USA - Rosco Laboratories was Behind the Scenes’ first Pledge-a-Product Partner and they continued their support with a cheque presentation by Chad Tiller, Rosco's vice president of global live entertainment, to executive director Lori Rubinstein in the BTS office. “Behind the Scenes goes above and beyond to help our colleagues and industry professionals in need and Rosco is proud to give back and support this outstanding charity,” comments Tiller. "This marks our 11th year of donating proceeds from Roscolux 359 Medium Violet, and we are thankful to Behind the Scenes for their commitment to the entertainment technology industry." Rubinstein gratefully accepted the cheque, saying: “We continue to be extremely grateful to Rosco for having led the way in our Pledge-of-Support programme and, particularly, for their long-term commitment to the charity. While some oth
Czech Republic - The new - fourth-generation - Skoda Octavia was launched to a VIP audience and the global press in the Czech Republic at the Prague National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace. Lighting designer Michael Kuehbandner created a lighting scheme for a special presentation show attended by 700 guests. Included in his brief was also lighting a number of periphery areas covering the entrance, reception and after-show display, for which he specified over 200 Astera wireless LED fixtures. This included the venue’s impressive and vast six-storey atrium and ridged roof space which was used for the after-show, complete with a display area on the ground floor with four Skoda Octavias, a bar and drinks section and a band stage, where everyone could mingle, network and socialise before and after the main launch show. Michael’s lighting plot utilised 218 AX7 batte
Zimbabwe - This year’s edition of the annual Worship Experience 2020 gathering at the aptly named Rainbow Towers in Harare was ‘an ecstatic, full throttled celebration of hope’. This was evident in the musical segment of the event, which was organised by Kayse Connect, to showcase new talent, with a special emphasis on Zimbabwe’s abundance of emerging women artists. Adding to the occasion was a bright, bold, and fast-moving five-universe lightshow designed by Blessing Bero and programmed by Tatenda Gaylord Rushwaya of Events Evolution that featured Maverick and Rogue fixtures from Chauvet Professional. Relying on the intense output of the Maverick MK2 Spot, Rogue R2 Beam, and Rogue R1 Beam, Bero and Rushwaya sent multi-coloured and white aerial effects in every direction, symbolically raising the visual voice of the stage in concert with the uplifting music. Th
UK - White Light has supplied the lighting equipment for the UK tour of Poet in da Corner, following its critically-acclaimed run at the Royal Court Theatre. Poet in da Corner is a coming of age story inspired by Dizzee Rascal’s seminal album Boy in Da Corner. Written and performed by lyricist and poet Debris Stevenson, it originally ran at the Royal Court in 2018. This latest tour is a new production, directed by Ola Ince and featuring a lighting design by Anna Watson. Watson comments: “Poet in da Corner is an original story told primarily through grime music. With this in mind, I always knew that the lighting would have to work hard in order to match the show’s epic, fast-paced soundtrack. I wanted my design to support the story and music as well as capture the grime rave aesthetic. I also had to work alongside the set design by Jaco
Europe - CLF Lighting has launched the Odin outdoor LED luminaire to the market. Designed for high-demanding applications, it comes with an optical system that provides even light and colour projection; a fast and accurate zoom function that ranges from 11° to 50°; and an IP65-rating that makes it suitable for indoor and outdoor usage. The RGB+Lime LED engine generates a rich colour set, from vivid and saturated colours to subtle pastels. Adding lime fills the gaps between red, green, blue and enhances the colour spectrum of the fixture. It also adds beautiful white tones to the feature set. High performance LEDs deliver high CRI and R9 values. Packed in a signature CLF housing, the Odin combines convection cooling with an ultra-quiet intelligent fan. The fixture can be aimed easily by using the one button test function. The fixture can also be configured for
USA - City Theatrical has announced that its Multiverse Receiver Cards are now available in either the 2.4GHz or 900MHz band through City Theatrical distributors worldwide. Multiverse Receiver Cards can be used to implement wireless DMX/RDM into entertainment projects or lighting equipment in a simple way. They act like full Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM receivers without the housing, XLR connectors, and user interface as used in wireless DMX receiving products like the Multiverse Node and Multiverse SHoW Baby. Multiverse Receiver Cards include an internal antenna and a connection to an optional external antenna. Configuration for Multiverse Receiver Cards is done via RDM with DMXcat Multi Function Test Tool, or with City Theatrical’s USB Configuration Programme for PC/Mac. In addition to receiving wireless DMX and outputting wired DMX, the Multiverse Receiver C
