USA - Back in 1991, Jeffrey Metter was board operating the band lighting console for The Grateful Dead when he got a call inviting him to Atlantic City. Country and pop superstar Kenny Rogers needed a lighting director for an upcoming concert. It was supposed to be a weekend gig, but 26 years later the South African- born lighting designer is still with the multi-platinum singer, lighting the final Kenny Rogers tour. Travelling with them as they crisscross the US is a touring package comprised entirely of Chauvet Professional fixtures. Made up of 14 Rogue R2 Wash and eight Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures, as well as an assortment of 20 COLORado par units, the rig is substantially smaller than the lighting package Metter used when he began his association with Rogers. Still, the rich warm colours and tight focus of the Chauvet Professional fixtures is helping the designer create a
Israel - I Am Jerusalem is a new multimedia interactive experience designed to welcome visitors to one of the most famous cities in the world, offering a fast-moving history and snapshots explaining how cultural diversity is fundamental to the dynamics and development of life in this vibrant gateway to the Middle East. Robe Pointes moving lights were specified by the installation division of Danor Theatre & Studio Systems as part of the entertainment lighting scheme in the movie theatre which features 270 degree wrap-around HD video and a video ceiling. The venue is located in the basement of Jerusalem’s central retail environment - Mamilla Boulevard. During the 25-minute show, the city’s rich and colourful history is unfolded to an intimate audience of 200 complete with pitching and moving seats to ensure a roller coaster ride! Orphan Group Creati
UK - Outback Rigging has announced that Ed Pagett, formerly MD of Panalux Broadcast & Events has been appointment commercial director from 1February 2017. Ed commented, “My role at Outback is to help diversify their product/service offering as well as increase market share and profile of the established core business – which traditionally has been rigging services to the events, exhibition and corporate presentation markets throughout the UK.” He continued, “I initially took a six-month sabbatical after 11 years at Panalux to step back and evaluate where new, fresh and exciting opportunities lay. It wasn’t a complete break however because I remained (and continue to remain) heavily involved with the PLASA Board in my capacity as chairman. I have known Mark Surtees – MD of Outback Rigging for several years through PLASA and after an initial discussion, i
USA – Lighting designer Bob Barnhart, who has lent his talents to 19 Super Bowl Halftime Shows, chose Claypaky Mythos and Sharpy fixtures to help illuminate Lady Gaga in her solo turn at Super Bowl LI at Houston’s NRG Stadium. Lady Gaga began the Halftime Show with a tribute to America singing God Bless America and This Land is Your Land on the roof of the stadium. She performed some dizzying flying effects, crooned a medley of her hits, led high-energy dance routines and closed with a rendition of Bad Romance in an action-packed, 12-minute show. Barnhart first used Claypaky Mythos fixtures on a Super Bowl Halftime Show two years ago with Katy Perry. This year he employed 56 Mythos on field truss set against the upstage wall below the first row of seats. The lights were positioned on 2.5-foot spacings from the centre of the field out to the 20
France – Leading entertainment lighting manufacturer Ayrton has announced the tragic death of its export manager, Valère Huart-Gyors. The company’s statement said: “It is with a heavy heart that we report the heart of Valère stopped beating last Sunday. He was 37 years old. “Valère Huart-Gyors, our collaborator and dear colleague, was responsible for exporting Ayrton throughout the world. Since 2011, from Las Vegas to Sydney, he has spread our values with a rare commitment because Valère was an authentic fan of Ayrton. “Methodical, organised and precise, he advanced quickly and well, exercising a detailed knowledge of his market. Societies and their politics, people and their past, excited him in addition to his many interests such as history, politics, music . . . Valère was both brilliant and cultivated. His humour, sharp and often caustic, made
USA - TMB has issued the following tribute to its first employee Tommy Stephenson who sadly passed away this week . . . “TMB fondly remembers our first employee, Tommy Stephenson, the loudest man in show business. “After a record breaking stint as PA for Greg Lake (of ELP fame) Tommy joined TMB around 1984 (who kept track in those days?). He transformed the fledgling organization from Two Men in a Bedroom to Three Men and a Dog. Tommy’s primary role then was, and always remained, Confusion Analyst, but his early duties also included cable coiler, driver, shipping/receiving expert, and ace booth builder (specializing in the afternoon shift). Later, in the spare time between his ongoing confusion analysis, he grew to become TMB’s Sales Manager. His heavy focus on confusion was the origin of TMB’s famous Rule Three: “Do Not Believe A Word Tommy Tells You.” I
