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Lighting

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UK - The 2013 National Stage Management Awards Ceremony was held recently at the Old Truman Brewery in London, during the ABTT Theatre Show. The award for 'Stage Management Student of the Year' is sponsored by GDS, itself an award winning manufacturer, and was won this year by Alex Bradford of Rose Bruford College.

The award honours outstanding student achievement and Alex was considered to have truly risen above the competition, fully demonstrating her ability to take responsibility and apply herself skilfully and passionately to her work.

MD of GDS, Matt Lloyd expressed great pleasure in sponsoring the award: "This is the third year that we have been the proud sponsors of this award. As manufacturers of essential stage management equipment, some of which has been developed directly in conjunction with educators in the stage-management field, we are only too well aware o

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USA - Leading UK lighting designer Dave Byars has put his new Avolites Sapphire Touch to work on Brit-pop band Blur's heavily atmospheric 2013 tour, which has smouldered under the stars in venues and at festivals, including Coachella, California.

Dave Byars - who has been in charge of lighting Blur since the band first formed - had quite a challenge on his hands. Maintaining his high design values, while coping with the varying set ups of festivals, and arenas around the world is no mean feat. This is especially true in Byars' case as he is not touring his own rig but rather using festival house rigs or hiring locally at each venue. This means he often ends up with very different set ups or equipment types for each show.

"Being able to programme and design on the fly is essential for a tour like this one," stresses Byars. "I've been an Avolites console user for

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USA - Grunge rockers Alice In Chains are in the midst of a five-week national tour, and Clay Paky Sharpy Washes are shedding light on 22 dates coast-to-coast as the band plays festivals, theatres and small clubs.

The band began their spring tour in Miami and will finish in San Antonio, TX to generate buzz for their latest studio album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, their first since 2009.

Main Light provided 14 Sharpy Wash 330 units to lighting designer and director Marty Postma. "They're part of the floor package for effects," says Randy Mullican at Main Light. "We compared the Sharpy Wash to 1000-watt units and found the Sharpy's intensity, size and feature set to be better. They're a beautiful light in the right size package. This was the first rental the Sharpy Washes went out on for us, and A.C.T has been fabulous; their service and support has been s

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UK - Continuing a long-standing relationship with the Rod Stewart team, that spans nearly three decades, Tait was eager to produce customised staging elements for the artist's widely- anticipated Live the Life tour. Working alongside set designer Paul Staples, production manager Lars Brogaard and lighting designer Mark Payne, the team integrated Tait's fully-optimised stock assets into the set design.

Tait supplied six custom Periaktos, which are positioned on the mainstage and manually rotated throughout the performance. Each of the three-sided Periaktos contained a multi-faceted mirror face, a 12mm CT Flyer video screen and a grill-plated surface backlit with LED PAR fixtures.

Tait's automated helical trussing provides one of the main, artistic focal points of the set design. Powered by Tait's Nav Hoist system and hung from 10 half-ton chain hoists, the elements featu

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UK - White Light was recently chosen to supply lighting equipment and solutions for the Journey and Whitesnake 2013 UK Arena Tour. The widely popular bill featured the two superstar bands, along with musical guest Thunder, together in concert for the first time in the UK.

For the tour, which opened in Belfast and finished in London, White Light worked closely with production manager Rob Kern and lighting designer Kevin 'Deuce' Christopher, supplying a full production service including lighting fixtures, cabling, rigging, and power distribution.

The nine-venue tour in the UK is a continuation of Journey's worldwide tour with previous stops in North America, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore earlier this year. Christopher, who has been the touring LD for Journey since 2004, worked with Lester Cobrin, head of concert touring at White Light, to accommodate the addition of double h

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UK - Nick Gray of London-based creative visual design practice Renegade worked his lighting magic on the latest Eddie Izzard Force Majeure arena tour which has just finished an intensive three-month tour around the UK and Europe.

It's the first time that Gray - well known for his work in the fashion world and as LD for rockers Kasabian - has designed lighting for the 'surrealist' funny-man, a task on which he collaborated closely with Izzard's artistic director, Sarah Townsend.

The stylistic theme for the tour included flourishes of classic 1960s Avengers and Austin Powers, and another important aesthetic starting point was the large portrait format LED screen onstage.

This all needed careful and thoughtful lighting.

