USA - Theatre lighting design specialist Tyler Micoleau recently collaborated with New York-based Public Theatre’s Public Works programme, lighting a production of the musical Hercules, a world-premiere presentation of a stage musical adaptation of the Disney film, developed in a collaboration between The Public Theatre and Disney Theatrical Productions.
To add poignancy, the venue chosen was the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in New York’s Central Park, and helping Tyler to achieve his objectives were 34 Fusion by GLP FP7 Par and 20 Fusion by GLP FS10 Stick battens, operating alongside the repertory house rig.
Tyler has a long history of working on productions with Lear deBessonet, founding director of Public Works, and has designed four productions for The Public Theatre at the Delacorte.
The LD said: “Musicals are not the typical production at the Del

UK - Marking the 15th year of Christie’s partnership with the National Film and Television School (NFTS), this year’s Christie prize for Most Promising Student was awarded to Michael Pearce, NFTS graduate in digital effects. Michael received a monetary prize, a certificate, and a crystal trophy to celebrate the win at the NFTS Graduation Ceremony. Already employed as a colourist, Michael has already gained vital experience having worked on numerous short films, music videos, commercials, documentaries and feature film credits.
John Rowe, head of digital effects at NFTS said of the win: “Michael has earned his reputation as a diligent and trustworthy ally, working tirelessly across every genre to help finish projects to the highest possible standards. His determination to succeed and his resourceful nature have resulted in him earning a full-time contract at world-leadi

UK - The Lastminute.com London Eye dazzled its vast visiting crowds this year with a first-of-its kind, eight-metre tall Christmas tree adjacent to the attraction. With plans to transform the tree every hour into an attention-grabbing light show to music, the Merlin Entertainments team turned to TLS Lighting, for a bespoke LED lighting solution that would fully pixel-map the tree’s surface.
Merlin Entertainment’s David Rigby explains: “We wanted large scale pixel-mapping and TLS Lighting created a custom-designed and manufactured lighting system in a conical shape that was supplied to us as plug and play. We know we can always trust TLS Lighting to create exactly what we need with the feature sets we are looking for. They don’t let us down.”
The tree twinkled with almost 4000 RGB LED light modules and was adorned with a total of 64 strings of lights, varying

World - For the current world tour by Charli XCX, lighting designer Elliott Mountford is enjoying the power and consistency of the VL2600 Profile luminaire from Vari-Lite.
The tour is in support of Charli XCX’s third studio album Charli. Having worked with Charli and creative director Jed Skrzypczak through the summer, Mountford knew what was required, but also the limitations. “Charli hates key light,” he says, “so most of my show is backlit, with a very silhouetted look. I love big, backlit looks in white, but they have to be super-wide for every audience member to see the effect.”
In achieving this, Mountford was impressed by the VL2600 Profile’s powerful output and wide zoom range. “I wanted great contrast between the lights and the rest of the rig - we had 100-plus strobes that they had to compete with,” says Mountford. “They cut through e

USA - Michael Brown is a lighting designer who loves to experiment and take some creative risks in the quest for imagining new and exciting performance environments and that’s exactly what he did for the US leg of Bon Iver’s recent tour, part of the campaign for new album i, i, where 49 x Robe MegaPointes and 25 x Kinetic Lights custom moving mirrors were at the core of his design combining the diverse visual disciplines of art, architecture and concert lighting.
Michael has worked with the band since 2012, following a chance backstage encounter a few years earlier with lead singer Justin Vernon. It’s been a fertile and stimulating partnership, for which they implicitly trust in his creative judgment.
He first encountered the Kinetic Lights winch system in 2017 while researching cool art projects for the Eaux Claires Festival in Wisconsin for which he was

USA - As the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs battled it out for the NFL Championship, the Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show brought a little Latin flavour to Miami’s 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday 2 February, thanks to an explosive show by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, aided by Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny and Colombian star J. Balvin, and a cast of near 170 musicians, dancers, and performers.
This massive production - an eagerly awaited annual event - was broadcast live by Fox to 100m viewers worldwide, all of whom witnessed a lighting show which had at its centre over 120 Ayrton Perseo IP65-rated multi-function profile fixtures.
The spectacular production was created by the Super Bowl team headed by show designer, Bruce Rodgers of Tribe, Inc. and lighting designer, Bob Barnhart of 22 Degrees. “We quickly decided the Ayrton lighting rig

