Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
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Lighting

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Show News - Loudspeaker manufacturer Tannoy makes a welcome return to the PLASA show after being absent for a couple of years. The company will be using the Earls' Court event as the platform for a first UK demonstration of its newest pro-audio product lines, VQ and QFlex, as well as exhibiting some of the existing V-Series loudspeaker range.

Executive News - Bandit Lites has announced that Peter M. Heffernan, a 30-year veteran, has been named president of the firm. Effective immediately, Heffernan will take the reigns and serve as both president and C.O.O., a role he has held for the last 15 years. This move comes at a time of growth for Bandit and is the logical step in taking the firm to the next level, says the company. Heffernan began his full time relationship with Bandit Lites in 1978 and he has risen through the ranks. He served as lighting director and/ or production manager f

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Serbia - Rental company Studio Berar supplied over 100 Robe moving light fixtures for lighting the main and dance stages at the 2008 Exit Festival, held in the picturesque Petrovaradin fortress of Novi Sad, Serbia.

The production design for the 35,000 capacity main stage was created by Studio Berar's Marko Maleševi?. It was based on the need to have a flexible rig that would work for all artists including those bringing their own LDs. Maleševi? also lit several bands playing at the event including Gogol Bordelo, Juliet & The Licks, Manu Chao and others.

The Studio Berar team installed a trussing grid, below the 25m wide, 14m deep roof which offered an impressive 18m of headroom. The moving lights - 20 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs and 50 Robe ColorWash 575E ATs - were arranged across the grid, with 60m of Tecno Vision LED at the back.

Maleševi? comments: "Robe's a great ch

PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

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Germany - On 20 July, the biggest LED video screen ever used at a major motor racing event - and one of the largest systems ever supplied by G-LEC - was installed at Hockenheim Ring.

In cooperation with Hockenheim Ring, host of Formula 1 Santander Grand Prix, the massive 300sq.m screen provided spectators in the Innen Tribüne - the long stand inside the track, where spectators were up to 400m from the screen - with a television view of the race, something that would have been impossible with a standard high resolution screen.

Using 299 Phantom30 frames, the 23m wide x 13m deep screen is thought to be the largest LED screen ever used at such a major motor racing event. Built specifically for the occasion, the screen needed to be easy to construct and de-rig, but also needed to present extremely low wind resistance. Indeed the pre-race days saw strong winds and torrential rain,

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UK - PLASA Media has revealed this year's short-listed nominees for the prestigious Gottelier Award, and opened up the online voting form at the PLASA Show website.

The voting is open to industry professionals worldwide, and will remain open until 12.00 midday (UK time) on Friday 29 August 2008. The winner will be announced at the PLASA Show on Monday 8 September.

Named in honour of the late designer, developer and commentator Tony Gottelier, this award aims to recognise the tireless product developers who have made a significant contribution to the development of the equipment and tools that enable our entertainment technology practitioners to continually push the boundaries of event production, presentation and installation.

Last year's inaugural Award was won by Tony Andrews of Funktion One for his decades of dedi

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UK - Alpha Beam 1500 is a new 1500W concept beam moving light that produces a super-concentrated and super-powerful parallel light beam for use with a "very long throw aircraft landing light effect", an ever- present at all the great shows in stadiums and arenas, but with new graphic, chromatic and movement features.

Alpha Beam 1500 is ultra bright and eco-friendly; thanks to the new special Clay Paky optical group, it produces a much greater brightness than lights of the same power, achieving projection distances reached only by lights of thousands of watts, but with the energy consumption of a 1500W light bulb. This enables it to be used instead of considerably larger projectors, with enormous savings in energy, says the company.

Alpha Beam 300 is the only 300W beam moving light on the market able to release an aircraft landing light effect from a powerful, light a

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UK - After being on tour for six months, Foo Fighters performed three UK stadium shows - two at Wembley and one at The City of Manchester to a combined audience of 230,000.

Production designer, Nathan Wilson, was tasked with the duty of simultaneously designing, programming and building the two separate stadium shows while still nailing the touring version nightly.

A joint effort by XL Touring Video Los Angeles, XL Touring Video London and XL Video Belgium was launched to produce not only the fabrication, but the extensive LED requirements and labour to execute the massive shows in support of Nathan Wilson. The Wembley show incorporated over 5000 individual MiTrix panels divided up into three different screen configurations. 3000 MiTrix were in a circular screen above the stage, above that was a roof surround screen with 300 MiTrix and 750 MiTrix were configured into four zipp

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USA - YLS Lasers of Los Alamitos, California was awarded the contract to provide a substantial amount of laser equipment for The Who's performance at the recent VH1 Rock Honors at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.