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied over 11,400 items of professional equipment to P&J Live at TECA, the new events venue in the North of Scotland (see full report in LSi February 2020). Replacing the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC), P&J Live offers world-class conference & exhibition facilities for organisers and delegates across the globe. Located next to Aberdeen International Airport, the £333m, purpose-built development is operated and managed by ASM Global, and features 48,000 sq.m of flexible, multi-purpose floor space. AC-ET was awarded supply of venue-wide loose equipment & flexible house lighting for the venue’s Baker Hughes Exhibiti
UK - Midas is the power behind Ian Xiang’s Lightopia in London, a festival featuring 47 groups of Chinese lantern installations - 1m LEDs - projection mapping, acrobats, musicians and much more. The first time a Western design company has worked with Chinese manufacturers to build a set like this, tailored to UK audiences, Lightopia was spawned at the Edinburgh Diwali in October last year moving to Manchester just in front of the festive window. With different USPs in each location, the festival made its London debut at Chiswick House & Gardens in 2020 where it runs through to March. Exploring the theme Harmony, Lightopia fuses art installations with human experience/interaction across zones including 12 Star Signs, the Rose Garden, Tree of Life, the Light Tunnel and 3D Mapping on the 18th century villa itself. Making us
UK - Martin’s new VDO Atomic Dot hybrid lighting and video fixture made an immediate impact at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Show as the Scottish capital welcomed in the new year. Joining the Edinburgh Street Party, and working at the Waverley Stage - which saw appearances by Keir Gibson, The Ninth Wave, Marc Almond and Porkpie - lighting designer Sam Jones specified 30 of the versatile fixtures as part of a Martin package. With its vantage point at the end of the Waverley Bridge overlooking Edinburgh Castle, the designer’s biggest challenge was the bitter cold Scottish weather -mitigated by two heaters which accompanied him at FOH. “As is common in the industry, the timescales were very tight, along with all the commotion that comes with a street party,” he said. Since the Waverley stage was fairly small, with little space to rig fixtures, he approached the design w
USA - Bandit Lites has hired Nick Brown to provide lighting design and console operation for various productions, including events and Blackberry Farm, a luxury five-star resort. Brown’s previous experience includes working as the resident lighting designer and technical director foat the University of Tennesseer the Irondale, an Off Broadway theatre in Brooklyn, New York as well as a lighting and video engineer at the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. “I've loved concert lighting ever since I was thirteen years old,” comments Brown. “I knew about Bandit Lites when I was studying theatrical lighting design in college, so I'm very excited to finally be a part of this great team.” Upcoming events featuring Brown include the University of Tennessee’s Senior Toast, where students are nominated by faculty and staff and invited t
Germany Artistic Licence will be showing sunDial quad, winner of the 2019 PLASA Gold Award for Innovation, at both Light+building (8-13 March) and Prolight + Sound (31 March - 3 April) in Frankfurt. The product - a DMX/RDM/Xicato controlled trailing edge mains dimmer - offers ‘outstanding dimming performance and advanced safety features’. It works 'out of the box' with all dimmable replacement LED bulbs (also halogen and CFL). Performance is further optimized through the selection (via RDM) of one of four editable dimming curves on a per-channel basis. Also new for 2020, Commissioner dali is a hand-held, battery powered tool for commissioning, testing and configuring DALI installations. The bright, 40 character LCD is easy to read and provides a wealth of information. Commissioner dali has numerous intensity control functions including direct control over DT8 colo
Canada - Jon Stanners, one of two owners of Winnipeg-based production and design company Red Rover Entertainment, turned to an Elation lighting package on Canadian singer Jessie Reyez’s Being Human On Tour outing. Soundbox Productions of Ontario served as lighting vendor for the tour, which played dates in Canada and the US. Not only did Stanners design a lighting system that fit the budget, he made sure the rig was an appropriate fit for the 500 to 2000-capacity venues the tour played, not to mention the transportation used to haul the gear. “The design was created to have the most impact for these small venues but also had to fit in a single trailer with everything else,” explains Stanners, who has worked with Reyez for the past two years and handled design, programming and operation for the tour along with lighting production management. “Part of fitting i
