USA - Chosen for their video and pixel-mapping abilities, 130 Chauvet Professional ÉPIX Strip and 16 ÉPIX Bar fixtures complete the design for country singer Luke Bryan's Dirt Road Diaries tour.

"The main design concept as far as the ÉPIX Strip lights were concerned was to have a way to expand our video surfaces throughout the lighting rig," said lighting designer for the tour Justin Kitchenman. "Our lighting trusses cover the width and breadth of half the arena. We wanted to create the feeling that the entire space was alive with colour and motion." Kitchenman accomplished this by adding rows of single hung strips throughout the rig and then mapping them into the full screen video. The fixtures were provided by Elite Multimedia Productions with headquarters in Memphis, Tenn.

"We were already utilising the ArKaos media serve

UK - Lumonic has appointed Pacific Lighting as Distributor in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Lumonic director Mike Edwards comments, "We are delighted that Hugh and his team have decided to become distributors for the ilumo brand in Hong Kong and Singapore. Our brand fits perfectly with the ethos that drives Pacific Lighting. That is they strive to bring innovative lighting units to their market place, supported by technical knowledge and expertise and backed up with many years' experience in theatre, opera and leading festival lighting. They operate at the professional end of the market place offering excellent service to their discerning clients."

Hugh Chinnick, director Pacific Lighting adds, "Over the past 14 years Pacific Lighting has gained a reputation for supplying quality lighting products to the expanding professional entertainment markets in the region, and

UK - The Lighting Hospital has recently moved to new expanded premises in Bristol. This has enabled further streamlining of its processes to offer an even faster and slicker service for damaged lighting kit needing urgent treatment.

The success of the operation, launched in 2009 by well-known industry engineer Dik Welland, has been built on the fast turnarounds, friendly and efficient service, attention to detail and the quality of the repairs - all of which carry a 90 day warranty, but are rarely seen again.

"We pride ourselves on the excellent recovery rate," says Welland.

The Lighting Hospital space now comprises over 2500sq.ft dedicated to the repair of lighting fixtures of all types, specialising in electronic ballasts and moving light control boards as well as the full fixtures themselves and also lighting consoles.

Welland and his team of engineers and tec

UK - Blackburn-based lighting and visuals company HSL supplied lighting designer Neil Carson with full lighting production for chart topping, Brit Award winning singer songwriter Emeli Sandé's most recent UK tour, together with a 'specials' package for the European section.

Carson - who has worked with HSL on several previous projects including Chase & Status - was instrumental in getting the company on-board, where the account was project managed by Mike Oates.

Says Carson, "I wanted a lighting supplier that I knew could deliver the best quality kit, crew and attitude - HSL were my first choice."

Sandé's meteoric career trajectory which includes some interesting and inventive collaborations - has included three number one singles and a number one album Our Version of Events in the last two years and she performed at both Opening and Closing Ce

UK - Creative Technology (CT) will be the first customer to take delivery of the exciting new 8mm Outdoor LED product launched at ProLight+Sound by Barco's specialist LED division, LiveDots.

The new 8mm product is lightweight, low profile and silent in operation due to its fan-less design. With full outdoor brightness and high contrast to ensure optimal operation in direct sunlight, the product has been specifically developed by LiveDots in consultation with CT to service the companies growing portfolio of high profile sports events.

The C8 investment follows CT's successful introduction of the C5 and specially developed C16 as its mainstream indoor LED platform in early 2012. The C5 has established itself as one of the High Resolution product others are judged against and CT expect the C8 to be similarly successful.

The new product is expected to arrive at CT in May and wil

USA - American rock bands Three Days Grace and Shinedown are on the road with Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures helping to light up their tour.

Three Days Grace and Shinedown are co-headlining a national arena tour, which commenced in February.

"Using Sharpy is almost mandatory these days," reports Mike Filsinger, the lighting designer for Three Days Grace. "It's an advanced light - pretty much the only technological advancement in lights lately: Clay Paky has really done the R&D to make better fixtures and is now reaping the rewards."

Bandit Lites supplied 28 Sharpys in the main package. A primary lighting rig serves both shows; each band also has a supplemental rig. Three Days Grace has eight additional Sharpys in its package; Filsinger's Sharpys are the dominant light in the rig and are used in the air and on the floor. Shinedown has 24 additional Sharpys, whi

UK - The ABTT took the opportunity the recent PLASA Focus Show to pay tribute to Ivor Dykes, in recognition of his longstanding contribution to ABTT NorthNet, upon his retirement as the committee's Honorary Secretary.

