UK - Having developed and introduced LED solutions for over 15 years, Chroma-Q has built a steady following within the production industry, that continues to see the creative application of their low energy technology by a growing number of crews. A selection of products from the company’s range of low energy solutions were put to good use recently, with experienced gaffer, Wayne Shields (Brave New World, The Witcher season 2). Wayne says, “I’ve worked with Chroma-Q products for a few years now. As an LED source, they deliver some great results, powerful output with plenty of flexibility when you need it.” Wayne and his crew recently made use of the company’s Color Force IITM LED battens, with an installation designed to deliver a range of creative, in-camera effects. He explains’ “We used the Color Force II to illuminate a large
Sweden - Situated in Stockholm’s Royal Djurgården district, the Cirkus theatre complex recently opened a new restaurant, where an Alcons system has been installed. Cirkus first opened in 1892 to house many of Sweden’s prominent circus companies. It has evolved and expanded over the decades to host many different forms of entertainment, including theatre, musicals, dance, concerts, corporate events and television productions. Today it is owned by Pop House Sweden - a company whose principal owners are Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and investment banker Conni Jonsson. The new Restaurant Djurgården offers classic dishes with a modern touch, ‘inspired by the odd and unexpected’. Brollan Söderström of systems integrator Electrosound AB was asked to supply and install an audio system for the restaurant, its performance stage, bar and the Ernst Rolfe VIP lounge. An Alco
Australia - A large, illuminated Ox artwork created by Paul Wells from Sydney Props Specialists to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Ox was illuminated with Astera Titan Tubes and NYX Bulbs and realised in collaboration with Sydney Event Services. This stood on display in Darling Harbour, Sydney, for three weeks during the 2021 Chinese New Year celebrations. The work was commissioned by Sydney’s Harbour and Foreshore Authority. They approached Paul just four weeks ahead of this year’s Chinese New Year and asked if the piece could be delivered as an internally lit steel-framed structure with stretched fabric skins. Paul in turn asked Mitch Hancock from Sydney Events Services to assist with the project’s lighting and delivery. Once work started on the Ox which is 1.16m wide and 2.4m long, Paul and Mitch soon realised time was simply too tight to complete th
Greece - Lighting designer Christina Thanasoula brought her visual style to a recent Greek National Opera production of Juditha Triumphans with the help of some Robe LEDBeam 150s. The performance was directed by Thanos Papakonstantinou with music delivered by the Armonia Atenea Orchestra, musical ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, the GNO Chorus and members of the GNO Children's Choir and conducted by Markellos Chryssicos and recorded for broadcast on the Mezzo TV channel. The Vivaldi oratorio - the only surviving one of four he is known to have composed – was staged at the Greek National Opera’s Stavros Niarchos Hall in Athens to mark the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution. Christina is co-founder of Athens-based lighting design company Creative Lighting, and her inspiration for lighting this production was the early Baroque painting Juditha slaying
UK - A small group of patrons of London’s Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts have been able to enjoy a live performance of the romantic comedy, Shakespeare In Love. Performed in front of a small and socially distanced audience of industry professionals, the production immersed them in the fictional tale of Shakespeare’s unrequited love for his ideal women. Contributing to this experience was an evocative Adam King lighting design, which, despite the well-advised safety protocols at the theatre, was able to convey a richly textured sense of time and place. “We had lots of different locations to depict in the play, but due to Covid we could not have massive scene changes,” said King. “It therefore became very crucial that our lighting really help drive the scenes taking place on stage, whether they be dingy taverns or grand ballrooms.” Helping Kin
UK - AV integrator AT&C has installed K-array loudspeakers and Innosonix amplifiers at Browns newly launched Mayfair shopping experience; the client brief was for high quality audio – and they didn’t want to see it. Browns Fashion offers an unrivalled, tactile in-person experience that flies in the face of the currently obsessive trend for instant online click-and-ship gratification. Blending exceptional service with creativity and technology, the Browns ethos is personified in the recently opened Dimorestudio-designed flagship boutique at 39 Brook Street in the heart of London’s Mayfair. Following extensive construction work which saw the Grade II listed building gutted and completely renovated, a contract was awarded to South Hampstead-based AT&C Professional System to design and install a fully networked, high specification audio system throughout eve
