USA - The University of North Georgia (UNG) recently built a 3,600-seat Convocation Centre with the goal of making it the focal point of campus life for the community. When it came to sound reinforcement, the university called upon Dallas-based Idibri who designed an Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) system that would be suitable for the various ways the venue would be used. “The convocation centre is a multi-purpose facility that hosts student and community activities and academics while also being home to UNG Nighthawk basketball games,” explains Ben Boeshans, consultant for Idibri. “The EAW QX 300 Series loudspeakers are superb for speech and music and offer exceptional control. The distributed system works extremely well in an arena setting.” The seating area is covered by 14 clusters hung in a ring around the edge of the basketball court. Twelve of the two-box
USA - Magic Gives Back is an organisation that stages pro-bono magic shows at schools across the US to raise money for education projects. Started by celebrity magician and illusionist Rick Smith Jr, the organisation transforms school facilities into magical entertainment showcases. Key to setting the mood at these events is a versatile, compact and easily transportable lighting rig created by Brent Schmidt that features a collection of Rogue and Ovation fixtures from Chauvet Professional. “Rick Smith Jr. approached me three years ago about designing, building and running the production for this show,” said Schmidt, the owner of B Productions. “Since the shows often take place in schools, they are not your typical theatrical production. I’ve taken theatrical elements, magic show looks and rock concert effects from my other projects and blended them into a creation th
USA - The Yost in Santa Ana, California, is enjoying new life as a modern live event space thanks to entertainment production company N-EFFECT Productions and an entertainment technology package that includes Elation Professional lighting. First opened in 1913 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the space initially housed vaudeville acts, silent films, and talkies but has also seen service as a live theatre, house of worship, live performance venue and nightclub. N-EFFECT Productions and owner Kris Plourde started renovation of The Yost in June 2017 and he says almost $1m was put into the venue to give it the encore it deserved. By tapping into the old-world vibe of the storied venue, the new incarnation’s customizable Elation lighting system, QSC line array and large 3mm LED wall can transform events into extraordinary experiences. “It
Thailand - Mahajak Development recently installed a complete audio system by Harman Professional Solutions at Mitr Phol Stadium. The 10,000-seat soccer stadium in Huai Phai, Thailand is the official home field of Thai Premier League team Ratchaburi Mitr Phol FC. Completed in 2016 and constructed to FIFA standards at the cost of over $9m, Mitr Phol Stadium is a world-class soccer facility, equipped with sufficient parking lots, pressrooms, locker rooms and souvenir shops. Ratchaburi Mitr Phol FC hired Mahajak Development to perform its first stadium audio installation. Mahajak rose to the challenge, selecting a complete Harman system for audio quality, reliability and powerful performance. “We required a customised audio solution for the new stadium that would deliver consistent coverage and vocal clarity for announcements and music performances,” said Tanaw
Israel - Ronen Najar is a lighting designer used to working under some pressure, and for the 2018 Israeli Independence Day (Yom Ha'atzmaut) opening ceremony on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, he needed those steely nerves as part of the creative team helping to commemorate a historically significant moment in Israel’s history, the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Ronen chose to use 55 x Robe MegaPointes and 68 x BMFLs - a combination of Spots and WashBeams - to illuminate the vast performance area built around the tomb of Theador Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, at the top of the Mount of Remembrance, the site of Israel’s national cemetery and a resting place for the country’s war dead. The event is organised by the Culture Ministry and broadcast live on all Israeli TV channels. It’s also attended by an invited audience of 7,5
UK - Since their formation in 2017, Lights Control Rigging (LCR) has supplied kit for many high-profile tours and artists ranging from Ed Sheeran and Dizzee Rascal to rising stars such as Wolf Alice and Sundara Karma. “At the moment we seem to be sending out equipment for a different tour every week,” says LCR director, Mike Oates. “The key is being able to work with the artists, their lighting designers and make sure we have the right, high quality equipment available at the right time. We work closely with A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET), who supply much of the equipment we hold in rental stock.” Recent purchases from AC-ET have included Chroma-Q Color Force II Battens, Luminex networking equipment and ProLights static lights. LCR also sources many of their consumables and specialised cables from AC-ET - cabling being supplied under the Tourflex Cab
