Sweden - Wireless Solution hosted three very successful training days in Marstrand, Sweden. From the 25-27 August the Wireless DMX team introduced the new G5 software to 23 distributors of 13 different nationalities in this picturesque Swedish west-coast city.

W-DMX introduced innovative new features in the new G5 software, including Triple-Band communication, Wi-Fi, improved Adaptive Hopping with four times increased resolution and many other great components soon to be released.

The team also introduced a redesigned product line: a sleek MicroBox, IP66 rated WhiteBox, new ProBox, BlueBox and completely reshaped UglyBox. "It was very important to present these new products to our loyal distributors first," said Niclas Arvidsson, CEO of Wireless Solutions. "We have got the most unique software on the market, and the best product range created to date. The new im

Denmark - Martin Professional has announced the RUSH FiberSource 1 is now shipping. As the latest addition to the RUSH by Martin line of affordable lighting solutions, the RUSH FiberSource 1 is a powerful tool for illuminating fibre optic cables in permanent installations.

With a new 78 W LED fiber projector, the RUSH FiberSource 1 can light up to 300 1 mm fibre optic cables and boasts improved efficiency and reliability. The luminaire features a colour wheel with nine interchangeable colours, a twinkle wheel for variable-speed sparkling effects, and smooth, full-range (0-100 percent) electronic dimming.The fixture is fully controllable via DMX (up to five channels) as well as a stand-alone mode that ensures any combination of colours, colour speed and twinkle speed can be easily programmed.

"LED technology is evolving and is now also taking over traditional fibre applica

Germany - The new Flashback 4 (FB-4) network interface from Pangolin Systems is now available in a professional and durable aluminium housing. Ray Technologies (RTI), a Laserworld company, manufactures the new interface at its premises near Munich, Germany.

The Pangolin FB-4 is a new interface providing Network laser show control options for Pangolin software products. It is designed for high performance application. Several FB-4 interfaces can be connected with normal network switches.

The RTI FB-4 is available for Pangolin Quickshow or for Pangolin BEYOND, and it is available in different configurations, each providing additional features: Standard, DMX, IDLA and MAX. RTI's FB-4 interface can be used with any ILDA compatible laser show projector, and can be placed directly at the laser (it is snap-on compatible to the RTI PIKO and RTI NANO remote pad attachment slot) and the

Russia - Lighting designer Roman Stolyarov has used a wide range of Clay Paky fixtures to create stunning lighting looks in celebration of global cosmetic company Oriflame's annual awards ceremony and banquet, which saw over 3000 employees attend.

Leading technical production house MAX'N'MAX created the concept for the event which was called Banquet of Oriflame Directors: What Dreams May Come and took place at Moscow's Gostiniy Dvor.

MAX'N'MAX designed an ultra-wide stage with dynamic LED screens at the end of the venue's large hall. To complement this, the team worked with Stolyarov to specify an impressive rig of 34 x Alpha Spot 1500 HPE, 28 x Sharpy Wash 330, 50 x Sharpys, 81 x Shotlight Wash and 24 x Stormy CC fixtures from Arlecchino Group.

"As the venue has a glass roof and part of the event happened during the day, we needed fixtures that would still perfo

Sweden - Mats Karlsson, an industry veteran with a string of successful products and positions with several major companies, has started Intendor - a product innovation consultancy.

"My mission is to help companies get ahead of their competition by helping them create useful, innovative, and differentiated products. Anyone who has visited a trade show in recent years can testify to the fact that you have to look long and hard to find something really new. As the competition heats up and product life cycles gets shorter, companies are becoming painfully aware of the need to innovate in order to stay competitive and profitable. But only a few know how to do it, Karlsson shares."

"After bringing successful products to life at several leading companies, I am now making my skills and experiences available to those who wants to succeed using true competitive advantage

Sweden - The Stadsteater in Borås - about 60km west of Gothenburg - is one of a number of high profile city theatre and cultural centres in the country which has invested in Robe moving lights.

The purchase of 19 LEDWash 800s currently sees 10 installed in the 500 capacity main house, with nine in the smaller 100 capacity studio space. The Stadsteater is located in a large facility - together with the culture centre and library - built in 1976 and featuring some classic 1970s retro architecture and décor.

They wanted to replace some of their colour scrollers explains Lighting Technician and house LD Michael Dimle - and are absolutely delighted with the results of the LEDWashes. The Stadsteater had some previous experience with Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs bought in 2008, and the reliability of these was one of the reasons they looked to Robe again.