Ivor's initial career began as an apprentice organ builder in Leeds. In the late 1950s he worked at London's Selfridges store as a television repairman whilst volunteering at the Questors Theatre in Ealing and the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

This lead to a formal role with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop Company as its theatre engineer, working alongside Gerry Raffles and John Bury, amongst many others.

During his time with the company, Ivor researched and produced the original glass slides used for the inaugural production of O What a Lovely War, sourced from images held at the Imperial War Museum. These slides, now digitised, are - some 50 years l

UK - "I'm having the time of my life with these," said an ebullient Simon Tutchener, lighting designer for Mark Knopfler. "I'm still getting to know the lights but everything I've seen so far is just what I was expecting."

Tutchener is using the new Clay Paky Sharpy Wash and the Alpha Spot QWO 800. "I knew the Sharpy Wash was coming, and had read about the QWO 800s, so I suggested to Noreen O'Riordan at Entec that we should take a look. She agreed and we duly set of for a demo at Ambersphere. There are many features that attracted me, even on first examination you see they're not huge hulking great lumps of metal work.

O'Riordan comments, "As a company Entec chooses very carefully where we spend our cap' ex' budget, but this was a straight forward decision. The Sharpy has proved a world beater since its launch; we expect nothing less from the Shar

USA - Good Friday and Easter Sunday are typically some of the most celebrated days in the Christian calendar, making it only fitting that the services be as stunning as possible. To that end, Bandit Lites aided lighting designer Ed White and production manager Ian Cattle of Black and White Live Ltd. in creating two stellar services for Passion City Church.

"My aim with this event is to support the atmosphere, and what is going on musically, without overpowering or distracting people," White explained of his lighting design. "There are moments that need to be like a rock show, with huge dramatic cues and changes; but then also times for a lot of restraint, and subtle changes to enhance what is happening on stage and in the crowd."

For one of the more dramatic aspects of the show, a large 25ft cross was placed as the centrepiece of the rig, whereas in the pas

India - When Norah Jones, daughter of Ravi Shankar, made her first ever appearance in India - at A Summer's Day Festival in Mumbai - around 8,000 fans turned up at the Mahalaxmi Race Course to cheer her on.

Making sure that the stage dynamics lived up to the performance were local production company E2Tech. Among the FX used were 24 of PR Lighting's new XLED 1037 moving heads with zoom.

Characterised by the use of 37 x 10 Watt RGBW LEDs (containing four colours in one), one of its outstanding features is its wide linear zoom, with variable beam angle. It was deployed on this show with 26° beam angle.

The lights were flown down specifically for the event - purchased by E2Tech from Modern Stage Service, PR Lighting's Indian distributors.

E2Tech owner, Jasjeet Singh comments: "We have been using PR fixtures for the last four years and are very happy both with

USA - GLP German Light Products Inc. has announced that it has become a sustaining member of USITT, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology.

President of GLP Inc., Mark Ravenhill said, "Since we started our US operations in 2009, we have been endeavouring to support more and more of the valuable associations within our industry, and we are very proud that we can now call ourselves members of USITT."

USITT is a not-for-profit Corporation and is operated exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purposes.

Carl Wake, Technical Director of GLP Inc. added, "We are very excited about working with, and supporting the organisation and in particular its student membership in any way that we can. Having done many years of product and application training through my career, I see some exciting opportunities ahead."

(Jim Evans)

France - LED lighting solutions are taking over TV studios. And the increase in popularity of ETC LED products across France can be attributed to the meeting of two men: director of photography Jacques Audrain, and Jean Louis Pernette, commercial director at ETC distributor Avab.

Pernette says: "Jacques was in charge of the lighting of a documentary for the Arte TV channel. He showed a lot of interest in the LED fixtures which we were demonstrating; he could see the fixtures' potential, and saw that they had a much better output than their regular RGB counterparts."

As a man who professes himself artistically committed to improving the lighting in TV studios, Audrain is among those who believed in LED from its early days in entertainment technology; his faith in the technology was confirmed with the launch of ETC Selador, and its seven colour mixing system.

