Singapore - Lighting designer Nick Ho began working with the G12 worship rally in 2005 and has lit every one of its annual conferences since 2016. Although his big, multi-faceted lightshows have earned widespread praise from the conference’s attendees and its technical director, Dennis Thien, Ho is always working to make them more compelling. This year, he and his programmer Justin Poh upped the engagement level by doing something they’d never done before: pixel map their rig’s washes. Creating this new design with the 78 wash fixtures in their rig was made much easier, they say, by the pixel mapping features in their ChamSys MagicQ MQ100 Pro. “This was the first time that we have tried pixel mapping washes for such a large scale event,” explains Ho, noting that the conference, which was held at the Singapore Expo Hall, drew 10,000 people. “The pixel mapp
UK - The Elgiva Theatre has invested in a Vista by Chroma-Q lighting & media control system to take full advantage of its recent upgrade to an all-LED house rig. Located in Chesham, The Elgiva presents a wide-ranging programme of professional and amateur productions, touring concerts, top comedy, musicals, ballet/dance, one-night shows, professional pantomime, movies, and private events. After upgrading its house rig to all-LED, the theatre’s ageing control desk had been struggling with the quantity and greater sophistication of the fixtures, and the extra workload created by additional shows as a result of the venue’s increased popularity. This was limiting what could be achieved creatively in the time available - both for Elgiva’s own productions, and in the theatre providing high quality technical support for its clients, which include major interna
Poland - Mateusz Karon, deputy of technical manager the Teatr Dramatyczny m. st. Warszawy (Dramatic Theatre of the capital city of Warsaw), is happy with the new Robe Tarrantulas that are part of the house lighting rig for this important venue, which has been at the forefront of producing Polish drama since 1949 and ensconced in the Palace of Culture and Science venue since 1955. There are two performance spaces at the Palace of Culture, and the company also runs programmes in two other buildings around the city. These four stages offer a busy and vibrant schedule of modern, classical and new works with a reputation for excellent acting and tackling relevant contemporary issues. Each space stages between 10 and 12 shows a year, primarily their own productions. Mateusz oversees all things technical in the main Dramatic Theatre building and creates new lighting sp
Australia - Fusion Entertainment provided the technical production for the gala unveiling of the Ferrari F8 Tributo in Sydney, using a complement of Claypaky fixtures to illuminate the car’s debut at the black-tie event. The evening marked the first Australian appearance for the new, half-million dollar mid-engined supercar. More than 300 guests gathered at Sydney’s White Bay passenger terminal for an immersive Ferrari experience. The 2,000sq.m space was filled with classic cars in Ferrari’s shade of red and speeches paid homage to the luxury brand’s history and the debut of “the best eight-cylinder in the world.” Some 200 Fusion staff members worked continuously across 36 hours to install and prepare for the event. They put together 5.1 tons of rigging equipment, 6,000m of cabling, 158m of black drape and a total of 236 lights to create a 348sq.m sta
UK - Lighting rental specialists Version2 supported The Brits Are Coming at the newly re-opened Riverside Studios. Working with award winning lighting designer Tim Routledge, the Version2 team supplied a comprehensive lighting package, including a healthy selection of recent additions to the company’s growing inventory. The Brits Are Coming TV special is the reveal of the nominations for the BRIT Awards 2020. Hosted by broadcaster and presenter Alice Levine, the show featured special guest performances by nominated artists including Liam Payne, Aitch and Mabel. Recorded for ITV in front of a live audience, this was one of the first and one of the largest productions staged within the newly opened Studio 3 at Riverside Studios. Following the extensive re-development of the historic West London site, Riverside’s hosting of the show conveyed a clear mess
USA - Nesta Garrick lights the Welcome to Jamrock Reggae Cruise, an annual December excursion that showcases many of the genre’s leading stars. But every year, the Jamaican-born LD disembarked from the floating festival’s ship with the same unfulfilled wish: he wanted an outdoor rated moving wash. “I have been working on Jamrock for five years, going on six, and in that whole time I’ve asked myself ‘why can’t someone make a moving wash that’s IP rated?’” he said. “This is a five-day cruise, and every night we’d have to take our washes down, because it rains a lot at sea. Then, the next evening, we’d have to focus them manually, which was difficult given the short amount of time we had to set up.” The owner of RAS Visuals & Lighting, Garrick was visiting LDI in 2018 when he came across the Chauvet Professional Maverick Storm 1 Wash. “Rig
