UK - Staff and students at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD) in London became the first users in Europe of the award-winning ColorSource PAR from ETC, when they used it for a show at the beginning of the year.

The school used the fixtures on their musical theatre produciton of Big City Dreams, performed by students on its MA Music Theatre course. The production ran over three days in Central's Webber Douglas Studio, a black box studio theatre with fixed lighting catwalks which allow for flexability, both in terms of design and staging.

Technical manager Phil Rowe says: "The show was set in traverse, and its divised nature required a broad colour palette. But our fixtures' scrollers were coming to the end of their life, which gave us an opportunity to try some LED fixtures, ahead of the new uilding which is being planned, and which will be largely

Mercury Rising - Former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, 20 years after his band's debut album made the shortlist. The singer was just 19 when Supergrass appeared on the list. His solo album, Matador, is more introspective and experimental than his Britpop band. Other artists nominated for the £20,000 prize include Florence + The Machine, Jamie xx and Wolf Alice. The winner will be revealed live on BBC Four and BBC 6 Music next month.

The Book's The Thing - A new theatre company hopes to reinvigorate local libraries through theatre. Librarian Theatre will tour productions to libraries across the UK in what founders Tom Cuthbertson and Kelly Eva-May, who are both actors, say will be the first touring company dedicated to visiting regional libraries. Its first production, an adaptation of Hamlet called The Book'

USA - Lycian Stage Lighting will be showing an as yet unnamed new followspot at LDI. Model #1299 utilises a miniaturized Xenon module with integrated heat sinks to produce an intensely bright beam.

"The intent to show the prototype is to gain feedback from our distributors as well as end users so the final product has widespread appeal from a form and function standpoint," says Lycian. "This followspot puts out a beam that surpasses even the Lycian 1295 ELT, already acknowledged as the most powerful production followspot and does it in a surprisingly compact body."

The model 1299 incorporates a number of features not seen in any other followspot. Among them is the ability to be used over a wide spot to flood ratio without lens changing. The 1299 can be used in fixed or variable focal modes. Although still in the prototype stage, Lycian intends to make optio

USA - Video equipment rental company Pete's Big TVs has added new technology to its rental stock, including the digiLED LightSlice

Pete's Big TVs' owner Peter Daniel said, "We make it our mission to offer more creative, innovative solutions for your concert tour, corporate event, theatrical show, television broadcast or whatever your needs may be."

LightSlice will be on display at LDI at digiLED USA's booth #872 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre. Pete's Big TVs' Peter Daniel and Anne Johnston will be there Friday, 23 October..

The LightSlice is a slice of lightweight 10mm resolution LED video strip for indoor or outdoor use. It was designed for events requiring creative video solutions which do not conform to the module & panel format of standard LED screens. The LightSlice strips can be oriented in curved, splayed and organic formations to complement stage and se

USA - Ayrton will be bringing six new products to LDI 2015, all which have been launched this year, and will be presented on the stand of Ayrton's exclusive US distributor, Morpheus Lights (1531).

MagicDot-R and CosmoPix-R are part of the Creative Solutions line, into which Ayrton has incorporated a totally new technology: the first 94mm diameter narrow beam angle collimator combined with the latest generation high-power (40W or 60W) Osram multichip LED that create tighter beams with an unrivalled centre beam intensity.

VersaPix-RS, the third new member of the Creative solutions line, puts Ayrton's new 94mm diameter optics in combination with a 4mm2 40W RGBW multichip to produce five 3.5° beams (the narrowest in Ayrton's portfolio) with a record-breaking central beam intensity of 200 candela per lumen.

LDI also marks the US premiere of DreamPanel-Shift and DreamPanel-Twi

USA - Designed to create an interconnected life which affirms the gifts of women worldwide, the Propel Women's Conference hosts a series of events aimed at strengthening the leadership role of women in today's workplace.

With local chapters on virtually every continent, the conferences entail a full production of inspiring music, speakers and panel discussions. Brought on to heighten the conference experience, production designer Nathan Baugh (46 Entertainment) and lighting designer Craig Rutherford (Blueshift Design) created a full lighting, audio and video design using the live event production team at Elite Multimedia.

