- USA - Specialist mobile business fabricator Cruising Kitchens has created a custom food truck for the Raising Cane’s chicken finger restaurant chain, which was designed ‘not only to deliver delicious food but also to get the party started’. The fully functioning mobile kitchen also features a custom-designed pop-up DJ booth on the roof, which is surrounded on three sides by ADJ weatherproof LED video panels.
Already operating from over 500 restaurants in 29 states and territories, they are moving into more areas, thanks to a pair of custom food trucks. The trucks were delivered at the end of 2020, as a surprise for the company’s founder, Todd Graves, from his co-CEO, AJ Kumaran, to celebrate the brand’s 25th anniversary. They are now making their way across the US, as part of the Cane’s Across America campaign, visiting areas not yet served by a Raising Cane

Zimbabwe - The rhythmic Afro-pop dance floor sound of Ammara Brown flows through a musical path that is distinctly different from the jazz infused offerings of Tamy Moyo. Yet both of these multi-instrumentalists and All Africa Music Award winners exude a captivating aura every time they step on to the stage.
This was plain to see on 12 February when they joined forces for Girls on the Move, a two-hour pay-for-view livestream on Gateway Stream Music intended to celebrate and raise awareness of Zimbabwean women in music.
Providing a lively and brightly coloured setting in support of their performances was a Blessing Bero designed lightshow that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick and Rogue fixtures, including eight MK2 Spot units, four R2 Spots and four R2 Washes, all of which were supplied by Events Evolution.
Working in coordination with video designer

Estonia - Robe moving lights and two RoboSpot systems provided a neat solution for the 2021 Eesti Laul competition to select Estonia’s entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Lighting and set designer for the finale show and the two semi-finals that preceded it in Tallinn’s Saku Suurhall arena was Rene Jõhve, who was approached to work on the project by Estonian national broadcaster, ERR. This was his tenth year of lighting the finale and semi-final events which were aired live, and - for obvious reasons - this year were staged without an audience.
The lighting rig included a selection of Robe fixtures including two BMFL WashBeams, 13 x DL7 Profiles, 12 x 300E Spot, 42 x Pointes, 25 x Spiider LED wash beams, 18 x LEDBeam150s and eight MMX WashBeams, plus other lights, all of which were supplied to the production by rental company Cuuclub.
The streaml

Finland - Tomi Björck is one of Finland’s best-known chefs and restaurateurs. With 10 restaurants and two bakeries already to his name across Finland, Sweden and Australia, Björck with his wife Minka and three other associates embarked on their latest project in Spring 2020.
Lily Lee, in the heart of the Finnish capital of Helsinki, offers a range of dishes inspired by Taiwanese cuisine, Hong Kong’s street kitchens and classical Cantonese cooking.
Finnish AV integrator, 4Business Oy, installed a Genelec loudspeaker system in the environmentally friendly RAW aluminium finish to enhance the dark, sultry interior with an audio experience that blends into the lush surroundings. In fact, Björck contacted Genelec directly for his latest project. 4Business’s Janne Lankinen was unsurprised by Björck’s choice. “Music and atmosphere are crucial elements for Tomi at

USA - The Events United team and production manager Kevin Hart returned to live work in March at the Space Coast City Fest in Melbourne, Florida.
For Events United, the two-day evangelical conference represented its first large-scale live event (with the exception of a few smaller outdoor projects) since the pandemic started. As if putting together a stage for Dove Award winners Casting Crowns, Zach Williams, Social Club Misfits, Andy Mineo and other praise music stars while dealing with COVID-19 safety protocols wasn’t enough, they also had to contend with problematic weather throughout the two-day event.
“The winds got pretty intense at some points. The gusts ended up peaking around 35 mph.” said Jon Martell, who made up the Events United team along with Donald Van Slyke, Chase Clark, Ryan Lane, and Joel Pelletier.
As a result of the wind, the festival ha

USA - With up to 50,000 people in and out of the Georgia World Congress Centre each day over a two-day period in February, the Cheersport National Cheerleading Championship in Atlanta may be the largest event to have taken place in the world under the COVID pandemic.
Rental and production company Lite Tek Entertainment supplied and designed lighting for the event and turned to an Elation lighting package of Cuepix and DTW blinders, Protron strobes, SixPars and more to highlight team routines across five different stages.
The National Cheerleading Championship is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. A typical year would see 1,400 teams competing but due to a 50%, reduction in allowed participants due to the pandemic, some 700 teams competed at this year’s event. Nevertheless, the event was huge with stages spread across two buildings and 90 acres.
“Th