<b<Denmark - In the weeks leading up to the lockdown, Volbeat was tearing up Europe on a 32-city tour of the continent. The Danish metal band included a date at the 15,000-seat Stuttgart Hanns Martin Schleyer Halle. Building on the energy of the band’s performance and driving the intensity level ever higher was a 40-universe Niller Bjerregaard light and video show powered by the designer’s two ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium consoles. Part programmed and part busked, the show served up a torrent of searing images for the 22-song set. Although fans haven’t been able to see a live Volbeat show since the lockdown, they had the chance to immerse themselves in the magic of that special evening when the band’s Stuttgart performance was streamed on a pay per view platform. “The broadcast was as original as it gets,” said Bjerregaard. “All elements and feature
UK - In February 1840, a group of local citizens, including a future prime minister, welcomed 10 students to what was Britain’s first purpose built teacher’s college. Over the ensuing 180-plus years, both the size of the institution and the scope of its mission have changed dramatically. Known today as the University of Chester, the university welcomes some 15,000 students from every continent, save Antarctica and, as its guide notes, offers courses ranging from Animation to Zoo Management. The energy and broad educational mission of the university is reflected in the busy main performance space in its School of Arts and Media. One of four such spaces at the university, this facility hosts myriad productions that can include a traditional theatrical performance, a live music concert and a lecture or conference covering endless topics, sometimes all in the same day
Poland - Polski Teatr Tańca, or Polish Dance Theatre, is an interdisciplinary dance company formed in 1973. While the company owns a rehearsal studio in Poznań in western Poland, it has never had its own performance space - until now. The curtain is about to go up on a new theatre in the historic centre of Poznań, complete with a carefully designed KV2 Audio sound system. From the outside, the building looks like any one of the imposing 19th century edifices in the old town centre. Now fully renovated, whilst the exterior blends perfectly with the rest of the city’s architecture, inside the venue has been transformed into a modern performance space with distinctly industrial feel. Concrete, glass and metal structures prevail in the new space which has been designed as a place of interaction between performers and spectators; here, the set is the whole theatre and audien
UK - Scottish events company 21CC Group has recently unveiled the output of months of planning, with a new project delivered in partnership with The City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh College. The creative lighting design company was appointed to transform the iconic gasholder tower into one of Scotland's biggest works of art, while providing opportunities for students at Edinburgh College - a major academic institution in Scotland - to work on a live creative project. Commenting on the success and long-term objectives of the installation, Geoff Crow, director of 21CC Group states: “We are immensely proud to have been appointed for this project, and of the results achieved by our technical production company, 21CC Productions. For us, it’s about giving Edinburgh a new landmark and students hands-on experience with cutting edge equipment, that will enable them
USA - The San Francisco Opera utilised a complement of Ayrton Perseo-S fixtures when it brought opera back to town in a COVID-safe outdoor production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Ayrton Perseo is the first compact, multi-function luminaire with an IP65 enclosure rating developed for intensive outdoor use. The Barber of Seville, directed by Matthew Ozawa, ran from 23 April - 15 May at Marin Centre, 15 minutes from San Francisco, where the audience pulled up their cars alongside the lagoon with the beautiful hills of Marin in the background. They watched the production, on a custom-built stage with soaring LED videowalls, from their vehicles. “We have staged concerts before in Golden Gate Park, but nothing to this extent has been produced outside in the three years I have been with the company,” notes Justin Partier, lighting director for the
UK - Based in Glasgow, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is a world-leading conservatoire of music, drama, dance, production and film. Founded in 1847, it now has more than 1,300 students studying undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and, pre-COVID, staged over 600 live performances across its professional venues throughout the year. It recently opened a new rehearsal and performance space for its students and approached White Light (WL) to provide the lighting equipment. As part of its COVID-19 response plan, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland realised that building occupancy numbers and social distancing were going to play a key part in ensuring it could continue to deliver technical training and support to all its students. The decision was made to transfer a rehearsal studio into a new, fully-equipped performance space that would allow both performance and productio