UK - PRG XL Video, the UK operation of Production Resource Group (PRG), has moved to a new, larger, London location. Continuing its strategy for growth, the company has relocated within Central London. The office, in the very heart of London’s theatreland, houses sales and support teams from four major market sectors – concert touring, theatre, television and film, and corporate and events. The location at 77 St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden includes space for PRG XL permanent staff, hot desking space for clients and creatives to visit, and multiple meeting rooms, which are not only used by PRG XL’s own teams, but are utilised by industry organisations for their regular board meetings. PRG XL Video’s director of human resources, Alistair Todd comments: “The space has been designed not only to house our growing team, but also as a hub of creativity for client
UAE - Christie Pandoras Box is synchronizing more than 100m pixels of Float4 content at Meraas City Walk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. City Walk was conceived as a destination par-excellence for both locals and tourists complete with upscale shopping, dining and living with a park-like ambience by Meraas, a Dubai-based holding company with extensive assets in real estate, retail, hospitality and entertainment. Meraas approached Float4, an award-winning studio that designs and produces site-specific interactive multimedia installations, to create a digital feature for City Walk. The scope grew to encompass an outdoor digital experience that includes more than 30 LED installations, nearly 30 projectors, and a water fountain show that uses water screens. In total, there are over 100m pixels that cover a space the size of 12 football fields. “Meraas wanted to differen
Mexico - Justin Bieber kicked off year two of his comeback tour with a sold-out concert at Monterrey, Mexico’s Estadio BBVA Bancomer arena. Accenting the star’s performance and lending an aura of timelessness to the evening was a powerful and evocative Corey FitzGerald lightshow that featured 88 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Wash fixtures, supplied by Serpro Producciones of Monterrey. “We were very honoured to have provided lights for this concert,” said Renato Betancourt, CEO of Serpro Producciones. “Recently, we made an investment in the Maverick MK2 Wash because we wanted a fixture that could deliver the output and colours that would be needed for major productions – and at the same time would be flexible enough to work well for a range of musical styles.” With 12 40W Osram RGBW LEDs, the Maverick MK2 Wash met Betancourt’s criteria for output and
USA - December saw the opening of Rumba Room Live, an upscale Latin-themed nightclub and concert venue in Anaheim, California. Located at the Anaheim GardenWalk and built new from the ground up, the club, which features state-of-the-art Elation entertainment lighting and video systems, has energised the nightclub scene in Anaheim. The 10,000sq.ft venue has the flexibility to host 1,000 people and hold a variety of events yet maintains a chic, intimate feel. Working with the club’s architect and ownership to develop the design and look of the venue was Michael Betancourt, general manager at Southern California-based Props AV, the production company that designed, supplied and installed the Elation lighting and video package. “When the Rumba Room Live project first came to the table the feel that they wanted to go for was a Latin-themed nightclub and live venue with a sex
USA - This summer marks the fourth CUE professional development conference hosted by ETC. This year, the biennial event will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, 21-23 July. The CUE conference is designed for ETC end-users of all skill levels to gain knowledge that can be used in their careers. It also gives students the opportunity to get hands-on experience with the technology they’ll use when they enter the workforce. This year’s theme reflects back to a time when many youngsters were shipped off for a week or two to summer camp. The Camp CUE programme features high-quality keynote speakers, three days of classes, and networking opportunities with industry peers and the ETC professionals behind the company’s award-winning products. Classes include day-long tracks geared toward console programmers, lighting designers, educators, and technicians. For participan
Europe - Laserworld's Purelight Series with 6W, 10W and 20W offers high power for a low price with a good white balance. This makes the units suitable for high power applications in bigger venues. Laserworld’s Purelight systems are powerful white light RGB laser systems with a power range between 6 and 20W. The three offered RGB systems have a good white balance with homogeneous beam profile and analogue colour modulation. Lasers in the new Purelight Series have a compact housing, thus they easily integrate with existing lighting setups and established room concepts. Due to the rugged mounting bracket, the Purelight laser systems can be mounted in standing and hanging position, thus it is possible to hang the units from a truss or mount them on top of a stand. Laserworld Purelight systems are especially suitable for beam shows with longer beam distances such as festi