USA - CMI Communications supported the stage production for a multifaceted event at the Minneapolis Convention Centre in August, where they utilised a large complement of Ayrton Ghibli LED spot luminaires to illuminate the Knights of Columbus 137th Supreme Convention. Sessions were broadcast internationally, and to over 1800 attendees of the event. The fixtures matched exactly in output and colour temperature even though they were supplied by three different vendors. AV service provider CMI Communications of Rochester, New York asked Light and Shadow, LLC of Winter Garden, Florida to provide turnkey lighting design for the convention as the company has in the past. During the three-day event the daily morning Mass and business sessions were broadcast on EWTN, CatholicTV and other outlets. The convention hall featured a 120ft-wide stage with a 115ft projection screen as a bac
Europe - Award-winning independent French theme park, Puy du Fou, unveiled its first venture in Toledo, Spain with an epic night-time immersive spectacular El Sueño de Toledo (The Dream of Toledo), creatively directed by Nicolas de Villiers and the team from Puy du Fou with lighting designed by Koert Vermeulen from Belgian creative visual practice, ACTLD. At the heart of Koert’s lighting spec are 74 x Robe BMFL WashBeam and 20 x MegaPointe moving lights. El Sueño de Toledo takes spectators on a hi-octane condensed one-hour journey through history – from the Reign of Ricaredo in the 6th century to the arrival of the railways – touching on the battle of Navas de Tolosa and the discovery of America along the way! The 1500 years of history is represented by 185 actors and a plethora of special effects. Koert and Nicolas have worked togeth
UK - Arena Birmingham is set to be renamed Utilita Arena Birmingham as a part a new partnership with Smart Pay As You Go (PAYG) Energy provider, Utilita. . Utilita has a growing presence in the UK live events industry, having partnered with a number of major music festivals in recent years including Parklife, TRNSThe city centre venue will take up its new name on 15 April 2020MT, Creamfields, V Festival, Bestival and Camp Bestival – as well as Newcastle Arena (now Utilita Arena Newcastle). Utilita’s customers are set to receive exclusive access to pre-sale tickets at the 15,800-capacity venue, which has recently hosted the likes of Ariana Grande, Jack Whitehall and Take That, as well as VIP experiences and exclusive ticket offers. The energy supplier will also use the Arena’s pre-show entertainment areas to get audiences thinking about their energy usage as
UK - Leeds City College is the city’s largest educational establishment, offering a wide variety of courses to more than 25,000 students. The college recently expanded its facilities with the new £60m Quarry Hill Campus, home to the School of Creative Arts, featuring an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system. Following a recommendation and demonstration by the audio sales division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET), the college opted for a dLive C3500 control surface and CDM48 MixRack, fitted with a Dante 64x64 networking card, for the campus’ soon to open theatre. For use by both Theatre Design & Production and Music Production students, the dLive system will also be employed for public performances by theatre companies and community groups during holiday periods and outside of college hours. As such, the new system needed to meet a variety of
Finland - In the wake of the success of G Livelab Helsinki, the Finnish Musicians’ Union has opened a new - and bigger - venue in the city of Tampere, some 200km north of the Finnish capital. The same team was deployed to realise the Tampere project, which is built according to the same ‘music first’ philosophy as Helsinki. The result is an extraordinary live music experience based on quality programming, modern design, and Genelec audio systems including the new 4430 Smart IP loudspeaker. Housed in a striking red brick building which was formerly the boiler house of the Frenckell paper mill in the heart of the city, the venue hosts up to 250 people and offers a varied programme including jazz, folk, world music, pop/rock, chamber music, electronic music and more. Akukon Oy designed the acoustics, electroacoustics, lighting, sound, video, communication sys
The Netherlands - Visual design studio Tenfeet’s longstanding relationship with Dutch rockers BLØF resulted in some dazzling effects as the much-loved band played two sell-out gigs at Rotterdam’s 16,000-capacity AHOY Arena. Tenfeet video programmer Pim Elberse specified and supplied two Hippotizer Boreal+ Media Servers - one main and the second as a full live backup machine - to handle pre-made content mixed with multiple effects and live feed blend. The content ranged from sweeping landscapes to computer-graphics, lyrics and pictures. “We needed a system that could cope with various live feeds and feed a variety of content that was mixed with live, as well as control an SDI-matrix with 10 cameras on stage surrounding the band,” explains Elberse. “The Boreal+ provided total flexibility in combination with our Hog4 lighting console.” Despite the large
