UK - Lifting, control and rigging specialist Lift-Turn-Move (LTM) supplied LoadGuard hoists to SSE Audio which were used for The Corrs tour. Four of the LTM team were invited by SSE Audio's Russell Holt to watch the load in at Liverpool Echo Arena. This was the first time behind the scenes for some of the team to see their gear in action. It has proved a very valuable experience, improving their understanding and product knowledge.

The attendees from LTM comprised of Clare Sheppard from Sales, Alison Marshall from Marketing and Jack Triggs from the Workshop. Jack Triggs stated, "Today has been extremely beneficial, I am based in the workshop building the hoists I have never had the opportunity to see what the hoists were used for in a concert, it gave me a great overview of how the hoists are used."

The LTM team enjoyed watching the rigging by SSE Audio's Perttu Korteniemi

UK - Arena Group was pivotal in supporting The Jockey Club's transformation of Aintree Racecourse for the 2016 Crabbie's Grand National with temporary event seating and structures. David Mullins trained Rule the World won the race and the £1m prize money.

Carl Pastor, The Jockey Club's operations director, states, "I view Arena as a partner, rather than a contractor: they are pro-active in suggesting ideas and helping us overcome problems, always in tune with our own brand values. The introduction of new features such as the Arena Deck viewing area in front of The Chair Pavilion and the double decker Owners and Trainers hospitality facility this year were great examples of the fantastic advances in the experience we were able to offer our guests."

Arena Group's Aintree installation came hot on the heels of a record breaking installation at Cheltenham Festival for The

USA - Las Vegas-based with the purchase of eight variable speed chain hoists fitted with Kinesys Elevation 1+ drives, Kinesys Vector Software and eight Kinesys LibraCELL load measuring shackles, all delivered via the manufacturer's U.S. office in Atlanta.

Brent founded Alpine Rigging in 2011 and has been working out of the frenetic entertainment industry hub of Las Vegas since 2005. He's previously worked as a freelance rigger and automation specialist in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world, as well as extensively throughout North America.

Las Vegas was already replete with several major and well respected lighting, rigging and AV rental companies, so with Alpine Rigging, Brent wanted to offer something altogether different. He decided his unique selling point would be to concentrate on niche markets within the world of entertainment and prodAlpine Rigging, headed by

UK - PLASA Focus Leeds returns to the Royal Armouries 10-11 May with its popular seminar programme offering a variety of thought provoking topics from leading organisations in the live entertainment technology industry. The two-day free to attend seminar programme will welcome inspirational and technical sessions from the likes of Soulsound, Association of Lighting Designers (ALD), BECTU and d&b audiotechnik.

This year, the ever-popular seminar programme offers practical guidance for industry professionals with early highlights including multiple sessions from Soulsound as Justin Grealy hosts A Sound Engineer's Guide to Guitars and Guitarists and Dug Gutherie (Soulsound / Surfing Cow) looks in-depth at Category Cables for Touring Applications. Steve Jones from d&b's Education and Application Support team will present Why Size Matters exploring how loudspea

UK - A bright sunny April day saw the 6th Annual Behind the Scenes UK Charity Golf Day kick off in normal chaotic style. The morning started with all 20 teams having to pass the BTS Golf Academy before being let loose on a proper golf course with real balls. The teams had to negotiate the four crazy golf putt putt holes, swiftly followed by the driving range and 'nearest to the pin' challenge. This being a BTS Golf Day the challenges are never normal and these tasks involved the golf balls being replaced for marshmallows. Surprisingly some of the golfers chose to keep using the marshmallows on the main 18 holes as their game suddenly improved with straighter and longer shots!

A networking lunch was rounded off with final instruction from BTS Golf Day judge, jury and executioner, Lee Dennison. The teams departed to their holes and the game was afoot. Never one to let people enj

Germany - MDG's stylish new stand at Prolight+Sound was a popular gathering place for those interested in the best of atmosphere generation. The stand was busy on all days with visitors interested in products across the board, and receiving demonstrations of the Atmosphere range, the Me Family, the IceFog Series of low-fog generators and the award-winning, theOne. Customers also benefited from fabulous videos that showed on screen how to unleash the full potential of some of the larger generators that the environs of a trade show were not able to accommodate.

One of these was the new Me8 fog generator which was launched at the show to great excitement. The biggest of the Me Series, the Me8 is an 8-nozzled monster capable of pumping out a massive 800m3 of fog per minute. Visitors were able to witness the speed at which it could fill a 60m x 30m x 8m (15,000m3) space with thick

UK - Penn Elcom has launched a new series of ingenious space-saving Cavity Wall Racks designed for housing rack-based AV, IT and communications equipment ... in any usable void wall space.