The Netherlands - Lighting, audio and rigging for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was delivered and co-ordinated by leading Netherlands rental specialist Ampco Flashlight, and for lighting control, this included 14 grandMA3 light consoles and 32 active grandMA3 processing units (PUs) used by production lighting designer Henk-Jan van Beek of visual design practice Light-H-Art and his team. Henk-Jan created a spectacular design that enabled each of the 39 entries participating in the 2021 contest - which also included two televised semi-finals - to have a distinct and dynamic look utilising over 1,800 (main show floor and key) moving lights and LED luminaires from multiple brands, plus over 500 universes of LED tape running via two Green Hippo media servers. In addition to the real lights in the space, some augmented reality elements featured in the broadcast invo
UK - Philip French and his team from Peachy Productions lit Guildford Cathedral resplendent green - using Robe Pointes and LEDBeam 150 moving lights - to mark Surrey Day 2021, one of several celebratory events happening around the county led by Visit Surrey and their media partners BBC Radio Surrey and Surrey Life magazine. It was the second Surrey Day in which Peachy Productions has been involved. The company has many strong ties to the city and the area, and was keen to participate in promoting Surrey, which is known for its natural beauty, woodlands, and wildlife habitats among many other attributes. Having lit the Cathedral on several occasions last year, including in support of the National Health Service and other frontline workers battling the pandemic and also to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the Peachy crew were delighted to be back on top of St
Poland - The debut of the new Mercedes-Benz EQA vehicle in Poland took place in April, with Kukoni and Robimy Live supplying sound and lighting equipment, cameras and streaming systems. Kukoni supplied a range of Prolights equipment, including 16 Air5Fan, 12 Stark 1000, eight Ruby, 20 Lumipix 12QTour, six Sunblast 3000FC, one Mosaico, 18 SmartBat Plus, 18 TrussPod3 Bat and 18 Solar 27Q, with design by Kuba Czarnik. “Our main goal was to create a spatial effect to win the emotions of our viewers watching the event online,” says Miłosz Łapiński, manager at Kukoni. “We placed the Air5Fan on all sides of the stage area, where the car would drive in. We then placed the Sunblast 3000FC fixtures behind the car, proving a powerful colour punch as it would come in through a mist of smoke.” The Stark 1000 washes provided front white-light to the presenters and
Zimbabwe - Blessing Bero, Tatenda Gaylord Rushwaya, and the rest of the Events Evolution team faced a formidable task recently when they worked a noon to 8pm pay-for-view show by platinum Epic Records star Benjamin Dube. A noted South African gospel singer (he performed at Nelson Mandela’s Freedom of the City Award presentation), Dube was joined by a large group of other performers on stage. This helped the Events Evolution team achieve the diverse looks they were after. Also contribution to the variety, was a flexible lighting rig that included 11 Maverick MK2 Spot, four Rogue R2 Spot and four Rogue R2 Wash fixtures, plus a Net-X node from Chauvet Professional. “We created a wide range of backgrounds with our videos and the rainbow of colours we were able to get from our lighting fixtures matched them all,” said Rushwaya, who programmed the show and ran the vide
Saudi Arabia - Jeddah provided the start and finish lines for the 2021 Dakar Rally, while its King Abdullah Sports City Stadium - 30 kilometres north of the bustling port city - was the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies which included a special show complete with soundtracks by Daft Punk, other cultural performance segments and a host of media events and live broadcasts including the winner presentations. Each of the two events comprised around 10 hours of consecutive airtime in total. French creative lighting practice Concept K was invited by Paris-based Leap Creative Studio and Blink Experience’s Dubai office to create a production lighting design for the two ceremonies. Their brief also included direction of lighting for the cameras and integration of the set and scenic elements and video screens into a single visual picture for the events which were attende
USA - Audio Engineers of Detroit has opened a new recording studio in midtown Detroit with a 32-channel Neve Genesys Black console at the heart of its main control room. The studio provides many different recording services, including commercial voice over, podcasts, music recording, mixing in stereo, 5.1 up to Dolby Atmos, audio restoration, location sound and audio-visual services. Running alongside this commercial work, Audio Engineers of Detroit also offers an education programme that teaches students the skills and techniques needed to follow a career in professional audio. “Some years ago, I had the pleasure of mixing on a vintage Neve console and fell in love with the sound,” says Mike Kinnie, founder and vice president of Audio Engineers of Detroit. “We wanted that Neve sound for the new studio and we also wanted a console that had DAW control so it made