YLS creative team Marty Canavan, Steve Campbell and Scott Cunningham worked closely with The Who's lighting designer, Tom Kenny, to deliver a myriad of hall filling laser effects from the first note of the band's signature piece, Baba O'Riley.

"We utilized three high power YAG laser projectors, five fiber optic-fed remote scanners, three table scanners and over thirty stage mirror placements to give Tom and The Who what they were looking for, which was a big old school laser effect," explains Canavan. "The most challenging thing in an environment like this with several band and set changes leading up to The Who's performance is keeping eve

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USA - In addition to working on Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker's Super Bowl appearance, XL Touring Video is also the video contractor on the Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker's 2008 North American Summer Tour, which kicked off the end of May in MI, and wraps up 29 August in Woodlands, TX.

Tom Petty's production/lighting designer, Jim Lenehan has created a design that incorporates threedifferent resolutions of LED along with projection. To achieve the design, XLTV supplied 2200 XL LED Spheres and five Mitirx cubes with 72 Mitrix LED panels in a each cube. The cubes are 4ft in diameter and hung above the stage at different levels and move throughout the show. In addition to XLTV, CW Productions and Ed & Ted are also supplying tour support.

XLTV's project manager, Dave Hyslop says: "The result of Lenehan's vision was a three dimensional wild ride of a visual display. It was gratify

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China - Artistic Licence Asia, which opened its doors in Hong Kong on 1 July 2008, has collaborated with Norm Schwab and Glenn Wade of Lightswitch, San Francisco, on the Coca Cola Pavilion for the Beijing Olympic Games.

A two-storey, 4,000sq.m building, the Coca Cola Pavilion is the largest facility on the Corporate Sponsor Row, located outside the main Birds Nest stadium and providing exhibition space and corporate hospitality throughout the games.

The building houses an exhibition documenting the history of Coca Cola alongside that of the Olympic Games, the "Perfect Serve" hospitality area, a Media zone running automated fixtures including Vari*Lites and High End Systems DL3 digital luminaires complete with video content, and externally, a roof comprised of a material membrane surmounted by the Olympic rings - all of which is lit by 200 washlights from DTS of Italy

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UK- When the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) decided to invest in state-of-the-art scoreboards at its world-famous cricket ground, Lord's, it chose Lighthouse Technologies to head up the contract. "We had two scoreboards that had been there for some time and the 16,000 light bulbs of which they consisted needed constant replacement," explains Steve Jones, IT manager at MCC. "We also had a temporary video screen which was brought in for major matches. So when we decided to replace the two scoreboards, the decision was made to add a third and set them all up to be capable of showing video.

"It has been a sizable investment, "but it's part of an ongoing policy of upgrading our facility to ensure that Lord's continues to be the best cricket ground in the world."

MCC hired Gardiner and Theobald as project managers to put out a tender for a full JCT Desig

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UK - Avolites' stand this year will show the Diamond 4 Vision and Elite consoles, the full range of Pearls including the Pearl Tiger, Pearl Expert and the new Pearl 2010 console, plus Avolites' new operating system, Titan.

Also being demonstrated is Avolites' ART2000 dimming range. In particular, Avo will be illustrating how racks can be custom configured to client's specific requirements.

The Pearl 2010 sees Avolites introduce a new contemporary streamlined look for its global bestselling console. This will include new graphics and an ergonomically curved front and back, complimenting the physical aesthetics of the Pearl Expert and Pearl Tiger consoles.

Developed from the original D4 Operating System, Titan adds new features to the Diamond 4 and brings powerful features from the Diamond 4 to the Pearl Expert. All Titan based consoles offer powerful functions like Fixture Ex

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Olympic News (1) - The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games was undoubtedly one of the most spectacular such events seen and heard in recent history. The occasion provided a tremendous showcase for the world's lighting, sound, broadcast and production industries. Roll on London 2012!