Belgium - Het Kunstuur (the Art Hour) is a new ‘interactive’ gallery concept developed by art collectors and entrepreneurs Hans & Joost Bourlon, presented in the former Holy Ghost Chapel in the historical heart of Mechelen, Belgium. Thirty-two Belgian paintings from the 19th century are displayed in three gallery spaces where their stories are told by a series of well-known Belgian personalities. Creative lighting design and media specialist Painting with Light (PWL) was asked to manage and co-ordinate and design the technical systems and control for lighting, video, audio and humidity control for this intricate and unique project. Visitors wear headsets and listen to an audio track as they move around the spaces, prompted to stop / move on cue to designated areas by the audio track, where they watch and listen as the AV effects play out. The walkthrough
UK - When they set out to replace their flagship PA system, West Country-based Nub Sound underwent an exhaustive process of research into all the premier league contenders, with a view to making a decision in time for the 2020 Festival season. “We have been evaluating systems for six or seven months,” explained Nub Sound system tech Josh Small. “We needed to step up to a bigger, eco-system that is also rider friendly and offers ease of rigging. It has to be sufficiently flexible to work in a number of ways, be tourable, perfect for festival use and above all, it has to be a complete system.” When Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision Compact (WPC) was fired up recently for a Sam Fender gig at Plymouth Pavilion, a venue he describes as “a nightmare” and “notoriously challenging”, the system ticked every box. The company, run by directors Adrian Sund
Europe - Progressive rock act Haken, a multinational six-piece, recently returned from a European tour mixed on a Yamaha Rivage PM7 digital mixing system. Haken’s most recent album, Vector, took the band into harder-edged ‘progressive metal’ territory. Getting the heaviness of the music across, while ensuring audiences also hear the intricate musical phrasing, needs an audio system that puts equal emphasis on audio quality and high-end features. FOH engineer Adam Bonner has used Yamaha digital mixing consoles for 15 years, mixing the band’s last three tours in Europe and the US on a CL5. “I really wanted to see what we could achieve with the FOH mix when using Yamaha’s flagship system, effectively removing any processing limitations. I knew that Rivage PM7 was the perfect fit for this tour,” he says. Bonner contacted Steve Davies at L
USA - Audinate has announced that California Baptist University has deployed a Dante audio network which runs through the entire campus to support the ever-increasing demands of several diverse departments. From high-end music productions and performances to academic lectures and sporting events, California Baptist University (CBU) relies on a Dante audio network, Dante Domain Manager, and Dante AVIO adaptors for deploying an efficient, cost-effective, reliable and secure, campus-wide, IP audio network. California Baptist University is one of the top private Christian colleges and universities in Southern California, hosting nearly 11,000 students with a 160-acre main campus comprised of more than 30 buildings, including the 95,000sq.ft Eugene and Billie Yeager Centre, the 270-seat Wallace Theatre, and the JoAnn Hawkins Music building - one of the nation's most advanc
South Korea - Christie Digital reports that Gyeongnam Masan Robot Land, the world’s first theme park dedicated to intelligent robotics, has installed an extensive range of its laser projectors and real-time video processing and show control systems, which deliver spectacular visuals and enhance the visitor experience. Located in the city of Changwon on the southeast coast of South Korea, Gyeongnam Masan Robot Land occupies 1.25m square meters and comprises a research and development centre, convention centre and theme park. Its main attractions, which combine robotics technology and entertainment, are powered by Christie GS Series and HS Series 1DLP laser projectors, as well as Christie Pandoras Box’s Single and Quad players, Dual and Quad OCTO Servers, Pandoras Box Manager and Widget Designer. These systems were installed by Christie’s Korean partners Star Networks an
UK - Women in Data, the UK’s largest female data professional event, pulls in over 1,000 attendees from around the world. Held within the surroundings of the InterContinental, London O2 on the banks of the River Thames, WiD features keynote presentations from a host of guest speakers. Having worked with Light Fantastic Production Services on a succession of previous events, WiD once again called upon the team to provide a complete technical, equipment and logistics production solution, custom designed to cover all aspects of the prestigious conference. Branding for 2019 Women in Data was characterised by red to signify confidence, ambition and drive. Following this theme, LFPS applied bold, crimson hues throughout the stage set and lighting design, emphasising the colour as a symbol of strength and vitality. Continuing the look, the team extended the lighting design