"One of the biggest challenges in the design was the differences in the venues," says Rutherford. "We had to have a design that could be manipulated to fit as needed, but then we still had to have the right production elements to support the ba

UK - West London-based production technology rental specialist Entec supplied lighting and sound for the recent Legends Live UK arena tour which played three of the country's major venues - Wembley, Birmingham NIA and Manchester - uniting four chart-topping, superstar acts from the 1960s and 1970s - Dionne Warwick, Roberta Flack, The Drifters and Mary Wilson of the Supremes.

Entec's Will Wright project managed and co-ordinated all the prep work for the lighting department and Mark 'Magic' Ellis-Cope did the same for all the sound elements.

Entec's account handler Noreen O'Riordan commented, "When Richard Ames requested that Entec quote for both sound and lighting equipment, I knew that this would be a show ideally suited to our equipment inventory and skills. Having one supplier really benefitted the logistics of a four band arena tour - without any tech or rehearsal day.

UK - The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015 Awards took place on 13 October. Held annually at the Natural History Museum, the awards ceremony celebrates the finest wildlife photography from across the globe. Following more than 42,000 entries submitted from 96 countries, the eventual winner was Canadian photographer Don Gutoski with his image Tale of Two Foxes. Having previously worked on the event, White Light once again provided the lighting support for this year's ceremony.

The evening took place in the Hintze Hall, with 220 invited guests in attendance. As with most award ceremonies, the museum wanted to implement a particular theme for the occasion. Alice Beer, Events and filming manager at the Natural History Museum, comments, "Each year we choose an image from the finalists to establish the theme of the ceremony. For 2015, we chose the image of a pangolin.

Australia - Abba tribute band Björn Again have been delivering great nights out since their formation in Melbourne in 1988. The only tribute band endorsed by Abba themselves, they have toured the world, played major festivals and entertained the stars. Lighting designer Alex Saad is currently on the road with Björn Again, and chooses High End Systems Hog platform to light up the feel-good show night after night, venue after venue.

"We were in Port Douglas on Thursday, Townsville on Friday and Canberra on Saturday," reported Alex, "and everywhere I go I ask for a Hog and nothing else. Björn Again own a HedgeHog4, we often pick-up a HedgeHog 4N, and I prefer to use a Hog 4. Staying in the Hog family is great because I can go from one platform to the other and not lose anything. I can also take a HedgeHog home for pre-programing and run the show on a Hog 4."<

USA - Nashville, TN based production and lighting designer Chris Lisle of Chris Lisle Lighting Design has created an elegant stage look for country singer Miranda Lambert's Roadside Bars & Pink Guitars tour, featuring Robe moving lights supplied by Bandit Lites, also based in Nashville.

The tour runs for five weekends in the US over October and is based on the concept of playing smaller and more intimate spaces on the touring circuit, allowing Lambert - known as a great communicator - to be close to her already loyal audience and reach out to potential new fans.

Chris has worked with the prolific and successful star since she opened on a section of Keith Urban's 2005 world tour.

He decided to specify 20 x Robe BMFLs Spots, 24 x Pointes and 19 x LEDWash 600s for his primary moving lights to give plenty of versatility and scope.

The BMFLs and Pointes are spread out al

Brazil - Queen + Adam Lambert's recent Latin American tour comprised six shows in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, featuring a suitably impressive lightshow created by UK based designer Rob Sinclair, who has brought his magic visual touch to the QAL project since 2012.

Lighting for the three Brazilian dates in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre was supplied by leading Latam rental company LPL who are based in Sao Paolo and featured a total of 137 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 2500E ATs.

This was a continuation of the ongoing 2014-15 world tour which had visited North America, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The band wanted their enthusiastic Latam fanbase to experience the proper touring QAL experience, so brought their full production including Q-shaped set and ramp, sniffer kabuki, smoke and cryo machines and backline, sourcing the lighting, LED screens a

USA - LD Nook Schoenfeld was the first lighting designer to use Elation Professional's much anticipated Platinum FLX hybrid moving head, as well as the company's new ACL 360 Matrix narrow-beam LED effect light, and came away wholly satisfied. Both lights had their show premieres at a VIP-only Sheryl Crow concert held on the Trestles Stage just prior to the opening of the inaugural Kaaboo Festival in Del Mar, California.

"I really liked the Platinum FLX and Elation should be commended for this fixture," lighting designer Nook Schoenfeld stated just hours after Sheryl Crow's performance. "Being the first time anyone had used these fixtures I had to get a rushed fixture library to use in my console. So I was actually unsure of what I would see on stage for that evening's performance as I wrote the entire light show in the light of the California sun. But here's where

USA - Global design software developer Vectorworks, Inc. has acquired the ESP Vision product line, including the well-known Vision Pro, one of the most advanced pieces of lighting pre-visualization software available for both PC and Mac operating systems.