Gray wanted to introduce depth and architecture into the performance space and also make large arena spaces with one person onstage look and feel inter

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France - The nuclear blast at Hiroshima in 1945 is often described in Japanese as a flash (pika) followed by a bang (don). Last year, a performance lit with ETC Source Four LED Lustr+ fixtures aimed to represent the unexpected terror of the pika don through the medium of dance. Un Coup de Don, by dance company Ariadone and led by Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Morobushi (Japan), was part of the Festival Automne in Normandy, France.

Lighting director Eric Blosse says, "We all agreed that we needed to restart from the beginning, rather than seek to replicate the actual flash itself: we were left with a blank white space focused on the body in a trance."

The style of dance, Butoh, is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, which is well suited to trance-like movements and subtle colour shifts.

Says Blosse, "The

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Australia - The recently opened, and largest flagship restaurant for the Hurricanes group, Hurricanes Grill Brighton Le Sands is an expansive venue which overlooks the beach.

When deciding upon a suitable audio solution for the venue, Steve Sidd (general manager) wanted great sound but was under the impression that a JBL/Crown/BSS solution may have not been within his budget. Fortunately Con Constantinou, managing director of Constant Technology Pty Ltd, recommended a quality JBL audio solution which the client was delighted to learn was affordable.

"Steve's perception of the JBL brand was that it would be too expensive," explained Constantinou. "Once we presented the quote to the client he was really surprised how much of a cost effective solution it was."

The main challenge was that the client didn't want the speakers to be visible and so Constantinou h

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Fundraising Fellowship - The Arts Council is to fund a new fellowship programme to train arts fundraisers of the future. The Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy Fellowship will offer 11 places for entrepreneurial graduates at organisations including Opera North and Tate Liverpool. The programme is the first of its kind in the UK. With continuing spending cuts it is thought fundraisers will be increasingly important for the arts. A recent study by the charity Arts & Business suggested a growing divide in donations to the arts between London and the rest of England. Philanthropic giving to theatres and galleries rose 10% in London between 2011 and 2012. while donations elsewhere fell 3.5%. The trainee fundraisers will take part in an intensive 12 month training programme and it is hoped that they will go on to be leading directors of arts organisations in the future.

Budget Cuts<

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Australia - Canberra's National Science and Technology Centre Questacon has become the first Australian institution to invest in Philips Selecon's fully tuneable high output LED PL1 luminaires.

The centre - which attracts more than 420,000 visitors each year - has purchased 20 of the PL1s, which draw on Philips' pioneering technology to meet the everyday challenges of illuminating the museums, art galleries and stages.

"As an interactive Science Centre our requirement for lighting is based on more of a theatrical approach than traditional museum lighting," says Christine Hendry, creative manager at Questacon. "We use a combination of focused light and colour washing luminaires and needed to have an integrated approach to our gallery lighting with a plan for implementation over several years. The PL1s were seen as the perfect solution for us.

"Our main cri

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UK - White Light has announced the appointment of Rebecca Fellows as venue relationship manager, providing a key contact for events venues in London and across the UK. Fellows, previously events administrator at White Light, joined the company in 2011. She sees her new role as an opportunity to further develop White Light's ties with established venues while also seeking to connect with new and emerging events spaces.

"White Light has a strong history with many venues across the UK," she said. "My role will be to help those venues and clients make the most of our services and to understand how we can better serve them. I will also be investing time with newer and smaller production spaces, looking at how we can help achieve great events in any space."

"We are very excited to have Rebecca move into this new role," said Stuart Crane, head of events

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India - Leading south Indian rental company Nitin Speakers & Electrical has invested in Robe moving lights to upgrade their lighting inventory.

Run by Sachin Naik - who has connected with many politicians, dignitaries, VIPs and celebrities in the course of his work - the Pune based operation supplies technical production to events of all types from vast political rallies for half a million people or so to concerts and musical extravaganzas to corporate presentations.

Known for many years as a high quality audio rental company and also for building large portable venue superstructures, Nitin Speaker's & Electrical opened its Intelligent Lighting division a year ago.

"We were being asked more and more frequently if we could supply lighting," explains Naik, "So we decided to do it properly and make a substantial investment so we could stock and supply the very be

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Russia - Moscow's Teresa Durova Teatrium na Serpukhovke performance venue has invested in Philips Selecon's colour changing PLCyc1 luminaires in a major upgrade to its lighting equipment, replacing 121250W asymmetric tungsten cyc floods.

