UK - Blackout's team designed a custom-built touring truss structure for the first ever series of Sky Art's Portrait Artist of the Year competition, due on screens this autumn.

The reality TV show visited four locations across the UK - London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Dublin - with over 2,000 entrants battling out to win the title. The winner will see their work displayed in the National Portrait Gallery and awarded a £10,000 commission to produce a portrait of award-winning author Hilary Mantel.

After whittling the entrants down based on the portrait they submitted, 21 finalists per region were invited to each city and given four hours to paint a famous celebrity, who posed live. Called in by Papilo Production Management's Kate Wright and Lisa Shenton, Blackout was tasked with turning TV producers StoryVault Films' brief into reality.

A cost-effective, easy-to-inst

UK - For three days and three nights 135,000 Glastonbury revellers had the pleasure of seeing their favourite headline acts, lit by some of the best rock and roll lighting designers in the world, play the famous Pyramid Stage.

Taking care of the festival house rig was head of lighting, Andy 'Fraggle' Porter, who chose Clay Paky's extremely bright, effects-rich Alpha Profile 1500s and Alpha Wash 1500s to deliver dynamic beam shaping, vibrant colour and super bright effects to the long-running event.

2013's headlining acts included: The Rolling Stones lit by Patrick Woodroffe, Arctic Monkeys lit by Andy Watson and Mumford and Sons lit by Ed Warren. Each put Fraggle's house rig through its paces and all made dramatic and creative use of the Alpha 1500 Profiles and Washes. In addition each designer specified his own additional requirements for Clay Paky fixtures.

For the main ri

UK - Bournemouth-based Complete Production Solutions Group (CPS) has made its first investment in Robe moving lights, including the new Pointe together with other fixtures from Robe's popular Robin range.

The company, headed by Richard Colegate and Chris Caton, has been providing rental and turnkey production solutions since 1996 and specialises in the high end corporate events market - including conferences and awards shows - the company also provides technical support for a lively mix of live performance events including dance shows, rock 'n' roll and outdoor classical concerts.

CPS is currently expanding steadily and the decision to purchase new moving lights followed careful assessment of all the options as part of a planned upgrade and replacement programme with their existing intelligent lighting stock.

It's CPS's first purchase of Robe products, which were delivered b

Germany - Osram has for the first time achieved maximum image quality for pure laser-based projection with a combination of laser and phosphor materials. The new phaser technology contains modules which do not need to be replaced during the complete service life of the projector. They will be used for the first time in projectors from the end of this year.

Until now only green light was generated via laser with laser-based projectors - LEDs were responsible for the blue and red primary colours. With phaser technology, where 'phaser' stands for phosphor and laser, Osram for the first time presents a process which achieves outstanding image quality with projection by the use of laser, made possible by blue laser diodes. The beams of the diodes are focused directly onto a wheel coated with red, yellow and green phosphor. When the wheel rotates the colours are generated in sequence,

USA - Calling a nightclub 'Light' can be risky business. You're basically telling clubbers they should expect a mind-blowing illumination experience every time they step through its door.

Setting the visual creativity bar this high could be perilous for some, but not for developer/partners Cirque du Soleil and The Light Group, or for John Lyons Systems (Hollywood, CA), which provided the lighting design for this new nightspot at Mandalay Bay Hotel.

Part Cirque show and part dance club with 38,000sq.ft of space and a 35' high ceiling, Light features acrobats spinning overhead and world-famous EDM DJs spinning up front. To add to the multi-layered sensory experience, video is everywhere; 6mm video panels line the club's massive walls, its ceiling and cascade downward to the DJ booth.

Lighting a space a huge as this, where beams need to highlight performers on a vertical plane

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd, one of the industry's leading suppliers of specialist LED lighting and control solutions, is hosting a one day 'LED for Theatres' UK Workshop on Saturday, 17 August 2013 in the idyllic production environment of The Kings Theatre in Portsmouth.

With huge technical advances being made in LED lighting and control in recent years, more and more theatres are taking advantage of the latest generation of LED solutions when upgrading their lighting systems.

The LED for Theatres workshop has been organised in response to customer interest and follows a number of high-profile theatres and touring productions utilising LED technologies supplied by AC-ET.

The informal event will enable attendees to get 'hands-on' with the very latest in LED solutions designed for theatres - chosen from AC-ET's impressive portfolio of over 200 technology

UK - The L'Oreal Professional Colour Trophy held its first event way back in 1956 and by the 1960s there were hairdressers competing from up to 14 regional locations to gain a place in the London Grand Final. Today, it remains the most prominent hairdresser's competition in Britain with the regional finals consisting of a competition section, choreographed catwalk shows from big name designers and a traditional awards show that tours around the country.

