South Africa - KKNK (Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees) is a festival to which families travel from all over the country to enjoy the music, drama, works of art and food and a place where the crew work hard and ‘kuier lekker’ (socialise).
While part of the magic is the spectacular setting - the blue-skied town of Oudtshoorn located in the Klein Karoo between the Swartberg and Outeniqua mountains - a drawing card is the camaraderie amongst the technical team who work under the helm of Pieter Jan-Kapp. The festival is also a welcome injection to the economy of Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital of the world and home to the Cango Caves.
This year’s festival took place at the start of April with Blond Productions once again appointed as the main technical supplier for most of the theatre venues, Multi-Media taking care of the main theatre (The Burgersentrum), and Nation

Liechtenstein - The Neutrik Group has introduced a range of products, from its Contrik brand of portable power distribution systems, especially designed for deployment in harsh all-weather application environments.
The range of Xtreme Outdoor (XO) / Active designated products includes Power Container, Power Rack and Power Turtle systems. Designed and precision manufactured, using high quality electrical and electronic components, in the EU, they are intended for mobile entertainment production applications, including video walls, stage lighting and audio installations.
The XO designation denotes the extensive environmental protection features, additional to Contrik’s usual certification standards, guaranteeing high levels of mechanical (IK) and environmental (IP) protection. These include enhanced protective housings and self-closing caps. Protection up to the IP65

France - The Séries Mania Festival in Lille created a global buzz a few years ago when it hosted the world premiere of the Netflix series The Rain. None of the 32 premieres showcased at the four-day festival this year had rain in their titles, but there was plenty of precipitation outside.
The inclement weather did nothing, however, to dampen the excitement at an event that Variety magazine has hailed as ‘Europe’s Premier TV Festival’. Nor did it interfere with the bright and colourful lighting that enhanced the upbeat mood at the gala and conference, which drew TV executives from 64 different countries.
Valentin Lemarquier and Freddy Ledieu, who lit the Tapis Mauve (mauve carpet) area in front of the Nouveau Siècle auditorium, where the official ceremonies and screenings took place, credits an all-weather lighting kit supplied by Public Address/S

Jordan - HoverUp, the first Drone Show Company in Jordan, in partnership with SPH Engineering, entertained audiences with drone displays during the Jordan's Royal Wedding and Independence Day celebration. Utilising a fleet of 400 drones, HoverUp set the record for the highest number of drone light shows conducted per day, captivating audiences with 2-3 shows each day.
The Abdali Drone Show, held in celebration of Jordan's Royal Wedding and Independence Day, showcased a display of synchronised movements and intricate formations. Expert drone pilots choreographed the performances using the advanced Drone Show Technology from SPH Engineering.
One of the show's standout moments was a mid-air formation representing Jordan's 77th Independence Day, the Royal Crown, Flag of Jordan, and the initials of the Crown Prince and Princess Rajwa.
"The Abdali Drone Show surpasse

Greece - ETC’s automated luminaires and entertainment fixtures have been selected by rental company Papadimas AVL S.M.P.C for TV shows The Voice and Just the 2 of Us, as well as a recent production of the hit musical Phantom of the Opera in Athens, and Thessaloniki.
Almost 200 High End Systems moving lights feature across the productions, including Lonestar, SolaPix, SolaFrame and SolaSpot automated luminaires.
ETC’s affordable Lonestar fixtures took their Greek TV debut on talent show Just the 2 of Us, bringing their professional feature set, and quality output all wrapped up in a small package. They joined over a hundred other High End Systems moving lights as well as 50 Source Four LED Series 3 Daylight HDR profiles, all controlled by a mix of Hog 4 and Eos consoles. Series 3 continues to wow on-camera around the world, with its pat

Spain - Maxi Gilbert says that he draws inspiration for his designs from opera sets. At first that may seem a bit surprising, since the Madrid-based designer has created lightshows for stars like multi-Grammy winner Alejandro Sanz, and chart-topping Manuel Carrasco. But anyone who sees his work on Carrasco’s current Corazón y Flecha tour will readily appreciate the connection.
Like opera itself, Gilbert’s design for the 30-city Spanish tour is bold, ambitious, and full of life. With its massive centre stage video wall and giant inflatable heart pierced by an arrow (16m wide for most of the tour), and 272 custom-made neon flex lights, the design, which was done with visual director Susana Martinez Allende, creates an immediate, and dramatic impression.
This sensation is accentuated by the light from 282 other lighting fixtures, projecting a vivid array of colours,