The Netherlands - ESC official technical supplier, Ampco Flashlight of Utrecht, supplied a large number of Ayrton Huracán-X, Karif-LT and MiniPanel-FX LED fixtures for the 65th Eurovision Song Contest at the Rotterdam Ahoy Arena, at the request of ESC head of lighting, Henk-Jan van Beek of Light-H-art. With some 39 countries and 55 scenes to create and programme different looks for, van Beek needed fixtures that would give him a lot of variety and used the ‘trilogy’ of Ayrton fixtures for three different purposes. “Huracán-X is our workhorse,” says van Beek. “We chose it because it gave us all the power, possibilities and creativity in one fixture and we used every feature of it.” 180 Huracán-X were rigged over the main and B-stages where 40 of them were mounted on extendable drop arms, and on three levels around the auditorium from where they wer
UK - Pro audio solutions provider Audiologic is working alongside Probrand to deliver a remote learning solution for Arden University. Arden University is a higher education institution with approximately 10,000 students. It focuses on providing access to flexible learning for ambitious students of all ages around the world and provides a mixture of distance (online) and on-campus teaching services at five UK sites and one in Berlin. Arden has expanded its learning opportunities from an exclusively distance-learning model to a blended online and on-site model in 2017, but shortly after the pandemic struck in March, the team realised that it would require a different technical solution. The University wanted to continue its on-campus learning service when classes restarted in September 2020. Rob Palfreman, IT director at Arden, explains: "We were committed to pro
USA - Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and actress Miley Cyrus performed between games of the NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Tournament Final Four, which was aired on the CBS network. Her performance paid tribute to frontline workers and their continued service and sacrifices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lighting designer Otis Howard called on over 500 light fixtures supplied by 4Wall Entertainment in a design that used modern technology to create a dazzling, elevated 1970s rock & roll show for the superstar. Included in this mix were close to 200 Chauvet Professional COLORado 2 Solo fixtures. The par style wash units, which are fitted with three 40W RGBW LEDs, were positioned directly behind Miley Cyrus along with 44 LED panels. The creative inspiration for the Miley Cyrus team for the lighting design was from early rock shows like Queen and Led
USA - Families from across Georgia watched in in May as a spectacular firework display and 180-strong drone show by Verge Aero lit up the sky to mark Armed Forces Day. The annual Thunder Over Evans event returned for 2021 following the relaxation of COVID restrictions, offering an opportunity for the community to come together to honor members of the armed forces. Event producers were keen to go the extra mile and supplement their traditional firework display with drones, ramping up the visual spectacle using Verge Aero’s sophisticated control capabilities. The result was a choreographed vision of colourful and dynamic firework explosions and drone imagery as Verge Aero’s fleet flew the US flag, spelt out ‘U-S-A’, and military logos from all five services, all synced to an accompanying soundtrack. “We've been doing our Armed Forces celebration for over
USA - Christie Spyder X80 multi-windowing processors are helping to deliver a new fan experience at the Phoenix Suns Arena. As part of a massive renovation of the entire arena, the new lobby area has been outfitted with 7,000sq.ft of LED displays, with the Spyder X80 driving content to engage and educate fans as they enter the building. The 29 year-old venue underwent a significant $230m modernisation with improvements that allow the Suns to deliver ‘a world-class guest experience’. The transformation included upgraded fan amenities, technology and more. Stranger Production, which specialises in sports and broadcasting video processing and automation, commissioned the Christie Spyder X80 processors that are used to drive content to the LED walls in the new lobby area. Two custom, curved LED displays welcome fans to the arena inside the reimagined Phoenix Suns Arena
USA - Robe’s Forte LED moving lights have been purchased and installed at the extensive main campus of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The Baptist Evangelical mega-church in southern Orange County is the largest in California and one of the biggest in the US with several campuses in California and worldwide, complete with a busy worship schedule inspired by senior pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren. For now, the 24 new Forte luminaires - the Church’s first Robe investment, specified by lighting manager Jacob Olson and supplied via integrator Amplio Systems - are rigged on trusses above an impressive temporary tented structure, custom-designed and erected during reconstruction of their church’s main auditorium. The structure was erected when the California COVID tier system enabled the church to start holding limited capacity worship