USA - The Bronxville Union Free School District encourages their students to participate in a number of extracurricular activities including the performing arts programmes produced by the High School, Middle School and Elementary School departments.
Wanting to supply their student technicians with the latest in production technology used to accentuate the performing arts, The Bronxville School Foundation awarded a grant submitted by student technician AJ Radik for the addition of Siren Series LED followspots from Altman Lighting.
“I’m a junior at Bronxville UFSD and I started doing tech for the theatre productions back in the sixth grade,” began Radik. “I am mainly focused on the sound and lighting designs of the productions and last year as we were doing a production of Little Shop of Horrors, one of our old spotlights starting smoking and became inoperable fo

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied two Green Hippo Hippotizer V4 Karst+ Display Port media servers to full-service event production agency, T.H.Collective, to provide flexible, high-resolution video playback for a myriad of client events.
T.H.Collective was looking to invest in a robust system for large-format video playback on high resolution LED walls and edge-blended projection. These applications required the screen content to be displayed at a higher pixel count than a single video port could carry.
Matt Emmerson, head of video at T.H.Collective approached AC-ET to recommend a suitable playback solution to meet the company’s technically demanding requirements.
He comments: “The decision to use Hippotizer media servers came down to the flexibility in operating them. Triggers can be run using programmed timelines, individual DMX ch

USA - A majestic ‘magical’ 50ft tree is at the heart of the Wildwood Grove Tree Experience, a multi-media creation from LifeFormations and The Imagination House at Dollywood in the The Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.
A collection of 650 pixel-mapped and illuminated butterflies controlled by Weigel software animate the 50ft wide expanse of the venerable tree’s branches, while music by Mike Avila and an alluring story narrated by the park’s cofounder, Dolly Parton, add to the enchantment. Accentuating the entire scene is a vividly coloured Susan Rose lighting design that features 16 Chauvet Professional Ovation E-910FC ellipsoidal fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites.
Deftly mixing colours, light angles and slightly off focus gobo patterns, Rose creates a captivating vista that adds depth to the tree and its rocky surroundings, giving them a dreamy edge that conve

Norway - A 100-year old historical machine hall situated in Oslo is home to Norway’s Design & Architectural (DOGA) foundation, with DOGA responsible for facilitating collaboration between creative talents and businesses, as well as promoting innovation and new ideas on the role of design and architecture throughout Norway.
The large main hall, dating back to 1898, needed a versatile and dependable system suitable for conferencing or seminar purposes - from single stage solo presentations through to larger conferencing situations, with multiple presentations held across various locations in the building. For these reasons, Shure Microflex Wireless was selected as the system of choice.
The space at DOGA is 340sq.m wide and 8.5m high, which makes it a popular venue for hire when organising large conferences, seminars and parties. As a historical building steeped in

UK - Hundreds of television buyers from across the globe headed to ACC Liverpool on 9-11 February for BBC Studios Showcase 2020 international television market. For the 14th year running, creative technical event production company Hawthorn supported the distributor to showcase its premium programmes, delivering two evening events.
The events previewed some of the BBC’s top programmes including Doctor Who, A Perfect Planet and The Watch. Led by the BBC Studios team, Hawthorn’s head of creative technical Peter Harding helped to produce and deliver a production design for the two evenings.
This year’s format saw a considerable shake-up with the construction of a curve-fronted 1000sqm 5m-high platform over a section of the arena’s tiered seating and floor. Hawthorn worked with specialists Acorn Event Structures and Steeldeck to create the stru

Japan - Martin Audio’s MLA Multicellular Loudspeaker Array played an important role at the Countdown Japan Festival 19/20 at the Makuhari Messe Convention Centre in Chiba.
Countdown Japan is one of the biggest new year countdown music festivals in Japan, held over four days at the end of December (and leading up to the final countdown at midnight on 31 December). This major event features between 40-50 Japanese music acts per day.
The main stage is the 40,000-capacity Earth Stage, while the other four stages comprise Galaxy Stage, Cosmo Stage, Moon Stage and Astro Arena (some with acts running through until New Year’s Day morning). Furthermore, a shrine is set within the venue, providing a genuine Japanese new year flavour.
On the Earth Stage, 19 x Martin Audio MLA and a single MLD downfill cabinet provided the main arrays on each side of the stage, while si