USA - Arizona’s famed Valley of the Sun is located in a desert, but from 11-15 April, this hot, dry landscape was shaking with thunder, not the meteorological kind, but the rolling four-stroke variety, as over 70,000 motorcyclists from every corner of North America, descended on the area for the 22nd annual Arizona Bike Week. At the end of each day, after all the charity rides and swap meets were over, most bikers said goodnight (temporarily) to their Hogs, Blackbirds and Hurricanes and headed off to the event’s fairground concert venue to see multi-platinum headliners like ZZ Top, Shinedown, Collective Soul and Chevelle. Supporting these performances with some potent hard-driving looks was a flexible festival rig supplied by Creative BackStage that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and STRIKE 4 fixtures. Designed to create maximum impact with plenty o
UK - Established 20 years ago and set in the heart of rural Essex, the Magic Mushroom restaurant offers contemporary fine dining in relaxed modern surroundings. A recent extension and upgrade has added high quality audio, thanks to Yamaha loudspeakers and amplifiers. With a growing number of customers, for 2018 Magic Mushroom’s owner decided that an extension to the restaurant was needed, along with a new sound system. The restaurant prides itself on sourcing its products locally and has continued this ethos with the new audio system, approaching technical production company Spotlight Sound - based in nearby Chelmsford - to specify and install it. The new extension is designed to allow certain parts of the restaurant to be closed off for private functions and exclusive dining for larger parties. This meant that the new audio system needed to work in different ways, a
France - French band Shaka Ponk is touring through 2018 with a rig that includes flexible lighting pods full of Elation Rayzor 360Z LED fixtures, as well as Elation’s new narrow-beam DARTZ 360 LED moving head. Lighting design is by Alexandre Bucher of the 4eleven company, who has worked with Shaka Ponk for seven years as a lighting and video programmer and has toured with the band several times. The current MonkAdelic tour is his first as lighting designer. The LD, who also serves as lighting director on the tour, works with a set rich in scenery and detail with accompanying video show. Bucher uses lighting to add another layer of dynamism to the set while accentuating the on-screen visuals and has integrated the two Elation LED source luminaires in his design in large numbers. Compact Rayzor 360Z fixtures, high-speed LED beam/wash luminaires with zoom, are l
Sweden - Philips Lighting played a central role in the lighting for Melodifestivalen 2018, the popular television series in which Sweden's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest is selected annually. The VL6000 Beam, from the Philips Entertainment Lighting portfolio, was chosen by award-winning lighting designer Fredrik Jönsson, one of Europe's leading experts in lighting entertainment events for television. Jönsson has been responsible for lighting Melodifestivalen since 2002, and has also lit the Eurovision finals on two occasions, in 2013 and 2016. For Melodifestivalen 2018, Jönsson selected the Philips VL6000 Beam luminaire to fill a specific role in his lighting design. He says, "The set designer created a kind of radio mast set-piece, suspended just above the sweet-spot on stage, so we needed some kind of big, beamy lighting instrument that
USA - Tools from Waves Audio were employed by sound engineers for a variety of performers in diverse set-ups and consoles throughout Coachella 2018 – from Avid Venue S6L (Kygo) and Avid Venue Profile (The Weeknd), to DiGiCo SD10’s (Vince Staples), to SSL Live (Portugal. The Man) and Waves’ own eMotion LV1 Live Mixer (MØ). Prominent FOH engineers provided a peek under the hood of their productions, relaying which tools help them create a tight, spectacular-sounding show under demanding festival conditions. Vince Staples’ FOH engineer Robbie Barr has been touring with DiGiCo SD-series consoles nonstop for five years, mixing such acts as M83, Foster the People and Banks. His setup for Staples at Coachella consisted of a DiGiCo SD10 console, two Waves SoundGrid Extreme Servers (one for redundancy) and the Waves MultiRack plugin host. “Running Waves plugins on
USA - Excitement for ABC-TV’s Academy Awards show built well before the telecast began with the arrival of celebrities captured by the Oscars Opening Ceremony: Live from the Red Carpet. The pre-show, held on famed Hollywood Boulevard outside the Dolby Theatre, featured for the first time Claypaky K-EYE K20 HCR LED wash lights selected by lighting designer Madigan Stehly. Stehly has worked on the Red Carpet show for the last five years. This year marked his first in the lighting designer’s seat. He describes his brief for the live broadcast as “daylight reinforcement” since the show leads into golden hour, which “quickly changes the intensity, quality and colour of light” as the sun sets. “The whole Red Carpet is the show, not just the defined interview stages,” says Stehly. “Celebrities arrive and interact with each other – that’s part of