Michael also works for

USA - The Bay Area-based band Primus is touring North America with a Meyer Sound LYON linear sound reinforcement system to deliver its quirky, bass-driven brand of alternative rock. Described by FOH engineer Jason Mills as a "really fast" system with plenty of punch, the LYON configuration is provided byPro Media/UltraSound of Martinez, California.

"LYON is a very snappy box," says Mills, who works triple duty as FOH engineer, production manager, and system tech. "It's responsive, punchy and clear. The fans have noticed, too - I'm getting more compliments after shows than ever before."

The full system for the tour includes 24 LYON-M main and 4 LYON-W wide-coverage line array loudspeakers, 12 700-HP subwoofers, and four UPJ-1P loudspeakers as front fills. Two CQ-2 and four MSL-4 loudspeakers are deployed as needed for corner front and out fill, whi

Azerbaijan - Audiences were left enthralled and entranced by two dazzling opening and closing ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games - which saw Belgian based engineering specialist WIcreations involved in making some key elements of these innovative shows come alive.

WIcreations was approached directly by California based production company FiveCurrents who produced the Ceremonies. WI's team was led by Yves Vervloet and worked closely with FiveCurrents' senior technical director Nick Eltis.

The Heist-op-den-Berg based company was tasked with helping create some major visual moments, including the magic (flying) carpet during the opening ceremony, and design and construction of three performer stages for the closing ceremony, complete with a Temple of Fire rising up from beneath the largest one.

"It was a fantastic ev

Canada - Robe BMFL Spots and Blades were an integral element of the lighting scheme designed by Pierre Marleau of Orange Frog Productions Inc. for the Grandstand concert stage at the 2015 Calgary Exhibition & Stampede, arguably the world's most famous rodeo, exhibition and festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Pierre, based in the same city, has been a lighting professional for over 25 years, starting his career in the world of theatre and musicals, with which he has toured worldwide. He's been lighting the Stampede's Grandstand Show for the last 19 years which sees a line-up of international artists play in front of 20,000 people nightly for 10 days plus a preview evening.

The lighting equipment was supplied in collaboration with BML Blackbird of Secuacus, New Jersey and Stagelite from Winnipeg, Canada working a joint venture initiative project, managed by VP of

South Africa - Showgroup used four Robe BMFLs for Rocking the Koppies, an intimate event hosted on a farm in Potchefstroom. Control was on an Avolites Tiger Touch II. "This was a private function for a fiftieth birthday party and included performances by Prime Circle, Just Jinjer and Mean Mr Mustard," said Andries Liebenberg from Showgroup, lighting designer at the celebration.

Showgroup was the technical supplier and incorporated a Prolyte Roof Structure used for the stage, 16 Robe Robin 300s and four Robe BMFLs. Other lighting included six Martin MAC 600s, 30 Stage Color 48, 24 Longman LED Cans, 20 Longman Colourme 11, stage battens, 12 Parcans and six Source 4 Profiles.

"The BMFL is an amazing light," said Andries. He has since hired the units regularly from MJ Event Gear, usually four at a time, even incorporating them into smaller indoor shows.<

USA - Often, the owners of a club will select a name for their establishment, because it sounds good - or sells more beverages - but in the case of Passion, the multi-level mega club at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino, there is real heat behind the bright moniker. The 15,000sq.ft club pulsates with passion from 10pm to 6 am Fridays and Saturdays, with non-stop simultaneous performances at its three DJ booths and the visual treats served up by 184 pixel mapped ÉPIX Strip 2.0 linear fixtures and other products from Chauvet Professional.

Opened on 1 December, 2004, Passion quickly established itself as a serious player in South Florida's buzzing club scene, making waves by booking talent like Lady Gaga and DJ Pauly D, as well as international EDM stars such as Dash Berlin and Latin sensations like Grammy-nominated Farruko. Still the club's owners have never been ones to rest o

Canada - The famed annual Calgary Stampede just concluded another successful season attracting over one million visitors to the 10-day event. A combination rodeo-exhibition-festival, the largest fair in Canada also featured a nightly Grandstand Show, which was illuminated by Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures.