South Korea - Record-breaking crowds attended Seoul Light, where Nexo’s new Geo M12 line array made its debut. Newly-purchased by audio production company Plan 24, the M12 inventory was augmented by long-time Nexo user Way Audio, which ordered Geo M modules especially for this event.
Staged at the Dondaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in the centre of Seoul, the festival attracted more than a million visitors. The DDP is the centrepiece of South Korea's fashion hub and a popular tourist destination, Dongdaemun, which features a walkable park on its roofs, large global exhibition spaces, futuristic retail stores and restored parts of the Seoul fortress.
The entire outer wall of the DDP building, designed by Zaha Hadid, becomes a gigantic exhibition hall during the year-end and New Year’s period (20 December - 3 January). As the sun sets and the darkness falls, a larg

UAE - AO Drones recently delivered an airborne show in Dubai for a video campaign promoting Motorola’s reimagination of its Razr flip phone in the Middle East and Africa. The resulting video quickly attracted over 200,000 views through Motorola’s social media channels.
The teams from AO Drones and AO Creative, part of AO Technology, worked in collaboration with Motorola and netizency, the digital marketing agency, to design the visual content, including animated logos and brand names. AO Drones’ design team even created an animation of the Razr flip phone opening, closing and rotating in the sky.
Vinayak Shenoy, head of marketing, Middle East and Africa for Motorola’s parent company Lenovo, said of the Razr launch event, “We felt that this drone show symbolises what this product is all about - a great blend of technology and art. The beauty of 120 drones ris

UK - JoeCo’s Blackbox BBR64-Dante multitrack recorders feature in Spiritland One mobile studio set-up. The four-unit solution provides 256-channel recording and back-up capabilities so that the Spiritland Productions team can reliably capture live sound recordings over long periods of time.
Created by two ex-BBC sound engineers, Antony Shaw and Gareth Iles, Spiritland One is a high-end studio on wheels, designed to go wherever live music takes it. For Shaw and Iles, inspiration struck when they took over the technical fit out and management of Spiritland Studio, King’s Cross.
“When we mentioned that we would love to build something like this, the team at Spiritland jumped at the idea,” says Shaw. “The truck is designed to record and mix big live events, with a high channel count to capture sound as reliably as possible.”
With the Dante network providi

Denmark - Car manufacturer Porsche launched its new electric Taycan Turbo S sports car for the Danish market at the Porsche Centre Copenhagen in January. In keeping with the electric theme, Hippotizer Media Servers powered the electrifying video-mapping of the car’s exterior at the special event, which was produced for Porsche by Capital Events.
Copenhagen-based projection specialist 4K Projects, brought in by technical supplier Nordic Rentals, were responsible for the visuals. They supplied a Hippotizer Boreal+ for the playback, along with a second unit as backup. The graphics and video content was fed from a single 4K output, through a Datapath FX4, which split the output into four HD feeds.
4K Project’s production team was made up of Mikkel Samuelsen, Balder Thorrud and Rasmus Linck, who designed the video content to complement a soundtrack created by Porsche es

Russia - An assortment of Claypaky lighting fixtures are to be found in Salekhard, the only city located directly on the Arctic Circle.
Systems engineer Vladimir Spravtsev of DNK Corporation installed Claypaky Axcor Profile 600 HC, A.leda B-EYE K20, Axcor Spot 400 HC, Axcor Beam 300 and Stormy CC fixtures in the city’s Cultural and Business Centre. Artem Bogatyrev was the project manager.
Spravtsev was tasked with refurbishing the lighting in the concert hall portion of the building, known for its stunning architecture. “We needed to install fixtures that were multifunctional, that could be used for performances ranging from folk artists to classical music,” he explains. “We chose Claypaky lighting because we know Claypaky’s reputation as a reliable manufacturer. The company’s products are in great demand for Russian show production.”
The Axcor Pro

UK - Shure collaborated with Adlib to upgrade ACC Liverpool’s RF system. The result is a future-proofed system ready for today’s challenging RF environment.
The ACC Liverpool is a conference centre situated on Liverpool’s waterfront. The event campus is an interconnected arena, convention and exhibition centre, which plays a leading role in shining a spotlight on the city. The venue has successfully staged a wide array of national and international events, from shows to conventions and business gatherings to showcase exhibitions.
Welcoming more than 7.9m people through its doors since they first opened, the venue is home to a flexible layout configuration. A tiered auditorium, break-out rooms, the exhibition centre and an event arena can be split, joined, and arranged in a variety of ways.
Owing to the ever-changing configuration of the building, ACC Liverp