France - For a major project in France, several hundred meters of Milos M290 Quatro truss took on a strong supporting role. It took on a total of seven supporting roles, for seven TV studios, in four buildings, on the Altice Media Group campus in the French district of Porte de Versailles, Paris. The Altice Media Group campus hosts a total of up to 6,000 students per day and supports the activities of the news organizations Libération, L'Express, and 01 Net. In 2016, the Altice Media Group needed to expand the number of studios on its campus and held a national tender for the construction of seven new studios in four buildings. The company who won the tender for this massive TV project was Red Bee Media, a sister company of Ericsson. Red Bee is the system integrator of NextRadio TV, a sister company of Altice Media Group, and manages the activities of seven TV channels in F
UK - The Taunton Amateur Operatic Society’s costumes for Cats provided the inspiration for Chris Sealy’s lighting design for their production of the musical at the Brewhouse Theatre. “The costumes were amazing,” explains Sealy. “I was lucky because the cast wore them to the rehearsals. So when I went to watch, I was able to see them in the flesh, which aided me greatly in selecting colours for my lighting. Every cat in the play tells a different story, each with a different feel, and that of course is tied tightly into the different costumes.” Helping Sealy accent the costumes and enhance the unfolding narrative on stage with light was a collection of six Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Profile fixtures supplied by Bright Production Services. Hung on overhead electrics, the 440W LED fixtures were used as as a primary light source. Adroitly
UK - Liverpool-based production specialist Adlib continued its working relationship with vocal harmony group The Overtones, supplying lighting equipment and crew to their latest UK tour, supporting LD and set designer Neil Holloway. Adlib has been an equipment supplier for the band since their career took off in 2010, and it’s been a great journey for all involved to see the band’s success. Neil, now a busy freelance designer working internationally for a diverse range of clients, was working full time for Adlib back in 2010, and that’s also where his association with The Overtones started. Understated elegance and a gentle symmetry defined the set which comprised of a central staircase flanked by two risers each side for the band, plus four signature big band art deco set pieces. There was no video on the tour, but an Overtones LED sign at the back - custo
USA - The historic Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, California, is an opulent art deco venue that is moving into a new era of performance excellence with the help of Kinetic Lighting and Elation Professional’s theatrical-grade Artiste DaVinci LED moving head. Originally opened in 1931 and listed on the National Historic Register, the 1500-seat theatre features a vaudeville-size proscenium stage with T-guided fly system that makes it an ideal venue for concerts, dance performances, multimedia presentations, film screenings or any cultural event. Great strides have been made in recent years to restore the theatre, with a lighting upgrade the latest in a series of on-going improvements. Kinetic Lighting worked with the Warner Grand and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to convert the theatre from conventional lighting to an entirely LED-based system, as
Mexico - Drone light shows specialist Verge Aero has delivered Mexico’s first drone light show. Working with local partner Sky Precision, Verge Aero provided a system of 150 drone lights to create moving, colour-changing pictures in the sky to open the performance by Dutch DJ Martin Garrix, marking Mexico’s Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) at the FIG19 hot-air balloon festival. Founded in 2002, the FIG (Festival Internacional del Globo) hot-air balloon festival, which takes place each year in the city of León in central Mexico, has become one of the leading balloon events in the world. This year, organisers were keen to provide a cutting-edge visual treat for visitors and called on Sky Precision to deliver it. Taking up the challenge, specialists from Verge Aero and Sky Precision created custom choreography to accompany a set of four songs, including an opening number
UK - White Light recently supplied the Royal Albert Hall with a range of Martin MAC Encore fixtures, continuing the phased upgrade of the in-house lighting rig. As it hosts concerts on an almost nightly basis, the venue houses its own in-house kit which is used by incoming shows. The rig has to be flexible in order to adapt to such a varied programme, as well as needing to be energy efficient and sympathetic to the needs and requirements of a wide range of different lighting designers and productions. The existing ETC Source Four Revolutions, whilst having served their time very well, were due for replacement in line with the Hall’s ongoing replacement programme. As a result, the venue approached WL in order to invest in some LED alternatives for these new fixtures. WL’s business development manager Jonathan Haynes explains: “I met up with lighting design manage
![The concert featured singer Dawid Podsiadlo and rapper Taco Hemingway (© PERCEPTO [LAB] / H.Karapuda)](/images/118975/percepto-lab--h-tn.jpg "The concert featured singer Dawid Podsiadlo and rapper Taco Hemingway (© PERCEPTO [LAB] / H.Karapuda)")
