Zimbabwe - Blessing Bero was focused on creating uplifting harmonies for the Zaoga Forward In Faith Church at its October live DVD recording session; not in the form of vocals, the church’s acclaimed choir took care of that, but with balanced video and lighting displays. “We wanted to create flowing videos for the beautiful music,” said Bero, of Events Evolution. “Our team was able to do this throughout the recording.” Bero, who served as technical director, set designer and lighting designer at the video shoot, hung 16 0.5m by 3m LED strips across the back of the stage. “I worked with LED screen engineer and operator Tatenda Rushwaya to create all the attractive visuals that the camera could capture on the strips,” he said. “We used them to play graphic videos that interacted with video playback.” Having the strips display their captivating content w
Australia - The 2020 NRL Grand Final, saw the Melbourne Storm defeat the Penrith Panthers at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium. Traditionally held on the first Sunday of October, the COVID-19 delay earlier in the year caused the date to be pushed back several weeks. The pre-show entertainment was once again enriched by Tom Wright’s lighting and stage design with Chameleon Touring Systems supplying the equipment. This year Amy Shark walked onto the stage at ANZ Stadium in front of a 40,000-strong crowd to perform several of her biggest hits which have dominated the Australian charts over the past few years. Unfortunately, as Wright lives in Melbourne, he was unable to attend the event and so Paul Collison and Dan Mercer worked closely with him to ensure his vision came to life. This was a task that ended up nearly impossible due to inclement weather that battered Sydney that we
USA - A Hippotizer Tierra+ Media Server from Green Hippo is driving the videowall content at the WVU Football facility at West Virginia University’s new Puskar Centre, in Morgantown, WV. Providing spaces for players, coaches, staff and visitors, the WVU Puskar Centre development is, with the help of Hippotizer, transforming the home of WVU Football, putting its facilities very visibly ahead of the competition. The video playback solution was designed by BrightTree Studios and installed by its parent company, Synergy Media Group, preferred technology suppliers to WVU. It encompasses five large screens in the spacious, luxuriously modern locker room, including a main video wall and four ‘end-cap’ screens located at the ends of the locker rows. The Tierra+ Media Server will also handle content feeds and mapping duties for screens in other areas in future phases of t
USA - Along with retro tech like vinyl turntables and instant film cameras, which have enjoyed a popularity resurgence in recent years, the drive-in movie theatres of old are also experiencing a revival in 2020. But that boom hasn’t always been sparked by patrons flocking to catch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Sully Erna and Aaron Lewis, frontmen for the hard rock bands Godsmack and Staind, recently wrapped up The American Drive-In Tour, a 13-date, coast-to-coast run of ‘unplugged’ concerts, many of which were staged in classic ’50s-era outdoor cinemas. To best reinforce every acoustic musical nuance and every word of intimate banter between these ‘old friends’ of 25 years, Denver-based concert sound company Brown Note Productions (BNP) chose to carry an L-Acoustics K2 system for the tour. Produced by Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP), the promoter behind pop
Spain - This year’s annual Coca-Cola Music Experience Festival took place again over two days at Madrid’s WiZink Centre (this year under the name CCME Reloaded, to reflect the COVID-19 restrictions). The event was recorded for streaming only on CokeTV (the Coca-Cola YouTube channel) and Divinity (https://www.divinity.es/). Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, despite the lack of venue atmosphere, the music was non-stop and featured local artists such as Aitana, Ana Guerra, Beret, Twin Melody, Cora Yako, and Lemot. Working with production company, the Method Agency (under the show direction of Oscar Fernandez), PRG provided an inventory of 124 GLP fixtures, for effects, washlight, and keylight. These included 20 GLP impression X4 XL; 18 GLP impression X4 L; 20 GLP impression X4 Bar 20; 26 GLP impression X4 Bar 10 and 36 GLP Highlander Wash, being used for the
Australia - Big Picture is always looking for new methods to allow creative and technical professionals to tell stories in fresh and innovative ways, especially during COVID-19. One area that certainly required a COVID-revamp was the award show format. So, with the Dally M Awards looming, thinking caps were put on by the teams at Fox Sports and Big Picture. “Usually the Dally M Awards are staged in a large event venue, but with COVID-19 we had to rethink how we would stage the 2020 production,” remarks Paul Slater, senior producer at Fox Sports. “We still wanted to have a big auditorium feel, but we didn’t have the budget or resources to shoot something like that in reality.” Paul turned to Big Picture for inspiration, who in turn demonstrated how an xR (extended reality) broadcast could work. The technology impressed, marking a vote of confidence for Big Pic