USA - The live finals of American Idol 2023 moved to a new venue - Red Studios Hollywood - giving lighting designer Tom Sutherland of DX7 design and production designer Florian Wieder the chance to create a fresh and new look in this special space, which has embraced history and innovation in film and TV production since the early 20th century.
Tom included plenty of Robe moving lights on his lighting plot, including 137 MegaPointes, about which he states, “I would not do a show without MegaPointes.”
These were joined by 104 Robe Tetra2 moving LED battens. He also used 49 Spiider LED wash beams, together with BMFL Blade Follow Spots.
The new set was one starting point for his lighting design concept. Elegant and modern, the performance area was a distinctive diamond shape, and the overall set incorporated a host of LED sources: screens, panelling, an

USA - LEDtronics has announced its latest series of compact and lightweight LED floodlights. High efficacy, multiple-angle mounting options, and sleek design make these light fixtures an ideal and easy installation in various applications, says the company.
The area and spot luminaires come with an adjustable U-bracket that offers a multitude of choices for angle of inclination for outdoor area lighting needs that require adjustable-angle uniform illumination, such as architectural wall washing and accents, walkways, pathways, garden or landscape lighting, amusement parks, recreation areas, illuminated signs, and emergency exit way lighting, among many others.
The LEDtronics GDL002 series flood lights are offered in a choice of two input voltages: 24VDC with 12 watts and 5000K pure white emitted colour, and a wide 100~277VAC range with either 8W/4000K natural white com

USA - City Theatrical has launched its newest addition to the QolorFLEX brand of professional LED tape, dimming control and accessories with QolorFLEX 25x3A Dimmer, which is a low voltage, constant voltage, dimmer that is designed for large installations of LED tape.
The QolorFLEX 25x3A Dimmer is the five-channel version of City Theatrical’s QolorFLEX 24x3A Dimmer for users who seek high-capacity dimmers to use for installations of 5-in-1 LED tapes, including QolorFLEX 5-in-1 LED Tape, HiQ High CRI for film and video, rather than LED tapes with four or fewer channels.
The QolorFLEX 25x3A Dimmer features 25 channels of control and can accommodate five-channel LED tapes easily, creating efficiencies when it comes to installation time and wiring. The QolorFLEX 25x3A Dimmer is fully DMX and RDM compatible and offers standalone functions.
The QolorFLEX 25x3A Dimme

Europe - Metallica launched their M72 World Tour on 27 April in Amsterdam with Rob Koenig again at the helm as lighting designer, an outing that has the thrash rockers playing a two-night, no-repeat schedule in cities across Europe and North America. Koenig crafts customised lighting looks using 600+ automated lights, a rig that includes Proteus Excalibur sky beams from Elation Professional. Lighting supply is by Premier Global Production.
Koenig has been part of the Metallica family since 2008. He started as lighting director under John Broderick, eventually moved into the lighting designer role and is now on his fourth record cycle with the band.
Metallica is touring in support of its eleventh studio album, 72 Seasons, which released in April. The number 72, which refers to the number of seasons in a person’s formative first 18 years of life, is a th

Egypt - Robe has appointed a new Egyptian distributor - Impact Egypte Solutions - which is headed by Jean William, a prolific lighting and show designer in his own right. The company is based in Cairo and is one of the longer established entertainment technology enterprises in the country.
Jean founded Impact Egypte 33 years ago initially as a rental and a sales business. Sales were then halted for a while as they focussed on installation projects and rentals, but recently sales have restarted to capitalise on a strong and developing market with a demand for quality equipment.
Impact Egypte Solutions also engages in a wide selection of lighting, visual and multimedia projects taking on multiple aspects including show design, installation, and operation, keeping its 40 or so full-time staff busy.
Jean has always had an eye for Robe products and has wanted to work

UK - The Robe UK team report a busy, successful, and very positive ABTT (Association of British Theatre Technicians) expo staged at Alexandra Palace in London.
The company had two exhibition areas, with a stand upstairs in the main hall and a large demo area downstairs in the Palace suite - both showcasing a range of its latest lighting technologies for theatre, performance, TV, and broadcast scenarios.
The stylish booth in the main exhibition hall featured a selection of the newest Robe, Anolis and MDG products.
A video wall at the back offered four separate brand windows / digital messaging boards snapshotting information, with two dedicated to Robe, one for Robe’s architectural lighting brand Anolis, and one for atmosphere and haze specialist MDG, which is distributed in the UK by Robe.
Selected products were also showcased on raised displays aroun

