USA - Lighting designer Benoit Richard, of Millennium Lighting Design, Inc, chose his first use of Ayrton MagicDot-R fixtures for the video shoot of NBC's spectacular NFL Sunday Night Football Open, employing 60 units in his design.

The Sunday Night Football opening sequence is the official introduction to America's prime time Sunday night programme and features Carrie Underwood for the third year running. Filmed in June on Stage 23 at Warner Brothers, Burbank, the Open was first broadcast nationwide on 13 September 2015, with weekly updates tailored to feature each Sunday's rival teams.

This year marked a style change - described as Nashville meets Hollywood - with the creation of a large virtual video backdrop and a new arrangement of the famous theme tune, Waiting All Day for Sunday Night, which Underwood performs in front of a live audience, amid real and projected

Italy - Over eighty solid-state FHD Media Players and 10 Wings Engine media servers were deployed in over seven pavilions at Milan Expo 2015.

Leading Technologies SRL, working with several main contractors supplied AV Stumpfl Wings Engine Install and FHD Media Players as core multimedia technology throughout Palazzo Italia, Italy and Iran Pavilions at the Milan EXPO 2015.

Marco Porro, managing director at Leading Technologies srl reports, "All AV Stumpfl products are easy to install and have powerful management and show control capabilities, which makes them the most reliable and functional multimedia technology out there."

"With the talent of Leading Technologies srl and their integration partners, our multimedia and control technology can be found in what we believe are the most eye catching, emotive uses of technology for story telling that the world has ev

UK - 'Projection mapping' has become an industry buzz word in the last couple of years and the Blackpool illuminations - among the world's most historic festivals of light is home to the first permanent projection mapped show in the UK, scheduled to run for the full two months / 66 day 'Illuminations' period each year from now on.

LightPool is a collaboration between London-based Ross Ashton and The Projection Studio who storyboarded and created the content, and Edinburgh based War Productions whose Alistair Young produced the technical design and supplied the hardware and control.

The two companies have worked together on previous projects, and Alistair suggested that he and Ross join forces to pool their extensive knowledge and experience of projection mapping monuments to answer a tender put out by Blackpool Council.

Their proposals were selected from some stiff competiti

USA - The Media Networking Alliance (MNA) - the professional AV industry alliance established to promote awareness and uptake of AES67 - is exhibiting at the forthcoming 139th AES International Convention in New York. A major attraction on the alliance's booth will be a live demonstration of audio networking interoperability, featuring 22 currently available networked-audio devices, from different manufacturers employing various audio network platforms.

AES67-specific extensions to the different network platforms provide for the common interchange of digital audio between them. In the instance of the demo, digital audio signals will be interoperable between devices employing Dante, Livewire, Q-LAN and RAVENNA. A total of 22 devices, from ALC NetworX, Archwave AG, Axia Audio, Digigram, DirectOut, Focusrite, Genelec, Lawo, Merging Technologies, QSC, Solid State Logic, Telos System

UK - On Saturday 24 October, Central Hall Westminster was part of a worldwide initiative to mark the 70th anniversary of the formation of the United Nations (UN). The venue joined iconic buildings and monuments such as the Great Wall of China, the Empire State Building and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, by projecting blue light across its facade, with blue being the official colour of the UN.

As White Light is Central Hall Westminster's production service partner, the company provided all of the production support for the evening - with the venue being the only English landmark to be featured as part of this iconic occasion.

Central Hall Westminster has a long and historic relationship with the UN. In 1946, the venue was chosen for the very first General Assembly of the newly formed United Nations; a meeting that saw the appointment of the first Secretary General, along with the c

UK - PRG XL Video continued their long relationship with Creamfields by supplying a wide range of video, lighting and rigging solutions across multiple stages at the 2015 festival - the biggest Creamfields to date.

With the festival growing in popularity every year, Creamfields producer LarMac LIVE are working to create a bigger and better experience for the audience at each event.

Featuring two main stages - North and South - with identical screen set-ups, and a further seven tent arenas, PRG XL Video were brought in early in the design process to help deliver Creamfields' most ambitious production to date.

The recent combination of PRG and XL Video further streamlined the process this year, with video across all stages, and lighting and rigging on the two main stages all supplied by the new integrated team. Under the direction of Ian Greenway of LarMac LIVE, Paul 'Macca' M

UAE - A team of Avolites S4 servers, Expert Pro console with Wing and TitanNet Processors were deployed to control more than 350 fixtures and 150sq.m of LED screens for an extraordinary party to open WHITE Club Dubai's new season.