For the last 10 years, lighting, film, TV, exhibit, concert, theatre and other designers have been exporting their light plots, scenic designs and event models created with Vectorworks Spotlight software to ESP Vision to cue and visualize award-winning experiences. This announcement creates a path to further enable such workflow collaboration.

"This purchase fortifies Vectorworks' global market leadership position and signals our continuous commitment to the entertainment design industry at a time when visualization capabilities are becoming a more mission-critical, cost-effective means of cueing a show in advance,"

UK - Stage Electrics has announced the relocation of its London operation to new premises in Southwark. The company will continue to offer Hire, Sales and Live Events services from the new London premises just 1.6 miles from the old premises and just 3 miles from the heart of the West End.

Greg Wood of Stage Electrics commented: "We continue to offer our London customers our full range of services, we move a huge amount of hire equipment and sales goods through the London operation each month and having a central London premises to coordinate this is an important part of our strategy.

Stage Electrics provides audio, lighting, staging and video equipment to a wide range of theatre, events, broadcast and corporate clients in and around London. The London operation carries stocks of consumable items, including a comprehensive range of lighting filters, tape and batteries ava

Europe - Spandau Ballet recently played their Soulboys of the Western World world tour with a lighting and stage design by Patrick Woodroffe.

The lighting was operated by lighting director and programmer Roland Greil using two grandMA2 full-size consoles and four MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) which were controlling nearly 130 moving lights and, amongst others, 315 LED panels.

Says Roland, "It was our intention to have a straight and elegant design that could provide theatrical as well as rock'n'roll looks. Therefore we focused on using only three different types of moving lights, amongst them Clay Paky Mythos and Philips Vari*Lite VL3500 Washes. That offered the flexibility we needed. Furthermore, the grandMA2 system was a great choice and proved once more its advantages and power, especially when adapting the show to various different lighting systems in the gi

UAE - Over thirty Philips Showline SL NITRO 510C LED strobes have dazzled audiences at the packed opening party for WHITE club Dubai's third season.

WHITE Dubai is situated on the rooftop of the Meydan Grandstand racecourse. Each season sees a roster of international DJs take to the decks, with the club offering one of the most extravagant audio-visual party experiences in the Middle East.

During the opening party's 'reality-altering' light show, the Philips Showline strobes were employed to deliver bursts of colour that filled the space with light. The SL NITRO 510C is the colour version of the highly popular SL NITRO 510 and boasts an array of 264 tightly packed RGB LEDs to ensure maximum output.

"The SL NITRO 510C fixtures played a huge role in providing intense colour washes in conjunction with the LED wash lights," says the club's lighting designer Dave Parry

UK - Flightcase, loudspeaker component and 19 inch rack manufacturer Penn Elcom has launched a new LED rack light - the RADM-23 Raclite.

The RADM-23 1U Raclite is designed to be fitted to any 19 inch equipment rack, providing a flexible, elegant and practical solution for illuminating equipment in dark and dingy environments.

Suitable for the stage wings or dimmer, amp and control rooms, 25 x super bright high quality cool-white (6500K) LED emitters provide a crisp wash optimised to give clear vision of all the kit in the rack, allowing the status of equipment to be checked and assessed, and all the vital information and monitoring seen at a glance.

A 130 - 150 degree variable beam angle on the LEDs offers further visibility depending on the location and set-up of the installation, and a universal 12 Volt power supply means that it can be plugged in anywhere in the world.

USA - From film to television to theatre and the concert stage, there are several tools beloved by designers; a recent addition to that list of must-have products is LED tape. Enttec has been leading the way in easy-to-use, bright, LED tape, and is now launching the 8PW and 8PX series of LED tape. Both offer designers a new option: White LEDs.

Both the 8PX and 8PW series of LED tape are individually addressable and suitable for both stage and architectural applications, as well as any other indoor application; their use is only limited by the imagination of the designer.

The 8PW and 8PX LED tape offers designers flexibility as well; they can be joined together, cut to a smaller length, and are available in three different densities: 30, 60 and 144 pixels per meter. As expected, the brightness increases with the pixel density. Both the 8PW and the 8PX tape are backed by 3M adhe

Germany - Setting up a lighting network can be a complex and time consuming process. Especially when integrating different products using various lighting protocols.