Pierre Marleau of Orange Frog Productions Inc was the lighting and production designer for the grandstand show, a role he's fulfilled for the last 19 years. "It's an old-style review, a big outdoor mega-spectacle," he says. "It's got acrobats, circus acts, video, pyro, fireworks. It's one of the more complex projects we do." He obtained the Sharpy fixtures from a new joint venture between BML Blackbird of Secaucus, NJ and Stage Lite Manitoba Ltd. in Winnipeg, which combines a 30-year reputation for serving clients in the northeastern US with a professional team

Mexico - Mexican rock band Maná has earned four Grammy Awards, seven Latin Grammy Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards Latin America, six Premios Juventud awards, fourteen Billboard Latin Music Awards and fifteen Premios Lo Nuestro awards. The band's sound is inspired by Pop Rock, Latin Pop, Calypso, Reggae and Ska music genres. Recently the band started its new world tour 'Cama Incendiada' with a lighting design by Alain Corthout.

The tour used a grandMA2 full-size and a grandMA2 light consoles, two MA NPU (Network Processing Units) and eight MA 8Port Nodes for lighting control of over 200 Clay Paky moving lights.

"Versatility, robustness and reliability are the main reasons I'm using a grandMA2", explained lighting programmer and operator Menga Cruz. "Versatility is needed because of the various ways in which we work with the system on shows. We have two users

UK - Flashlight Ltd, a leading UK supplier of lighting equipment to the broadcast, motion picture and theatre industries, has announced the opening of a London sales office and warehouse, headed up by sales executive Gordon Smith.

The new location will also provide showroom and demonstration facilities. Due to the rapid expansion of their southern client base and operations, the company feels the new location will better serve the demands of local rental and sales clients.

The new location will provide sales and support for the company's expanding range of leading lighting products - stocking the brands the company has become renowned for supplying, such as ARRI, Manfrotto and KinoFlo. The company will still have its headquarters at the existing location in Manchester.

Flashlight directors Andy Dodd and Rob Williamson commented: "We're delighted to open a London office;

USA - Lighting gaffer Matt Ardine is shooting a pharmaceutical industry commercial at DC Studios, a few blocks from Los Angeles' Skid Row. The camera tracks down a drab hospital corridor whose 'windows' are lit by eight ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr luminaires behind diffusion scrims.

Staring at the monitor, cinematographer Larkin Seiple calls for level changes barely visible to the human eye. Bringing a fixture down to 4% output, Ardine explains, "If I were using incandescents, I would start seeing colour shift at around 26% and my crew would be spending time putting in NDA or full blue to compensate for the tungsten effect."

On a set with skylights, windows, fluorescents and practical table lamps, setting the perfect colour temperature can be challenging. "We started out trying to shoot at 3200K, but now we have settled on 4400K. With the Lustrs, I can di

UAE - Dubai-based production supplier Protec supplied HQ Creative with lighting, video and rigging for the opening ceremony of the Nad Al Sheba Sports Tournament 2015, held at NAS Sports Complex on 21 June.

The event was created using two d3 4X4 Pro servers which created the mask, blend and warp for the custom made screens as well as integrating the use of primarily Clay Paky lighting fixtures which included 24 Clay Paky Mythos and 14 Clay Paky K10 B-eye, working together alongside eight Sharpys, seven Sharpy Wash 330s and eight Super Sharpys.

The venue had to function as a sports arena post show, so the design had to take this into account, staying out of the way of overhead house lighting as not to form shadows for the TV sports broadcast and not interfere with the games being played below. The rig needed to be light weight but still pack a punch for such a dynamic and fast

UK - When lighting designer Owen Pritchard-Smith from Spirit Design was tasked with the light setting for Nobel Biocare's stand at EuroPerio 2015 in ExCeL London, he met a challenge that led him to test out many different fixtures on the market.

The design and production of the exhibition stand was carried out by Andreas Messerli AG. As part of their stand design, three light boxes were hung from the ceiling. With open top, the boxes were on all other sides covered with white fabric. They were to be lit from above with enough light to travel through the fabric to create an up-lit bar environment underneath.

Owen Pritchard-Smith explains: "With only a metre or so between the truss and the fabric, I needed to find a fixture with a very wide beam angle, and little or no hot spot. It also needed to be bright enough to fight against the general lighting in ExCeL and the MSR PA

USA - PLASA has announced that Steve Terry will receive its highest honour, the Eva Swan Award, which recognizes exceptional long-term commitment to the association. The award will be presented at PLASA's Annual General Meeting on Thursday, 22 October, from 2:30pm-4:30pm at the Westgate Las Vegas Casino and Resort.

Steve, vice president of research and development at Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC), has made a significant impact on the Association during his many years of service with the Technical Standards Program, the Entertainment Technician Certification Program, the ESTA Board of Directors and the PLASA Governing Body.