Argentina - Estadio Unico Madre de Ciudades is the largest stadium in the province of Santiago del Estero with a capacity of 29,000. Completed in October 2020, the stadium will host matches for upcoming editions of the Copa America and the Supercopa Argentina.
To meet the project’s deadline, the AV integration firm working on the stadium, Equaphon Sistemas de Sonido SRL, found a way to integrate the stadium’s audio system while still adhering to all health and safety restrictions in place due to COVID-19 - all thanks to the trust they put in Audinate’s Dante audio network platform.
“Dante saves on costs and ensures the stadium can expand and scale the system as needed,” explains Francisco Maiocchi, member of the Equaphon Engineering Department. “Dante also offers many great audio control and management benefits. Dante was always part of our integration plan

USA - When the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM) School of Visual and Performing Arts was looking to update its existing wireless intercom system, the task of finding the right equipment was left in the hands of the programme’s veteran technical director Steven Burnside. He found the solution he was looking for with Pliant Technologies’ CrewCom wireless intercom system.
Burnside’s primary goal in upgrading the equipment at ULM School of Visual and Performing Arts was ensuring complete coverage throughout the entire building. “Our main auditorium was built in 1931 and made out of steel and concrete, so we really wanted to make sure we had a solid signal throughout,” says Burnside. “We were able to secure a CrewCom demo and we were really impressed, right off the bat.
“With just one Radio Transceiver (RT), we pretty much covered the entire building. To t

USA - Berkeley Dent, Jason Pastel, Trevor Creany, Dustin Lee and the team at 81 Productions demonstrated the unifying power of music in a real sense during this cold, hard winter.
With live music venues in their area of Roanoke, VA, locked down, and musicians out of work, they launched The Space Shop Sessions, a series of five livestream concerts, each featuring a different Roanoke band, and each supported by a different hometown business. Taking place over a two-month period, the sessions helped feed the local appetite for live music, while also providing gigs for some of the region’s favourite groups, and giving businesses a chance to engage directly with customers.
Helping the 81 Productions team create a flowing series of distinctive, colourful looks that reflected the personality of each band in the livestream series, was the company’s “virtually all Chauve

USA - The Victory Worship Centre, a multi-campus community church in Arizona, created a special Christmas service for its limited-capacity congregations in December. As a backdrop for the music and sermons, a stage-wide picture window setpiece framed wintery vistas, displayed in ultra-high definition on a 30ft x 10ft LED videowall. Faithfully delivering the visual content, day after day, was a Hippotizer Karst+ Media Server from Green Hippo.
A recent purchase by the Victory Worship Centre, the Karst+ Media Server was used for the very first time on this show. Production designer Alex Fuller, of Fuller Lights LLC, was familiar with Hippotizer from previous projects and was able to link the Karst+ unit to the grandMA3 lighting console at the heart of the Victory Center’s control booth.
Situated in a separate video control suite, the Karst+ was fibre-linked to the MA3,

China - League of Legends’ World Championship 2020 Finals were staged at the new Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai, a high-profile, hi-energy event notable for many things, which – in addition to being an eSports calendar highlight – included a spectacular production lighting design by Mat Stovall of LampedUp and his team.
Thirty-seven Robe RoboSpot systems were part of a large lighting rig for the event, specified by Mat and associate LD Trevor Stirlin Burk of Visual Noise Creative, and supplied by Christie Lites out of their UK and US bases to the event’s main technical contractor, Creative Technology (CT) Shanghai.
Robert Roth coordinated for Christie Lites, working closely with the CT Shanghai team headed by Aaron Ross Durdin, Sam Tibble and Daniel Sun.
Mat wanted RoboSpots on the event for several reasons. He needed “a quality white light source

USA - Home to the Colorado Eagles of the American Hockey League, the Budweiser Events Centre (BEC) at The Ranch Events Complex in Loveland, Colorado is a 7,200-capacity multi-purpose arena that hosts everything from hockey, basketball and indoor football to concerts, rodeo, family shows and more.
Less than an hour drive from both Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming, BEC has become the focal point for sports and entertainment in Northern Colorado, offering approximately 200 events each year, including the 2021 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Loveland Regional Tournament held there in late March.
Larimer County, which owns the Spectra-managed venue, recently took advantage of the COVID-mandated downtime to make several notable renovations to the arena. The most significant of these was integrating a new L-Acoustics A Series loudspeaker system, which was designed and installe

