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Lighting

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UK - Stage Electrics and Projected Image Digital will be demonstrating the new Pixelmad software at Stage Electrics HQ in Bristol on Wednesday 2 June and Thursday 3 June from 10am - 7pm. The software is designed to control lighting using video and still images, and has recently been used on the Radiohead tour.

PixelMad software is similar to Catalyst however it outputs DMX rather than a video signal. The software uses an Artistic Licence Ether-Lynx Interface, which links the DMX lighting controller to an Apple Mac computer on which the video clips and images are stored. With up to four layers; two outputs; video signal input i.e. cameras and DV playback; 200 DMX fixtures; and eight universes, the control system produces some amazing lighting sequences.

The demo will feature a rig comprising of 20 Thomas Pixel Line 1044 LED battens; 16 Ayrton Eyecolor LED moving-heads; and some

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USA - Warren Flynn and Brian E. Kuehne have formed a new design partnership - Spacecoast Visual, which will concentrate on the corporate theatre and concert touring markets. Flynn and Kuehne have diverse yet complementary design and programming talents along with over 40 years of experience in entertainment lighting. "This is an exciting time for Brian and me," says Flynn. "We are both recognized as programmers who also design, and this allows us to firmly state that we are lighting designers who also program."

Flynn is probably best known for his work on Broadway. The Tony Award-winning musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Universal's new musical Wicked have both benefited from Warren's experience. Corporate theatre clients of Flynn's include Morgan Stanley, Nextel and Wendy's. Warren's design work has been seen on tour with Dashboard Confess

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Uk - At this year's ABTT show (16-17 June, London) James Thomas will show its comprehensive ranges of theatrical lanterns. Its asymmetric Cyc lights feature a high quality electrostatic paint finish and robust yoke, complete with T-bar for positive lock-off. Cyc lights can be used flown or floor-mounted - the body of the unit having an inbuilt 30 degree angle floor-mount facility - optional floor mounting plates are also offered. The units have adjustable lamp-holders and feature ventilation slots to prolong bulb and gel life.

Spot banks are available in various configurations of Par 36 lamps. Lamp changing is simple due to quick-release knobs on lamp's front retaining ring. Units can be supplied with stand-off colour frames if requires, and with two or four-way barn doors. Adapters are also made for all the major brands of colour changers. Spot Bank units can also be supplied w

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UK - Lighting director Tom Kinnane used 55 James Thomas PixelPAR 90(A) LED fixtures to light the set of ITV's dating show, Love on A Saturday Night, presented by Davina McCall. Kinnane chose the fixtures to front-light the set designed by Marcus Blee. Lighting became the show's key effect on the multilayered set, shifting the colour, mood and feel of the space.

Kinnane started using Pixelline 1044 battens - of which there are also 10 on this show - at Christmas after seeing them in action on Granada's Stars In Their Eyes in Manchester. He was impressed with the power and punch, and then tested some of the new PixelPAR 90 convection cooled fittings at the first opportunity. They were run in 10-channel mode for Love, ensuring full dimmer intensity control.

"They look fantastic on camera" he declares, and likes them so much that he'll now use them w

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UK/Ireland - Duran Duran's recent UK tour this spring sold out in a matter of minutes, drawing in old fans as well as new ones. Though the band performed favourite hits from the past, they didn't stick with old technology for their stage show. The main workhorse of the rig featured some of the latest technology from High End Systems - specifically, 50 x.Spot Xtreme and 46 Studio Beam automated luminaires, with control from a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog III lighting console. All lighting equipment was supplied by Neg Earth.

Reardon was not only the lighting designer, but also the programmer and board operator. Plus, he co-designed the set with production manager Tony Gittins. Reardon explained: "I chose the Wholehog III because the show was extremely cue-intensive and I couldn't use a console that might slow down while running eight universes at full tilt. The Hog III's remo

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UK - Bandit Lites UK and US are supplying the current Incubus tour in the US and Europe. Lighting designer is Joe Paradise, who has worked with Incubus since 2001. For the tour's lengthy European leg, Paradise and his Bandit Inc crew of Geddy Kordyjaka and Jeff Archibeque took a rig out of Bedford-based Bandit UK.

The rig is all Martin Professional luminaires - a mixture of 2K Profiles, MAC 600s, 500s and 300s, plus Atomic strobes, all split between the trusses and the floor. The downstage and mid-stage trusses are straight and there's two cross-trusses running upstage/downstage which are gently angled onstage, plus a straight drapes truss upstage. This holds a fibre optic starcloth, fed with mega-bright QFX 150 colour changing fibre optic light sources. Paradise is using one of the new Martin Maxxyz consoles for control.