UK - New Robe MegaPointes and LEDBeam 150s, purchased by SJ from Birmingham UK based rental and technical specialist DMX Productions, were used to spectacular effect in lighting the 2018 Voice in a Million (VIAM) extravaganza which was staged at London’s SSE Wembley Arena. VIAM amasses some of the largest children’s choirs in the world. The Voice in a Million organisation was founded by Robert and Jo Garofalo in 2006, to raise awareness of the millions of children worldwide who are orphaned, abandoned or separated from their birth parents. In 2009 the VIAM shows began to showcase children’s choirs from around the UK. Now these annual shows are full scale arena concerts with some of the largest children’s choirs in the world, this year comprising 10,000 children’s voices. DMX productions, for the second year, supplied lighting and all other technical
UK - Students from the University of South Wales Lighting and Technology department, who were given the opportunity to operate the lights for a music video shoot by The Haus Band at The Wales Millennium Centre last month. The students got to use a variety of consoles, including a ChamSys PC Wing to run a David Howard- and Dominic Boston-designed rig that featured over 50 moving lights, including Chauvet Professional Maverick and Rogue fixtures. Aside from getting the chance to operate this impressive gear, the students garnered valuable insights into the lighting design process. “It was really nice to lead a project with students from conception, though programming and production, to completion,” said Howard. “It’s something I had not yet done on a university project of this scale. It was also nice to see pre-visualised programming come to life on a real rig,
Malaysia - Goldenduck International recently outfitted the newly-opened MBO The Starling Mall with end-to-end cinema surround audio systems by Harman Professional Solutions. Founded in 2005, MBO Cinemas operates 27 complexes across Malaysia, making it the third-largest chain of movie theatres in the nation. The new state-of-the-art facility at The Starling Mall in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Petaling Jaya offers a wide range of movie-going experiences, with revolutionary theatre formats such as MBO Big Screen, MBO Premier, MBO MX4D and MBO Kecil. In order to ensure pristine surround sound reproduction, MBO Cinemas hired cinema sound integrator Goldenduck International to outfit MBO The Starling’s ten theatre rooms with premium cinema audio systems. Goldenduck selected a complete cinema audio solution comprised of JBL ScreenArray Series cinema speakers and Crown amplif
USA - Steven Wilson is out on tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites, bringing his ever-evolving sound to audiences around North America. The English musician and singer-songwriter released his fifth studio album To the Bone in the fall of last year, and while lighting director Tellson James is apt to note that Steven’s sound dictates the lighting, he also works to make sure the mood of the lighting matches the songs. Bandit Lites is supplying Martin MAC Viper Profiles, GLP JDC1 Strobes, Clay Paky B-EYE K20, a Road Hog for control along with Chauvet VIP X6iP Video Panels. With each venue featuring its own lighting fixtures, James shared how the Bandit-supplied package is crucial in crafting a consistent look that is still adaptable no matter whatever unknown factors the venue is going to throw their way. “The B-EYE s offer something t
USA - With total album sales topping 12m and more than 35m singles sold, Imagine Dragons continue to soar – and the Las Vegas band’s epic live gigs no doubt play a significant part in its swift ascension into ‘arena filler’ status. Last year witnessed the four-piece thunder its way through North America, wowing fans on the first leg of its Evolve World Tour which started in Phoenix, Arizona and is scheduled to conclude in Kiev later this year. This opening stage of the global outing, in support of the band’s third studio album Evolve, comprised 31 North American dates and SRae Productions – owned and operated by Sooner Routhier and Robert Long – used a trio of Hippotizer Boreal Media Servers to control a stunning array of 30 LED pods. Mounting the pods on a brace of automated Axis the SRae team used four projectors to shoot on to physical roll dro
Poland - The new Karova Club in Warsaw has opened, with an advanced technology infrastructure. As a central component of the AV fit-out, Phono Media, Martin Audio’s recently-appointed Polish distributor, supplied system integrator, LFX, with a CDD (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) and BlacklineX solution to fulfil the owners’ request for the Martin Audio brand cachet. Explains Phono Media director Jacek Stanislawski: “This is a brand new club and the owner approached them for a quotation, believing that Martin Audio would be a perfect solution for the club sound. The owner, Marcin, has a lot of knowledge and passion for sound and he demands the same high quality as he would expect at home. His goal was to provide hi-fi quality to achieve the same result with classic club music. “Once LFX had made a presentation, showing references of installations at the Minis
