Business

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14 March 2016

The League of Independent Producers will lobby and negotiate on behalf of its members with other trade bodies or with theatre owners directly, with the stated aim of "improving the lot of the independent producer". The body, which is in the process of being constituted and registered, has grown out of a more informal group - the Society of London Theatre's independent producers forum.

Greg Ripley-Duggan, one of the founding board members of LIP and its acting chair, told The Stage "It was suggested to me that we should revitalise that now defunct body. In response to that, I sent a round-robin email

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14 March 2016

The Prague-based company recently relocated to a new, 3,000sq.m warehouse with a private rehearsal studio including four production offices, two dressing rooms with showers and its own cafeteria.

"T Servis required more K1 inventory to supply its growing international clientele throughout Central and Eastern Europe," explains the company's managing director, Radim Janousek.

With more than 350 L-Acoustics boxes now in its rental stock, T Servis is looking forward to a busy summer season with tours including Sting and Metallica, as well as popular open air festivals such as Frequency and Nova Rock.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Dating back to the 1920s, the building was created as a memorial to a fallen soldier in the First World War, complete with turrets and ramparts. Despite being a landmark in the town, it stood empty for five years until James Smith, Paul Clarke and David Ward moved in to transform it into Borjia.

The bar has a capacity of about 140 but this is set to increase to 200 after some extra building works. Open from midday, it operates until 3am on the weekends, and with a strict over-25s policy, it is attracting an upmarket crowd.

Northampton-based installation company Fabtronic has designed and supplied a Nexo house PA for Borjia, using four PS10-R2s and two RS15 subs, powered by NXAMPS4x4. Proje

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14 March 2016

A variety of entertainment was on offer during the day, from a street theatre group featuring a giant inflatable lobster to the City of Bradford Brass Band, the award-winning Bradford-based Mind The Gap theatre company, the Q Corporation exploring the British obsession with queuing, 15ft tall Liver Birds, illuminated stilt walkers and talking post boxes. Musically-inspired performances included a human juke box, a giant opera singer with a hidden orchestra, a five-piece calypso group and a host of local

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14 March 2016

There were performances from nearly 60 bands over the course of the week-long festival, including emerging talent Django Django, fiN, Maverick Sabre, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Jonquil, Ben Howard, Slow Club, Twin Atlantic, D/R/U/G/S, Skindred, and Clock Opera.

"I ran the desk in a very analogue way, all inputs on the left banks, and master section on the right and some v

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14 March 2016

In doing so, the company was renewing its penchant for working with some of the funniest people on the planet!

The tour already had a lighting design in place and a spec to which Adlib worked. Based on four trusses, the front one was in the 'advanced' position, around 30ft out from the front of stage. This was rigged with eight Martin Professional MAC 700 Wash moving lights, four ETC Source Four Profiles with 19 degree lenses and seven 4-way linear Moles for audience illumination.

Above the middle section of the stage was a 56ft wide truss that provided mid-stage lighting positions for 12 MAC 700 Profiles and a 24ft wide by 18ft high projection screen flown at 8ft off the ground, complete with bla

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14 March 2016

Held at the Hilton Ballroom on 21 April 2012, Volvo management along with some of their biggest clients gathered to say good-bye to Anders Lindblad, who plans to relocate back to Sweden. The occasion included performances by Fever Trio, the Volvo Star for Life choir (Star for life is a non-profit Swedish school created in South Africa), and a surprise act by Swedish band Tripple & Touch, who have performed with the Star for Life Choir on several occasions - just in from Sweden that night.

The original spec included 12 LED PARcans, Source Fours, MAC 250 Entours and Prolyte Trussing. However, when MJ's de

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14 March 2016

Owner Mr. Kokanovic was already a well-known jazz promoter in Zagreb when he gave first thought to opening a permanent jazz venue. At the time he called upon Miro Vidovic from Morris Studio to act as an independent technical consultant. "After some preliminary proposals he approached us to bid," said Tomislav Ko

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14 March 2016

Moores continues, "We buy Christie because of the people we deal with there. The product is stunning but the relationship we have with them is the most important thing. The Technical support from Christie is very helpful and you can speak to someone in depth. They're always very quick to resolve issues when they do occur and Christie is a very good product. I would say it's one of the best.