There's no video, so he uses the stage as a large canva

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Finland / France - FogScreen Inc, the Finnish company whose walk-through projection screen we've reported on recently, has been awarded the Laval Virtual Award in Interfaces category at the sixth International Conference on Virtual Reality in Laval, France. An international jury made up of virtual reality specialists presented awards for the year's best virtual reality creations worldwide.

FogScreen Inc, which was founded less than a year ago, has received a remarkable variety of prizes and honours, including the InnoSuomi 2003 prize from the President of Finland for the best innovation of the year. During the International Conference in Laval, FogScreen presented its new interactive fog display, which makes writing and drawing in the air possible. The innovation had its debut in San Francisco at Wired Magazine's NextFest.

FogScreen's recent demonstration at the Washington Des

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UK - Rosco will show two new products at the ABTT Theatre Show at London's Horticultural Halls (16-17 June). The X-Effects Projector, say Rosco, provides large-scale 3D effects previously unavailable to lighting designers: it utilizes a 200W Enhanced Metal Arc source, whose short arc allows for an output of 5,000 lumens, and a 2,000-hour lamp life. The colour temperature is comparable to a Xenon source at 6000°K but with nearly two times the luminous efficacy of a halogen source.

The effect itself is created by rotating two B-size glass gobos off centre of the optical path. This results in a projection that does not appear to have a visible direction or pattern. Onboard potentiometers control the speed and direction of both gobos, and the colour slot will accept dichroic colour filters. Lens trains are available in 30, 50 and 70° configurations. Due to the efficiency of the la

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USA - VLPS Lighting Services is debuting the new video demo of the Virtuoso EX1 Media Server on its website (address below). Officially launched on 1 April, the EX1 media server employs a moving perspective camera and five-point lighting in a virtual 3D environment.

"The EX1 3D virtual environment contains two separate backgrounds, up to three interactive geometric objects, a positional camera and five light sources - which can be difficult to explain in words," comments Mike Snyder, EX1 product manager. "Plus, writing or talking about it just doesn't do enough justice to the EX1's capabilities. You really have to see it at work to appreciate its unique differences from the other media servers in the market."

Bryan Faris, senior programmer and developer of the EX1 video, says: "We've been holding ongoing demonstrations for clients at our studios but we

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Australia - Coemar DeSisti Australia (CDA) has announced the addition of new products to its portfolio. Imagine 300 is an elegant new display projector, say the company, which allows the projection of a range of gobos for striking visual effects. Utilizing a high-output HTI arc lamp, the fixture is suited to a range of applications, including point of sale promotions and marketing events. Features include high-output, long-life arc lamp, twin condenser lenses, thermal protection, die-cast aluminium construction and a range of optional attachments including rotating gobo and adjustable pivoting mirror.

CDA has also announced the addition of the Europoint range of powerful motorized hoists and droppers, ruggedly constructed and suitable for lifting extremely heavy luminaires and other equipment. Features include SWL capacities ranging from 100kg to 200kg, maximum heights up to 5m,

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UK - Strand Lighting has announced two staff changes at its London office. Strand Europe strengthens its marketing with the return of Bethan Dickson as marketing assistant. Formerly with Strand, Bethan returns to the company having gained extensive marketing experience within various facets of the industry. Her role will be to improve press, trade show and dealer communications and co-ordinate production of documentation in multiple languages. Bethan will work closely with all of European sales offices and will be based in the London office.

In sales, Ken Berreen has been appointed area sales manager London and South UK. Berreen has a wide experience and technical knowledge having worked in the industry for many years. He joined Strand Lighting in 2002 as a project manager.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

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UK / Japan - This summer, leading lighting rental company White Light and its specialist automated lighting division The Moving Light Company will be continuing their long association with the hit musical Miss Saigon by supplying lighting rigs to not one but two new productions of the show - one in Plymouth, the other in Tokyo.

White Light supplied the lighting rig to the very first production of the show, which ran at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London from 1989 until 1999. In 2001, David Hersey's design was re-conceived for a British tour which ran until late-2003; White Light and The Moving Light Company supplied the entire rig for that production, which included some of the first Vari-Lite VL2000 Spot and VL2000 Wash units used in Britain.