Procom Middle East, the Dubai-based professional audio, lighting and video equipment supplier and Avolites official distributor delivered the venue at the request of Addmind, the venue's owner and manager.

They teamed up with club lighting designer Dave Parry of Most Technical, lighting programmers Ross Chapple and Tony Chidiac, and Immersive's John Munro and Martin Harvey to create the awesome event.

"The club's opening party set a new frontier in entertainment technology, giving a 'reality-altering' experience with impressive lighting shows, effects and a cutting edge video mapping show on a 3D video wall," says Procom's Rami Harfouch.<

South Africa - This year's Rocking the Daisies - which coincided with the festival's tenth birthday - was the biggest and best year yet. It was the fifth time that Kilowatt AV saw involvement in the festival, this year being commissioned to conceptualise, design and fully execute four of the eight stages (where they incorporated Avolites Ai technology and Robe fixtures) as well as multiple activation areas.

Rocking the Daisies was held at the start of October at the Cloof Wine Estate in Darling, under an hour's drive from Cape Town, and included a line up of international and local musical acts, camping, relaxing and good food. In fact the owners never suspected that what started off, as a small festival on their tranquil grounds, would turn into one of the most popular annual music occasions on the South African calendar.

"We were commissioned by Seed Experiences to prov

UK - Theatre Projects has appointed theatre consultant and international auditorium acoustic designer Rob Harris as a key consultant.

The move marks a significant strengthening of Theatre Projects' acoustic and theatre design team, as the company embarks on a number of high profile design projects worldwide.

Harris's impressive 35-year career as an acoustics specialist has seen him amass a plethora of prestigious design credits for cherished performing arts buildings including: Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; City Recital Hall, Sydney; Kilden konsertsal, Kristiansand; Bord Gâis Energy Theatre, Dublin and Kings Place, London.

Specifically, Harris is renowned for his acoustic design for some of the world's most iconic opera houses. These include collaborations with TP on both Glyndebourne Opera House and Oslo Opera House. In addition he has led on the Copenhagen Opera House, t

South Africa - The Calibre LEDView530 scaler/switcher is now available from Penmac, live event, staging and multimedia specialists, based in Randburg, South Africa.

"The LEDView530 has a strong feature set, unrivalled functionality and competitive edge. It is the perfect tool for switching, scaling and processing video wall content and has performed extremely well in projects we have been involved with," explains Malcolm Finlay, managing director at Penmac. "The LEDView530 is supported by our experienced technical experts who are available to demonstrate the LEDView530 technology as required."

The LEDView530 is a multi-input scaler/switcher that is designed for combining HD and SD video sources on to LED video walls. Four-sided picture edge Features also include genlock capability and low latency.

Pauline Brooksbank, managing director at Calibre adds: &qu

Greece - 360 event agency from Greece looked no further than Austrian engineering experts AV Stumpfl to meet its requirement for a 4m high by 30m wide Curve screen for presentations at an international conference of a Fortune 500 client that was held in Athens and attended by 500 participants from 28 countries.

"We turned to AV Stumpfl as the number one company to handle a project of this scale," explains Apostolos Papadopoulos, managing director at 360 event agency.

For this project, the AV Stumpfl Curve screen needed to be incorporated into futuristic architecture and design of the presentation. The screen was made to measure for its application and delivered ahead of schedule. 360 event agency integrated with five Barco HDX-W20 high-definition projectors and content was edge-blended onto the screen alongside state-of-the-art acoustic and video conferencing technol

Hungary - UK-based S+H Technical Support supplied its innovative LED Video Floor product to the first Hungarian edition of popular television games show, The Cube.

Recorded at the Stern Film Studio on Pomaz, close to Budapest, Hungarian producers Show & Game Production followed the style directions and replicated the rules established by the original UK series producers, Objective Television, who licensed this version, broadcast on leading commercial channel, TV2.

Hungarian production manager Krisztina Bene explained that they were recommended to S+H as the interactive floor supplier by Objective Television, from which they also rented key elements of the set

Presented (in the UK) by Phillip Schofield, Cube contestants can win up to £250,000 cash by completing straightforward tasks - like balancing, catching, throwing, estimating, reacting, memorising, etc. - wi

UK - Panasonic hosted the first European Heritage Forum on the connected digital future at the Tower of London.