"We opted for the J Series as it is packed with features, so

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14 March 2016

GDS distributor for Norway, Elektrik Solutions was approached by the technical team at Olavshallen to supply replacement fittings for the venues ageing auditorium lighting system. The brief was to supply a reliable, sustainable product that could be easily installed between performances, so as not to disrupt its busy performance schedule. The existing fittings were downlights and used standard 100W lamps which were proving inefficient and becoming increasingly hard to source. Petter Nilssen Sales Manager for Elektrik was consulted by the venue and recommended the GDS ArcSystem 1Cell Pro adjustable fi

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14 March 2016

After the successful training sessions organised in conjunction with Green Hippo at Theatre Basel in the autumn of 2011, IQunlimited scheduled another two-day training seminar for an extended range of clients.

The training took place Tuesday and Wednesday 13 & 14 March in a Cultural and Community Centre close to Zurich with invitations going to IQunlimited's customers as well as potential clients.

With attendees ranging from various fields including rental companies, theatres and operas, TV/Broadcast, cultural centres, concert halls as well as freelance designers and operators, IQunlimited managed to reach a wide range of market sectors, increasing Hippotizers profile even further in Switzerland.

Once again the seminars were held by Green Hipp

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14 March 2016

As part of the festivities the city produced a spectacular opening ceremony, Path of Pearls, which was packed with magical imagery and effects. Responsible for the stage and lighting concept was Belgian Lighting designer from Painting with Light, Luc Peumans, who employed 170 Clay Paky fixtures to light the vast tiered stage, full sized orchestra, aerialists and dancers.

Long-term Clay Paky stockist, Eclipse Staging Services supplied local Bahrain Company, AVL Concepts, with Clay Paky Alpha HPE 1500, Beam 1500, Wash 1500 and Profile 1500 along with a large number of Sharpy fixtures.

Darren, general manager for Eclipse, comments, "One of the fields in which Luc Peumans and his company Painting with Light excels is in utilising the latest tech

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14 March 2016

Canford will retain and develop the core ranges and will maintain continuity with existing ES customers and markets whilst expanding the brand's reach further into the broadcast and installer sectors. Chas Luchford, ES's sales manager is moving over to join Canford and will retain the ES portfolio ensuring complete

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14 March 2016

Martin Audio is an affiliated portfolio company of Sun European Partners, LLP ("Sun European Partners"), the European advisor to Sun Capital Partners, Inc. This is one of a number of deals completed by Centric with private equity houses in the first quarter of 2012, the company says.

Tim Hawkins, commercial director at Centric, comments: "As the popularity of ABL [asset based lending] grows and proves itself to be a flexible alternative to traditional bank overdrafts, we're increasingly working with private equity houses. Thanks to its superior products and established position, Martin Audio is an ideal candidate for the type of fundi

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14 March 2016

As the only annual event of its size that is dedicated solely to the global rigging community, it attracts professionals from over 30 countries. Out of around 200 delegates, over 40% are international visitors. These include not only rigging practitioners themselves, but venue technical staff, production managers, health and safety staff and policy makers, providing an exclusive platform to examine and debate the use of newly devised products, in

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14 March 2016

An element of the live tour performances well suited for a blacklight, are the glowing wristbands - called Xylobands - that concertgoers receive before the show. The bands glow once the music begins - due to the imbedded data receivers - making the audience part of the overall visual experience of the show. This sea of glowing lights surrounds the energetic stage design of neon colors complemented by Chauvet DJ LED Shadow.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

"The MSL-3s had served us well since the mid-80s," says Larry Bryan, TPAC's chief audio engineer. "But we were ready to step into the 21st century with the latest Meyer Sound line array technology."