Now widely regarded within the industry as the 'Vogue' of hairdressing award ceremonies, lighting designer David Miller needs to provide a rig that caters for an exceptionally broad range of venues and stage set-ups. "This tour is organised by Fisher Productions who are renowned for their high end production values. I went to Point Source Productions for control and lighting fixtures for this show as they could provide the q

USA - Martin's newly released M6 console has found its first permanent home, installed at Harvest Ministries in Riverside, California. When the house's original Martin Maxxyz console began to show its age after a long and prosperous run, in-house lighting designer Christopher Eguizabal began searching for an upgraded console to keep up with the constant stream of ever-changing events, varied lighting rigs and stage designs.

"The week we installed the M6, we had a guest artist playing and I was able to use it in a concert-style environment here at our venue," Eguizabal stated. "The console's encoder knobs made programming much easier and faster than I have experienced on any other console. M6's touch screens feel great and the amount of playback faders, combined with the play pairs and Submaster module, plus the amount of user-definable buttons, allows me to custom

Germany - Leading European lighting and visuals designer Manfred Ollie Olma of Cologne, Germany based mo2 design tried out 12 of Robe's new Pointe moving lights for a recent episode of Die Ultimative Chart Show, recorded at Nobeo 8 Studio in Hürth, near Cologne. The programme is broadcast weekly on RTL.

Olma has lit the show for the last ten years, all the time keeping it looking fresh, inventive and visually relevant. He also frequently uses Robe for his work, which embraces many disciplines including television, concert touring and music shows, special events and architectural illumination.

Initially six of Robe's new Pointe fixtures were delivered to the studio by Robe's German distributor LMP. It was the very first time that Olma had road-tested the Pointe ... he did not know what to expect ... and he was so impressed that he asked for more.

(Jim Evans)

Spain - Drawing an immense following since its debut in September 2012, reality television singing competition The Voice or La Voz in Spain, has become a social phenomenon. To help accentuate the live performances, live drama and the jury of popular Spanish singers: Rosario Flores, David Bisbal, Malú and Melendi, Madrid-based full-service rental, sales and installation company Citylight installed a complete Martin MAC lighting rig.

Citylight lighting designer Julián Perez's lighting design includes an abundance of Martin products including MAC III Profile, MAC 2000 Profile and Wash, MAC TW1, MAC 600 NT, MAC 550, MAC 250 Krypton, MAC 250 Wash and MAC 250 Beam luminaires, as well as Martin Stagebar 54 L battens and Atomic 3000 strobes. The upcoming 2013 season will also incorporate more than 30 of Martin's new Rush Strobe 1 5x5 effect lights.

Perez has been espec

UAE - UAE based lighting designer Terry Miranda specified over 120 Robe fixtures to realise an eye-catching design for Watan Al Ahlam (Country of Dreams), a musical performance staged by the UAE Ministry of Education at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

Students from schools across the UAE participated in the event directed by a team of Emirati professionals. This enabled them to showcase their talents in front of an invitation-only audience comprising high ranking government officials and locals.

The Robe lights - along with the complete technical production - were all supplied by Dubai based Lighthouse Productions of which Miranda is also a founder / director. Lighthouse has a large rental stock of Robe, and Miranda is one of the leading LDs in the country, working on a diverse selection of productions.

The stage design was based on a futuristic theme, with video projec

Australia - International creative practitioners are invited to submit designs that will transform Sydney's most famous landmarks into a living canvas of light during the Southern Hemisphere's biggest annual celebration of light, music and ideas, Vivid Sydney, which next takes place from 23 May - 9 June 2014.

Light artists, lighting projection designers, companies and manufacturers, architects, students, graduates, creative industry companies and practitioners from around the world are being called on to put forward their innovative lighting and projection designs and installations for inclusion in Vivid Light 2014.

Vivid Light is the centrepiece and crowd favourite of Vivid Sydney, with more than 800,000 visitors flocking to Sydney's harbour and surrounds over 18 nights in 2013 to see the city transformed into a colourful after-dark playground of interact

Denmark - Around 1025 AD, a fierce 37m Viking warship of the Danish fleet rode the northern waves. Excavated in 1997 from a Roskilde fjord bed, the ship has now been partly restored. A massive steel skeleton has been built around its wooden remains. Roskilde 6 makes a new 'voyage', in the National Museum of Denmark's exhibition Viking, until the end of November. ETC's Source Four LED fixtures, controlled by an ETC Ion console and Unison Paradigm system, bring the vessel to light.