Steve's unparalleled contributions to the lighting industry include leading the team responsible for the development of the original USITT standard for DMX512 and the formation of the original ESTA Technical Standards Program. He was a founding member of

USA - Italian lighting manufacturer, Novalight, has introduced its latest moving light fixture - the NovaScope; now sold, supported, and serviced in North America by the entertainment equipment distribution company DNJ Pro.

Novalight's Nova-Scope is a weatherproof aerial effect light that can withstand all weather conditions. Using the HTI 2000W/D7/60 lamp combined with a different approach to reflector setup, the Nova-Scope provides a high output light, delivering stunning aerial effects.

This large scale effect light, while best suited for the largest entertainment environments, is still suitable for all forms of live performance, says the company.

The Novalight Nova-Scope can tolerate the harshest of production environments. The fixture boasts a seven option gobo wheel, a kaleido wheel effect, shutter, dimmer, and strobe effects, six colours, white, and CMY colour mixing,

USA - When frequent and heavy storms hit Texas recently, causing flooding and widespread damage across the Lone Star state, Omar Dawoud, promoter at live music venue, The Marc in San Marcos, felt he needed to do his part to help the community. So he organised Band Together Texas, booking headliner Blue October - with all proceeds going to the United Way of Hays County Flood Disaster Recovery Fund.

In order to provide relief as quickly as possible, the event came together in short order, and Dawoud called on Colorwave Lighting and other rental houses for gear. Colorwave Lighting owner Erik Johnson didn't hesitate to volunteer his equipment, made up of PR Lighting fixtures, for the charity event. "When Omar asked if we would want to be a part of this it was a no brainer," he stated.

The company provided an inventory to The Marc's house lighting designer Alex Soto, know

USA - Focus on the Family, one of the largest Christian ministries in the US, put out a request for bid to upgrade the lighting system in its Chapelteria, a 750-seat large multi-functional conference and event space at its headquarter campus in Colorado Springs. Focus on the Family's AV team had a set of lighting products in mind and worked with Ben Gleason of LVW Electronics, the local systems solutions provider that won the contract, to ensure their needs were met.

LVW reached out to Elation lighting who in turn put them in touch with Jay Cid of Professional Sound and Lighting Products, who was integral in determining the best Elation lighting products for the space. In response, a turn-key solution was created that provided Focus with an outstanding and cost effective lighting system.

Ken Toal, Focus on the Family's audio visual services manager, recently reflected on the p

USA - A small spec on the map in the western part of America's 46th most populous state is hardly the type of place where one would expect to encounter a traffic jam. However, anyone who journeys to little Sturgis, South Dakota (population 6,900) during the first week of August will find that every street has been turned into a virtual parking lot, not of cars, but of motorcycles.

From 3-9 August this year, Sturgis was transformed into America's eleventh biggest city, ahead of such stalwarts as San Francisco and Boston, as an estimated 1m bikers and friends descended on the town for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. At the centre of it all was a Sturgis landmark, The Knuckle Saloon, decked out for the occasion with a lightshow that featured close to 40 fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Blue Seed Entertainment.

Erich Meitzner, the lighting director for the Casey Donahe

China - The first Infinity Summer Festival took place on 8 August in Shanghai, being the first interactive carnival themed music festival there. The festival was EDM oriented, with a lot of house and trance music.

The laser show was a central visual element of the event, so the organizers decided to go for high end laser gear from Swiss and German manufacturers. Ten SwissLas PM-10.000RGB lasers as well as six RTI PIKO RGB 18 were used to make this festival more than spectacular.

This whole laser setup had an overall laser power of more than 200W laser power and worked well with the video walls and conventional lighting, as the power was more than sufficient to cover the whole festival area.

Featured artists included Roger Shah, Dzeko & Torres, Alvaro, Genix and Ben Nicky.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Production Resource Group (PRG), the world's leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, today announced it will extend its branding in Germany and the UK to integrate the brand of the recently acquired XL Video Group. The integrated companies will be known as PRG XL Video for a transition period while the operations are being merged.

PRG will continue to use its brand name in all other countries across Europe and North America. XL Video teams in those territories will be immediately transitioned into the PRG family.

"Part of our decision to acquire XL Video was the premier value of its brand in many of our markets," said Jeremiah J. Harris, PRG's Chairman and CEO. "We recognize that the XL Video name and logo are synonymous with outstanding quality, customer service, and technical expertise in some of our territories, equal to that o

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