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Rigging / Staging

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France - In its third successful year in France, the Download festival served as solid evidence that rock’n’roll is as alive and relevant as it was in 1980, when its direct predecessor – Monsters Of Rock – forced itself on the unsuspecting English market town of Castle Donington.
Launched in 2003 to showcase the best in rock, metal and hardcore, Download expanded in 2016 with Live Nation’s introduction of Download Paris, and Stageco France – as the provider of all five stages – has played a major role in the festival’s production since it began.
In fact, as long as Igor Dawidowicz steers the ship as production manager, Stageco appears to have a job for life. He comments: “Involving Stageco was a very easy decision. Who else could do it? We know a lot of staging companies, but I can’t imagine giving this responsibility to anyone but Stageco – they

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Italy - Concerts by Italian megastar Vasco Rossi are usually an emotional experience, but the artist’s recent Non Stop Live summer stadium tour was ‘moving’ for a different reason - a large Kinesys automation system was used to dramatically change the architecture and shape of the stage through the show.
Lighting designer Giovanni Pinna, set designer Claudio Santucci of Gioforma, d3 operator Marco Piva and other key members of Vasco’s creative team including live camera director Peppe Romano were instrumental in the implementation of the Kinesys system to maximise the dynamic movement they wanted as part of the show aesthetic.
The hardware and control was supplied by PRG Belgium and operated on the road by Jimmy Johnson a UK based rigger / automation specialist.
The system comprised 16 x half tonne Kinesys ApexHOISTS complete with ApexDRIVES which
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UK - A group of industry representatives will cycle from Chippenham to London Olympia on Saturday 15 September to increase awareness of mental health within the entertainment and events industries. All donations will go to Backup, the technical entertainment charity which helps industry members and their families get back on their feet during times of hardship.
Starting at 7am, the cyclists will traverse 100 miles across the North Wessex Downs towards London in time for the PLASA Show. So far, eight cyclists have signed up to the challenge, including Peter Heath and Shane McGreevy of PLASA, John McEvoy and Bryan Raven of Whitelight, and Ben Tredwell of Autograph. 
This bike ride is part on an on-going collaboration between PLASA and PSA to support the mental health of all those working within lighting, AV, live sound, rigging and staging. This collaboration continues

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Malta - Luxury cruise line Seabourn introduced its newest vessel, the Seabourn Ovation, with a naming ceremony in the harbour of Valletta in Malta in May. The ship is the fifth ultra-luxury vessel to join the Seabourn fleet over the past decade and the second of two ships designed by Adam D. Tihany.
The event was managed by Belinda King Creative Productions and saw the ship's Godmother, Elaine Paige perform to an exclusive audience on the cruise ship’s pool deck and a debut of the Seabourn anthem entitled We Sail to See the Lives of Others by Tim Rice was performed. The evening was capped with a fireworks’ display that lit up Valletta Harbour.
Belinda King Creative Productions brought Push the Button on board to handle the technical aspects of the project and they, in turn, asked Unusual to deal with the rigging elements.
Jim Dugan, production manager

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USA - The ANSI Board of Standards Review has approved a revised version of ANSI E1.46, Standard for the Prevention of Falls from Theatrical Stages and Raised Performance Platforms. The standard has been revised to address changes to the OSHA regulations for fall protection, while keeping the document's useful guidance for preventing falls from stages into the orchestra pit or the house.
ANSi E1.46 – 2018 can be downloaded at no cost from the ESTA TSP website at tsp.esta.org/freestandards. The no-cost download is made possible by the sponsorship of ProSight Specialty Insurance. Alternatively, the standard may be purchased for $40 from ANSI and IHS at webstore.ansi.org/ and global.ihs.com/ respectively.
(Jim Evans)

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Portugal - Airstar, the French lighting balloon technology specialist, delivered a remarkable performance for the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) of Lisbon, on the banks of the Tagus.
Before battling it out in Lisbon’s Altice Arena, one of the country’s largest concert halls, delegations from 43 countries gathered at the MAAT to walk on the ESC’s ‘Blue Carpet’, under the light of Airstar’s lighting balloons.
Airstar specified and installed 30 Crystal and Solarc lighting balloons.
Raphael Vaz, head of Airstar’s Portuguese subsidiary, explains: "We had lengthy discussions with the client, and we were able to come back with a solution that was a perfect fit for such a high-profile event, but also perfectly adapted to the constraints of the venue. We wanted to bring out the magni

