UK - London- based Entec Sound & Light supplied lighting, sound and video production and crew for the recent Friends of the Earth's star studded comedy extravaganza at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo, Laugh or the Polar Bear Gets It.

The line up of eight comedians, one singer and one larger than life polar bear's head set-piece featured Tim Minchin, Josie Long, Badly Drawn Boy and Richard Herring and was presented by Greg Davies. The venue was completely sold out as all united in an evening of hilarity and arctic proportions.

Laughing all the way to the lighting desk was Entec's Ryan Brown, who created a production lighting design for the evening - which resembled a festival in style and execution.

His aim was to compliment the main set piece, a giant polystyrene polar bear's head, so to connect this to its immediate environment, he imbibed the stage with an arctic ambienc

UK - Buckinghamshire-based Universal Event Productions (UEP) has recently invested in a batch of the new i-Pix Satellite MkII LED fixtures as well as i-Pix' popular BB4 LED wash lights to service its busy on-going schedule of corporate and live events.

UK-based specialist LED manufacturer i-Pix launched the new Satellite Mk II LED 'brick' lightsource at the 2011 PLASA Light & Sound exhibition in September.

This was five years after the launch of the original Satellite, which was the then new company's debut product, and rapidly became a trend-setting massive best seller worldwide.

Universal Events purchased 24 of the original Satellite products when they came to the market in 2006. They have been in constant use - and are still going strong today, "They have been an absolutely essential element and a constant workhorse product in our hire inventory," confirms UEP's

Australia - LSC Lighting Systems has announced the retirement of long serving manager Alan Graham. Alan joined LSC in 1988 and will be known to many in the lighting industry as the front man for LSC export sales from the early 90s until 2004 when he relinquished the position to concentrate on internal matters and move away from the constant travel.

"Alan has contributed to LSC in many ways over the years and has had input to all aspects of the company including the design of its products, how they are manufactured and how they are marketed and sold," says the company. "On top of this, his love of building was gainfully employed when he undertook the design and project management of the company's current 2000sq.m head office."

Trained as a design draftsman, Alan was initially employed by LSC as a contractor in the early 80s to design printed circuit boards f

UK - The nominations for the 12th annual WhatsOnStage.com Awards were announced on Friday 2 December - at a star-studded launch party at London's Café de Paris. As ever, the awards are the only UK theatre awards where nominees and winners are selected entirely by the theatre-going public. The nomination process saw a record 11,000 theatregoers involved in the online nomination process.

Entertainment lighting specialist White Light is ponsoring the Best Lighting Designer award for the fourth year running. The company congratulates the six nominated designers: Neil Austin (for Betty Blue Eyes), Paule Constable (for Luise Miller at the Donmar), Oliver Fenwick (for My City at the Almeida), Mark Henderson (for The Kitchen, 13, and Emperor and Galilean at the National),Bruno Poet (for Frankenstein at the National Theatre)

Australia - Described by Australian press as "everything a rock show should be," Australian band Cold Chisel's Light the Nitro tour is playing dates across the country with lighting design by Francesco Calvi.

Because the tour is playing such a variety of venues - from large scale arenas to smaller amphitheatres, even circus tents - Calvi turned to Martin Professional's compact MAC 101 wash light as the base fixture in a versatile lighting design.

"We had serious weight restrictions in many venues, and truck space was also limited," Calvi says. "Because the 101s are so light I was able to go with lots of them and keep the rig the same across all venues."

Calvi uses 150 MAC 101s as the foundation of his design with fixtures on eight towers per side for cross lighting and on five finger trusses that move throughout the show, as well as on th

Super Star - Madonna is to perform during the interval at next year's Super Bowl, it has been confirmed. The singer will take to the stage at the game on Sunday 5 February at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Her performance is expected to coincide with the release of her 12th studio album and she will collaborate with a team from Cirque du Soleil. Broadcast around the world, more than 162m viewers tuned into last year's half-time entertainment which featured Black Eyed Peas.

Parking Protest - Musicians and actors held a protest in London's West End against Westminster City Council's plans to extend parking charges in the borough. The new parking charges will target the area south of Oxford Street, including Theatreland, and will see a rate of £4.40 an hour charged all day on Fridays and Saturdays until midnight, and between 1pm and 6pm on Sundays. It will be t

UK - The UK government has more than doubled the budget available for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies - from £40m to £81m.