Says lighting designer Hans Henrik Schmidt, "This is the first such use of LED lighting in a museum in Denmark, and exhibition reviews that we've seen which mention the lighting have been overwhelmingly positive."

Schmidt worked with ETC dealer Bico Professionel and the museum's head of AV, Michael Bj°rn, to come up with the exciting lighting scheme that would highlight the ship and surr

UK - Even through the peak of the summer, traditionally a quieter period in theatrical production, entertainment lighting specialist White Light is being kept busy by the numerous shows that have chosen the company to supply their lighting equipment.

Down in Sussex, the Chichester Festival Theatre is closed for refurbishment - but the company has created a temporary home for itself in a giant tent pitched in the surrounding parkland. The first performance in the tent is, appropriately, a new production of the circus musical Barnum, presented in association with Cameron Mackintosh. Directed by Timothy Sheader and designed by Scott Pask, the show features lighting by Paule Constable, continuing her regular collaboration with White Light. Constable's rig makes full use of the comprehensive range of equipment available from White Light's rental stock, including the powerful y

UK - As part of the current, continuing development of Wembley Arena, following a major refurbishment back in 2006, contractors Fagan Electrical, in a general technical evaluation, identified the need for significant improvements to the levels of emergency lighting.

The Wembley Arena management asked Fagan to recommend an efficient and sustainable solution. As respected, highly specialised contractors with over 70 years collective experience in the entertainment industry, Fagan recommended GDS' ArcSystem for the job. Entertainment lighting specialists and UK dealer for GDS, White Light, was chosen by Fagan Electrical to supply the new system.

GDS supplied 44 x Arc 8 cell emergency fittings, two TX 1 transmitters, one button panel and one commissioning tool.

Simon Needle, special projects director of White Light, comments, "The Arc fittings brought the safety lighting le

Italy - There was a job to finish: the 2011 tour Vasco Rossi, the Italian rock star from Emilia, interrupted owing to health problems. The seven concerts in two large stadiums (four in Turin and three in Bologna) were all sold out.

Vasco was in great shape on a beautiful stage, which led Roberto De Luca, tour producer for Live Nation Italia, to say: "These are perhaps the most exciting concerts I have seen since I have been working with Vasco- for a good 17 years." The stage was designed by Giò Forma. The layout was inspired by the triangular shape of Vasco's historic logo, around which lighting designer Giovanni Pinna devised the lighting plan.

There was a massive presence of Clay Paky lights, with as many as 40 Alpha Spot HPE 1500s, 20 Alpha Profile 1500s, 20 Alpha Beam 1500s and 18 Shotlight Washes.

There was also a staggering 54 of the omnipresent Sharpys. Gio

Bangladesh - Bangladesh-based Glow Lights & Effects only set up in business in 2011, but by the following year they were starting to service many events out of Dhaka - frequently using the PR5000 Spot and Beam lights from Chinese manufacturers PR Lighting.

Founder, Mukimul Anwar Mukim, and managing partner M H Khokon, along with experienced team members Shamim Ahmed (technical adviser) and chief communication officer, Khundker Hafizur Rahim, first saw the fixtures at the 2011 PALM Expo in Beijing and the team was immediately impressed by the state-of-the-art technology and highly developed optical path. By the following year he was ready to purchase 18 of each fixture for use in the company's inventory.

These were soon appearing on a number of high profile events including the Grameen Phone Tri-nation Mega Festival in the Bangladesh Army Stadium.

Grameen Phone is one of the

Finland - One of the largest temporary outdoor installations in the Nordic countries, Flow Festival in Helsinki, will for the second year in a row choose LumenRadio's CRMX products to control the lighting.

The popular music and arts festival will be held on 9-11 August 2013 at the historic Suvilahti former power plant area in the city centre of Helsinki. The music presented at Flow is a strong and varied selection of established artists from all around the world. Using control cabling for this project would have been very difficult, due to an extensive area lighting system involving long distances. It was these requirements that led LumenRadio's finish distributor Sun Effects to specify a wireless CRMX system in order to provide maximum flexibility, reliability and ease of use.