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UK - Star Events redesigned the entire Great Oak Stage sub-structure and super-structure to accommodate Roger Waters’ Us + Them production, which opened the BST Hyde Park series last Friday.
With gags including smoking Battersea Power Station chimneys rising above the stage, graffiti strewn flying pigs and the surround sound effects synonymous with Roger Waters, Us + Them managed to set a new precedent, even for a Hyde Park performance.
The Pink Floyd-heavy two-and-a-half-hour show contemporised the politics from the band’s mid-70s/early-80s canon through a series of stunning visual sequences fitted to the songs.
The back of the traditional performance box was pushed up and film, cartoons and stills on the resulting 1,100sq m video wall focused on state-sponsored torture, refugees, human rights, Donald Trump and the singer’s support for Pale

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UK - Unusual was the technical production company of choice for Artichoke when it staged the Processions march in London last month. The mass artwork took place on 10 June in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London and saw thousands of women and girls come together and march, wearing either green white or violet – the colours of the suffragette movement - creating the appearance of a flowing river of colour through the city streets.
Jim Dugan, production manager at Unusual explained: “We’ve been working with Artichoke on its major events and art installations for some years now – Lumiere London and Durham, the Sultan’s Elephant, Great Fire 350 etc, so we were excited to get involved with an event that celebrated something so fundamentally important in our country’s history.
“Our role on this project was to facilitate all the technical elements – from th

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Germany - Penn Elcom GmbH in Germany has moved to a new 8,000sq.m premises in Elten, north Westfalen just 10 kilometres from the previous warehouse – and over double the size.
From this hub, the company distributes over 1,700 product lines and hardware including 19-inch racking, flightcase components and loudspeaker elements directly to B2B and B2C customers all over Europe.
The new facility will assist the busy operation in continuing – and streamlining - the efficient and fast delivery of products worldwide which are manufactured by Penn in the UK.
It was imperative to stay in the same regional location explains Dennis Marco Meertens, co-MD of Penn Elcom GmbH with Thomas Mostar. “Elten is perfectly positioned for expedient onward transportation and delivery to our local and regional sales teams – a very successful model devised to best understand speci

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Europe - The PLASA Awards for Innovation are now open for entries. Product manufacturers and developers are invited to enter the annual awards by 17 August (Friday). Successfully nominated products will feature on the Innovation Gallery throughout the PLASA Show (16-18 September, London Olympia), with winners announced at a special ceremony on 17 September (Monday).
Entries will be judged by an independent panel of industry experts, with up to eight awards, including the possibility of Gold Award, set to be given to products and solutions that demonstrate a new style of thinking, improve technical practice and safety, introduce new technology, materials or techniques, or offer new commercial advantages. The PLASA Award for Sustainability may be presented to a solution that achieves significant power reduction, has a positive impact on the environment or makes an effective us

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UK - Christie Lites UK has made a major investment in Kinesys automation equipment. The stage lighting company’s British operation has purchased 24 half-tonne Liftket motors with Kinesys Elevation 1+ vari-speed controllers, complete with LibraCELL load monitoring shackle pins and the brand’s powerful and flexible Vector control software package.
Christie Lites UK account handler Andy Strachan comments: “Kinesys is constantly appearing on riders and technical specifications - a strong sign of their success and that is across all sectors of our work - corporate and industrial, concert touring, television and theatre”.
Christie Lites CEO and founder Huntly Christie made the decision to go with Kinesys, together with Andy Strachan, Roy Hunt and Mathew Ilott who are all part of the Christie Lites UK’s account management team.
The Kinesys investment is an in

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UK - Folkstone’s Magistrates Court sentenced Maidstone Studios Limited to pay a £30,000 fine and £6,487.76 worth of damages after a worker fell to his death.
Justin Newitt fell five metres through an opening on the roof at the TV studio on 23 September 2015 after using an unsafe mobile access tower to climb to the roof.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) identified a lack of planning with regards to the condition the tower, which had ladder sections the wrong way round, damaged bracing and inadequate guardrails. No formal planning had been recorded and there had been no supervision on how the work was being carried out.
HSE also highlighted that Mr Newitt had not been trained to erect the tower safely.
HSE inspecto