The forum, on Monday 12 October 2015, presented the museum and heritage sector with the chance to discuss the future of internet and social media, and how to develop solutions that incorporate these in to exhibition spaces.

Some of the biggest names in European heritage were represented at the forum, including the British Museum, Science Museum, Imperial War Museum, Vatican Museum, National Trust, National History Museum, National Gallery, National Museum of Scotland and the National Museum of Wales. In total, those attending attract approximately 68m visitors every year.

The event began with a presentation by MACOM on the connected digital future followed by delegate presentations, where experiences, challenges and solutions were put forward. The day concluded wit

Sweden - Dataton has announced the acquisition of software developer and production company, IXEL. Based in Sweden, IXEL specialises in the development of software for immersive environments and content production for fulldome applications. With the acquisition, Dataton strengthens both R&D and project management teams in the industry-key sectors of virtual reality, simulation software and film production.

"The team at IXEL has proven expertise of software development and content production for fulldome and 3D environments, both of which are already important application areas for our award-winning Watchout multi-display software and associated products," said Lars Sandlund, COO at Dataton.

IXEL's Miroslav Andel has been appointed chief software developer at Dataton and commented, "There is enormous development potential in the kind of large-scale visual and imm

Europe - Global flightcase and loudspeaker component manufacturer Penn Elcom has launched a tough new low-noise 3U heat extraction unit which can be fitted to the front or back of any 19 inch racking unit to quickly, efficiently - and silently - suck the heat out of an enclosure.

This is good news for any environment e.g. conference and presentation spaces, theatres, concert halls, lectures theatres, interactive AV displays, boardrooms and demonstration facilities, etc. utilizing AV equipment where noise is a potential issue, distraction or annoyance, says the company.

Penn's R 'n' D team has pooled its considerable experience and practical knowledge of the racking market and produced an ultimate and well-engineered solution.

The versatile FP02-Q-3U fan unit emits 22.5 dB(A) - with a Sone (loudness) value of 0.3 - and can be fitted to any existing 19 inch racking unlit. At t

USA - British rock powerhouse Coldplay premiered new visuals for 2015 in Las Vegas and New York this autumn designed by video director Ben Miles of Mixed Emotions, London, using Avolites Ai S4 servers.

Coldplay performed one-off shows at the two live music events: The Global Citizen Festival in Central Park in New York City, which also featured Pearl Jam, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, was timed to coincide with the launch of the United Nations' new Global Goals designed to fight inequality, protect the planet and end extreme poverty by 2030; the other was the iHeart Radio Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, with a plethora of acts including Sam Smith, Jason Derulo and Duran Duran.

"The band wanted me to produce some screen treatments for these one-off shows that were fresh and new," says Miles. "Having worked with Coldplay for so many years now I

Germany - For 10 days - from 17 to 27 September - visitors to the Opel booth at IAA 2015 could create their own personal Opel Selfie Jump - a bullet-time tracking shot with frozen scenery, known from the Matrix films and numerous commercials.

The automobile manufacturer relied on the experience of PRG XL Video for the planning, design and technical implementation of their exacting requirements. Bellprat Associates AG was responsible for the idea and the concept. The graphical user interface of the terminals, the Facebook connectivity and implementation of the barcode scanners was realized by bluelemon Interactive GmbH.

For Opel Selfie Jump the full-service event provider developed a system using 75 digital SLR cameras arranged in a semi-circle of 270 degrees, which was aligned with millimetre precision with the booth visitors in the centre of the circle. As a vis

UK - Showlogix, a developer of show and media control software, has released its version 1.6, designed for producing multi-display shows and interactive attractions in museums, visitor centres, trade shows and live productions.

The new Timeline Object includes numerous layers of videos, images or sound, synchronized to one centralized timecode. This is done across displays and computers. Several timeline objects can be added and can run simultaneously.

While this object requires loading all media files in advance before running a timeline, you can still load and play videos, images, texts and external inputs on top of a timeline. Moreover, it includes the option of fading smoothly between two media files on a single layer across displays, all while the timeline is running, says the company.

"There is a rise in demand for interactivity in typical time based show applicat

UK - PRG XL Video supplied video elements for the larger shows on popular drum 'n' bass massive Rudimental's 2015 tour, which started in March and culminated in a characteristically energetic performance at London's Alexandra Palace, complete with a vibrant visual design by Jonny Gaskell.

For this show, the company supplied LED screen and Catalyst media server control, a side projection system plus IMAG cameras and PPU.

The fundamental concept of Rudimental's full design was to make the stage an interactive and theatrical environment with several contrasting visual layers which peeled back as the all-action set developed, revealing more depth and new eye-candy every few songs. The space was defined by several impressive scenic pieces including a large replica of the Hackney Central (London, E8) railway bridge, and a tabbed double-sided back cloth which was in for the first few

Austria - AV Stumpfl, manufacturer of show control, multimedia and screen technology, has announced a programme of "unprecedented global growth and product development".

"The industry recognises us for our reputation in engineering design, innovation and return on investment," says Tobias Stumpfl, CEO. "Our aim is to become the preferred supplier to more companies, in more regions and in new markets. To achieve this, we need to be faster to deliver products to market, offer even higher levels of localized support and well as offer the industry's best technologies, expertise and manufacturing."

Ambitious plans for global growth have resulted in the opening of the AV Stumpfl Campus. The campus accommodates growing staff numbers within the company. AV Stumpfl has invested more than 7m Euro. The official opening took place on 30-31 October 2015 and wa

UK/China - Calibre UK, has appointed Grace Gao as sales and marketing associate, China.

Based at Calibre's Bradford, UK offices, Gao's responsibilities include conducting in-depth market research, developing the company's presence and profile of Calibre branded products as well as expanding OEM relationships.

Recruited under the GREAT Ambassadors (China) Scheme, a joint initiative with the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and The University of Sheffield, Gao recently completed a Masters Degree in Marketing Management Practice. "This is a great success story. Calibre is setting the standard for UK businesses that increasingly are having to work on a global basis and they will provide Grace Gao with great practical experience and knowledge," says Yiyun Ling at The University of Sheffield.

"Grace has terrific business skills, and is a great fit to the Bradford team.

Germany - Working with video designer, Ingi Bekk, PRG XL Video supplied a video technology solution for a Hamburg theatre production of Reisende auf einem Bein (Travelling On One Leg), based on the novel by Nobel-prize winning author, Herta Müller.

Adapted for the stage by British theatre director Katie Mitchell OBE, and adviser Rita Thiele, and directed by Mitchell, the production incorporates a multimedia approach to theatre by the use of live cameras on the actors, the feeds from which are then cut live and projected on to screens above, creating the effect that a movie is being made live on stage.

Many of Katie Mitchell's productions use multimedia, and this is used to explore the theme of detachment which is present in many of the plays she stages. In Reisende auf einem Bein the main character Irene, played by Julia Wieninger, begins life in Romania, but th

Brazil - Barco has teamed up with virtual reality company Sensorama to create Brazil's newest amusement attraction - the first of its kind in Latin America - providing 4K ultra-high resolution projectors that deliver breathtaking cinematic content for a simulated underwater journey.

Immersion rides that plunge visitors into a virtually surreal world have largely been the purview of giant theme parks. However, they are now beginning to emerge as standalone entertainment experiences in public venues around the world. Sensorama is a frontrunner in this trend with the development of VIX: a 24-person ride taking passengers on an underwater voyage at the Shopping Praia de Costa in Wila Velha, Brazil, a centre boasting more than 225 world-class shops and attractions.

The simulation experience is designed for families and thrill seekers alike, allowing passengers to travel through an

USA - Scott Guenther of Full Stage Productions, Texas chose Arkaos MediaMaster Pro 4.0 to help create the haunting, atmospheric backdrop to aerial performances from Dallas-based dance academy, Dance Xpress. The production, entitled Smooth Operators, was a tribute to the music and work of English singer-songwriter, Sade.

Guenther used a single projector to project a mélange of imagery onto the back wall of the performance space, which mixed live and pre-recorded content for the show. Guenther filmed images of the dancers in stages of preparation for the performance - close ups of faces, arranging hair, donning point shoes etc - and juxtaposed these with live images of the performers in mid-air and on stage.

The opening number to the show (DSC 0013) included 'shadow' images of the dancers which Guenther was able to synchronise with the live performers, using MediaM

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