USA - By calling their facility The Venue, the United Auburn Indian Community and Thunder Valley Casino Resort left no doubt about the goal they set for this 4,500-seat indoor theatre located outside Sacramento. Their new attraction was designed to stand-out from the pack and define its own category.
Featuring shows by artists like The Eagles, Bruno Mars, Santana with Bryan Adams, The Black Crowes, and Ringo Starr, The Venue, which was built to replace the casino’s outdoor amphitheatre, offers top-flight entertainment in an engaging and supportive setting.
Contributing to the fan experience at the facility are three massive video walls made with over 550 Chauvet Professional F3X LED tiles supplied and installed by CTM Sound of Sacramento, which has worked with the casino since 2010.
CTM used 255 of the 3.9mm high-res panels to create an impressive 50ft wide cen

USA - Matt Dean has rejoined Bandit Lites as its newest project manager. As a member of the Nashville production office, Dean will oversee the planning, directing and coordination of his designated tours and events.
Dean got his start in the lighting industry in 2007 at Bandit Lites and has since worked in various roles across the lighting industry for the last 15 years, gathering experience in concert touring, integration, architectural lighting and houses of worship.
“Sometimes when people leave, you always know you’ll cross paths again,” shared Jake Tickle, Bandit Lites vice president of business and innovation. “Matt never really left our family; in fact, he and I had kept in touch during nearly every phase of his career.”

USA - Lorna Shore doesn’t hesitate to bend or break rules in order to expand their musical horizons, readily adding techno and symphonic elements to their signature metalcore sound. But when it comes to lighting, the band and their LD, Nate Haber, do have one edict that they’re pretty strict about: limit the use of front light.
“The band and I have come up with a few guidelines regarding front light,” said Haber. “In no particular order it goes something like this: the default is that they have no front light. Also, we try to keep Austin and his drum set as lit as possible. When Adam has a guitar solo he always needs light; and when Will is talking to the crowd, he needs light too. There are a few other parts in songs where I light the band because it feels right. In those cases, typically, if you can see one member of the band you can see them all, but at this poi

UK - A 500 drone show was experienced nightly by 50,000 music lovers at the Isle of Wight Festival last weekend.
US-based Skyworx Drone Shows, producer for The Global Drone Network (GDN), presented a 12-minute show at the close of each night for revellers to enjoy. References to Jimi Hendrix, the island’s heritage and the world-famous festival filled the sky on all four nights with an attention-grabbing animated display.
Skyworx and GDN were supported by UK company AeroAVA, who handled all UK regulatory permissions and flight crew for the project.
Skyworx founder and CEO, Taylor Woodall, comments: "It has been a great pleasure to create and deliver our first UK drone show at the iconic Isle of Wight Festival. We believe this is the largest drone show presented at any UK festival to date."
Reflecting on the sustainability aspects of the project, Tom Rees,

Singapore - Cinewav is looking to expand its presence in the live events, sports and broadcast sector.
The platform has already been successfully enjoyed by thousands of guests at outdoor cinema events and at festivals including Vivid Sydney 2023 where Cinewav enriched dozens of immersive, super-sized light, drone shows and animations with personalised soundtracks.
At the Danang International Fireworks Festival 2023 (DIFF2023), Cinewav synchronised the audio soundtrack with fireworks displays via mobile phones to locals and tourists across Da Nang, Vietnam’s fifth most populated city. Upcoming global projects include Drive-ins and cinematic screenings at cultural attractions, hotels and resorts.
Cinewav is a platform and mobile app that allows users to watch visuals on a big public screen and listen to the audio in perfect synchronicity on their own mobile pho

UK - The fantasy world of HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones is brought to life at Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Northern Ireland with over 1000 Elation lights supporting its epic storytelling. The new global attraction, located at one of the series’ original filming locations at Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, invites fans to step behind the scenes and discover the making of the celebrated series.
Game of Thrones achieved record-setting ratings over 73 episodes and eight seasons, and established itself as one of the most iconic shows in television history. Opened in 2022 in partnership with Warner Bros, Game of Thrones Studio Tour is a 110,000sq.ft interactive indoor experience that allows fans to explore the original sets, costumes, props and weapons used in the series.
Brian Reilly, MD of PSI Production, one of Ireland's largest technical producti