USA - With a portfolio of clients including Apple, Vogue, Amazon, and Spotify, GUM Studios is a New York Qualified Production Facility, offering expansive and versatile spaces that can confidently cater for any requirement and shoot. Recently, GUM turned to 4Wall Entertainment to provide lighting and video equipment for its new Virtual Production (VP) facility. The high-spec virtual environment includes ROE Visual Black Pearl 2 LED video panels, which are driven by Brompton 4K Tessera SX40 processors. “GUM is a long-term customer of 4Wall’s, and we have been supplying it with equipment for years,” says 4Wall’s account executive - video production, Wayne Romanowski. “With Virtual Production tipped to become a standard for how major motion pictures will be shot going forward, we were honoured when the GUM team contacted us about supporting them in bringing this
USA - Located at the Oconto Falls High School in Wisconsin, an ageing sound system in the Falls Area Performing Arts Centre (PAC) has been replaced with Martin Audio’s new scalable resolution Wavefront Precision Mini (WPM) line array. Part of a complete AV upgrade to the technical infrastructure, the work was carried out by Camera Corner Connecting Point in Green Bay, Wisconsin, following a competitive bidding process. According to their project designer, Steve Littlepage, the contract was broken into two phases: a complete video upgrade, followed by the installation of the PA and system processing, as well as supply (and relocation) of a new digital mixing console. The function of the PA was to provide an even coverage for a seated audience of up to 700, and be sufficiently versatile to serve not only a range of school events, but incoming productions hosted through
USA - The second tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) located in the heart of Downtown Chicago, is home to more than 100 companies and is one of the city’s best-known tourist attractions. When a tower client needed a powerful, flexible, and scalable audio system, USIS AV looked to LEA Professional. The team at USIS AV was tasked with the AV design and build in two floors of the tower, encompassing over 90,000sq.ft. The floors are leased by a global coworking company who provide premium work, meeting and event spaces around the world and needed a multifunctional system that could meet the ever-changing needs of their clientele. The space in Willis Tower was designed to be re-configured depending on the specific need, with flex walls allowing the area to accommodate both small breakout sessions and open out for larger conference and
USA - While the majority of festivals and concerts scheduled for the summer of 2020 had to be cancelled due to COVID-19, a few smaller events were still able to go ahead with social distancing in place. One example was the fifth annual Birds of a Feather Music & Arts Festival, which took place during August in Northern Kentucky. It featured a varied line-up of bands playing across two adjacent stages, which both featured identical lighting rigs comprised exclusively of ADJ fixtures. Located at the picturesque Thornhill Drag Strip in a little town called Morning View in Kentucky, Birds of a Feather is a small family-friendly festival that hosts a mixture of local and regional touring acts. At the top of this year’s line-up was Tropidelic, a band that blends reggae, hip-hop and high energy funk alongside ‘trashgrass’ string quartet The Rumpke Mountain Boys and electr
South Africa - MJ Event Gear has created an outdoor music concert environment at The Local Bar and Kitchen in Kyalami, no. 66 on the R55 Main Road, for those who want to enjoy good music in a space that strictly complies to the COVID-19 safety regulations. MJ has also set up a venue incorporating sound and lighting at the Bryanston Country Club. The Local has JOC approval and has been given the green light by the SAPS and the fire marshal. The venue has various seating options available and includes paramedics on-site in case of an emergency, while all tables and chairs are sprayed and sanitized by Gary Love and the Viral Shield team. Patrons entering the venue will walk through a humidifier tunnel (not spray) and endure the usual hand sanitization and a temperature check, while face masks are sold on site. Mike Jones, the owner of Johannesburg technical supply company
The Netherlands - The newly built Terra Emmen school offers a varied and practical curriculum – including cooking, ‘green subjects’, and sports, alongside more traditional subjects – and, as such, required an audio system that could be as versatile as it was discrete. After assessing the options available to them, the school’s administrators decided that MM Concept Audio Solutions was the right company to assist them in creating an audio infrastructure that could fit into Terra Emmen’s sustainable, forward-thinking ethos. “The initial brief from Terra Emmen was rather a simple one,” said Mark Molema, CEO of MM Concept Audio Solutions. “At that point, they weren’t being supported by an AV system advisor, which was a huge benefit for us. As far as they were concerned, the functionality and ease-of-use of the system was key, which is a welcome change f