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USA - Celebrating its third year of exhibiting at InfoComm, Current RMS demonstrated its rental management software to all that came by stand C1510 over the three days.
Since last year’s show, Current RMS has released a number of new features, showing that it’s expanding as per the changing needs of the industry the cloud-based software was built for.
Do a Deal, the most recent feature update, was well received by booth visitors, providing users with the ability to set a round figure on quotes and orders they create for their clients. For example, if a job comes out at £6,453, it can be rounded up or down to create a neater price and much friendlier quotations. Deal prices are flexible, and can be set on product groups, or the entire job, distributing the change in revenue accordingly and allowing users to keep track of the profitability for each job.
A

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Europe/Asia - Milos held its annual product academies at its bases in Roudnice nad Labem, the Czech Republic (13-14 April), and in Guangzhou, China (10-11 May).
The two-day product academy has been designed to provide attendees with the knowledge and skills for working safer while carrying out rigging duties and constructing support structures.
The Czech Republic event brought together local attendees, but also visitors from Slovakia, Germany, England, Scotland and Australia. The product academy in China drew attendees from China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, as well as from Australia, New Zealand and Kenya.
Eric Porter, certified rigging consultant and internationally renowned rigging professional, gave rigging presentations and provided rigging consultations. Norbert Tripp, Area Four Industries technical director and structural engineer, held presenta

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Poland - Protec European Events partnered with their client Xerox once again to deliver the audio, lighting, video and rigging at the Xerox Forum 2018 held in Warsaw.
This event, held in the Doubletree Hilton from 22-24 May, included three days of presentations and 23 seminar sessions with the highlight being the Xerox International Operations Premiere of the new Xerox IridesseTM Production Press.
Xerox hosted 400 of their top graphic communications customers, resellers and business partners from around the world.
The project ran in a few separate spaces or scenes – a daytime conference, a pre-reveal with Kabuki curtain, the reveal element and finally, the conference and demonstrations on the new machine.
Sean Godefroy, HOD Protec video, chose three Barco 20k projectors, one for each side screen and one for a kabuki drop drape projection. He chose the Ch

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Switzerland - Verity Studios AG, an indoor drone technology specialist, has announced that it has raised $18m in a Series A funding round. Fontinalis Partners, a venture capital firm focused on next-generation mobility technologies, led the round. Other investors include Airbus Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Kitty Hawk. Verity plans to use this funding to expand its live events business, with a heavy focus on US growth, as well as to expand into other commercial verticals.
“Verity has assembled an exceptional team, with credibility, valuable IP, and extensive technical know-how, all while building a fast-growing business in the live events market,” says Chris Cheever, co-founder and partner at Fontinalis. “Our firm was founded to invest in and help scale the world’s best mobility technologies, and what Verity has developed has broad applicability beyond entertai

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UK - The winners of the Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) Theatre Awards 2018 have been announced.
The awards ceremony took place on 6 June (Wednesday) at Alexandra Palace, London.
The five awards for sound, lighting, engineering, widget and stand were complemented by a special award to mark the retirement of Roger Fox, the theatre show's director, acknowledging his 40 years work on building and developing the event since 1978.

The winners, who were picked by an experienced jury of working practitioners and industry peers, are listed below, along with the jury's comments:

ABTT Sound Product of the Year
EM Acoustics for EMS-41
"This speaker features a compact design with a 4” driver and coaxial compression driver, producing similar output to the larger EMS-51, but at half the size,

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UK - Flightcase Warehouse has acquired Production Park-based heavy-duty case company Box Clever Cases, effective 4 June.
The deal reflects an “ambitious growth strategy”, which has seen the Tamworth flight case manufacturer invest in “product, people and process”. Flightcase Warehouse is also launching an enhanced protective case service for Production Park businesses, including an on-demand delivery service, and is transferring all manufacturing to Tamworth.
Sam Austin, managing director of Flightcase Warehouse, comments: “The Flightcase Warehouse acquisition of Box Clever Cases complements our overall offering whilst strengthening our hand in the production and live events marketplaces through maximising the unique and exciting opportunities Production Park affords us. We’re an ambitious company continually leading the way in both exclusive services and p