Awards News - Rock band Iron Maiden have asked to be removed from the Vodafone Live Music Awards shortlist after being nominated for the best live return prize. Vodafone said the band had complained they should not be considered for the prize because they said they had never stopped touring. In a posting on their website the band said: "We are not quite sure where we are returning from." Indie group James have now been nominated for the award instead. Iron Maiden, who recently played at Twickenham Stadium, said the nomination was "very flattering". A Vodafone spokesman said: &q

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UK - Hidden underground near to Tower Bridge London, is a private tunnel where clients are driven to a taxi drop off area and car park, to access the offices above. Light Bureau (Lighting Consultant) was given the task of enhancing the concrete service tunnel providing a welcoming and dynamic transport link. Working closely with Control Lighting Ltd, Light Bureau developed a sophisticated lighting control system that would monitor the position of any vehicle within the tunnel and use this to trigger digital images and video to be played anddisplayed on the LED feature wall along one side of the tunnel.

"We designed the feature wall to draw the eye through what is otherwise a very utilitarian space" explained Paul Nulty of Light Bureau. "We wanted the animation to keep pace with vehicles, thus avoiding distraction for the drivers. This required an intricate control

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Turkmenistan - The Caspian Sea country's capital city Ashgabat features the Arch of Neutrality. Its tripod shape is based on that of the traditional Turkmen tripod and it is the city's tallest building; on its top, reachable with a lift, there is a gold statue of former president Saparmurat Niyazov, which rotates through 360° every 24 hours, in order to always face the sun.

Only completed in 1998, the Arch was recently the object of an impressive lighting installation, with 105 SGM Palco 3 positioned at the base of the structure's pilasters. Chosen for their exceptional brightness and protection to IP 65, which makes them reliable even with the region's typically extreme climatic conditions (from -20° during the winter to +45° in the summer), the fixtures were mounted without any difficulty, in spite of the construction's unusual set-up.

The fixtures, supplied by

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China - The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics 2008 in Beijing, held in the Beijing National Stadium - the Bird's Nest - has been universally praised as one of the greatest spectaculars of recent times. More than 2,300 DMX controlled fixtures and 45,000 parameters transformed the stadium into a sea of lights. Three grandMA full-size, plus three grandMA full-size as backup, two grandMA light as well as 46 x MA NSPs controlled the sophisticated lighting network during the ceremony.

"These are the Games of the records so is the Opening Ceremony", says Mr. Sha, lighting designer of the opening and closing ceremony. "In a show like this, pure reliability and proven functionality are vital."

Paul Collison, who was responsible for the control system and broadcast lighting, said of the preparation for the opening ceremony, "I was first contacted in Decemb

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Hong Kong - Lighthouse Technologies' returns to PLASA to demonstrate its latest high resolution R4-B and R6-B LED panels, as well as two of its new creative display products, the Tile and Mesh on Stand E81.

R4-B is a 4mm pixel pitch, black-faced panel and R6-B is a 6mm pixel pitch, black-faced panel. Both have brought a new dimension to the picture quality of Lighthouse LED screens.

By combining a superfine resolution with Lighthouse's new 3-in-1 black-faced Surface-Mount Device (SMD) LED, a much better contrast level and visual performance have been achieved. The lightweight and slim casing design makes these panels ideal for rental applications and they can also be easily installed and integrated, thus providing the best possible return on investment for customers, says the company.

The black casing of the SMD provides a truer black level within the displayed image and a c

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UK - Rapper Jay-Z's Glastonbury 2008 performance featured a giant Lighthouse LED His intro was screened on a 15 x 5 panel (15.3m (w) x 3.8m (h)) Lighthouse R7-ER 7mm visual pitch LED screen, which also formed a backdrop to the rest of his set. The only problem was that, not long before the festival, there were few R7-ER screens in the UK that wasn't already in use.

"We were already on site doing various projection jobs and we were the only company who had any quantity of R7-ER available," says Robin Wealleans of screen provider, The Picture Works. "Unfortunately we only had about half the required quantity of panels in the country and Jay-Z insisted on using R7-ER for the backdrop. It was obviously a key part of his performance so there was a stark choice for the Glastonbury organisers - to source more R7-ER panels or Jay-Z doesn't play."

The Picture Works

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Italy - Santa Cristina della Fondazza in the city of Bologna has recently undergone a restoration programme.

The interior lighting is now based almost exclusively on LED fixtures. With this choice, unusual for a church, Bigi+Gregoli managed to meet different indispensable: highlighting a unique artistic heritage, creating atmospheres suited to the performances, accentuating the cultural role of a consecrated building and keeping its sacredness intact.

After careful selection, SGM was chosen and through Volume Srl supplied all the equipment used for the system: 24 Palco 5, one Ribalta and 38 Genio Mobile, plus four Giotto Wash moving head units and a Pilot 3000 console, used to programme and control all the lights.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Belfast based BBC Northern Ireland has invested in three new Avolites ART2000 dimmer racks for it's OB unit, which have been supplied by Production Services Ireland (PSI).