Chile - A national historic monument, the Teatro Galia was intended to reflect the pride and character of the Los Ríos region when it was built over a two-year period in the 1940s. Designers Felipe Barthou Lapouple and Juan Poletter Saint-Simon adopted a balloon frame system for the 500-seat theatre to reflect their country’s rich art deco tradition. Inside, they used only native Chilean woods for flooring and panelling, including warm, orange-tinged Lenga, famous the world over for its depth and texture. In 2020, when the Chemtrol Chile team began a socially distant lighting upgrade project as the historic structure, they were careful to preserve the unique character of the building. They accomplished this with the help of 34 Chauvet Professional LED fixtures. This made Teatro Galia the first theatre in Chile with an all-LED rig. “For the execution of the rehabil
Ireland - A new collaboration between Robe and Dublin’s Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art sees a quantity of Robe moving lights – including T1 Profiles and T1 Fresnels, LEDWash 300 LEDs and ParFect 150s – made available on long term rental, which were used to great effect for Lir’s 2020 Gradfest event. This featured four back-to-back new productions presented in Lir’s two studio spaces, all lit by students completing their master’s degrees in fine art, for which Gradfest was a final segment requiring completion before they gained their qualifications. The Lir’s conservatory training for students of theatre, film and television offers a dynamic fusion of creative and technical disciplines. Lir’s head of lighting Eve D’Alton explained that Gradfest is a stepping-stone that galvanises the skills of the MA students, who work with industry profe
UAE - The long-awaited Ain Dubai will be a world first, when it begins spinning as the world’s tallest observation wheel, at more than 200m high. Unusual Rigging and Engineering LLC was brought on board to install each of the 48 capsules that will give passengers spectacular 360° views of Dubai's landmarks. Hyundai Engineering and Construction awarded the contract for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the capsules to POMA who in turn called on the expertise and knowledge of Unusual Rigging & Engineering LLC to set up a winch system and install the capsules onto the wheel. Unusual project manager Alex Taylor explained: "We began the project back in August with the installation of the first pod. Ahead of this however we spent time installing the lifting frames and winches and carrying out load tests. Working together with POMA, we devi
UK – Visual artist Ben Sheppee, innovator in immersive light-based environments and founder of visual design studio Observatory, is the latest artist to be commissioned by Collusion to create a major new site-specific artwork which is on free display for one month this autumn. DRAWDOWN, which is running from 25 October to 24 November, is Sheppee’s first major installation in King’s Lynn and will consist of a series of five large-scale building projections. Each will explore how the effects of climate change can be reversed, presenting an often-overlooked positive angle on the most crucial environmental issue humans have ever faced. “I personally feel like everyone has a general awareness and understanding of climate change, but many people feel ineffective as individuals to have an impact,” comments Sheppee. “I wanted to highlight the practical solutions
USA - Although Miami’s annual VOUS Conference has been taking place for more than a decade, VOUS Church officially launched five years ago out of a weekly young adult gathering known as The Rendezvous, started by Trinity Church in Miami Gardens. Since then, VOUS Church has grown rapidly, expanding into two worship spaces - a 1,500-seat auditorium at iTech, Miami’s mega technology magnet high school, and a 500-seat hall at Jose De Diego middle school, just two miles to the south. But the real audience explosion has taken place virtually, especially during the pandemic, with the church now having an average of 40,000 viewers streaming services online each week. VOUS Church production coordinator Jon Wygant oversees all church sound, both live and studio, as well as personnel and inventory for the production department. He served on the church’s launch team in 2015
USA - Country music duo Brothers Osborne recently debuted a new music video, All Night. Daniel Rehbein, who serves as the band’s touring lighting director, was called on to create the lighting scheme for the video and turned to Elation ACL 360i beam lights for concert-like looks and Antari DarkFX Wash 2000 luminaires for a black light element. The six-time Grammy nominees and four time CMA award winners partnered with directors Wes Edwards and Ryan Silver on the video, which was rooted in the excitement and electricity of a Brothers Osborne concert. Rehbein comments: “They wanted the video to feel like a Brothers Osborne show with a lot of effects in the air and a ceiling of lights close to the band that we could run patterns through. I immediately started thinking about what fixture could project a nice beam plus act as a pixel effect and thought of Elation’s