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Europe - The MTN Shop, an e-commerce platform offering entertainment, manufacturing and recreational products from industry-leading brands, has updated its websites (shopmtn.eu / shopmtn.com).
Visitors will now benefit from seamless navigation across multiple industries, with over 30 brands available from one place. The shop offers more than 10,000 products across three categories - entertainment, industrial and rope access. One major change to the MTN offering is the addition of film industry rigging gear to service the full range of entertainment rigging professionals.
Apart from enhanced aesthetics and a more advanced navigation, the websites benefit from optimised filtering and search, a live chat function, and secure online payment options. ShopMTN.eu is fully compliant with EU GDPR data protection regulations.
(Jim Evans)

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) will demonstrate its extensive portfolio of leading theatrical technologies - including new lighting, rigging, audio and video products from Chroma-Q, Spotlight, Follow-Me, Sixty82, BroadWeigh, Tourmate, Sennheiser, Shure and Green Hippo - at the ABTT Theatre Show 2018 this week. Highlights include:
Lighting: Chroma-Q's premium performance Color Force II LED cyclorama & effects light, and Inspire XT RGBW LED house light - both multi award-winners - and new Studio Force II high output variable white fixture; ProLights' Eclipse LED Fresnel in a choice of white colour temperatures, plus various effects lighting models; a preview of Spotlight's Hyperion 6-colour LED Profile and Fresnel, alongside many other theatrical LED fixtures; Follow-Me's remote follow spot control system for harnessing multiple moving lights from any brand i

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UK - The PLASA 2018 Members’ Day and AGM took place on Thursday 31 May at the Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, London to reflect upon a year of specialist projects, industry collaboration and growth.
Members and guests enjoyed a productive day with an insightful AGM, followed by a networking afternoon in the venue’s unique ‘physic’ garden. The lively guest speaker, Caroline Russell from The Ideas Centre Group, encouraged audience participation with her creative approach to problem-solving, then attendees were invited to stay for drinks into the evening.
PLASA Treasurer Mark Surtees presented the 2017 accounts and announced that PLASA is in a place of financial stability, highlighting an increase in profits due to commercial growth within Events and Media. Newly elected Chair, Adam Blaxill, added later that all profits funnel back int

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UK - J&C Joel has announced the appointment of Alan Jackson as UK sales manager.
Jackson has more than 35 years’ experience in the industry including working for Hawthorn for 14 years, most recently as their installations director. He will work closely with the UK sales team to develop inclusive relationships with customers, drive a focussed approach to the UK market and raise awareness about the broad range of products J&C Joel provide.
Jackson comments: “As a Yorkshireman, it’s great to go back to my roots and work with a fantastic Yorkshire based company. I’ve had a long connection with J&C Joel and I’m really looking forward to developing the UK sales team, meeting customers and raising the profile of the team and the company’s products and services.”
J&C Joel CEO James Wheelwright adds: “Alan is a great addition to our senior

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Portugal - Ampco Flashlight played a major role as supplier of all lighting, rigging, video and motion systems for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
Preparations started as early as October 2017. The dedicated team of commercial, technical and logistics specialists, working closely together with local Portuguese partner Pixel Light, laid a solid base for a flawless production in the Altice Arena. Build-up started early April and ended with a 60-hour speed load out.
Over 2500 fixtures, almost four kilometres of truss and a huge amount of, cabling, dimmers, distro’s and a state of the art data network was used in this massive TV production attracting over 350m viewers worldwide.
Marc van der Wel, project director, commented: “It was very exciting being part of the team, and seeing how our specialists put so much effort, experience and knowledge into this proje

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USA - CyberHoist by CyberMotion is on tour again, this time with Vegas native band The Killers on their Wonderful, Wonderful tour. The band finished their European leg at the end of 2017 before starting their US leg at the beginning of the year.
The primary driving visual elements on the stage were video-constructed triangles with one anchored on the stage and an inverted triangle hanging above it nicknamed ‘The Flying V’ made up of video tiles that would fly apart, turn, twist and move into different shapes utilizing the CyberHoist automated moving system. 12 active CyberHoist 1000kg and 1 MotionCue control system, all with spares, turned the Flying V into an ever-changing video spectacle. These automated hoists came from CyberMotion North America and controlled by David Diamond, the show operator and motion specialist.
Diamond explains, “Working with LD
  1. LTM apprentices now full-time staff members
  2. ABTT 2018: Unusual Rigging in positive mode
  3. ABTT 2018: Rope Assemblies to debut Anchor Strop
  4. ABTT 2018: Doughty's lightweight stand to debut
  5. 11th Hour provides Cardiff temporary terminal
  6. Star Events’ X marks the spot at All Points East
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