The decision to specify Avo dimmers was made collectively by BBC NI's lighting directors Philip Brines and Jim Devlin and their colleague, electrical supervisor Colin Irwin.

"We needed something that was flexible, compact robust, reliable and portable," explains Irwin. "Avolites also came highly recommended by everyone we spoke to, and we wanted a future-proof product to keep the lighting department up-to-date for several years in the future."

As soon as the dimmers arrived at the Belfast HQ, they went straight out on the Royal Maundy Service, broadcast from Armagh and attended by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, the first time the service has been held outside the UK mainland. Sin

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USA - Bon Jovi have taken grandMA on the road. The band's 2006 Have A Nice Day tour, which was the first to carry a HD video system with it for the duration of the tour, employed a grandMA for lighting and video control. Now, Bon Jovi's Lost Highway world tour is concluding with a pair of grandMAs in tow.

"The operation of the grandMA has been similar to the last tour, but we upgraded our equipment inventory with new media servers with custom software," reports lighting director and programmer Patrick Brannon. "Our video house rack remained the same."

Brannon is convinced that: "we couldn't do what we do with any other console. As you learn and start adding bells and whistles on the outboard equipment you just add another parameter to the grandMA. grandMA enables you to build the system you need, because all the parameters are custom.&quo

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Hong Kong - The architectural style of Kowloon is influenced by the busy commercial activity: the main streets are dominated by contemporary buildings, illuminated night and day to attract the attention of visitors and buyers.

The Toy House, a recently renovated building hosting offices in Kowloon's Canton Road, features a LED installation fitted by K&C Creation in collaboration with the owner. A wall of LED lights, behind 84 square glass panels, transform its façade in a sort of luminous matrix. Each panel is rear-lit by three SGM Palco 3 White LED with 25° lens, apart from the smaller ones, in the top and bottom rows, for which 40° lenses were chosen.

Palco 3 White LED can reproduce a colour temperature that goes from 2,000°K to 6,700°K: the lights behind the translucent cladding thus play on variations of tone ranging from absolute white to amber. During th

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UK - White Light recently brought dramatic life to the Underglobe - the basement of the Globe Theatre on London's Bankside - for a spectacular birthday party that included a concert featuring Sean Escoffery, Lemar, DJ Spoony and others. The latest LED and wireless control technology from White Light's rental stock was used to ensure that equipment could be deployed quickly, unobtrusively and to maximum effect.

The lighting designer for the event, White Light's approved venue manager Steve Richardson, was working towards a brief to crate a "classy, exciting evening which slowly revealed a bit more of itself to the guests as they moved through the various spaces of the Globe."

To achieve this, he extended the Underglobe's existing stage, then built a 7m x 6m box truss around it, with a separate box on the upstage side to allow him to work around the venue's pillars and

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UK - For the third year in succession, ShowCAD Control Systems will be exhibiting with Pulsar Light of Cambridge at the PLASA show. ShowCAD will be using and demonstrating version 3.00 of its Artist show control system, which now controls 64,000+ DMX channels and implements many new features for comprehensive control of LED, intelligent and conventional lighting and supports many input/output protocols for interfacing to video servers, lasers, sound systems and a range of AV and industrial equipment.

Artist systems are principally installed in nightclubs. Examples in Las Vegas clubs alone are Jet at The Mirage, Blush at Wynns, The Bank at The Bellagio - and more. Artist is also in control at many and varied non-club sites around the world. Recent "unusual" commissions include illuminated fountain control for Waveney District Council, The Amber Fort son et lumiere shows

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Japan - Well-known for distribution of leading entertainment technology products around the world, the A.C. Lighting Group has announced its first A.C. Lighting office in Asia. The new company, A.C. Lighting Asia KK, is based in Tokyo to promote and support the innovative Chroma-Q LED range and to offer a wide range of products, synonymous with A.C. Lighting.

"We have enjoyed considerable success in Asia over recent years and feel now is the right time to commit additional resources, to offer the full "added value" service of A.C. Lighting to help build our business even further in this key region." say's director Glyn O'Donoghue.

The new company is headed by Ruilin Zhang, a well-known figure in the Japanese entertainment lighting industry. She comments: "A.C. Lighting have a reputation for excellent support and competitive pricing over a wide range of

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