UK - Really Creative Media, digital and live production company, created live performance visuals for Friendly Fires’ one-off comeback gig at O2 Brixton Academy, 5 April. Machine Management, brought in Really Creative Media’s video expertise to ensure Friendly Fires’ first UK gig in five years delivered maximum visual impact. “Having worked with Clean Bandit since 2016, who are also with Machine Management, we knew the artist team at Machine,” commented Nick Dew from Really Creative Media. Over the course of one month, creative director Jack James brought the bands’s‘psychedelic’ content vision to life, generating original footage filmed in-house during a series of one-day shoots followed by post-production editing. Jack explains: “The band expressed a keen interest in us using practical effects such as ink droplets into water rather than
UK - Sound Space Vision (SSV) acousticians and theatre planners worked as consultants with architects, MUMA, to provide an innovative and sustainable community space for Storey’s Field Centre at Eddington, on the University of Cambridge’s North West Cambridge development. Storey’s Field Centre is the dynamic hub of the community of Eddington, a new neighbourhood under construction as part of the North West Cambridge development. The Centre is a civic building in the heart of the new development and encompasses meeting rooms and a large multi-purpose hall for exercise classes, lectures, music of all genres, local festivities and events alongside a nursery. SSV joined the project to support the range of uses both in the acoustical design and the noise isolation and the activity-led design and specification of the technical fit-out of the building. MUMA design
France - Dushow, one of France’s leading technical production companies, has invested in 20 of Robe’s RoboSpot remote follow spotting systems. Dushow’s commercial director Christian Lorenzi commented, “We see this as a big innovation in the follow spotting world. It’s very flexible and gives everyone involved in staging all types of shows many more options.” The RoboSpot system comprises a BaseStation and a MotionCamera that communicate via DMX with no latency and enable several of Robe’s most popular moving lights – including, currently, the BMFL Spot, BMFL Blade, BMFL WashBeam, DL7S Profile, DL4S Profile, MegaPointe and Pointe - to be controlled from anywhere in a venue or space. The RoboSpot MotionCamera is available either as a separate unit or integrally on the BMFL Follow Spot fixture, a modified version of Robe’s signature high powered l
UK - The hit musical, Hamilton opened at the end of December to sell out audiences at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London. Prior to its opening, the venue underwent a complete facelift to prepare for the show, with everything from the decor, the seats and the uniforms of the staff tying in with Hamilton. As part of the refurbishment, Unusual Rigging was brought on board to rejuvenate the theatre's 'tired' flying system as well as to provide rigging services for the show itself. Jeremy Featherstone of Unusual explained: "The flying system at the Victoria Palace Theatre had become life expired due to many years of use. For Hamilton, Unusual was asked to refurbish fifteen counterweight sets that were needed for the show. Essentially, all the moving parts and ropes were replaced during the pre-rig period and the opportunity was taken to lengthen some of th
UK - Part of this year’s Barbican OpenFest saw a major new Culture Mile light and sound installation take place in the Beech Street tunnel, opposite Barbican Underground. Culture Mile presented Tunnel Visions: Array which transformed the tunnel into an audio-visual performance space combining cutting-edge projection and sound technology with the Barbican’s distinctive brutalist architecture. Created by Tony Award-winning artists 59 Productions led by director Richard Slaney, co-produced with the Barbican, and with music by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tony and Olivier Award-winning sound designer Gareth Fry was commissioned to create a multi-channel spatial sound design for the immersive multimedia art project, using TiMax SoundHub-S64 spatial audio matrix and playback engine. TiMax directed the audio playback of 30 channels of audio stems and effe
UK - It is 35 years since Dreamgirls first hit Broadway. It was a sensational success then and the latest production at London’s Savoy Theatre is equally so. Sound designer, Richard Brooker, wanted an analogue sound to the audio, in keeping with the show’s 1960s/70s setting, but also wanted to benefit from today’s digital technology. He specified a DiGiCo SD7T to handle Front of House mix duties, which has the warmth of sound he was looking for with all the advantages of the digital domain and the theatre-specific functions of DiGiCo’s ‘T’ software. “No other manufacturer has put the time and effort into understanding the strange idiosyncrasies of the theatre world,” says Richard. “The SD7T has functions that are imperative when you’re working on musicals and that’s because the guys at DiGiCo talk to us, the people that use them, and make t