The increase, which was announced in the latest London 2012 quarterly economic report by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), comes from the £9.3bn public purse, which is in theory meant for building, infrastructure and security, while the ceremonies is paid for from the privately-raised funds of the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games - money raised from the IOC, ticket sales and sponsorship.

In the DCMS report, Hugh Robertson MP, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, says: "The ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a unique opportunity to portray a positive image of the UK to a huge potential global audience - an estimated 1 billion people watched the openi

Sweden / USA - LumenRadio has announced a new OEM partnership with Wizard Connection. The Orlando-based company is a manufacturer and provider of products and services ranging from the latest in green LED lighting systems to elaborate custom ice sculptures. Wizard Connection has integrated LumenRadio's CRMX OEM modules into its portable battery powered LED fixtures.

Suitable for special events, parties, and exhibitions the handy fixtures eliminate troublesome cabling and facilitate placement in difficult locations, says the company. The 9W unit, designed to run for a minimum of 10 hours on a single charge, features integral controls for colour, brightness, fades, and presets. A double yoke system functions as a floor stand or simply add a c-clamp to hang the fixture into the rig.

Richard Painter, director of sales at Wizard Connection says, "Partnering with LumenRadio was

Denmark - In October 2011, Legoland in Billund, Denmark, offered a variety of Halloween-themed activities, competitions and special shows. As part of the spooky fun, Legoland dressed up its King's Castle in Halloween-themed colours and graphics, including animated images from energy-efficient, LED-based Martin Professional Exterior 400 Image Projectors.

Projected onto the King's Castle's turrets were a variety of themed images - ghosts, skeletons, jack-o'-lanterns and bats - up to six images per luminaire with creative options such as image rotation, dynamic focus and dimming. The Exterior 400 Image Projector's interchangeable colour slots allowed each image to change colour up to eight times, adding a further dynamic element to the ghostly atmosphere.

At over 7000 lumens of power, the Exterior 400 Image Projector had no problem handling the 40m projection throws, and the fixt

Egypt - The Ballroom of the luxury Fairmont Towers Heliopolis, Cairo, features four spectacular chandeliers designed to evoke the living corals of the Red Sea. Designed by Maurice Brill Lighting Design and implemented by Artistic Licence Integration, the chandeliers provide highly versatile illumination for this2000-person capacity space.

Each chandelier is rectangular in shape, the largest being over 6m long and 3m wide. Structurally, the illusion of coral is created by a forest of curved glass rods, hanging stalactite-like from the chandelier base. With the addition of dynamic lighting effects, the forest springs into life as synchronised pulses and patterns of light run across all four installations.

Artistic Licence supplied the luminaires and lighting control used to achieve these effects. These comprised some 720 custom RGB LED linear fixtures, each 0.5m in length, and 9

Croatia - The Summer Sea Coast Show takes place annually in Croatia's picturesque seaside towns of Opatija and Rijeka on the Adriatic Sea.

This year, a crowd of around 2,000 turned up to hear Zagreb rock legends Psihomodo Pop and The Beat Fleet (TBF), a rap rock band from Split - with fixtures from PR Lighting, supplied by production company GLS, bringing the scenography to life.

The company purchased eight versatile Pilot 575s from PR Lighting's Croatian distributors, Turbo-X d.o.o, which went straight onto the show.

GLS' purchasing decision was based on the value for money offered by these fixtures, according to Turbo-X d.o.o's Dario Stipic, "They were delighted with the performance," he said. "The Pilot 575's will now go into their rental inventory for use on shows throughout the year."

Meanwhile the company reports growing interest in PR Lighting fi

UK - The Leader Light Stage 6-06 LED fixture - which features a traditional look of six round lenses mounted in a 600mm linear batten, but with each lens powered by a 10W white LED source -recently made dramatic appearances lighting Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds on The Jonathan Ross Show, and on Bowling for Soup's UK tour.

Russ Grubiak, lighting programmer for The Jonathan Ross Show was "very excited about the use of a very special product." He and show lighting director Oli Richards considered various ways of using the 6-06 before deciding on their approach: "We figured that a lot of people would use them in straight lines or as a grid. Oli's preference was for a non-uniform, random focus that filled the ceiling space and looked as edgy as possible. We mounted the fixtures in a ball and socket TV grip, which suited our monopole hanging grid at the stu

USA - Skin care giants, Nu Skin, recently held their global sales meeting when 15,000 sales reps from around the world assembled in Salt Lake City to learn, celebrate and connect over a three day period. The expansive Energy Solutions Arena was dressed for the occasion, and Michael Marto, CEO of event producers Executive Visions Inc., collaborated once again with John Featherstone of Lightswitch for innovative lighting and media design.