The entire lighting rig for that tour, including the Vari-Lites, DHA Digital Light Curtains, ETC Source Fours, VSFX cloud ef

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Germany - Since the beginning of May 2004, the US-based Blue Man Group has been in performance at Berlin's Theater am Potsdamer Platz. The cult performers' production employs MA Lighting's network signal processors (NSP) - part of a lighting equipment package that also includes MA Lighting's grandMA lighting consoles.

Originally only 4,000 DMX lines were planned for the lighting design of the Berlin show, which could have been controlled by a single lighting desk. However, during the preparations for the production, the demands on the control desk gradually increased to include 130 moving lights, integrated video control via four High End Catalyst Media Servers and eight High End Catalyst DL-1 projectors and 50 Atomic Strobes from Martin Professional with 36 Atomic Color colour changers.

Thus the maximum capacity of 4098 channels was quickly reached. The use of a second consol

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USA - After playing to an estimated 35 million people over 10 years, the popular free outdoor sea battle at Las Vegas' Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, the Battle of Buccaneer Bay, was retired to make way for an updated, sexier show - The Sirens of Treasure Island.

The show was given a fresh new storyline and set to music, resulting in a musical-meets-action spectacular that features an exhilarating clash between a group of beautiful, tempting sirens and a band of renegade pirates. The buildings of the seaside village are bathed in a cool moonlit wash, while a ghostly bleached ship with tattered sails sits nearby. Lighting the tropical city façade is a new Martin colour-changing system of Exterior 600, Exterior 600 Compact and Atomic strobe fixtures supplied by Fourth Phase.

Lighting design for the new show is by Roy Bennet with programming and assistant lighting design

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USA - Apple stores all over the world are lighting up in blue, pink, green, gold and silver for the launch of the new iPod mini. Apple has installed a system of five custom-sized Versa Tubes, from Element Labs, to create a colourful, eye-catching window display. There is one tube for each color iPod mini and they run a custom sequence designed by Apple.

"Apple came to us in December because they wanted to do something unique and eye-catching to announce the arrival of the iPod mini in February," said Jeremy Hochman, vice-president of marketing at Element Labs. "So we visited their headquarters and then designed a store fixture around the Versa Tube."

"Because of the amazing colour range of the Versa Tubes, we were able to closely match the colors of the iPods themselves," Hochman continues. "We have a high level of colour control with our sp

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UK - Coemar UK has announced its appointment as exclusive distributors of Geni Lighting moving mirror scanners, gobo projectors and controllers to the professional and DJ markets. Coemar UK managing director, Ian Kirby, confirmed that the Taiwan-manufactured range fills a gap in their intelligent light portfolio for moving mirror effects, not covered by the Coemar range (for which they are also sole distributors).

While Geni scanners were this month specified by The Music Company for installation in the new Bakersfield Leisure venue, Mood in Liverpool, the company's new controller, dubbed 'PC Brain' is running the James Thomas PixelPar 87 LED lanterns in the Hard Rock's newly-piloted bar concept in Bristol. Kirby was particularly attracted to the Geni scanner family, comprising the Stratus 5X, The Shiva, The MZ-12 and the Mojo Scan, he said: "There is still a huge market fo

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Denmark - The Martin Professional head office in Denmark has announced a new member of the area sales management team, Peter Dahlin. Dahlin's main responsibility as area sales manager will be sales support for Martin's Spanish and Portuguese speaking markets. Besides facilitating business in Spain, Portugal, and South and Central America, Dahlin will support a number of Eastern European countries as well.

Dahlin comes to Martin with a background in international sales including 18 years serving southern European and South American markets. He has extensive sales experience including a seven-year stint at LEGO in their Educational Division selling technology and robotics projects to schools and universities in Latin America. Dahlin masters seven languages including Spanish and Portuguese. He assumed his new position at Martin on 1 June.

With Dahlin's hiring area sales manager H

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UK - An imaginative use of LED lighting from the portfolio of Lighting Effects Distribution, has created a striking bar back display in the upgraded Loaf at Manchester's Deansgate Lock.

The former halogen colour-changers had fallen into disuse after problems with overheating, and the venue's owners, Mitchells & Butler asked Liverpool-based installers, Orritt Electronics, to provide a new look for the venue. LED technology provided the obvious solution, with its long lamp life, minimal maintenance, low heat emission and low power consumption. Orritt's redesign includes 18 Mood Light panels (split into two groups of 3 x 3 behind the bar, and running off the slowest setting). These are complemented by six Thomas PixelPar 87's and 12 Octopod 90 heads (divided into four groups). All were supplied by L.E.D. Ltd to create focal points and drama.