Almost every building - whatever the style and era - will have a wall void of some kind, explains Dave Roberts who heads up Penn's R&D at Bristol.

Stairwells and loft spaces are the most common - however a plethora of other 'spare' spaces are frequently created during building and refurbishment projects. The Cavity Wall Rack can also be fitted into cupboards and closets ... in fact, into pretty much every imaginable place!

The very first Cavity Wall Racks were a custom design for a smart-home project - a sector with huge potential for this product. The national house builder this was originally designed for, now installs one in every new home built.

This design provided such a si

UK - The UK-based artistic design firm, Oli Metcalfe Design Ltd working with entertainment studio, Moment Factory applied an unprecedented combination of interactive technology for the worldwide arena tours of British rock trio, Muse and their seventh studio album Drones.

Muse made history on Friday, 15 April 2016 when they played to a record-breaking 21,000 fans at The O2 Arena, London.

The Drones tour combines tracking, lighting, videos, flying elements and a lot of creativity, to create visuals and spontaneous interactivity unique for a live rock concert like this one.

BlackTrax real-time motion tracking solution from CAST BlackTrax Ltd is used to track and manage three technical elements, from band members to massive drones that fly above the audience as well as for projection-based storytelling. The area tracked is BlackTrax's largest to date!

Drones wa

UK - When Hungry Bear Media produced Michael McIntyre's Big Show, the new Saturday night entertainment show that aired on BBC 1 this weekend, they brought Showforce's crew in to assist. The show is hosted by Michael McIntyre and features a variety of acts and talent, the production was recorded in front of a live audience at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.

A six-week run of filming began at the end of February and was completed in early April. Showforce provided a team of 22 who were on site for two nights each week, delivering crewing requirements for the theatre, the backstage area and to support the production's suppliers.

The Showforce crew assisted backstage across the whole production, assisting the production's suppliers, this included: loading in Plus4Audio's equipment; transferring PRG's lighting rigs to the stage; unloading and installing a video wa

UK - Quantum Special Effects designed two new products for Adele's sell out world tour - a bespoke tourable rain system and storm blasters that can deliver up to a minute of non-stop confetti across an entire arena.

Working closely with Adele Live 2016 show designer Es Devlin and production manager Richard Young, Quantum is supplying over 100 shows across 44 arenas.

Quantum's team of in-house designers and engineers had just eight weeks to design, develop and build the new Q: Rain Graphix and just a fortnight for the Q: Storm Blasters.

Providing a genuine indoor downpour for Adele's performance of Set Fire to the Rain is Quantum's new digital rain system the Q: Rain Graphix. The system creates a four-walled curtain of rain around the singer whilst she remains safe and dry within.

Mike Badley, engineer at Quantum, built and designed the system. He said, "The

UK - Opening in three weeks, PLASA Focus Leeds 2016 will welcome the latest products recently launched in live entertainment technology from 10 - 11 May. Robe, Avolites, Triple E and Pioneer Pro Audio will join over 175 brands showcasing their new technical solutions for the live entertainment industry.

After recently launching a variety of new and innovative lighting products, Platinum Sponsor Robe, returns to Leeds with its new Spikie, a super-fast LED WashBeam, on stand N-B30. The fixture produces sharp, multi-coloured spikes of light, rotating in both directions at variable speed, while a unique beam effect engine transforms the output into three piercing narrow beams. It has continuous pan and tilt rotation and weighs only 5.5 Kgs.

State-of-the-art professional audio solutions will also be on offer, including the recently launched XPRS Series from Pioneer Pro Audio on

Germany - Track systems specialist Triple E is celebrating its successful launch of ModTruss in Europe at Prolight + Sound, Frankfurt.

The Triple E team constructed an iimpressive stand at the Messe Frankfurt for the event, showcasing the versatility of the ModTruss product line, which lends itself to endless configurations using standard accessories, ensuring ideas that once took extensive custom design and fabrication are constructed easily and fast.

Triple E launched the US-designed ModTruss in the UK in June 2015, immediately winning 'Engineering Product of the Year' at the ABTT Theatre Show in London.

"This year's Prolight + Sound marked a milestone in the history - and future - of Triple E as we undertook the biggest launch for our company yet - ModTruss, Europe-wide," says Triple E's managing director, David Edelstein. "We've put in a lot of hard work to bring t

World - Muse is the latest band to benefit from Mojo Barriers' specially-designed touring barrier as 160m of the system keeps crowds safe throughout The Drones World Tour.