Norway - The Voice, officially distributed in 62 countries, is one of the most-watched television formats worldwide, with over 650m viewers. For the eighth season of The Voice - Norges beste stemme, TV2 Direkte studios have chosen numerous Prolights fixtures.
Prostage, the official Prolights distributor in Norway, supplied 20 Astra Wash19Pix moving heads, 40 Astra Hybrid420 hybrid moving heads, 50 LumiPar 12UQPro LED fixtures, 30 Lumipix 12QTour linear LED bars, and 20 Stark Bar1000 units.
The lighting system installation, entrusted to Center Stage and Hilux, has delivered a visual experience, illuminating the stage, backlighting the contestants during their performances, and enchanting both the live audience and the millions of viewers at home.
The lighting designer, Kasper Melgavis comments: “I worked very well with the Prolights lighting fixtu

USA - There are as many ways to tell a story as there are stories to tell. The incomparable Reba McEntire has demonstrated this with the rich and varied narratives that run through her songs. So too did Matthieu Larivée and the team at Lüz Studio when they created one of the final shows in the Queen of Country’s current tour at Madison Square Garden.
The Montreal based design and production team, which included David Rondeau, Pierre-Luc Bedard, and LD Andy Knighton, wove a textured narrative to reflect the multi-Grammy winner’s music by using a range of different techniques, most of them centred on employing lighting and set extensions as storytelling tools.
“This show is a great music show; it is not theatrical at all, so lighting is a big actor in the narrative,” said Larivée. “We wanted to create lighting moments. There’s so much history in Reba’s l

USA - While not a single moving light source could actually appear on camera, Robe BMFLs, Esprites and RoboSpots played a starring role for three different live concerts filmed for the live sections of the Amazon Prime hit Daisy Jones & The Six.
A massive effort and meticulous detail went into crafting the vintage 1970s concert looks for the series by lighting director Matt Ardine, and while the hundreds of PAR cans visible at the gigs played their part in the visuality, for practicality, the band’s key lighting was achieved using Robe innovations.
The narrative follows a fictional rock band embroiled in the thrills and spills of the LA music scene, as Daisy Jones & The Six rise rapidly from obscurity to global fame and success, quitting unexpectedly at the height of their fame.
Matt was brought onboard by the series gaffer, Nicholas Kaat, and th

UK - The high lumen output of the Vari-Lite VL3600 Profile IP from Signify was seen by millions of people for the King’s Coronation Concert, where landmarks across the UK were lit at part of the Lighting up the Nation event. Lighting designer David Bishop sourced 41 VL3600 fixtures, which were rigged outside Sheffield Town Hall in changeable weather with their IP-65 rating, to achieve the intricate Union flag design using their rich colours and optics system.
“I discovered the VL3600s at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt, getting a demo and trying out the output and colour wheel mixing system,” says Bishop. “The Sheffield project was meant to be a projection mapping job with a few luminaires around the building as fill light. However, this approach changed after I realised I could use the VL3600s even at a 66m throw from the building to both create strong enough light and

UK - In celebration of the coronation of King Charles III last month, the Palace of Westminster in London was illuminated in the colours of the Union flag - red, white, and blue. To illuminate the Gothic-style exterior facade in the national colours, lighting designer David Bishop chose a total of 74 units of Cameo Zenit W600 LED Wash Lights, supplied by Version 2 Lights.
The IP65-rated Zenit W600 fixtures were placed at the base of the building's facade over a width of more than 250m by David Bishop and gaffer Matthew Zelmanowicz, focused to uplight the historic building with a beam angle of 18°. When choosing the colours, the lighting team didn't have to think twice: blue, white and red - alternating across the entire width of Palace of Westminster.
“The Zenit W600 was the obvious choice”, says David Bishop. “Its power, reliability and IP rating combine to pro

UK - Simon Horn designed the lightshow for Anastacia’s current tour. Originally scheduled to start in February 2020 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the singer’s seminal hit I’m Out Of Love, the tour had to be shelved because of COVID.
This year, supply shortages and budget constraints still lingering from the pandemic lockdown made it impractical for Horn to get the level of video he wanted for the tour. He more than compensated for this, however, by creating a captivating background using geometric configurations of light that he is running on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M Stadium, which, like his lighting rig, is supplied by 4Wall Entertainment.
“I have always stood by the idea that if you are going to use video, and do it well, it takes money,” said Horn. “There are some shows I’ve seen that were ruined by the desperate desire to use v

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