The Mood Light panels were deemed part

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USA - When Ford Motor Company revealed its 2005 Mustang at Ford Division's Spring Dealer Meeting in Las Vegas during the week of 26 April, a herd of Mustang horses galloped around the audience on giant video screens. PRG helped immerse the audience in the experience by using the TiMax system to synchronize the movement of sound with the images. The result was a wild rush of excitement befitting the car's namesake!

PRG helped the audience experience another rush of excitement as Ford's new super car, the Ford GT, was revealed. After providing dramatic audio support for the car's entrance onto the stage, PRG used speakers under the seating area to shake the audience as the Ford GT's engine was "revved".

Other support provided by PRG for the event included supplemental lighting and full sound reinforcement for the event's receptions, speaker presentations, and Q&A sess

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UK - Since February this year, Sound Division has been designing and supplying lighting effects to upmarket urban street and sportswear chain Diesel to light their display windows in their flagship stores in the King's Road and Covent Garden.

Sound Division's Chris Baxter who runs the company's hire and events division for whom Diesel is an extremely long-standing client, explained that this particular contract formed part of a campaign for a new style line for Diesel. Every three weeks Baxter is given a brief for the look and feel of the display, and he is required to design and implement the appropriate lighting scheme.

Baxter commented: "Our most recent design was definitely among my favourites and I have to say I'm particularly proud of what we achieved. We were asked to create an effect which gave the impression of being under water looking up to the surface and bein

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Belgium - A commercial centre located in Mons, approx 60Km south of Brussels, Les Grands Prés has had its façade lit. Whilst creative lighting of commercial structures is not a novelty in itself, the novelty of the Mons - Les Grands Prés project lies in the type of spotlights used: effects projectors that are able not only to diffuse the colour but also to project pictures and writings, or to draw precise and imaginative shapes with light.

According to the manufacturers Rain Spot 575 from Clay Paky is currently the only IP65 product on the market able to meet this requirement: it is provided with advanced optics, four interchangeable lenses with 18° to 46° beam angles, electronic focusing and an effects section consisting of four fixed gobos, four indexable rotating gobos, four rotating prisms, dimmer and immediate beam stop.

Koert Vermeulen, lighting and pr

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UK - Projected Image Digital will exhibit at ABTT for the first time, featuring Element Lab's Versa TILE and Versa Tube LED products and PixelMAD, a revolutionary matrix control system for playing back digital images as Quicktime movies via DMX-controlled lighting fixtures.

The newest Versa TILE product is Versa Tube, which can produce vibrant patterns to organic flows of coloured light. Versa TILE and VersaTube both use LED video display technology to produce a broad spectrum of rich, saturated colours.

Each Versa TILE is edge-lit by LEDs, giving a smooth light output. Like building blocks, tiles can be placed together in any configuration. Proven LED video display technology lets VersaTile produce a broad spectrum of rich, saturated colours - in addition to flesh tones, browns, greys and other colours normally unachievable with conventional lighting technology.

Each single

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USA - Production Resource Group LLC (PRG) and VLPS Lighting Services International Inc (VLPS) have jointly announced a merger agreement, under which a newly formed subsidiary of PRG will merge with and into VLPS, with VLPS becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of PRG. The new PRG will operate as PRG Lighting, PRG Audio and PRG Scenic Technologies. Upon closing, the transaction will result in a fully integrated equipment rental and services company for automated and conventional lighting and audio systems, as well as scenery fabrication and automation technologies to serve the entertainment industry from facilities in 13 cities, worldwide.

The transaction, approved by the boards of both companies, is subject to the conditions set forth in the merger agreement, including the approval of VLPS' stockholders and completion of regulatory review. The holders of more than 50 percent of the

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Spain - MACs formed the core element of a city illumination scheme for the Spanish Royal wedding - The event was billed as Spain's 'wedding of the century'. On Saturday 22 May Crown Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne, and Letizia Ortiz were married in the country's first royal wedding in nearly a century. The Prince of Asturias and newly crowned Princess of Asturias exchanged vows at Almudena Cathedral in Madrid's old quarter.

As part of the cultural festivities, the city of Madrid instigated a celebration of its architecture through a temporary City Beautification project. The project consisted of lighting a number of culturally important buildings and monuments including the Puerta de Alcalá, the fountain in the Plaza de Cibeles, monuments to Neptune and Apollo, the Correos building (Post Office) and Museo Nacional Del Prado.

Cinelux, Ecler, Martin - The experienced

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  5. Ayrton adds moving head To L.E.D. portfolio
  6. White Light busy at ABTT 2004
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