Bahrain - Woodroffe Bassett Design (WBD) recently designed and delivered a new lighting and video installation on the façade of the Sakhir Tower at the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) in time for the first Grand Prix of the Formula One season. The circular viewing tower is the centrepiece of the BIC and has become a key visual element of the television broadcast of the race, seen all over the world.
The design of the scheme enhances the night-time drama of the track illumination installed in 2014 and follows the original visual concepts that were developed in collaboration with architectural design practice Stufish in London five years ago.
The dynamic and colour-rich scheme is a deliberate counterpoint to the myriad of powerful white lights that illuminate the track during the night races. The design explores the geometry of the spectacular building and articulat

Lithuania - Sonus Exsertus, based in Vilnius, is a specialist in stage technologies with a 20-year history of providing turnkey solutions for a wide range of venues, from theatres and houses of worship to cinemas, arts centres and retail settings.
The company also acts as a distributor for many leading brands across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and Georgia, offering comprehensive sales and servicing. For the last five years, Sonus has been distributing DiGiGrid products in the region, and has overseen a steadily upward trajectory in sales during that time.
Whilst recent world events have seen turbulent times across the industry, Sonus has adapted to circumstances and continued to perform well. Its sales of DiGiGrid units continued to grow strongly throughout last year, something that head of sales Ramunas Alenskas attributes to a combination of factors:
“As fa

The Netherlands - The sustainable AFAS Theatre, which is incorporated in the new HQ of software developer AFAS, named the AFAS Experience Centre in Leusden, has recently been equipped by Rolight with 74 Infinity TS-260C7 Profile engines from Infinity’s Signature series.
The AFAS Experience Centre has been designed from the ground up to create an “experience” for clients, employees and visitors - a complex that includes office space, meeting rooms, relax areas, demonstration rooms, fitness area, gym, educational spaces, studios, patio & atrium suitable for events, exhibitions and social gathering. The complex takes ecological and environmental aspects into account as much as possible.
Almost energy neutral, it is fitted with solar panels, sedum roofs, heat pumps, heat exchangers, triple glazing, a multitude of sensors and 50 charging stations for electric vehi

South Korea - Harman Professional Solutions recently partnered with MIX Media and TechDataPS Coto upgrade Seongnam Arts Centre’s AV system with AMX networked video solutions.
Seongnam Arts Centre is the largest venue for cultural arts in the city of Seongnam. The facility features a 1,804-seat opera house, a concert hall, ensemble theatre for smaller performances, two visual art galleries and an outdoor amphitheatre with seating for 11,000 people.
The centre hired MIX Media to upgrade its video infrastructure with a HARMAN networked VoIP solution consisting of AMX encoders, decoders and controllers supplied by TechDataPS.
To provide a scalable AV control platform with intuitive operation, network security and backward compatibility, MIX Media selected the AMX NX-3200 NetLinx NX Integrated Controller as the core of the AV infrastructure. For transmitting and rec

Germany - Fine & Bright’s Hybrid Studio Berlin is located in the bustling heart of Germany’s capital. The new 425sq.m space is housed in a century-old former malt factory. Its black and white tile floor and industrial fittings serve as reminders of the building’s past, whilst its advanced design make it suited to provide clients with COVID-safe options for connecting to customers through virtual productions, or (once it is permitted by the government) with combined virtual/live events accommodating an audience of up to 50 people.
“We developed this studio with our partners ICT AG and the Malzfabrik, in order to offer our customers a high-quality and fully equipped space for digital and hybrid events during the COVID-19 pandemic,”explains Robert Ulm, CEO of Fine & Bright. “The studio has all the digital tools required for the quick and direct implementatio

Germany - The CLW in Bonn-Bad Godesberg is a protestant free church and open to believers of all nationalities and generations. The parish has a church with an adjoining kindergarten and offers, among other things, services for the whole family every Sunday at 10.00 am. The Living Word (CLW) is an acronym for Centrum für Lebendiges Wort) is the focus of the services, in the form of sermons and musical contributions. The live music component in the church has grown steadily in recent years, so an upgrade of the sound system was necessary.
Julian Betker, trainee pastor and vicar at the CLW, states: "We have been working on a new sound reinforcement solution to meet our many requirements for a while. On the one hand, we wanted to use our existing technology, including mixing consoles, microphones and subwoofers.
“Our church lives through, and with, live music - which c