USA - The Institute for Creation Research (ICR)’s new Discovery Centre for Science & Earth History in Dallas is benefiting from an advanced, integrated lighting control system from Strand. Specified by The Lighting Practice, the system seamlessly combines the needs of multiple exhibit zones, user requirements and technologies. The control system exploits Strand’s ability to integrate entertainment and architectural lighting in one, seamless system. It combines Strand’s powerful NEO Rack playback controller (with a second as backup), which is responsible for playback of the exhibits’ show lighting, with Strand’s flexible, scalable Vision.Net platform, which looks after the various area lighting zones. The system includes a mix of individually addressed track lighting units, in-grade uplighters in the exhibit floors and various accent luminaires highlightin
Europe - Singer-songwriter Rea Garvey is no stranger to international audiences. This is ensured not only by numerous TV show appearances, but also by his extensive musical output. For the past 20 years the Irishman has been delighting his audience with multi-faceted pop rock and his distinctive voice. His most recent solo album, Neon was released in March 2018, and in the autumn of the same year and through summer 2019, Garvey presented the new songs on a large Neon tour. At his side for many years has been lighting and stage designer Christian ‘Rocketchris’ Glatthor. Glatthor - known for creating multi-layered, haptic spaces on stage - designed a variable set with many surprises. With the help of 60 FS20 Fusion Sticks FS20 from Fusion by GLP, he picked up on the Neon theme from the album and the tour. The majority of the Fusion Sticks were suspended from e
UK - Elliot Griggs chose Robe’s T1 Profiles to provide key lighting for Amélie the Musical, a new production first staged at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which then undertook a nationwide UK and Irish tour and then played at The Other Palace in London. Griggs was asked to light the show, directed by Michael Fentiman and based on the five-times Oscar-nominated 2001 French art-house romantic comedy film, Amélie. The lead character has an eccentric upbringing and a vivid imagination which she uses to explores the complexities of love, loneliness, existence and survival in the big city. The T1 Profiles - used in addition to the touring lighting rigs at each venue on the tour - are being supplied by leading theatrical rental company White Light, investing in their first T1s for this production as they were essential for Griggs’ lighting plot.
UK - Fineline Lighting, based near Bristol, hosted over 20 lighting designers across two days on 17-18 February for basic and advanced MagicQ training, in partnership with ChamSys. The ChamSys team were joined for the training by Chauvet ChamSys product specialist Rebbecca Cadd. The basic course covered the use of all MagicQ products including the range of PC Wings and MagicQ consoles. It taught attendees about starting new shows from scratch, layouts, patching, recording and editing cues, cue lists and chases, FX programming and pixelmapping. The advanced course covered advanced MagicQ features including advanced patching, media server control, timecode, scheduled events, execute window and group FX. Aziz Adilkhodjaev, international business development manager at ChamSys, comments: “Massive thanks to Rob and Sevim [Sangwell, Fineline directors] for or
Europe - Ed Sheeran wrapped his 260-show Divide Tour last year, which featured a large complement of Claypaky Mythos 2 and Scenius Unico lighting fixtures. Mark Cunniffe was the lighting designer for Divide. Cunniffe created a set piece for the tour comprised of LED tiles and lighting with a massive curved crown above the stage and tall columnar centre piece. The elements at times resembled a goblet and a tree. Four automated triangular pods resided in the underside of the LED structure; each pod was on three variable speed motors controlled by Kinesys. Cunniffe used 118 Mythos 2 spot and beam fixtures in the crown, base and across the front of Sheeran’s riser; 10 Mythos 2 were mounted inside each triangular pod. “One of the driving factors behind choosing Mythos 2 was the size,” says Cunniffe. “I knew I could hang it on its side, it’s relatively light
UK - There are few cities blessed with a more spectacular landscape than Edinburgh, over which Edinburgh Castle presides and forms a natural centre piece for events and celebrations in the city throughout the year. Through November and December 2019, the city was treated to the inaugural Castle of Light, a celebratory visualisation of Edinburgh’s history portrayed by a combination of mapping, projection, lighting and audio, which treated visitors to a journey through thousands of years of the city’s back story of which its citizens are so rightly proud. As part of the lighting design, nine of Ayrton’s Perseo-S fixtures made an impressive impact on the show, in particular during the finale of this promenade performance. At the top of the Perseo-S tick list is an IP65 rating making it a suitable choice for intensive outdoor use. NL Productions (NLP) w