Featherstone's brief from Marto and the EVI team was to help bring their vision to life by creating an exciting 'arena scale' design that would be interesting and engaging from the front of the room to the back. A combination of a dynamic lighting system and an LED stage deck made for an inventive palette of creative tools, which included six of GLP's new impression Spot One LED heads.

With three days of meetings and awards - interspersed with

USA - Josh Groban's Straight to You Tour played its first show -fresh from its European leg - at the Bank Atlantic Centrein Sunrise, Fla. Fourteen COLORado Batten 144 Tour linear wash lights illuminated the stage's backdrop adding depth and colour to the faux building - reminiscent of old-word ruins - that doubled as a projection surface for video content.

Flanked by sets of stairs, the open stage allowed Groban to walk straight into the audience. At times, the accompanying band - over a dozen horn players, drummers, violinists, guitarists and more - perched themselves on the edge of the stage or on the stairs as well. This gave the performance a theatrical look overall, lending an intimate touch to the large arena.

At other times, the band plays fairly close to the backdrop where the slim, linear and unobtrusive COLORado Batten 144 Tour wash lights uplight the scene in

UK - Edinburgh-based Northern Light has announced this morning the death of its Head of Project Delivery, David Vandepeear. "It is with extreme sadness that Northern Light must today announce the death of David Vandepeear," the company said. "David, or 'Vandy' as he was affectionately known, had been with Northern Light for more than 20 years and was well known and loved throughout the industry.

A key member of Northern Light's team, David left his considerable mark as a project manager on numerous key projects such as Leicester's Curve, Theatres on the Bay in Singapore, The Sage in Gateshead and Manchester's Lowry Centre.

More recently, David had taken on the post of Head of Project Delivery with responsibility for overseeing all of Northern Light's installation projects. "It was a role he was a natural at and he was loved and respected by his entire team,

USA - High schools and colleges from coast to coast are investing in Robert Juliat followspots, according to Bill Conner and Paul Sanow of Bill Conner Associates LLC, theatre planners and designers in Oak Park, Illinois.

They have specified Robert Juliat Super Korrigan 1200W HMI followspots and Buxie 575W MSD followspots in both newly-constructed and renovated theatres in public and private high schools and colleges across the country.

"Schools typically don't go for high-end lighting, but I like these fixtures and strongly recommend them," says Conner. "There was a perception that the Robert Juliat followspots were more expensive than others on the market. But my conclusion is that they are not: On a dollar-to-dollar performance basis, they rate better. And thanks to their versatility, they're a great pick for educational institutions and the variety of product

UK - The hit of the 2009Durham Festival, Crown of Light -a stunning son-et-lumière that uses the extraordinary architecture of Durham Cathedral as its canvas - returned to the city once again this winter.

Created by Ross Ashton, with a soundtrack by Robert Ziegler and JohnDel'Nero, Crown of Light draws its visual material from inside the cathedral itself and from the Lindisfarne Gospels.

The PIGI projectors were supplied by entertainment lighting specialist White Light, continuing a collaboration with Ashton that has encompassed projects from Edinburgh to New York.

"White Light is a valued partner on my projects," Ashton notes. "They are helpful and accommodating, and work hard to make sure that everything goes well prior to delivery and during the operation of the kit."

"Ross's projects are always something to behold," comments

USA / UK - A sleek new addition to ETC's Unison line of architectural control, Tessera combines a 4.3" (10.9cm) touchscreen with a 512-channel DMX over Ethernet Mosaic controller. Complex lighting shows as well as devices like moving lights, colour-mixing LEDs, conventionals and dimmers can all be controlled by Tessera. It also handles impromptu show control, accessories, automation, waterworks and other non-lighting effects.

ETC named its new product after the ancient word for 'tile'. ETC's architectural market manager Joe Bokelman explains, "A tessera is a tile in a mosaic but also an object of beauty and utility itself. Our Tessera is both a part of a greater sophisticated networked system and a standalone full controller, in a compact interface.

"Imagine colour-changing lights in a shopping centre or office block that can go through dynamic effects, seasonal

UK - The prime time Saturday night quiz show Who Dares Wins, hosted by Nick Knowles, sees two teams of complete strangers compete by completing a series of lists. The team who names more correct answers on a list gets the chance to play...and win £50,000.