MA Lighting has a solution. With the new MA Network Switch, the setup time and the level of complexity to achieve an optimised lighting network is radically reduced, says the company. MA now offers the complete lighting control solution from MA console, via MA Network Switch and its network infrastructure to MA DMX distribution.

In combination with the MA consoles and additional MA networking devices the MA Network Switch provides a very easy to use solution, even for complex lighting systems. Incorporating the hardware and software features MA is famous for.

The MA Network Switch is designed to simplify the set-up and management of today's lighting networks. A simple and intuitive web browser based user interfa

UK - As the exclusive UK distributor for four of the most respected manufacturers in the lighting industry, Ambersphere Solutions provide a gateway to some of the most innovative lighting products on the market. As always, the team at Ambersphere went that extra mile to offer visitors the warmest of welcomes at stand B10. Representatives from all four brands alongside the Ambersphere lineup were there to welcome, inform and discuss the extensive range of products on show.

Joining the team of Clay Paky fixtures, the Mythos, the Stormy, the SuperSharpy is the brand new Scenius. This moving head spotlight boasts a 95 CRI light quality and a wide 80-500 zoom combined with all the sophisticated features one would expect from Clay Paky. Also attracting interst was the Spheriscan, a whole new take on the scanner light of the 90s; its mirror has a continuous pan rotation with speeds of

UK - Battery powered LED lighting manufacturer Core Lighting recently supplied fashion and art exhibition Off The Wall with a fully wireless LED lighting solution.

Presented at the Art Couture Painswick (ACP) Gallery in Painswick, a historic town in the picturesque Cotswolds, the six-week installation included creations from fashion icons Philip Treacy, Alexander McQueen, Selina Blow and many more, plus high profile works from sculptors, leather designer Mary Wing To and Peter Pullion (creator of the original Orville the Duck puppet) and a miscellany of other artefacts and exhibits.

When it came to lighting the space, the existing lighting wasn't suitable and a completely different approach was needed that was good looking, contemporary and portable, so organisers ACP approached Core's Phil Ion with the challenge.

Phil, who also lives locally, jumped at the chance, &q

Italy - Gianna Nannini's most recent, long-awaited Hitalia Rocks tour brought the star live to major sports arenas in Italy. This tour followed and celebrated the release of Gianna's latest album, Hitalia. The entire album is devoted to the most beautiful Italian popular music songs of the twentieth century, performed for the first time by Gianna Nannini with her unmistakable voice.

Lighting designer Carlo Pastore and Gianna met professionally for the first time in 2011, in a show where Patrick Woodroffe was in charge of setting up and directing the lighting design. That tour was entrusted to the care of Eneas Mackintosh, founder of Lime Light.

At the time, Carlo Pastore was a programmer and Eneas's lighting assistant. During the second part of the tour, he was put in control of lighting desk operations and that was when he met Gianna Nannini.

"We met again this

USA - It isn't often that a new artist wins three Dove Awards, the Christian music equivalent of the Grammys, in the same year. Then again, few things about Lauren Daigle's music can be described as "ordinary." The 2015 Dove New Artist of the Year has captivated audiences and catapulted herself to the top of the Christian music charts by blending sacred music with a potent mix of zydeco, Cajun and blues from her native Louisiana. Bobby Dennis matched Daigle's eclectic performance note for high-energy note by drawing on some versatile power of his own in the form of the Rogue RH1 Hybrid moving fixture from Chauvet Professional.

The technical director of The Heights Baptist Church outside Dallas, Dennis flew six of the 330W Rogues in front of stage positions when Daigle appeared at his well-known house of worship. "There are a lot of nice performance features in the

USA - During the LDI 2015 show in Las Vegas, attendees found a range of lighting, video, and automation innovations in the PRG Solutions Studio.

This year Production Resource Group L.L.C. (PRG) showcased cutting edge developments that continue to provide practical yet inventive solutions to the various challenges of production. PRG understands that true innovation must enable producers, designers, gaffers, cinematographers and technicians to work smarter - to accomplish more, with greater efficiency, at lower costs.

One of the innovations making its debut at LDI was the PRG GroundControl Remote Followspot System. Followspot control hasn't changed for decades. It's time to take the truss spot operator out of the truss and put him on the ground where it's safer and more efficient to operate the followspot.

The PRG GroundControl System allows a technician to remotely operate a

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