China - The 2020 League of Legends World Championship, one of the biggest events in esports, took place in Shanghai from 25 September to 31 October. Creative Technology supplied ROE Visual LED panels to create an immersive xR Stage to broadcast this international tournament. The League of Legends World Championship is a yearly international tournament that brings together the top teams from each regional league in a battle to host the Summoner’s Cup and earn the title of World Championship. This year marked the 10th edition. The event, like most, had to be re-envisioned in order to make it happen. Normally, the early stages of the tournament would be a traveling road show, with different rounds taking place in different cities. In 2020, things had to change. With travel restrictions in place, and fans no longer able to attend matches, the team at League developer R
UK - Every year, EMF Technology is involved in poppy projections to commemorate Remembrance Day - and this year was no different. The Wembley-based company transformed a wind turbine into a giant poppy for the Vattenfall Group in support of the Royal British Legion’s annual poppy appeal. The 125m structure at Swinford windfarm near Lutterworth had a 90m wide poppy head projected onto the blades overnight, along with a cascade of poppies falling down the turbine tower. The message EMF wanted to promote was simple - that ‘every poppy counts’, particularly in a year when due to the pandemic and local restrictions, the appeal had been hampered. "We selected a 125m high wind turbine which has a 90m wide rotor to project a poppy head onto the blades and a green stem mixed with a cascade of smaller poppies falling 80m down the turbine tower to produce th
UK - Le Mark donated 38 home-practice dance mats to The Sarah England Dance School to enable participants to perform in aid of BBC Children in Need. The Greater Manchester school is set to participate in “Tapathon”, the national dance marathon, which will take place on 15 November as an online event, with participants recording their performances at home. Ahead of England's second national lockdown, school owner and tutor Sarah England had the foresight to prepare, and had everything in place to bring back online classes when the restriction measures were re-introduced. But how could she get 38 tap dancers to take part outside, on hard ground, without damaging their tap shoes and respecting social distancing rules? Not wanting her students to miss out on this opportunity, Sarah called Le Mark’s flooring manager, Hannah Tuohy. "When I spoke to Sarah, she to
UK - Robe sponsored the Best Designer category of this year’s The Stage Debut Awards which was won by set and costume designer Rose Revitt for the raw, visual environment she created for Dr Korczak’s Example at Leeds Playhouse which was staged in January / February. The Stage Awards celebrate the very best breakthrough talent in theatre, including actors, directors, designers, writers, composers and lyricists making their professional debuts in the past year. For Rose, this particular journey started with another prize-winning opportunity. Last year, she won the biennial Linbury Prize for Stage Design which offers 12 emerging designers the chance to work with some of the UK’s leading theatre, opera, and dance companies. Newly graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff with an MA in Design For Performance (set & costu
USA - Lighting rising blues star Samantha Fish is acknowledged as a world-class blues guitarist whose repertoire covers southern rock, R&B and soul. When Fish played The Birchmere outside of Washington DC this October,” house LD at the club David Beebe noted. “I love this artist and her music. A lot of greats have performed here at various times in their career, and she definitely deserved to be added to this list. “From a lighting perspective, it was really appreciated that the depth and variety of her music gave me a lot to work with,” continued Beebe. “She slows things down sometimes, which creates dramatic moments. This gave me a chance shadows and patterns as much as light.” Key to creating this deeply evocative effects were the areal patterns Beebe created with the six Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Spot fixtures in the Birchmere’s hous
UK - Event producers Second Sight asked AV rental and technical specialist CPL to provide a 5m wide by 3m high Roe Black Onyx 3mm pitch LED screen for a key live stream presentation by Volkswagen UK for their retail dealership members and investors. This annual event was presented from Stage B at Millennium Studios in Bedford. Normally it would be a big show at a prominent event venue with a full stage set and multiple presenters, but with the pandemic this year, everything was changed as they shifted to a digital format. As brands, creative agencies and technical delivery companies and organisations continue to come up with new and interesting ways of delivering events safely and Covid-compliantly, like so many others, the Volkswagen Investors Update flipped to a live-streamed event. Second Sight’s Guy Shayler explained how they were already producing su