Germany - The 1000th edition of Germany’s hugely popular children’s TV show 1, 2 oder 3 aired in July, and Green Hippo and mo2 design helped ensure it looked suitably impressive. Based on the original US version, which was called Runaround, those in the UK may be familiar with the UK show, which went out in the 70s and 80s under that same original US title. The success of the German show has outstripped that of any of its ‘siblings’ seeing it become a mainstay of German childhood TV watching.
mo2 design produced the historic episode, and to help ensure that the visuals went perfectly to plan, Green Hippo delivered special training to the German lighting and design company. Cologne-based mo2 design has extensive experience working with Media Servers – it was the first lighting designer to widely use them in German television – and has recently focuse

World - Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes shot to fame via a clip he posted to Vine in 2014 and has quickly garnered pop royalty status with a social media fan following of millions. At the pinnacle of his career playing sold-out arenas around the world, Shawn is currently embarking on his Illuminate world tour – and French manufacturer and provider of lighting balloons for the event industry, Airstar, is helping to set the stage with its Pendulair LED product.
The llluminate tour comprises 61 dates in total touching every continent, with Shawn playing some of the world’s biggest music venues. Named after his current platinum-selling second studio album, the show features a set built around a 5m wide Airstar Pendulair LED lighting balloon - known as the ‘Orb’. Providing the main source of the light for fans as they walk into the venue, in an off-b

South Africa - Indian Independence Day, holds a special meaning for the people of Lenasia Township. It was here in the early 20th century that a young Mahatma Gandhi staged a famous protest at the local railway station to advance the cause of civil rights for South Africa’s Indian population. Later, when he returned to India, Gandhi would employ the idea of non-violent civil disobedience that he had honed in South Africa to win independence for his native country, and in the process, change the world.
This year, as India celebrated the 70th anniversary of its independence, Lenasia hosted an array of events to mark the occasion. Among the most moving and colourful was Celebrating India at the township’s Patidar Hall, which featured a performance by the Kashvita Music and Dance Academy. Creating a bright and upbeat background for the spirited performances on stage w

UK - His aviator shades, curly mop and beard may appear to be cryogenically frozen in time but the renaissance of Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra continues to move ever forward in popularity and – with assistance from Stageco – sheer physical size, as witnessed by 70,000 ecstatic fans at Wembley Stadium on 24 June.
Supported by The Shires and Keane’s Tom Chaplin, Lynne led his latest ELO incarnation through a two-hour set rammed with highlights from his vast catalogue of self-penned hits, including Mr. Blue Sky, Livin’ Thing, Evil Womanand Shine A Little Love, while Handle With Care served as a reminder of his brief but perfect career as a Traveling Wilbury.
The big talking point of the night, however, was the breathtaking, 16.5-tonne spaceship hovering above the band that evoked memories of ELO’s celebrated

USA - Foreigner recently released Forty Hits from Forty Years with an accompanying 40th Anniversary Tour appropriately featuring an old-school lighting design by Dan Lastovka using Elation Arena Par Zoom LED wash lights supplied by See Factor.
Used to create a 70’s rock par can look but with the benefits of a modern intelligent luminaire are 108 Arena Par Zoom fixtures. Lastovka comments: “When I was first playing around with ideas for Foreigner’s 40th Anniversary Tour, I wanted to centre the design around a big par can rig, certainly not the largest that has ever been out, but bigger than has been seen in 10 or more years, and maybe a different look to modern audiences. In the end, whimsy yielded to practicality and a richer feature set, so the hunt for a par can analogue began.”
Lighting vendor on the tour is See Factor, who, working with Elation rep

UK - Lighting and visuals designer Andy Hurst wanted to make a big impact for Chase & Status acclaimed Saturday night headliner set at the 2017 Lovebox festival in London’s Victoria Park - so he designed an epic specials package which was supplied by HSL, together with crew – which was installed under the event’s production ‘top rig’.
The ‘extras’ included 194 x SGM Q-7 LED flood / strobes, used highly effectively for the onslaught that you expect at a Chase & Status gig as well as super-bright floods and audience blinders.
The Q-7s were rigged so they effectively worked together in linear strips, wrapping around the back and sides of the stage, the PA wings and the portrait format IMAG side screens, also integrating these screens into the performance space.
Andy loves creative challenges and is known for his fresh approach. “I wanted th

Hungary - Allen & Heath’s dLive S Class mixing system recently managed the gala event for the FINA World Aquatic Championships 2017, held at the prestigious Opera House in Budapest.
Hosted in Hungary in 2017, the FINA World Championships take place every two years in different locations. The Championships are attended by international athletes in swimming, diving, high diving, open water swimming, synchronized swimming, and water polo. Staged at the end of the competition, the gala comprised performances from a symphony orchestra with a choir and opera soloists, alongside the FINA Awards Ceremony.
Local PA company, AV Advice Ltd., managed technical requirements for the event, supplying the dLive system, which comprised a S7000 Surface equipped with Dante and Waves interface cards, a DM64 MixRack, and two DX32 expander racks with redundant connections to the MixRa

Germany - The annual DPWK Deutscher Preis für Wirtschaftskommunikation (German Prize for Business Communication) gala award presentation took place recently in the casual surroundings of Berlin’s Columbiahalle rock venue (replacing the usual formal ‘black tie’ event).
Known as Der Goldene Funke, the event was expertly lit by locally based lighting designer, Björn Hermann, working in conjunction with phase7 performing.arts, with whom he shares a studio. German lighting manufacturer GLP provided many of the creative tools, including 24 x GT1, 14 x impression X4 and 16 x impression X4 L.
Hermann says he believes it is important to support the City’s institutions, particularly at student level, and GLP were also happy to lend their sponsorship.
Explaining his conceptual mission, the designer states, “It was important to create an ‘Oscar’ type feeling

Hungary - July saw the FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) World Championships for aquatic sports take place at the Danube Arena in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Hungarian sales and rental company Chromasound was tasked with providing a complete audio system for the games and its subsequent events, with a DiGiCo SD10 chosen to provide audio control.
“FINA was responsible for the entire AV installation for the event and they wanted a redundant, reliable, high-end system that could also be used for various events after the games,” explains Imre Makkay, Chromasound’s sales director, who was in charge of system design. “As well as DiGiCo, we are also suppliers of Meyer Sound loudspeaker systems, so it was obvious that we could provide them with the correct overall solution.”
For the main venue, Imre chose the SD10 because he wanted to supply a con

Belgium - Tomorrowland is one of the world’s highest profile electronic music festivals, gathering over 400.000 people at the main site in Belgium, and connecting an additional 70.000 people at multiple remote venues through the UNITE event. UNITE are events organised in different countries and connected via a live satellite broadcast with Tomorrowland Belgium.
This year UNITE shared three hours of live HD video broadcast feeds featuring performances from the main stage in Belgium, with remote live parties in Germany, Malta, Dubai, Israel, South Korea and Lebanon. At each location grandMA2 consoles were in control. In Belgium 13 x grandMA2 full-size, eight grandMA2 light, one grandMA2 ultra-light, two grandMA2 fader wing, two MA onPC command wing and one MA onPC fader wing were used.
Up until 9pm Belgium time, every party had their own DJ performances. Starting at 9p

Brazil - Rental company LPL supplied over 150 Robe moving lights including BMFL WashBeams to the 2017 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitationals (MSI) competition staged in the Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janiero. (formally the Rio Olympic Arena)
Produced by LoL developers Riot Games, professional regional champions from Asia, North America and Europe met in Brazil and battled ‘live’ to win large numbers of points counting towards the 2017 World Championship title for this popular e-sport phenomena.
The 15-day Group / Knockout games and their Finals in Rio was one of two LoL MSI events hosted in Brazil that featured five team players per game and an eye-catching production including giant LED screens, dramatic lighting and lots of audience interaction, together with colourful and vibrant opening and closing ceremonies, explained LPL’s Caio Bertti, who project manage

USA - Earlier this month, the Lollapalooza Festival rocked Chicago at Grant Park with four days of music and fun. Supplied through LD Systems, High End Systems SolaSpot 1000s helped augment the visuals on the Pepsi Grove and Lakeshore Stages.
LD Systems’ Nathan Brittain served as lead programmer on the Pepsi Stage, joined by Pepsi Grove lead tech Wade Henry, while the Lakeshore Stage was manned by lead programmer Lance Williamson and lead tech William Diven.
Brittain commented: “We recently purchased SolaSpot 1000’s to fill a need in our inventory for a bright midrange hard edge fixture. Being that the stages we were providing for were medium size roofs, the SolaSpot 1000 was a perfect match. Their size, weight, and power consumption fit with our needs for this show.
“We provided two identical rigs for the two stages, and the SolaSpots were placed on the

Poland - Nexo systems, in the hands of rental company POGO Art, have played a central role at the World Games in Poland, bringing sound reinforcement to 24 venues in the city of Wroclaw.
Officially called the X World Games, this massive event is the largest competitive sporting festival after the Olympics. Nearly ¼ million people gathered in Wroclaw to watch 3200 athletes from 111 countries in 31 sports which are not contested in the Olympic Games. Featuring powerlifting, karate, squash, water skiing, billiards, to name a few, the 2017 programme encompassed more than 200 events.
Wroclaw-based rental company POGO Art was responsible for providing sound reinforcement to all 24 host venues, which was, according to owner Sławek Pogorzała, “a logistical and technical challenge, requiring a tremendous amount of equipment”.
With the support of Lauda-Audio, the Ne

Austria - Gracing the beautiful and imposing open-air stage of Austria’s St. Margarethen Quarry this summer is one of Verdi's most popular operas, Rigoletto. The scope and scale of the production was readily matched by two TiMax SoundHub spatial audio processors specified by sound designer, Volker Werner, to meet some interesting and unique challenges.
St Margarethen Quarry is Europe’s largest natural stage: 65m wide and 25m deep, it is set in 7,000sq.m, with an audience capacity of 4,700. For Werner, the choice of TiMax was essential: “One reason is to have the possibility to achieve accurate localisation of the singers for as many listeners as possible. Another reason; the stage is a huge 100-ton steel structure, the whole of which is 3D-mapped and projected on with 16 high-power projectors. Due to this open design there are very few possibilities to hide larg

UK - The Batley and Spen Youth Theatre Company was recently set up to celebrate and pay tribute to the life of the late Jo Cox, MP for the constituency. Its aim was to create a lasting legacy in the town which will benefit young people for many years to come. Its inaugural project was a three-week event led by a West End creative team which included a performance of Jo’s favourite musical Les Misérables</>, using an entire local cast. In support of the project, White Light provided the lighting equipment.
The project was entitled Hear the People Sing and celebrated the values that Jo stood for: togetherness, collaboration, comradeship and equality. The performances of Les Misérables were made possible by Cameron Mackintosh generously granting the rights for free. The creative team included renowned director Nick Evans, producer Donna Munday, musica

South Korea - Located in the city of Gangneung on the east coast of South Korea, Gangneung Ice Arena is a new indoor venue which has been built for world figure skating and short track speed skating events in 2018 and as a permanent legacy facility for local recreational use.
The Gangneung Ice Arena has a seating capacity of 12,000 and houses two 60m x 30m ice rinks, for competition and training respectively. With four floors above ground and two underground, the arena has been designed using an environmentally-friendly ice cooling system.
The sound system for the Gangneung Ice Arena was designed and supplied by Inter-M Corporation, assisted by Desco Coon for the installation. The Inter-M design was accurately calculated for the required intelligibility, sound levels and coverage and was based around Community R Series loudspeakers.
For the main competition rink,

UK - VME provided full production (including their flagship Martin Audio MLA Compact PA) for the first ever Cotton Clouds, Saddleworth’s pioneering boutique music festival.
Held at Saddleworth Cricket Club in Oldham, and surrounded by the picturesque Pennine hills, it sold out all 3,000 tickets well in advance, setting it on the road to an inevitable success. According to VME, there seemed no better time to introduce the Oldham faithful to the precision and accuracy of Martin Audio MLA.
“Being from the local area I knew that there would be issues with noise propagation,” stated Oliver Fallon, technical manager of Cotton Clouds and VME sound engineer. “During my time at VME I have worked with the Martin Audio MLA many times - therefore I knew there was no better system to do the job as it has got us out of some sticky situations in the past.”
Chris Pearc

USA - Artist- producer duo, The Chainsmokers, aka Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, embarked on their first arena tour earlier this year, visiting 36 cities across North America. The multi-faceted show was designed and produced by Miguel Risueño, aka Mike808, and Corey Johnson of Production Club, Los Angeles, with a stunning lighting design from Cory FitzGerald, and production management by Clancy Silver.
Signature to the show’s design were 126 MagicPanel fixtures from Ayrton, with 42 of the new MagicPanel-FX and 84 MagicPanel-R fixtures forming a dynamic, articulated ceiling of light above the duo, and 18 Ayrton MagicDot-R units fronting their DJ booth.
The tour was in support of Memories…Do Not Open, the duo’s first studio album which plays with the concept of a teenager’s ‘memory box’ in which a youngster might hide their precious objects – love lett

The Netherlands - Each year, the GelreDome - home of Dutch football club Vitesse Arnhem - is transformed into a huge centre of Christian worship by the EO-Jongerendag (Evangelical Broadcasting Youth Day) event. With 25,000 young people enjoying a range of Christian music and sermons in a huge ‘in the round’ production, two Yamaha Rivage PM10 digital mixing systems ensured that the message was clearly heard.
Thanks to its retractable roof, retractable pitch and climate control system, GelreDome is readily transformed from a 35,000-capacity football stadium into a 41,000-capacity venue for live music and other events. It has hosted concerts by many of the world’s biggest performers, ranging from Madonna, Coldplay and Lady Gaga to Iron Maiden, AC/DC and Bon Jovi.
On 10 June, the 43rd annual EO-Jongerendag hosted a number of high profile Christian acts, including Li

UK - Since the release of their debut album Speak & Spell in 1981, Depeche Mode have had 50 songs in the UK singles charts, 17 top 10 albums in the UK chart and have sold over 100m records worldwide. For their current Depeche Mode Global Spirit Tour, Front of House engineer Antony King has chosen an L-Acoustics K1 system, supplied by UK rental company Britannia Row Productions.
Depeche Mode have worked with Britannia Row for more than a quarter of a century and this longstanding relationship with the company and the pristine equipment it provides gives peace of mind to both the band and their engineers, who are certainly putting it through its paces, with the stadium tour starting this past May in Europe and concluding in March 2018 in South America.
With the tour playing over 90 dates in stadiums and large-scale venues around the world, a system that prov

UK - Sir Elton John is one of a number of acts PRG has had the pleasure of working with for many years. Account director Jon Cadbury explains a little about PRG’s history with Sir Elton’s tours: “We have been working with Sir Elton and his touring team for many years, and we supply lights for most of his shows around the world. I look after them in Europe, together with a fairly consistent, and excellent lighting team, and my colleague Curry Grant takes care of all of the North American and rest of the world shows.”
As part of a wide-ranging tour, taking in numerous countries around the world, Elton played a number of dates around the UK this summer, including the First Direct Arena in Leeds.
Lighting crew chief Lars Kristiansen has worked with the touring production and LD Kevin ‘Stick’ Bye for 14 years, during which time there have been various designs w

USA - For over 30 years, DeHerrera Event Services has been working behind the scenes to make the performances, conferences, and celebrations in the area around Pueblo, Colorado come to life.
The company’s highest profile work includes concerts for up to 5,000 people (Foghat, Jimmy Eat World, War, etc.) and its regular gig running AVL for the three free stages of Colorado’s State Fair. But DeHerrera Event Services also has plenty of bread-and-butter work running modest AVL systems at weddings, graduation ceremonies, and the like.
Because its large-format consoles are overkill on those smaller jobs, company owner Wayne DeHerrera recently picked up two of Ashly Audio’s new digiMIX24 digital mixers, which pack all of the features of his larger consoles into a 14” x 20”, 17lb frame using a clever workflow that, in DeHerrera’s words, “has anyone I’ve shown it

UK - BBC One’s musical show Pitch Battle recently completed a successful opening season with five pre-recorded episodes, plus the live finals. Live broadcasts have zero tolerance for malfunctions (just ask Mariah Carey or Janet Jackson) and gear must be 100% reliable. For this reason, lighting designer Mark Kenyon insists on ProPlex Data Distribution Devices for all his show data networking.
In addition to Pitch Battle, British television credits for ProPlex include six seasons on the hit show Strictly Come Dancing, five seasons of Saturday Night Takeaway and the new game show Big Heads – all designed by Kenyon.
“ProPlex just keeps working,” says Mark Newell, lighting gaffer and Kenyon’s chief systems tech. “For Pitch Battle, we used 10 ProPlex Opto-Splitter 2x8 RDM units, plus a user-friendly, versatile ProPlex IQ

UK - Funktion-One rental house and sound production company, Sound-Services Ltd., worked together with the loudspeaker company to produce the Funktion-One ‘Experimental Ambisonic Soundfield’ for The Glade Stage – the major electronic and dance music stage – at The Glastonbury Festival.
Sound-Services put in a Cadac CDC seven live sound console FOH, for its audio performance, allowing the audience to fully appreciate the ambisonic configuration of the Funktion-One Evo system.
Sound-Services installed a Funktion-One Evo Touring system, comprising a main-stage FOH system with four additional positions; the six loudspeaker positions arranged in a perfect hexagon, 36 meters in diameter, to create the sound-field. The ‘Experimental Ambisonic Sound-field’ was not a discreet configuration but a system design wherein all loudspeaker positions conjoined to generate a

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