USA - Innovation Nation, the CBS Saturday morning TV show about change-making technologies, recently called on Verge Aero, to find out more about the new aerial technology.
Produced by The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Litton Entertainment, Innovation Nation presents stories of history’s technological turning points, as well as looking at the innovations that are changing the world around us. With drone light shows offering spectacular additions - or even alternatives - to traditional fireworks displays, the technology was ripe for further investigation by the educational programme.
Verge Aero’s drone fleets have been seen performing aerial celebrations at high-profile events including Joe Biden’s victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware, back in November. Presenter Alie Ward visited the company’s headquarters at Pennovation Works, part of the Uni

Australia - Cutting Edge has been a leading provider of sound and picture post production for the advertising, features and television industries, both in Australia and internationally, for almost three decades. The company recently announced Edge Lab, its newest venture in Virtual Production (VP) based in Brisbane, Queensland.
The facility is a research and development (R&D) hub for production industry professionals, developed in partnership with Big Picture, part of the NEP Worldwide Network, and motion caption integrator Logemas.
Brompton Technology processing is used for the main LED screen as well as ambient reflection and lighting walls.
Cutting Edge is able to facilitate all its clients’ needs across commercial, television and feature film productions. Now, the company can also tap into the latest technical innovations in VP with its Unreal Engine po

UK - Dan Ridd, Steven Haynes and a team from Clearsound Productions in Shipston on Stour marked the culmination of a week of #LightItInRed ‘heart’ actions around the country with a livestream broadcast featuring mixmaster DJ Benji surrounded by a heart-shaped lighting rig designed by Steven and featuring Robe moving lights.
With overall direction by Dan Ridd and camera and humour direction by Andy Cox, the multi-camera broadcast included two drone feeds plus assorted visual highlights from the last year of #LightItInRed campaigns. These have focused on keeping the entertainment, production, and performance industry visible and relevant during the pandemic and consequent shut down, and this content was eloquently wrangled by #LightItInRed’s Sarah Berryman.
Working alongside Steven on lighting were two fellow Rose Bruford College students, Sam Jones, who programm

Saudi Arabia - Noor Riyadh is a citywide annual festival of light and art that showcases individual artists and talent and promotes creativity. The event produced by Balich Worldwide Shows (BWS) brings together artists from all over the world.
Star in Motion by renowned lighting designer Koert Vermeulen, is a powerful focal point in the middle of the city of Riyadh - a shining star, suspended from the top of the famous Kingdom Tower more than 300m in the air. Balich Worldwide Shows has worked with Unusual Rigging on other events in the past, and as such they were the natural choice when it came to rigging this spectacular installation.
Steve Porter, director at Unusual, explains: “Having worked with BWS on several projects in the past, when they approached us to hang the centrepiece for the festival, it was a pleasure to collaborate with them again. We were approach

UK - The National Theatre’s production of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England was performed at the Dorfman Theatre in spring 2020 before the venue closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The one-man show was an intense study of grief and identity in Britain, performed in-the-round on a cross-shaped stage by Rafe Spall in an explosively energetic performance. Dyer’s direction, and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ’s stark set demanded equally dramatic lighting from the outset, which was provided by dance and theatre lighting designer, and NT regular, Jackie Shemesh.
Shemesh chose four Ayrton Diablo 300W LED profile fixtures as central features of his design, which he mainly deployed as followspots to track Spall’s every move.
The Diablo fixtures were rigged above the four inner corners of the cross stage, side-mounted and droppe

Italy - The Lucca region has given birth to many of the greatest voices in opera, but every spring and summer, Tuscany’s historic piazzas resonate with the impassioned sound of another kind of music, as they play host to world famous blues festivals.
In 2015, Lucca joined the list of Tuscan cities celebrating the musical genre by starting a blues festival of its own. Given the city’s evocative charm and rich musical tradition, the Lucca Blues Festival was an overnight success, attracting internationally acclaimed artists and legions of fans.
This year, because of the pandemic, the live event was cancelled, but the Lucca Blues festival continued its robust celebration of all things blues with a series of livestreams from Amandla Productions Studios, a versatile broadcast facility set up inside the city’s 1,500sq.m event centre by locally-based Amandla Productions

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline