UK - The judging panel of the Knight of Illumination Awards 2015 Concert Touring and Events category has announced its shortlisted designers for the prestigious ceremony this autumn.

The Awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of lighting and, as of last year, video designers working on shows in the UK.

The Concert Touring and Events judging panel, who were joined this year by new recruits Financial Times arts pages journalist David Cheal and editor of live event technology publication Total Production International Kelly Murray, deliberated over what they described as an 'incredibly high standard' of entries this year before reaching a decision.

The Concert Touring and Events shortlist is as follows:

Arena - Jamie Thompson for The Script, LeRoy

UK - 31st August is the last day that visitors can pre-register for free entry to PLASA Show 2015, the UK's premier business event for the live entertainment technology industry. International pre-registrations are at their highest level since the show moved to ExCel in 2013, with registrations coming from over 90 countries so far. Visitors who haven't already registered are urged to take advantage of the last few days of the free registration period.

PLASA Show 2015 takes place at London's ExCel from 4th - 6th October. From 1st September to 3rd October visitors can pre-register for £10, meaning doing so before the end of the free period can make a significant saving. On site entry will cost £25.

"The show will feature over 300 brands, covering all production di

USA - Veteran Australian LD Francesco Calvi recently put GLP's impression X4 S LED moving heads to the ultimate test - chasing a team of all-action daredevil bike riders known as Nitro Circus.

Founded by ringleader and athlete Travis Pastrana, the Sydney based Nitro Circus Live tour features more than 40 of the world's best action sports athletes performing daring and record-breaking tricks in freestyle motocross, BMX and skateboarding, aided by stunts and accessories involving water coolers, rocking horses, a lazy boy couch and more. The lighting has to be equal to the challenge of placing this into a rock 'n' roll, stadium context.

Brought in by production manager, Brendan Maher, with whom he had worked previously Calvi was hardly fazed.

Although these events follow a typical rock concert model, with build-up day, and the infrastructure built and ready for rehearsals by 3p

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Germany - Last weekend, the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany's largest indoor arena became home to the world's biggest and most-watched Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event. With over 11,000 visitors flocking to arena each day and millions more tuning in online, it was a fitting way to celebrate ESL's first standalone CS:GO event.

Over 27m unique viewers watched the tournament on Twitch for almost 34m hours (nearly 3,879 years!) between them, and at its peak the event was being followed on-line by over 1.3m concurrent viewers - an increase of more than 30% on the last ESL One Counter-Strike event five months previously and a new record for both ESL and the game itself.

ARAM was responsible for set design and technical production, including rental of latest video , lighting technology and camera jib's.

The equipment list included CP Mythos, Sharpy, GM2, Fourlight LED light

UK - Seven years after its inaugural event at Henley-on-Thames, the Rewind Festival has mushroomed into three events - with Rewind North (in Cheshire) and Rewind Scotland in Perth further celebrating the sounds of the Eighties (and the glamorous attire that accompanies it).

Providing the PA system from the very beginning has been Capital Sound. But while the sites to the north have been problem free in terms of sound propagation, the Henley location at Temple Island Meadows, Remenham Farm, has always been noise sensitive, and until 2013 elicited complaints from the local gentry.

2013 proved to be the watershed year, when acoustics consultants Vanguardia were brought in by the promoter, Impresario Festivals' David Heartfield, and suggested a guaranteed means of curing the problem was to deploy Martin Audio's award winning MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array solution.

Capital

Singapore - Alfonso Zarate Takano is the new Clay Paky area manager for the Asia Pacific region (APAC), comprising all countries in the Far East, South Asia and Oceania. He will report operationally to sales manager Alberico D'Amato, and is based at the OSRAM offices in Singapore.

"The markets in Asia and Oceania are growing fast and the appointment of Alfonso Zarate Takano is a strategic move to ensure a constant fixed local presence," said Alberico D'Amato. "It will now be easier for Clay Paky to visit customers in the region and provide top-class timely technical and commercial support."

Alfonso Zarate Takano was born in Peru, but has lived for many years in Japan and in Singapore and speaks English, Spanish and Japanese. He has excellent technical experience in the industry, having worked for important manufacturers of stage and architecture lighting, a

The Netherlands - ETC is preparing for the next trade show in their busy calendar, with Amsterdam's IBC on 11-15 September, coming up soon.

The company's main draw for the show, which is geared towards professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment and news content, are set to be the Source Four LED Series 2 Tungsten HD and Daylight HD fixtures. Specially designed to produce the best quality white light in cool (4000-6500K) or warm (2700-4500K) ranges, each is tuned for high definition use, eliminating any on-camera flicker. They have already been installed at a range of studios worldwide, including Israel's Channel 1 news studio in Jerusalem, where the technical staff and presenters were impressed by the flicker-free performance, low heat and impressive light output.

Alongside the two white light engines on the stand, the full-colour, high pow

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Case Study: Hans Zimmer Live

When award winning film composer Hans Zimmer brought his smash-hit tour Hans Zimmer Live to North America fall 2024, the show's audio team sought out to bring infrafrequency bass to the show to add new depth to the show's audio experience. The team chose Danley Sound Labs.

UK - For the NHS Confederation event in June, The ACC Liverpool team provided full production services for the second year running, and this year also provided AV for the conference dinner which took place off site at St George's Hall, Liverpool city centre.

The production needed to be delivered to a set budget, be innovative, colourful, reflect the branding identity and develop from the previous year.

Requirements included live streaming, interactive voting and the recording of all plenary sessions which were then to be made available for post conference viewing.

The annual conference and exhibition is one of the most high profile healthcare gatherings in the UK, bringing together senior leaders from across the whole of the health and social care system.

The team devised its Bring Your Own Device system for interactive voting. Innovative interactive online platforms were

USA - Originally built in 1960 and now owned by the Tenaglia family, the Jolly Roger Motel is a New Jersey beach icon that has maintained its nostalgic character while upgrading its facilities, opening a pool-side restaurant and adding a modern audio system with Community loudspeakers.

The motel's previous audio system had poor coverage and music quality and had deteriorated from years of exposure to the New Jersey shore's winter weather. Its new audio system improves both music quality and coverage and uses Community loudspeakers designed to perform in extreme weather conditions.

Moyer Electronics of Pottsville, PA, designed and installed the new system beginning with four Community R.15 COAX loudspeakers to cover the pool. Paul Moyer of Moyer Electronics explains, "By placing all four of the R.15 loudspeakers on one side of the pool, we were able to get very good covera

Romania - More than 70 high power discharge and LED fixtures from PR Lighting were on duty when Beth Hart's Better Than Home European tour arrived in Bucharest recently.

The Los Angeles-based singer songwriter appeared at the Palace Hall - before an audience of 3,000 and performing under a lighting rig dominated by PR Lighting pieces.

These were provided to lighting designer Cristian Simon by Romanian distributors (and event specialists) Temple Media - part of an impressive concert spec sound and lighting package.

Simon, who has worked with PR Lighting fixtures at many high profile performances in the past, chose 20 fully featured XR 200 Beams, with the impressive 189W Philips MSD Platinum 5R lamp), 10 XLED 1061, housing an incredible 61 4-in-1 bright linear colour mix LEDs, 20 high output XR 230 Spots, with their variable linear zoom, and 24 ultra compact XLED 2007 B

UK - Lifting equipment specialists Hoist UK & sister company Truss UK have recently moved to bigger premises, significantly increasing the size of their previous facilities. The new offices, workshop and warehouse are still based on the Wirral peninsula and are ideally located in the heart of the UK motorway network.

The move reflects the growth and success of both companies over the last year which has seen an expansion in the company, the product range and business generally which meant that they outgrew their previous site. The new workspace boasts a 10,000sq.ft building, along with extensive yard space.

Tony Dickson, director of Hoist UK & Truss UK comments, "Our new Moreton facility consists of ample office space for an ever growing sales / admin team, substantial customer meeting areas, plus extensive warehousing with a lifting equipment testing bay, that should sup

Austria - Engineering company, AV Stumpfl has expanded its presence in creating an extensive visual systems product and service offering to its extensive international client base.

In speaking about the expansion, Tobias Stumpfl, CEO at AV Stumpfl GmbH says, "Over the past few years, we've established ourselves with a solid foundation in creating a wide range of robust projection screens, in-house warp, blend and auto calibration technologies and projectors. With a reputation for excellence in engineering, our systems are backed by an experienced team of visual display professionals with direct experience in the simulation and training sector ranging from civil aviation to aerospace, education, military, security and operations."

All products are custom engineered for their intended application and manufactured in Austria.

All screens are custom made to measure in

UK - Specialists in the hire of giant video screen technology for events, broadcast, TV and entertainment industries, Cheshire, UK-based Euroscreens Ltd has taken delivery of Calibre LEDView530 Universal rental, staging and events switcher-scalers for its complete turnkey production solutions.

The LEDView530 performs screen processing for high-profile projects that Euroscreens works on. As an all-in-one solution, the LEDView530 has optimal operating modes and can be used on either LED video walls, projection or for scan conversion.

Euroscreens has deployed LEDView530 in a number of different scenarios, from edge-blending of projectors at corporate conferences to LED screen processing for live broadcast events.

Most recently the LEDView530's were used to process LED screen content for Matchroom Sports Boxing, shown live on Sky Sports HD. For this event 4 LED screens that were

UK - A wide array of Clay Paky fixtures was spread over numerous stages at one of UK's biggest dance festivals, Parklife in Manchester, with several of the major acts' lighting designers 'very happy' to discover them in the rig.

Event production house Audile supplied 12 Mythos, 16 Stormy CC strobes, 96 Sharpys, 12 Alpha Spot HPE 700 and eight Alpha Beam 700 fixtures to the event, which takes place in Manchester's 600-acre Heaton Park.

The fixtures were rigged on The Temple outdoor stage and several of the Big Top arenas; lighting artists such as hip hop giant Nas and Brit and NME 2015 award-winner FKA Twigs.

"As so many lighting designers are familiar with Clay Paky fixtures they were very happy to find them in the rig as they knew they'd be able to achieve the looks they wanted," says Rob Leach, director of Audile. "The Mythos was extremely popular on accoun

Denmark - Lighting designer, Kasper Lange, chose to work with Ayrton MagicBlade-R fixtures for the current Dizzy Mizz Lizzy tour of Denmark which kicked off with six shows in April and May and continues to take in the majority of this summer's festivals. The vintage alternative rock band started life in 1988 and found huge success in Denmark and Japan.

Lange, amongst whose credits is the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen in 2014, specified 65 MagicBlade-R units which were supplied by Ayrton's Danish distributor, Bico Professionel A/S, to LiteCom A/S, the contracted supplier of lighting and video for this revival tour.

Kasper Lange explained why he chose to use the MagicBlade fixtures. "I have been following Ayrton for some years, as they are a company that always seem to make innovative and interesting lighting products, with a design factor that really makes them sta

Finland - Valokaivo, a difficult-to-translate Finnish word for 'Light Well', is also the name of an interactive light installation located in the central market square of the Finnish town, Lahti. Valokaivo is essentially an array of skyward-facing lights, illuminating when passersby step on different sections of the protective glass panel. Such an interactive installation required the participation of several specialty organizations and components from high-quality manufacturers, including Martin Professional lighting elements.

The installation was designed by Studio Lux Nova and Marjut Kauppinen. Studiotec supplied the Martin VC-Dots for the media surface and the reActor Media server. The Invisible developed the interactive digital content and installed the IP camera motion tracking.

After developing the initial design, Marjut Kauppinen and Studio Lux Nova brought in Studiote

South Africa - Blood Brothers, South Africa's first supergroup, is a project featuring 10 of the country's best known musicians and rock heroes, who recently played a special one-off concert to a hugely enthusiastic 3500 capacity audience at Johannesburg's Carnival City Big Top venue.

Lighting - almost entirely Robe, a mix of Pointes, MMX Spots, LEDWash 600s and 300s, LEDBeam 100s and PARFect 100s - was designed and operated by Magz Schoeman, head of lighting at the busy venue.

Magz was very excited when the opportunity arose to light such a high profile event, and put substantial energy and detail into designing the rig for the occasion.

A pre-production meeting revealed who was in the band. Magz had already worked with some of the individual bands involved, and learned that the set would be three hours long and be a mix of the greatest and best loved hits of the key bands

UK - Every year Newham Council hosts Under the Stars; a free, four day music festival for those living in the borough of Newham, with the aim of bringing the community together. This year it took place on 13-16 August at Central Park, East Ham and featured a wide range of artists. Following White Light's work with Newham Council last month on The Mayor's Newham Show, the complete production solution specialist was once again on hand to provide all of the lighting and rigging support for this occasion.

Now in its 16th year, this year's Under the Stars was the biggest one yet. The line-up featured chart-toppers Maxi Priest, Aswad and Hot Chocolate along with children from Newham's Every Child a Musician programme who took to the stage to entertain the crowd. There was also a performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who performed a classical music set. Over 60,000 attended t

UK - West Midlands based technical production and solutions specialist Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) has made its first purchases in a major new round of investment in Panasonic laser projectors.

A fleet of 24 new projectors will comprise 12 each of two models, the PT-RZ670 single chip 6500 lumen and the PT-RZ 12K 3-chip 12000 lumen machines.

"The idea is to replace the older stock of conventional bulb-lightsource Panasonic projectors completely," explains CPL MD Matthew Boyse.

"We need to keep constantly moving with the technology alongside offering our clients the best and most appropriate options for all of their projects" continues Max, highlighting the fact that the new machines also draw less power and are essentially more eco-friendly.

As most events are now under pressure to prove - and improve - their carbon footprints, this is set to become

UK - Lights, Camera, Action has announced the appointment of Spencer Newbury as international business development manager.

Spencer joins the team bringing a wealth of knowledge of the film, TV and broadcast industry and will help to develop international markets covering Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Working as a lighting technician for 25 years, Spencer has travelled globally advising on his specialty, lighting car commercials for advertising in studio or location. In the last seven years, he developed business for Litepanels in the EMEA and APAC Regions.

Nick Shapley, managing director commented, "Spencer is a well respected figure and we're excited he has decided to join our team. With his extensive knowledge of international markets we're looking forward to building up our current customer base and bring the many brands and products we represent to th

USA - Intensity is the name of the game at American Ninja Warriors. More of an athletic event than a reality show, the popular NBC programme, which is perennially number one in its time slot, treats its 6m viewers to a breathtaking display of physical power, quickness and dexterity. Lighting director Edward Motts brought forth similar qualities in the searing lightshow he created for the 2015 edition of the program, using Next NXT-1 and Nexus LED fixtures from CHAUVET Professional provided by Aspect Lighting.

Taking place at the USS Iowa battleship museum as a salute to the armed forces, the summer 2015 American Ninja Warriors set featured a daunting obstacle course made of gleaming aluminium truss. Accenting the imposing image of the course were a collection of Nexus 4x4 LED panels and Nexus 4x1 LED strips.

Motts positioned two rows of four Nexus 4x4 panels acro

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