As typically deployed, the system comprises left and right flown arrays of 16 M'elodie loudspeakers each, plus six deck-stacked 700-HP subwoofers, eight MINA line array loudspeakers spaced across the stage lip as front-fill, and a Galileo loudspeaker management system with a Galileo 616 processor for drive processing. The system was provided by Blackhawk Audio of nearby White

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14 March 2016

The 54th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were held at the Crown Entertainment Complex in Melbourne, and was televised Australia wide on the Nine Network.

Performers at the event included British-Irish boy band One Direction, Flo Rida, Tony Bennett and the The Voice mentors, Seal and Delta Goodrem.

Showtech Australia provided all the rigging services for the broadcast and had the opportunity to use its BT280, BT200 winches and Nomad Control Consol that set a new benchmark for scenery mechanics at the Logies.

With six winches in total, four BT280 and two BT200 the set design called for six panels on three tracks to move throughout the evening to create many different looks for different segments of the production. 4 900 Kg LED video wall panels and 2

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14 March 2016

"MGC Lighting Group better reflects the market areas we operate in and reinforces that we are the lighting distributor of choice for our customers," said managing director James Greig. "We have worked hard over the last 30 years to establish a good reputation. Although the old name has served us well, we needed a facelift to reflect that we are a large, modern company with global coverage, a loyal customer base, and a team that possess technical knowledge that is second to none in our industry."

MGC Lighting Group was conceived after a six-month process that involved the whole team working at its three offices in the UK, Germany and Spain. Workshops were hel

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14 March 2016

To create that atmosphere, OTG depends heavily on custom music programming and Audica Professional MICRO series audio systems provided by NYC's EL Media Group. "Airports aren't known for good sound," says EL's chief creative officer, Ernie Lake, "but it's not just about the food for OTG. They're very in tune to music, so we have to have incredible programming and incredible sound."

Featuring Class D amplifiers and onboard EQ, Audica's MICROzone controller/amp and MICROplus 4-channel power amp combination are compact enough to fit into a small cabinet at e

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14 March 2016

Distributed in the UK by Pixels, seven BrightSign media players were used at the opening of Infiniti's new showroom in Stockport in late 2011. The event was devised and managed by London-based Oil Productions, with the technical aspects managed by The Big Idea and installed by Entserv Audio Visual.

"We had used the BrightSign players on the Doctor Who Experience. They were extremely reliable, gave fantastic resolution and were able to be synchronised accurately

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14 March 2016

Ajax formerly had a 'museum' in its stadium some distance from central Amsterdam. The new visitors' centre is within walking distance of popular areas of the city and easily accessible via public transport to team supporters and tourists alike.

The highlights of the Ajax Experience are the interactive exhibits, which give visitors an opportunity to experience what it's like to be an Ajax player. The exhibits include T.I.P.S, which emphasises Technique, Insight, Personality and Speed; and a series of virtual exhibits where visitors take the place of players in the locker room, players' tunnel and stadium.

T.I.P.S. Techni

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14 March 2016

The awards ceremony was held this year at London's Royal Opera House, with the lighting designed once again by Ben Cracknell.

"It actually feels a bit like the perfect gig for us," comments White Light's managing director Bryan Raven. "It celebrates theatre, with which we have a long historic involvement - many of the shows nominated this year use lighting rigs supplied by us - and yet it's staged as a giant event, like the many other corporate and live event productions we are now involved with. It also uses the full range of equipment we offer - everything from LED moving lights to the good old-fashioned PAR can!"

White Light supplied the

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14 March 2016

According to Ken Johnsen, international training manager at The AVC Group, the tour gave distributors the opportunity to engage in brand specific training on the ELAN, Niles, Xantech, Sunfire and ATON brands. The tour is part of a new programme rolled out at ISE 2012.

"We were able to extend the success of our European Training Tour with this three-city tour of China and Thailand, training hundreds of our Asian partners on every aspect of each brand's product line in a comprehensive three-day programme in each city," Johnsen said.

The focus of The AVC Group's international education effort, Johnsen said, is to 'train the trainers' to be complete experts in all of the five brands' pro