The Theatre's head of lighting, Vladimir Evstifeyev, invested in the PLCyc1s after testing them in the venue in early 2013.

"Vladimir and I were amazed at the PLCyc1's brightness and homogeneous filling without coloured shadows, and also absence of visual crossings of the light flows from adjacent fixtures," says Andrey Isotov, lighting designer at the Maly Theatre. "I was keen to be able to use the latest in LED lighting technology while working on The Scarlet Flower show, and the PLCyc1s do the job perfectly."

"Each PLCyc1 LED luminaire can replace the equivalent of a traditional four-colour, 500W per circuit cyc l

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Denmark - Just in time for the shipping of Harman Martin's new flagship lighting console, the M6, Martin has released a new software version for M-Series consoles with hundreds of improvements and a new user-interface, built from the ground up to make programming performances easier and more efficient.

The new v3 software is all about speed with faster start-up time, show loading and more efficient access to functions. The clean and modern user-interface has been optimized for touch and gesture technology, which allows the user to work in an environment where everything is accessible from a single finger touch. Users can simply swipe to move from view to view, access other playback banks quickly or change parameter selection. Double tapping on playback status accesses its functions and options. Additionally, users can enlarge the quick slide out for visual parameter control.

&

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South Africa - Philips Vari-Lite's LED VLX Wash luminaires have been used to deliver 'breathtaking' lighting to celebrate the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone in Johannesburg.

Event production manager Victor Vermaak and lighting designer Renaldo Van Den Bergfrom AV Unlimited (AVU) specified 12 of Vari-Lite's 14,000 lumens output VLX luminaires for the spectacular show at the city's Sandton Convention Centre, which was attended by more than 2,500 guests.

"We used the VLXs in the Presentation area to light the Honeycomb roof. We chose them because of their colour richness and punch," says Vermaak. "The VLXs were used to create colour and mood changes and worked perfectly. The lights were positioned quite a distance from the roof and no other LED wash light in our company would have created what we were looking for over that distance. Plus the awesome zoom

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Brazil - Paul McCartney's Out Thereworld tour kicked off in Brazil with three shows and a lighting design created by Roy Bennett.

The shows were supervised by Bennett and operated by lighting director Wally Lees. Lighting equipment for all three was supplied by leading Brazilian rental company LPL Professional Lighting and included Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash luminaires, together with other moving lights and generics.

LPL's Erich Bertti project managed all three Brazilian dates which saw McCartney perform for the first time ever in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais), Goiânia (Goiás) and Fortaleza (Ceará).

The production used 12 x Robe ColorWash 2500E ATs located on the stage floor, nine ColorSpot 2500E ATs on overhead trusses and 20 x ColorWash 1200E ATs distributed on the side and followspot trusses. "As usual the Robe fixtures worked really reliably," said

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UK - The 2013 Olivier Awards saw the new Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330s take charge of their first event since they became a recent addition to White Light's ever growing arsenal of entertainment technology.

For the third year running the Awards, which were broadcast from the Royal Opera House's glittering auditorium, were lit by respected lighting designer Ben Cracknell.

Lighting designer Humph McDermott continued the lighting theme outside on the Radio 2 Stage, where special live performances and live streaming of the Awards were watched by hundreds of theatre fans on the Covent Garden Piazza.

And it was outside that the brand new Sharpy Wash 330 came into its own. McDermott used them, alongside Sharpy Beams, to cut through the daylight and complement the sparkling theatrical atmosphere inside the Royal Opera House.

McDermott needed a super bright fixture to cut through the

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UK - GLP, German Light Products, has announced the launch of the Impression X4S - the latest product in this award-winning series. "The Impression X4S brings a whole new level of functionality to compact LED wash lights, complete with RGBW homogenous colour mixing, a 7 to 50 degree zoom range and a high output level," says the company.

A smaller version of GLP's popular Impression X4 fixture, the Impression X4S utilises seven high powered 15W RGBW LEDs at its source. These LEDs give a single homogenised colour output from its unique looking front lens across a wide spectrum and with high output for a very compact fixture.