"F

China - Wireless Solution Sweden AB will be showing its growing line of G4S products during PALM Expo, June 7-10 2013 at the New China International Exhibition Centre in Beijing.

The W-DMX G4S software platform includes an improved adaptive frequency hopping algorithm that improves the plug and play use in crowded radio spectrum situations and better avoids interference from Wi-Fi, DECT Phones, Intercom and more. The adaptive frequency hopping technology has been granted a patent in the USA and patent pending in the EU.

G4S also has a new Invisi-Wire MK2 with support for wireless software updates, which will make it possible to perform wireless software updates to all your receivers, with an easy connection to your transmitters with all receivers updated at the same time.

Another new feature is W-DMX Slot In, a new module that makes it easy to retrofit for the market and is

USA - The newest members of Martin Professional's award-winning MAC Viper Family and the first fixtures in Martin's RUSH range of affordable effect lighting await visitors to InfoComm.

Held 12-14 June at the Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando, visitors to InfoComm will be some of the first in North America to get an up-close look at two Martin product lines that are taking the industry by storm.

Martin will also have on display its EC Series of LED video panels as well as its Exterior 400 range of outdoor LED lighting fixtures.

Martin invites all industry lighting professionals to Booth 6151 for a relaxing chat and demo from their own personal Martin rep.

(Jim Evans)

Europe - Two giants of the lighting world have come together to help provide a dazzling show for one of the world's leading artistes.

The introduction of the g X-5 LED strobes from Peter Johansen's SGM provided all the inspiration necessary for multi-award winning production designer, LeRoy Bennett, to specify almost 450 pieces for Beyoncé's The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour.

When the set climaxes with her popular song Halo, the accompanying drum roll is the cue for lighting director Whitney Hoversten to trigger every strobe in the house, completing a blinding blitzkrieg. "We throw everything plus the kitchen sink at it," he says.

Beyoncé herself had expressed a preference for a lightshow-dominated stage set this time around (rather than the current video-led paradigm) and Bennett immediately set to work creating a stunning light ladder 'torm', i

UK - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light was recently chosen to supply lighting for the highly anticipated The Jacksons: Unity Tour, which packed venues across the UK in March of this year. As Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon took to the stage each night for a non-stop, pop-fuelled frenzy, their high energy performances and glitzy costumes were matched with a range of powerful lighting visuals designed by lighting director Theryn Knight.

For the UK leg of the tour, Knight and production manager Scotty Ross worked with Lester Cobrin, White Light's head of concert touring, to choose the layout of the lighting rig. Having already toured the show in America, Knight decided to go in a new direction with the lighting for the UK tour. "In the US, we used mostly conventional sources - incandescent pars and similar - which didn't give me a lot of flexibility and required

Europe - LumenRadio has announced that Svetlost Teatar has been appointed CRMX distributor in Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

Svetlost Teatar is focused on a full service concept, including design, manufacture, assembly, install and service. During the past years, the company has successfully completed over 100 projects, including 19,000 seat arenas and world famous opera houses.

"We chose LumenRadio because it is a trusted name in the entertainment industry. The quality of the CRMX products and the reliable performance make LumenRadio the perfect fit in our product portfolio of world-leading brands", says Olivera Mitrovic, general manager at Svetlost Teatar

Jessica Björk, sales & marketing manager adds, "In signing with Svetlost Teatar, I believe that we have found the best possible partner in this region. We are very glad to have Svetlost Teatar r

Argentina - Lighting and set designer Eli Sirlin utilised over 120 Robe moving lights in his lighting scheme for the 2013 Festival Nacional de la Vendimia (National Grape Harvest Festival), a high profile world-renowned celebration of wine and the wine-making industry held in Mendoza, Argentina.

The 2013 event, staged at the Frank Romero Day Greek Theatre, celebrated the local traditions with dance, music and wine, plus a special drama performance Noche de Teatro Mágico de Piedra y Vino to honour the venue's 50th anniversary.

Up to 30,000 people a night flocked to catch the action over the two week Festival. A Vendimia Queen was chosen and various wine tastings took place as well as live performances from an impressive line-up of local and international folk and rock bands. The event was closed by Spanish singer-songwriter and musician Alejandro Sanz who gave a show-st

Australia - Tony Jex, managing director of Oz Management Entertainment is thrilled with his new Jands Stage CL console, the desk designed specifically for LED fixtures but just as suitable for conventional lights.

