable success as recording artists. Their 2013 recording Listen to the Sound holds the record for the longest unbroken run at the top of the Billboard Christian Charts.

It is at live concerts, though, where the quartet really shines, as their anthem-like choruses, heartfelt melodies and raw, honest devotion create a powerful connection to fans. On their 2016 tour, the band forged an even stronger fan bond with a new lightshow that includes 18 Chauvet Professional Nexus Aw 7x7 LED panels supplied by Theatrical Media Services.

Well-known lighting designer John Hansen of EnHansen Design created the new lightshow for the band's 2016 tour after they retained him earlier this year. "This is my first year designing and programming for Building 429. After working on several differen

USA - Wanting to get back to a bigger lighting look for country music star Luke Bryan's current Kill the Lights tour, lighting designer Justin Kitchenman of FadeUp Design Group created a spectacular upstage wall of lighting effects using 100 Elation Professional ACL 360i narrow-beam LED fixtures.

"We chose the ACL 360i after a shootout with other similar fixtures," Kitchenman explained. "We felt the beam was a bit more defined, performance was comparable, and the price of the fixture allowed us to get the amount of fixtures we desired without blowing up our lighting budget."

In Kitchenman's design, the ACL 360i fixtures are mounted to the back of a video wall that is comprised of (10) 1m wide by 5m high columns. Each column is on an automated system that tracks side to side with full rotation capabilities and has 10 ACL 360is mounted to the back of it.

Kitchenman, who

UK - Opened in 1997, Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan Playhouse in London where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed.

For the first time, the venue has installed a theatrical lighting rig for the summer season - with GLP's multiple award-winning impression X4 Bars playing a crucial role. Previously, performances have used only natural daylight, similar to the original productions, during daytime shows, and a wash of tungsten floodlighting in the evenings.

Designed by Malcolm Rippeth, who has also masterminded the lighting for two of the shows in the opening season, the new inventory has been supplied by White Light, and installed as part of Emma Rice's first season as artistic director.

"The trickiest part of the rig was finding a good overhead backlight, as these units are most prominently in the audience's sightlines,

UK - The National Theatre's (NT) River Stage Weekends festival has returned to London's Southbank, with chief lighting designer Huw Llewellyn choosing an Avolites Tiger Touch II and Fader Wing running the latest Titan v10 to deliver versatile, power-packed control across the month-long programme of weekend takeovers.

A free festival, River Stage plays host to a diverse range of artists and acts from family friendly workshops to energetic riverside raves. Throughout August, the festival has seen numerous National Theatre partners from across the country tread the boards of the outdoor stage, painted red to mirror the NT's Temporary Theatre (previously affectionately known as the Shed).

"We chose an Avolites console for River Stage because it's what we know and love - it's so versatile whilst being quick and easy to programme," says Llewellyn. "We're operating and programmin

Namibia - The first Robe Spikies to be purchased on the African continent have gone to Windhoek, Namibia based rental company Mikel-Jes which purchased eight units from Robe's distributor DWR in Johannesburg.

The events market in Namibia is currently buoyant, and Robe - thanks to the hard work of DWR and the leading Namibian rental companies' willingness to invest in premium products - is well established as a moving light brand amongst the top production companies in the country which is most definitely 'emerging'.

Michael Vermeulen founder and co-owner of Mikel-Jes already has around 80 Robe fixtures in hire stock and has been a steady investor in the brand - along with other quality names in the entertainment technology world - since founding the company in 2008.

When he saw the Spikie in action at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt this year ... he knew it was a suitable

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