"Nobody's trying to pretend that it's 1976 again," says front of house engineer Andy May, owner of one of the very first Yamaha PM5D digital consoles to roll off the production line. "But these shows are for the 'hardcore' fans, so we have tried to put on a good, old-fashioned rock'n'roll show."
He and lighting designer Pat Marks have succeeded admirably in t
Campus Westend of the Goethe University Frankfurt nestles in a burst of parkland, yet directly borders Frankfurt's downtown, boasting a wealth of eateries, shops, theatres and other recreational facilities. The buildings of Campus Westend are based around the Neo-Realist IG Farben Building , while immediately beyond the campus boundaries you can find splendid art deco residences and cutting-edge modernist architecture.
The House of Finance building is part of a gigantic investment by the State of Hesse to build a new site for the Goethe University. The House of Finance is encompassing 14,000
This was the third year running that the SW19 team had worked with EMI on the party, which welcomed a host of industry figures and artists aboard after the spectacular BRIT Awards Ceremony to celebrate another successful year for EMI's roster of artists, which includes Emeli Sande, Coldplay, Bastille and Noel Gallagher, who were all in attendance.
SW19 worked with EMI's Deby Bunyard and Caroline Hilton to realise their vision for a chic club / bar vibe, elegantly lit and with a distributed zoned audio system throughout the boat.
DJ David Rodigan set the scene for the party with Fabio Lendrum taking over later in the evening.
The boat
R20 is a non-profit environmental organisation founded by former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the support of the United Nations. A coalition of sub-national governments, private companies, international organisations, NGOs and academic and financial institutions, R20 supports governments building a green economy.
The two day conference gathered nearly 600 participants, and was hosted by Schwarzenegger. Local broadcast company, RadioMax, led by production manager, Martin Jeschke, was appointed to manage all technical aspects, and freelancer, Andreas Putz, was appointed chief audio engineer.
Based in Austria, Putz specialises in live sound engineering for music and corporate events and also specialises in multimedia AV desig
Nashville-based consultant Steve Durr was called in to recommend a sound system whose sonic quality would keep it competitive with the city's many other music venues, while at the same time keeping the sound highly controlled and away from reflective surfaces, and keeping the energy channelled within the venue and away from neighbouring residences.
Th
Winter Jam serves up a wide range of music styles-from the dub step of the Capital Kings to the acoustic pop of Jamie Grace, the guitar rock of Red and the rap of headliner TobyMac.
"It's a challenge for the PA because you can't simply tune it for a certain style," says Jerry Holcomb, production manager and one of the FOH engineers on the tour. "Fortunately, the Meyer system shines on all of them. It's a very musical PA at any level. It doesn't have to be loud. The lighter bands early on all sound great, and by the time TobyMac comes on it's still very high fidelity-only much lo
Offsite, he lit a variety of leading shows including Vivien Westwood, L'Wren Scott, Rocksander, Mark Fast, Kinder Aggugini and Pringle.
It's the seventh season that Gray has lit the BFC space, featuring up to five or six shows per day for a plethora of leading designers including Marios Schwab, Issa, Emilio de la Morena, Bora Aksu, Jasper Conran and numerous others.
Working for show producers Bacchus, Gray's lighting design featured a three truss format overhead - centre and two sides - running the full 25m of the catwalk.
The set this year featured a wider entranceway for the models and an elegant chevron-shaped wood / black carpet runway, all of which r
The singer opened the show accompanied by his marching band of female dancers to perform his new single. As he entered onto the stage, the set was flanked either side by four of the dancers, who marched and danced up and down two 10' long travelators below that constantly moved throughout the song. Their fluid movement was mirrored by the ice-skating contestants who took it I turns to make their entrance onto the rink, all choreographed by Nathan Clarke.
Creative director for Olly Murs and staging producer for Dancing on Ice, Dan Shipton, wanted to add an exciting effect that hadn't been seen on the show before. He said: "Initially I was worried that there wouldn't be a company out there who could provid
You could be the first worldwide to get your hands on Martin Professional's new range of affordable effect lights - RUSH by Martin.
Martin will be giving away some of the very first RUSH effect lights to a few lucky winners via a competition at the upcoming Prolight + Sound exhibition in Frankfurt, 10-13 April, Stand A93, Hall 9.
All visitors need to do is get a RUSH badge from the RUSH area of the Martin stand and wear it around the trade show floor. One lucky participant will be stopped and announced as the winner each day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Martin is also offering RUSH fans a chance at design stardom. Send Martin a unique design for a new RUSH t-shirt and if your design is a winner, Martin will splash it on a t-shirt for the world to se
Don McConnell, head of product, for the Hills SVL Group, commented, "We're delighted to be involved with such a respected and innovative company. The timing of the agreement is perfect with new products including ARCS WIDE, ARCS Focus and ARCS II sure to create a lot of interest. This along with respected line source products such as Kiva, Kara and Kudo, and the coaxial range, provides us with a wide yet complementary product offering. We're looking forward to introducing the full range of products to our customers. We know they'll be impressed."
Tim McCall, sales m
GAM has provided high quality lighting products to the theatre and film community for more than 35 years, and Rosco says it will continue to market and promote them worldwide through its extensive global distribution network. "For existing and loyal GAM customers, it will be business as usual with GAM's entire catalog of products available through Rosco. But we're especially looking forward to leveraging our world class dealer network to expose these excellent products to new clientele," said Mark Engel, CEO of Rosco.
GAM w
As one of the world's most-watched live music productions, attracting in excess of 100m television viewers each year, the Eurovision Song Contest has become a major annual showcase for the technologies at the cutting edge of the show production industry.