"With some of the small DMX consoles you almost need a calculator to work out which fader is going to control which element of the DMX functions on your fixtures," commented Jex. "With the Stage CL, Jands has recognised that and seen a gap in the market. I did look at some software options as well but I prefer to 'play' the console like a musical instrument. A lot of the work I do is with bands that I may be working with for the first time and the Stage CL allows me to easily interact with them."

One feature that Jex particularly favours is the 'one channel strip per fixture' which helps him to change colours easily as well as fade in and out. He

Singapore - The technologically advanced new Star Performing Arts Centre has invested in Clay Paky's Alpha Spot HPE 700 and Alpha Wash 700 fixtures to provide a bright solution for its 770-seater Star Gallery multi-purpose hall.

The venue's technical director Daniel Loh specified 16 of each Alpha Spot HPE 700 and Alpha Wash 700s as an optional upgrade to the standard lighting package in the theatre, choosing them due to their compact, lightweight build and quiet operation.

"In addition to the Alpha Wash 700s and Alpha Spot HPE 700s' relatively small dimensions, we needed fixtures that offered good colour rendition and really packed a punch in terms of light output," says Loh. "The 32 Clay Paky fixtures will serve as floating stock that can be used in various venues in our facility, and the two Alpha ranges facilitate this due to their small scale size but powerf

UK - Avolites Media's industry-beating server 'Ai' has been powering the fast-paced visuals for Sky TV's popular spring series of Got to Dance. A total of four Ai Server systems, running on Mac Towers, two main and two backup, were supplied to the production by video rental house Creative Technology.

Respected TV lighting and visual media programmer Russ Grubiak - who has worked on a number of high rating shows including the X Factor, Big Brother, and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross - chose to use the powerful Avolites Media Server Ai to manipulate the end visual output for Series 4 of the show, which was created to discover the best dance act in the UK.

"The Ai's built-in visualiser has been a god send, particularly in television when you are operating from a gallery or position where you can't always see the stage with your own eyes," sa

UK - Verbatim has announced the commercial release of Vivid Vision, a directional LED lamp using VxRGB technology developed by Verbatim's parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation.

Vivid Vision ensures that colours and fine details of objects are rendered accurately through a combination of red, green and blue phosphors applied to a violet, rather than blue, LED die. This type of LED lighting is particularly effective in spaces where small differences in colour hues, tints and textures can have a significant impact, says the company.

Now available within Europe, Vivid Vision is an MR16 VxRGB LED lamp designed to meet specific requirements in professional applications such as prestigious hospitality venues, sophisticated retail outlets and museums where high contrast lighting enhances the unique features of artworks.

"Based on the technology and knowledge of our pa

UK - Philips Entertainment's four premier brands - Showline, Vari-Lite, Selecon and Strand Lighting - are powering up to exhibit their latest LED luminaires and lighting control products for theatre application at this year's ABTT (Orange Hall, Old Truman Brewery, Stand 123).

Following its UK debut at PLASA Focus in Leeds, Philips Showline will be promoting its SL NITRO 510 LED-based strobe, delivering superbright, intense bursts of light and dynamic effects using over 1300 high-powered LEDs. Six unique zones of control allow ultimate flexibility while unique built in chases aid in creativity and simplicity. With over 68,000 lumens of output, the SL NITRO 510 rivals conventional strobes and retains dynamic looks whether washing a stage or pointing directly at an audience.

Sister company Philips Vari-Lite will be demo'ing the recently released Indy software for the VLX Wash lum

Mexico - Luminica Gdl of Guadalajara was one of the first rental companies in Mexico and Latin America to invest in Martin's MAC Viper Profile and had the fixtures out on one of the Carnival season's more festive events in February, Carnaval Mazatlan.

Lighting designer Luis Ernesto Armenta Jiménez has used Martin products since he started in the industry as a programmer and incorporated the new 1000 W Martin fixtures into his lighting design for the festival.

"I chose to use the MAC Viper Profile because I felt it would help me achieve the goal of highlighting a show that was full of cultural juxtaposition as it mixed contemporary dance with orchestral music and pop music, all in the same festival," he said.

Luis lined ground supports with 10 MAC Viper Profiles with colour wash coming from 26 MAC 2000 Washes and 16 MAC 101 wash lights. Twelve Atomic 3000 str

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