USA - The latest in a succession of lighting professionals to adopt GLP’s award-winning X4 Bar 20 platform has been designer and programmer, Brian Jenkins. Part of an experienced team based on America’s West Coast, along with people like Roy Bennett, his verdict was unequivocal. “In the moving LED batten market, GLP has hit it out of the park.” Jenkins is no stranger to the German company’s products, having originally been introduced to the Volkslicht by Seth Jackson when he was designing the Selena Gomez tour. This kick-started an enduring relationship with GLP and its staff. Now in his fourth year with Maroon 5, the LD says, “When we first fired-up in 2015, Roy Bennett designed the production and lighting, with Jason Baeri and myself handling programming and associate design duties. We’ve found a workflow that we both enjoy. “Outside the main tour, wh
Germany - Production company LaserFrame recently installed Elation Professional Platinum HFX hybrid moving heads and ACL 360 Bar effect lights into one of the world’s top clubs, Bootshaus in Cologne. Located at the Cologne shipyard, Bootshaus has been an integral part of the city’s club culture for more than a decade. Primarily a techno club, Bootshaus attracts a clientele of sophisticated clubbers who often dance to the beats of top DJs like David Guetta, Avicii, Hardwell, Afrojack and Tiesto. The club is all about quality and as a top club maintains high standards when it comes to its lighting and sound systems. Pyro, Co2, lasers and confetti are part of the standard repertoire as well. Bootshaus houses three rooms – the Mainfloor, the BLCKBX and the Dreherei, an old workshop – plus a large outdoor area where open air parties can be celebrated. The Mainfloor
USA - SGM Q-7 strobes were the main cannons of the stage lighting for Justin Bieber’s exclusive show at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, FL. Everlast Productions have carried out the New Year’s Eve Party at Fontainebleau Hotel for several years. It was the first year that Tyler Frank spearheaded the overall design. Tyler and his crew took the shell of the structure from previous years and incorporated that into the new design for the stage. He wanted to create something that had more depth, immersion and dynamics, all the while fitting into the tight restrictions of the space. They built a 18m wide x 15m tall x 13m deep (60’ wide x 50’ tall x 40’ deep) structure and stage over an existing poolside bar. The lighting design had to be practical, bright and resilient to South Beach weather conditions. He explained why he chose the Q-7s for the stage setup:
USA - Set in the vast expanse of the Sonoran Desert in early February, the Gem and Jam Festival has a way of inspiring flights of imagination. Originally an after-party for the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, the four-day electronic music festival, which this year featured stars like The Trancident and The Floozies, pays tribute to its roots by embellishing its grounds with a captivating and sparkling array of crystalline artwork. This enchanting atmosphere was apparent at the Festival’s Onyx Stage, the only indoor stage of the four gem-inspired stages, set to go off at closing of the mainstage and continue to sunrise. The building was centred in a fantastical courtyard that housed an eclectic mix of sculptures and vendors. The stage was bejewelled with enormous clear quartz matrixes, large wooden panels riddled with intricate cut-outs of coyotes, symmetric crystal and interw
USA – In the Texas tradition of going big, Houston welcomed Super Bowl LI with a number of exciting attractions, including the Houston Skylight high atop the George R. Brown Convention Centre(GRB). Houston First Corporation, which maintains GRB, asked Nimblist to conceive and execute the Houston Skylight, a rooftop beacon that marks the centre of the city’s cultural activities. Nimblist designer and creative consultant Spike Brant devised an array of 36 Claypaky Supersharpy fixtures, mounted on staging on the GRB roof overlooking Discovery Green park. The Supersharpys swept the sky with powerful searchlight-style beams and created numerous lighting effects as well. “We have an ongoing conversation with Mike Waterman with Houston First about using light as a beacon to connect all of Houston,” says Spike Brant. “The Houston Skylight would symbolize ener
China - PR Lighting has announced the release of the XPar 150 Zoom – a compact and lightweight fixture. With its IP67 rating it is designed for extreme outdoor conditions such as building façades, landscaping and so on. Featuring multi-chip (4-in-1) multichip 150W COB (chips-on-board) LED and linear zoom, it is ideal for applications requiring superb RGBW colour mixing or high quality white light, and comes as part of a fully-featured package. This includes Strobe (0.5-33 fps); Dimmer (0-100% linearly adjustable); RGBW colour mix, with macro; Beam Angle (1/2 peak) of 22°-55°; Zoom (DMX linear zooming); Colour temperature (2700K-10000K linear correction). In terms of construction, the fixture is housed in a rugged, high-strength die-casting alloy capable of operating in ambient temperatures ranging from -20°C to 40°C. With a net weight of just 7.5kg, it mea