Sun Effects has been responsible for the lighting, video and stage design at the festival for many y

UK - London based technical and creative solutions provider and live communications specialist Eclipse Presentations has invested in four of S+H Technical Support's ShowLED Animation Cloths, which have been added to their hire stock.

Eclipse Presentations designs and produces a wide range of shows and events and has enjoyed a long working relationship with the Devon-based draping and special effects specialist S+H.

The new 6 x 4.5m Animation Cloths went straight into action in VIP Areas for a run of high profile concerts by Bruce Springsteen, The Killers and Robbie Williams at London's Wembley Stadium.

(Jim Evans)

USA - One of the oldest churches in Northern Florida, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church recently saw an upgrade in gear - the first in three decades - with the addition of about 20 Chauvet fixtures. A selection of Chauvet Professional Ovation E-190WW ellipsoidal-style fixtures, COLORado 1 VW Tour and COLORado 1-Tri Tour PAR wash lights comprise the church's permanent inventory, used for services and special events.

Trinity Audio Video Lighting of Orange Park, Fla., specified and installed the gear. Completed in 1910, the church is built in a late Gothic revival architecture style, featuring a cruciform floor plan, pointed arches, tracery on the windows, buttresses and pinnacles, high spires, and an interior high vault. With the addition of the LED fixture these traditional features are enhanced for a beautiful mixture of old and new.

"The church wanted to change the a

UK - Respected lighting designer Rob Sinclair is using Clay Paky's compact yet super bright Sharpy Wash 330 as the workhorse fixture for the lighting of the visuals-led Pet Shop Boys Electric World Tour.

The new Sharpy Wash luminaire - a 330W washlight with the luminous efficiency, graphic and optical performance of a 1000W fixture - is providing a lightweight yet powerful solution for Sinclair as the tour travels from America to Europe and the Far East.

"We specified the Sharpy Washes because I needed an extremely bright workhorse light that was small enough to travel with us on the numerous plane journeys around the world," says Sinclair. "They're working great, and we're very happy with them."

The tour is projection-focussed, jam-packed with dynamic visuals throughout, which are beamed onto an enormous Venetian blind-style screen. This requires

Czech Republic - Clay Paky's bright yet compact Alpha Spot HPE 700s and Alpha Wash 700s alongside its beam shaper Alpha Profile 1500s are being used to light the pop idols of tomorrow on the Czech and Slovak Nova TV show SuperStar.

Clay Paky's distributor, Pro JGS Light, Sound and Video, based in the Slovakian capital Bratislava, supplied the fixtures to Prague based production company Media Pro Pictures, which used them on Prague's Barandov Studio's SuperStar production - a joint Czech and Slovak production aiming to discover the countries next big singing sensation. The show was broadcast on popular Czech TV channel, Nova TV.

In total Pro JGS supplied 40 high-speed, graphic effects-ready Alpha Profile 1500s, 20 Alpha Spot HPE 700s featuring an array of optical and graphic devices, and 20 extremely high luminous efficiency Alpha Wash 700s.

Julius Szaraz from J

USA - Chad Kuney of award-winning lighting design and AV production studio Full Spectrum specified four Robe ColorSpot 250 AT moving lights to illuminate the interactive Shark Bay Ray Dive Theatre at Newport Aquarium, just outside Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Theatre measures 30 x 48ft, has a 23ft high ceiling and is popular with aquarium guests staging a variety of dive-based shows for an audience of around 150. It is also used as an events space. It features one of the largest water tanks in the aquarium, the central focal point of which is a visible viewing area of 17 x 9ft.

The four ColorSpot 250 ATs are rigged off the ceiling grid at the back of the theatre. It's a challenging space which entailed the use of custom brackets so they can be suspended below several large air ducts.

This gives an ideal angle for them to be pointed all around the space and also to light and project

South Africa - The sounds of the American trio, Chevelle, recently hit South Africa. Chevelle had plans to play at local festival Oppikoppi in 2011, but due to obligations to finish their record, they had to cancel. Keeping their promise to come back, fans were delighted to welcome them to Johannesburg and Cape Town.

In Cape Town the show was hosted at the Grand Arena at GrandWest on Friday, 31 May 2013. Rental Company, Ultra Event Technical Solutions, had the use of the Grand Arena's in-house sound and lighting but also supplied additional lighting fixtures, and were responsible for the technical and support.

Yasheen Abdullah from Ultra Events did research on Chevelle to ensure he could recreate their lighting style. "I had a tool, the grandMA2 light, which made my life easier," said Abdullah. "It helped me to make the show as good as it was." Abdullah fel

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