"Adding flexibility, the Impression X4S turns things up considerably for such a small fixture with an expansive 7:1 zoom ratio that ranges from 7 to 50 degrees," says GLP. "At its narrowest, the Impression X4S features both a hard and

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USA - When the annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival got underway, with its 24/7 schedule and desert location, Clay Paky lighting took centre stage for the Main Stage performances of California rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Lighting designer Scott Holthaus had 70 Clay Paky Sharpys and 23 Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500s in his inventory for the Chili Peppers' night-time shows on both festival weekends. "The Sharpys were on moving pods on the stage while the 1500s were on top of my vertical towers, on the floors and screamers; eight 1500s were front of house," he explains.

Holthaus recounts how "one show was nearly cancelled due to a sandstorm. There were sand dunes on the stage. Our video portion and many of the fixtures were disabled. All I had was Sharpys and Alphas." With so many particulates in the air Holthaus wanted fixtures "that throw a beam

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Sweden - Woodlite is a leading Swedish lighting, trussing and rigging dry-hire rental operation founded in 1995 by Magnus Jansson. Headquartered in Karlstad, the company now has around 150 Robe fixtures in its rental fleet and over 1100 moving lights in total.

In March 2012, a new office and warehouse was opened in Stockholm to enable Woodlite to service its clients and the generally buoyant business in the area even more quickly and efficiently.

Midway through 2012, Woodlite started purchasing Robe's Robin LEDWash series fixtures - both 300s and 600s - and more recently it has invested in the new Robin DLX LED Spot fixtures.

This increase in business with Robe has been prompted by the demands of their rental partners ... and in turn their clients who are specifying Robe increasingly frequently for shows, concerts, tours and events.

"We also like to be proactive in ou

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The Netherlands - Wireless Solution Sweden AB was part of the recent Queen's Day banquet hosted by the Dutch Royal Family in honour of Queen Beatrix at the famed Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Queen Beatrix has stepped down after her 33-year long rule so that her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, can be King.

W-DMX BlackBox ran Luminair and controlled GlowUp fixtures during the dinner, which was attended by royal heads of state from 18 countries. Among the many notables on hand were Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, and the Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako. W-DMX for the banquet was supplied by Keylight Design & Supply in The Netherlands.

Later that day, the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam hosted a very special concert marking the interval between the Queen's abdication and the new King's induction, featuring the Dutch national song, specially written

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UK - PRG teamed up with Harvey Goldsmith promotions at Twickenham in June to supply the rigging and lighting for the massive Chime for Change concert headlined by Beyonce and Madonna.

Dubbed a 'feminist Live Aid', the production was complex, featuring a 12 strong line up of big name stars and a 50,000-strong audience to campaign for improved education, health and justice for women around the world.

In charge of the logistics and operations was production director Jim Baggott from promoter Harvey Goldsmith: "I immediately involved PRG because I knew this was going to be an extremely complex and time restricted set up. We needed a company we could rely on 100%. For something like this we would expect eight days to set up and rehearse - but PRG had just 4.5 days to build the stage and put in all the infrastructure before rehearsals, so it was tight."

With such

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Italy - The Raptor is the latest development in beam fixtures technology from D.T.S. At beam moving head on the market.

Raptor features the FPR system (D.T.S. patent), a breakthrough in moving-head technology. The FPR system allows limitless pan rotation. The Raptor head rotates freely on its vertical axe without interruption, in either direction, never having to go into reverse motion. Raptor's ability to quickly and precisely select any point within its sphere of movement means faster looks and scene changes, offering unmatched creative control to the lighting designer, says the company.

Additionally, new Tri-phase stepper motor technology allows ultra-fast and silent pan and tilt movements.

(Jim Evans)

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France - Traveling through France for a two-month tour, singer, songwriter, musician and producer Benjamin Biolay entertains thousands of fans every night, lit up with the help of nearly 2,000 Harman Martin VC-Dot LED's for a stunning backdrop.

For this fast-moving tour, Barcelona-based Dushow and Alabama lighting companies developed a video and lighting system, designed to be quickly installed for efficient execution. Using strings of Martin VC-Dot 9's for backdrop lighting, the product's versatility allows for the use of various lighting arrangements for each number. More than 1,700 VC-Dot 9's shine behind the stage to accentuate Biolay's performance.

VC-Dot 9 is a lightweight string made up of individually controllable LED pixels, designed to create LED video solutions with maximum artistic flexibility and minimum effort. The lighting system was designed with proficiency in

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