This year's Eurovision Song Contest, produced by the European Broadcast Union (EBU) and SVT, the national broadcaster of last year's winning nation, Sweden, will be preceded by PLASA Focus: Backstage Malmö - an opportunity for industry professionals to take a first-hand look at these technologies in context.
The event will include a series of excl
"The Equipment Suspension training was a great success at The Hawth and everyone found it relevant and useful to our venue," commented Quentin Whitaker, The Hawth, Crawley.
Other training topics include courses and workshops on maintenance and troubleshooting with intelligent lighting. Health & Safety and manual handling training in the entertainment environment, as well as pyrotechnics safety awareness; all designed for individuals who are responsible for health & safety at their venue or an event, freelancers and technicians who want to burden their skill set.
The tour is using 12 K10 and 36 K5 fixtures as part of its "big, powerful rock 'n roll rig," says lighting designer Justin Kitchenman of Fadeup Design Group. He was introduced to the A.LEDA Series at LDI 2012 where he was "looking for the next generation moving light." After seeing the A.LEDA fixtures, "We feel we found the best the industry has to offer," he says.
The A.LEDA Series is the first professional Clay Paky product line to use LEDs as light sources. An alternative to discharge lamp wash lights, it offers all the benefits of LED technology: low energy consumption,
"My entire rig comprised Clay Paky fixtures," says El Hariry, "The Sharpys performed brilliantly. The strong beam they deliver give a really contemporary feel to the show. Also, by playing around with the prism, we created a variety of very distinctive looks for Amr."
Clay Paky distributor for Egypt, Cairo-based Audio Technology, which is well respected for its service and product knowledge in the Egyptian market, supplied the Sharpys. Audio Technology managing director, Emad Adly comments, "At just 189W t
This allowed a conference and awards event to be staged in-the-round; ensured that all delegates in the room had a clear view of the proceedings with the installation of 16 plasma screens in strategic positions ... and maximised the very low and idiosyncratically shaped headroom of the space.
dbn's project manager was Nick Todd and the company was working for event producers, WRG.
The Pavilion Suite is a long rectangular room with a very low ceiling height of just under three metres down each side but up to five metres in the middle.
In addition to making this full ceiling area into usable space ... the other big challenge was a
The Fader Fort presented by Converse and powered by Dell, has the reputation of being the spot to see live music during SXSW. This year it brought together a mix of today's most innovative and emerging artists as well as many notables including.
"We wer
The Academy draws upon the insight gained through its links to the production rehearsal studio and set construction operation LS-Live, to promote the teaching of current working practices, methods and technologies in the entertainment industry.
The month-long Live Sound module on the Academy's Foundation Degree in Live Events Production (validated by The University of Bolton) was delivered by audio engineer, author and writer Dave Swallow, who held training sessions on The Science of Sound, Digital Sound, EQ, Dynamics, FX Live Sound mixing, and by Nigel Pease of Selva Sound who delivered Pro Tools 101 training.
The module featured training sessions by Fu
The brief from Griffiths, who has driven the project from its inception, was quite clear. He felt that rugby fans deserved better audio than that delivered by the often aging systems seen in many rugby grounds. His view was that expectations are higher now than they used to be thanks to the influx of technology into peoples' homes and better, more sophisticated systems in most music venues. He wanted to be able to offer
As always, noted production designer and artistic director Demfis Fyssicopulos took an innovative and forward thinking approach to his design philosophy for the tour, which entailed utilising the grandMA2 full-size. "It's the most advanced control surface in the market," he says. "In addition to the lighting for the show, a plethora of media servers and custom Control Freak System solutions are all controlled from the grandMA2 full-size. Centralised control ensures coherence and a show that looks well put together."
On the video side of the tour the grandMA2 full-size cont
"The Open Day went really well," said Black Light's Head of Company Development, Phil Haldane. "We got more people through the door than ever before, had an excellent range of exhibitors, met lots of old friends and said hello to many new faces."
The Open Day was an opportunity for lighting, sound and stage professionals from across Scotland to meet with product manufacturers. Among the innovative new products on demonstration were the ilumo range of LED Spots (which are designed and manufactured in the UK by Lumonic Ltd). Among the companies that exhibited were Av
ALD chairman Peter Mumford said, "We had a clear mandate from the members at the last AGM to get on with developing the ALD through expanding and advising the professional membership, and promoting the art of lighting design more widely. The Executive came up with several key initiatives, which included marketing ourselves better, more help for recently graduated designers- we call them 'emerging LDs' - and increased levels of support for professionals working in lighting. It was obvious that we needed someone working full-time on this project, in an office that would be available to a la
Conceived and produced by Moment Factory of Montreal, with content by Hubert Gagnon of Blackout Design, the fun. set was designed and built by Quebec-based Teksho. Featuring illuminated spheres rising from the stage floor like gigantic champagne bubbles in slow motion, the number climaxed with an actual on-stage rainstorm. LEDs inside each of the orbs were controlled by a grandMA2 at FOH, driving an NPU backstage, sending DMX to the LumenRadio Flex Transmitter. The Flex Transmitter sent wireless DMX to each of the frosted-white spheres, with continual control feedback of the entire wireless system.
"Our team imagined a story line for the
Not only does this reduce the size of the rig needed, it also introduces many less obvious advantages. It opens up the opportunity to use a huge array of plug-ins, offers large channel counts without taking up any more space in the auditorium and offers higher resolution DSP than is generally available with a conventional live mixing console.
The concert in mid-February that gave the opportunity to put theory into practice featured the renowned Frenc