Richard Martin Lighting (RML) provides the lighting for the show, which is filmed in 3sixtymedia - Granada Studios, Manchester. It has previously been filmed in TVC, TLS, BBC Glasgow. Martin Kempton designs the lighting show.

His chosen specification includes VL1000TS, VL2402s, Stage Zoom 1200s, MAC 250s, MAC 500s, MAC 600s, Mini MACs, Nova Flowers, Chroma Banks, Pixel Bricks, Chroma Floods, Pixel Pars and VL3000 Wash's. Over 200 moving lights are used to create a strong and vibrant look to enhance the drama of the show.

Who Dares Wins is aired each week on BBC1 and also includes Thunderball, Lotto Draws

USA LED video screen manufacturer Lighthouse's new product, VideoBlades, is the main video element in Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour.

The tour unfolds Michael Jackson's artistry before the eyes of the audience. Aimed at lifelong fans as well as those experiencing his creative genius for the first time, the show "captures the essence, soul and inspiration of the King of Pop, celebrating a legacy that continues to transcend generations".

VideoBlades, a result of an alliance between Lighthouse and Pix2o, is a large-scale LED video display technology that straddles the worlds of video and lighting in the entertainment, events and architectural markets. VideoBlades 12 provides a 12.5mm pixel pitch, modular LED video screen that delivers "superb image quality both indoors and outdoors, with a literal twist...".

VideoBlades 12 come

USA - Few rock bands can say they have been touring to sold-out crowds across five decades, but Journey can. Since first forming in 1973, the group has produced 19 Top 40 singles and 25 Gold and Platinum albums. When launching their 2011 tour in Phoenix, AZ, lighting designer Kevin 'Deuce' Christopher was tasked with putting together a powerful and expansive design that could enhance the music while creating a variety of looks. To do so, Christopher turned to long-time tour provider Epic Production Technologies who supplied him with Vari*Lite automated luminaires.

"I initially joined Journey as their lighting designer in the summer of 2004," began Christopher. "When I put a lighting design together, I like to design in flow with the songs, which for Journey can be anything from up-tempo and powerful, to subtle and dramatic. As a designer, they give me a fantastic

UK - Black Light has replaced the house lighting for two auditoriums within the Sage Gateshead, one of the UK's leading music venues. The project required Black Light's team to overcome a number of significant technical challenges and work to a tight deadline and on a restricted budget. To get the job done the company used its specialist rigging skills and installed a bespoke LED-based system that provided the flexibility, long life, low running costs and low heat output that the client required.

"Thank you to all the staff at Black Light involved with the Sage Project, for all the hard work and attention to detail, greatly appreciated," said John Wilkinson from Gateshead Council. "The end result looks stunning."

The brief for the £150K project was to replace an existing tungsten-based system that was proving expensive and unreliable. The replacement

USA - Six High End Systems intellaspot automated luminaires helped shine the light on Alicia Keys' charity fundraiser - the 2011 Black Ball New York for the Keep a Child Alive Foundation. Keys started the organisation in 2003 to aid HIV/AIDS victims in Africa and India.

LD Brendan Gray of Gray Matter Visual returned for his fourth year designing the lighting and media content for the 3 November event, held at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. Scharff Weisberg Lighting was the vendor.

The six HES intellaspot fixtures were positioned on the deck behind the band in between the seven LED panels.

"I was interested in using the intellaspots after seeing them a few weeks earlier at an HES Open House in New York City. Craig Burross and Chris McMeen were helpful in getting the fixtures to me to try out," Gray explained.

Gray was intrigued by the 850W source, which he

New Zealand - The Edge is the hub of performing arts and entertainment in Auckland, New Zealand, and it comprises five of the city's leading venues - Aotea Centre, Herald Theatre, Auckland Town Hall, The Civic and Aotea Square. All of these diverse spaces are located within minutes of each other in the Auckland CBD, and cater for all interests, from intimate theatre and large scale musicals to outdoor rock concerts.

The Edge had always used Strand consoles for their lighting control ever since the original Aotea Centre opened in 1991 with a Strand Galaxy console. The majority of the consoles were Strand 500 series, upgraded 10 years ago.

Malcolm Ibell, head of lighting at The Edge, reports, "I was searching for replacements that would not only work for today but would future proof us too". A major consideration was the networking abilities offered by a console.

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