USA - Dollywood, the popular theme park in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, debuted a new area in June 2019 - Wildwood Grove - at the heart of which is a magical Wildwood Tree illuminated using Elation Professional luminaires with lighting design by Susan Rose.
The Wildwood Tree comes to life each evening during a light and sound experience created by The Imagination House for Dollywood and narrated by Dolly Parton herself. Designed and built by LifeFormations, the 50ft tree’s gnarled trunk emerges from a rock base before spreading into a beautiful green-leaf canopy covered with 650 custom RGB LED butterflies, controlled and programmed by Weigl Controls.
Lighting designer and lighting programmer for four separate seasonal experiences is local resident Susan Rose. She has previously designed lighting for Dollywood shows and spent nearly a year on the Wildwo

India - With redesigned drivers, an all-new rigging system and three flexible models to choose from, JBL Professional VTX A Series line array loudspeakers are quickly becoming a favourite of live sound professionals in the Indian market.
Building on the success of the venerable VTX V Series, VTX A Series loudspeakers feature several new innovations. Next-generation transducers deliver high-output performance with improved low-frequency extension. A redesigned Radiation Boundary Integrator waveguide ensures a smooth transition between mid and high frequencies. An all-new rigging system features auto-locking suspension for faster, safer and more precise deployment than ever, and the speakers’ reduced weight makes transporting them easy and efficient.
“The VTX A-Series is JBL’s next-generation tour sound solution, and we’re glad to see so many industry leaders ma

Spain - Technology experts from around the world descended on Barcelona for the annual Cisco Live EMEA conference in January to learn, share and drive the digital future.
For the third consecutive year, Christie Lites UK was commissioned by production company GPJ to design, supply and crew a lighting solution for the conference’s main stage and party area.
It is a major project, with Christie Lites UK working alongside production managers, technical managers and lighting designers to design a lighting and control package. This year, the team specified more than 850 fixtures and a crew of 27 experts, as thought leaders shared visions and performers including Nile Rodgers entertained the crowds.
GPJ’s head of technical production, Mark Bannister, worked alongside GPJ production managers John Carss for the main plenary and Isobel Webb and Dave Whitty for the

Germany - Von Welt spent 18 months in the studio together, writing and producing songs, before publicly launching the band in 2015. Those hours clocked up in the studio in their home area of the Black Forest in southern Germany have produced an interesting hybrid, and it is one that translates equally well to recordings or onto the stage.
“Our music is a symbiosis of alternative rock with German lyrics and modern electronic sounds,” responds Nico Kuri when asked to summarise the band’s output. Technology is clearly important to this close-knit unit whose songs and concepts almost all begin on a laptop and are produced digitally at home. Von Welt spent a year assessing which route to take towards developing a more compact and high-quality system for their live work. A friend pointed them in the direction of DiGiGrid, suggesting that it might offer them exactly what the

Indonesia - British pop rockers Suede played Soundrenalin in Bali. Sharing the stage with alt rockers was a wide range of artists, from the hard driving Indonesian metal band Jamrud, to local R&B legend Glenn Fredly.
Tying this diverse musical offering together visually on two stages, while still creating looks that reflected the different personalities of each of the more than 40 artists who appeared at Soundrenalin, was a challenge, according to festival lighting designer Iwan Hutapea. It was one he met with help from two ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium consoles.
“The diversity on the stage was impressive,” says Iwan, owner of Etcetera Lighting. “We designed the lighting rig to be very flexible. As for the console, we used ChamSys, not just for its capabilities, but also because it is very user friendly for programming and networking, which made it easy to a

USA - City Theatrical’s Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM technology was recently used to provide wireless DMX/RDM for the lighting installation by Dynamic Productions USA for Super Bowl LIVE presented by Verizon at Bayfront Park, a week-long, free-to-the-public fan fest leading up to Super Bowl LIV in Miami, Florida.
A total of six Multiverse Transmitters and 20 Multiverse Nodes using Multiverse’s dual band 900MHz/2.4GHz technology were used to create six zones of wireless DMX throughout this 32-acre park from January 25 through February 1, 2020.
“Multiverse worked great for us,” says John Fitzgerald, lead technician for the project from Dynamic Productions USA. “When starting to design this show, Multiverse was the best option for us to get data around Bayfront Park. It made our load in process much quicker as well.”
Each Multiverse Transmitter 900

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