Australia - Artists including Queen + Adam Lambert, Olivia Newton-John, John Farnham, Alice Cooper, Delta Goodrem, 5 Seconds of Summer, Tina Arena, Ronan Keating, Hill Top Hoods, Amy Shark, k. d. lang and many more entertained 75,000 music fans – and a worldwide TV audience – all helping Fire Fight Australia raise over A$10m for bushfire relief during a high energy day of performance at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium. Throughout the day, the heroic efforts of people uniting and the dedicated commitment of the firefighting community were highlighted in the context of the massive fight to save lives, homes and land. Dave Jackson, Jeff Pavey and a crew from Queensland and New South Wales-based rental specialists Creative Productions provided the lighting which included nearly 130 Robe moving lights including BMFL Spots, Blades and WashBeams and Spiider LED wash beams. T
UK - The Knight of Illumination (KOI) Awards has announced the appointment of five new judges across its three categories for the 2020 Awards. The KOI Awards invites critics, journalists and industry professionals to form its three independent judging panels for the categories of Concert & Event, Television and Theatre. Critic, broadcaster, and chair of the Theatre judging panel David Benedict is joined by three new judges: Mark Pullinger, an experienced opera critic and editor of classical music magazine Bachtrack; Sarah Crompton, dance critic for The Observer and theatre reviewer for Whatsonstage; and Susannah Clapp, theatre critic for The Observer. Each will serve a two-year term on the Theatre panel, where they join existing judges Louise Levene of the Financial Times, deputy arts editor and music critic of The Times Ne
USA - Obsidian Control Systems has released v4.4 of its Onyx lighting control software, now with integrated DyLOS pixel composer. Based on a full 3D environment and DirectX graphics processing, the DyLOS engine has been designed to manage tens of thousands of fixtures and parameters with ease. As part of this launch, Obsidian Control Systems is offering all DyLOS users a package with over 1,100 media files in many categories. Optimised for the Dylos engine, it allows users to immerse themselves in the system for immediate results. In addition to this media collection, any custom user content can be imported at any time in almost any codec and size. An unrestricted trial version of two DyLOS Zones and up to four DMX universes is enabled automatically for any Onyx PC installation. Onyx 4.4 is compatible with all Onyx NX4 and NX2 consoles, Onyx PC systems, a
UK - Last month, JL Lighting was the technical supplier for a large-scale event at Magazine London on behalf of Volkswagen and The Fresh Group. The event, which welcomed both Volkswagen employees and pre-bookers to the venue and The Intercontinental O2 at different stages over two days, celebrated the Volkswagen brand and showcased a new generation of electric vehicles in the form of the ID.3. Volkswagen commented: “The event went really well and the feedback so far has been very positive. With JL Lighting’s tireless efforts and commitment the end result worked as we envisioned.” Jack Linaker, MD of JL Lighting, adds: “We were thrilled to be working alongside Volkswagen and The Fresh Group to bring this event to life. The JL Lighting team were hard at work as the technical supplier, providing lighting, sound, power, rigging and video across five venue
USA - Full-service event production companies Frost Chicago and Frost Florida have added Ayrton Diablo and Ghibli fixtures to their lighting inventories. This is the companies’ first purchase of Ayrton products, distributed exclusively in North America by ACT Lighting, Inc. Frost Florida took delivery of Ghibli LED spot luminaires last year. “We were looking for an LED framing fixture with a high lumen output and CMY and CTO variable,” says Matthew MacPherson, general manager and head sales executive at Frost Florida. “Ghibli checked all the boxes; it was everything we needed at a reasonable price point. We couldn’t be happier with them and our clients are happy as well. They’ve proved to be an amazing workhorse for us.” Daniel Cortes, Frost Florida’s lighting director/designer, agrees. “Our Ghibli units have been in non-stop use; they’re great work
USA - The Greater Cleveland Sports Awards in late January honoured local athletes of every level, from the pros to high-school. Reflecting the connection between local athletes and their community, the event featured a runway-like path that extended down the middle of the Cleveland Renaissance Hotel’s elegant ballroom, giving the sports honourees and performing talent who walked down it a chance to be closer to crowd. Lining both sides of the runway and endowing it with a colourfully attractive touch was a collection of pixel-mapped Chauvet Professional COLORado Solo Batten fixtures supplied by NPi Audio Visuals Solutions. “The runway path ran from the built-in stage at the venue to the centre stage since the program was done in the round,” explains NPi’s Alex Kay, who was one of the project managers for the event. “We lined up 18 of the COLORado Batte