South Africa - The Market Theatre have invested in 8 Robin DL4S Profiles for their busy venue in Newtown Johannesburg. The theatre was looking at an LED solution to save on costs and maintenance, a common factor these days. DWR Distribution was awarded the tender to supply the DL4S fixtures which will be used in the main theatre. Nomvula Molepo, head of lighting at the Market Theatre, comments, “While we are yet to hang the fixtures on the lighting grid, I know that once they have been programmed they will work wonders and bring magic to our stage.” “The gobo set and the framing shutters makes this an extremely versatile fixture for theatre,” said Kevin Stannett of DWR Distribution. “Because of the RGBW chip you get extremely rich and high-intensity colours. We are finding that this particular fixture is receiving positive feedback from theatres world
USA - Officially, the theme of this year’s Portland Winter Light Festival was ‘Between the River and the Stars’. In reality, though, it could also have been described as ‘connecting people to light’. Held at the beginning of February on Portland’s beautiful Willamette River waterfront, the free four-day festival engaged visitors with an abundance of immersive lighting displays and interactive events like Illuminate Bike Rides and a Glow Jam circus show. Among the festival’s most engaging attractions was Harmony Park, an interactive exhibit created by Justin Metras, the founder of Portland-based Ellumiglow. Setting an appropriately immersive backdrop for this one-of-a-kind participatory exhibit was a celestial display created with six Iluminarc Colorist Line 6Qa fixtures. Metras used the RGBA linear fixtures to create a starry night sk
South Africa - The twelfth season of Idols South Africa wrapped up with a stunning finale at Carnival City Big Top Arena in Johannesburg, broadcast live on the Mzansi Magic network with a highly vocal audience of 3,500 packing into the venue - and lighting designer Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier choosing nearly 200 Robe fixtures to be at the core of his rig. As always, the challenge was to make this final season look better and different than before, and with over 80m votes cast across Series 12, a lot of eyes are on it and production values have been honed accordingly to reflect the intense public interest and impress fans. A skilled and imaginative creative team once again united to produce amazing results. Technical production – lighting, sound, video, set and rigging - was delivered by Dream Sets for producers SIC Entertainment and the series, which also
UK - Originally performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre before transferring to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Running Wild is now back and embarking on a UK tour. The show is based on Michael Morpurgo’s best-selling novel and uses live-action puppetry to tell the story of Will, whose visit to Indonesia sees her and elephant Oona having to ride deep into the jungle in order to escape a tsunami. White Light was called upon to provide the lighting equipment. Running Wild is being produced by the Children’s Touring Partnership, which is a collaboration between producers Fiery Angel, CFT and a consortium of regional theatres. The lighting design for the tour is by James Whiteside. He comments, “This is an extremely busy show, with the setting ranging from the Indonesian rainforest to a rural part of England to the tsunami itself. The high
Belgium - International creative design practice Painting with Light was commissioned to design lighting and a video system, plus produce video content for the recent staging of Disney’s Beauty & the Beast musical by Marmalade in Hall 8 at Ghent Expo in Belgium. The Belgium based company’s Luc Peumans also seized the opportunity to use their new BlackTrax real-time motion tracking system for the first time on a major production . . . to ensure that all the principal cast members were perfectly illuminated as they moved around the performance space. When Luc came on-board, the set designed by Stefaan Haudenhuyse - under licence to Disney with the producers having to meet certain criteria – was already initiated. Spectacular and dynamic, it was based around a 50m long performance area in the shape of a rose in the centre of the hall with audience seated
UK - Claypaky Spheriscans were selected to deliver a display of spectacular lighting effects that merged architectural and entertainment lighting during Edinburgh's famous Hogmanay torchlight procession. The award-winning fixtures were supplied and installed on The National Monument of Scotland at Calton Hill by Edinburgh-based production and rental outfit Black Light. Project manager James Gow from Black Light worked alongside lighting designer Grant Anderson and production manager of the torchlight procession John Robb, to create a lighting plan that offered maximum impact and versatility for the event. Gow explains: "We chose to use the Claypaky Spheriscan thanks to its 360-degree pan with an IP54 rating, which makes it a unique fixture on the market. With no need to add extra weather proofing, the unit has a sleek and discreet design." One Spheriscan was plac