Mojo Barriers was contracted to ensure audience and artist safety at all the US and European dates of Muse's nine-month tour. Mojo supplied 160m of barrier, ADA and heavy duty cable ramps along with custom designed Double Flex Corners to allow the Muse production team to pass cabling under the barriers safely.

Mojo's JB Dolphin and John Wagoner oversaw all 27 Mexican and North American dates, whilst Stanley Jilesen oversaw the 50 shows in Europe. Muse played in the round, with a circular stage in the middle with two catwalks at either end. To compliment the unique stage layout, Mojo's Vario Corners were widely used to work with the contours of the stage. The tour has been celebrated for its use of the la

UK - PLASA Focus Leeds (10 -11 May, Royal Armouries) seminars this year offer visitors the chance to attend sessions on a variety of topics and to demo new products from leading brands in the world of entertainment technology.

Highlights include sessions from d&b audiotechnik, MA Lighting console training from Ambersphere Solutions and HOG4 training from High End Systems.

The seminar from d&b audiotechnik's Steve Jones explores how loudspeaker size affects its whole performance including its directivity, the direct to reverberant ratio and what loudspeaker throw actually means.

The three sessions available from Ambersphere Solutions on MA Lighting dot2 compact lighting consoles will provide visitors with an overview of all the features of the new console, including hands-on instruction covering all the basic operational features. High End Systems will also offer traini

Germany - From 15 to 17 June Stage|Set|Scenery will be represented at the Stage Technology Conference (BTT), which is organised by Deutsche Theatertechnische Gesellschaft (DTHG) and will be taking place in Bremen.

The BTT is the most important advanced training event organised by the theatre and event technology industry in German-speaking countries. A total of 80 companies will be represented there, including established family-run firms and innovative enterprises, ranging from small start-ups to major market leaders. The Stage Technology Conference can look back on a history that spans more than 100 years and this year will be taking place for the fifty-eighth time.

The extensive programme of supporting events comprises around 70 lectures, seminars, round table discussions, workshops and excursions. High points of the conference will include the SoundLab, specially desig

Belgium - Due to renovations, the Royal Munt Theatre in Brussels needed temporary accommodation elsewhere at short notice. Veldeman provided a quick, qualitative solution and built the Munt Palace on the site of Tour & Taxi's, an opera house which was made to measure with a capacity of welcoming up to 1,100 people. An imposing TFS (Tension Fabric Structure) tent of 3,200sq.m will accommodate the opera productions until at least the end of 2016.

A storey tent of 25m by 40m serves as an entrance hall and VIP room. A true eye-catcher is the facade which has been personalised in a beautiful way, referring to the Munt's pediment in the heart of Brussels. The entrance and covered terrace were luxuriously decorated with wooden walls, wooden ceiling and a beautiful new bankirai floor. This highly qualitative decoration was maintained on the inside as well. The cloakroom was walled by

UK - The Shaftesbury Theatre in London prides itself on being the largest independent theatre in the West End. For over a century it has played host to many high quality, large scale productions, and in order to ensure its long term ability to do this, the theatre recently extended its fly tower, increasing both the height and loading capacity.

This valuable addition to the Grade II listed theatre has made the venue more capable than ever of accommodating large scale productions, particularly musicals, and indeed earlier this month opened Motown The Musical to critical and audience acclaim. The theatre now also provides additional dressing room accommodation and increased on-site office space. To help facilitate the refurbishment, Unusual Rigging was engaged on each of the three phases of the construction process, the last of which was completed in February 2016.

Ja

UK - Following on from PLASA's backstage tour of Sadler's Wells in March, a visit has been arranged to the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

The Royal Shakespeare Company will be welcoming PLASA members on 24th May 2016 to take part in an immersive backstage tour covering the transformation of Elizabeth Scott's iconic 1932 cinema-style Royal Shakespeare Theatre into a definitive new environment for performing the works of Shakespeare.

This was a major construction programme and Stage Electrics were involved on-site in the realisation of this transformation for over four years working to the design brief created by Charcoalblue (theatre consultants), Buro Happold (engineers) and Bennetts Associates (architects).

This project was a huge collaborative effort with a number of different contributors all handpicked by the RSC. More r

UK - Bluebell Opticom, provider of innovative fibre optic solutions for fixed and remote applications, has announced that UK broadcaster ITV has installed a ShaxX Lite SMPTE hybrid alternative connector kit as part of a studio upgrade and relocation. The ShaxX Lite allows ITV to share the refurbished studio with an existing master control room in another part of the building.

"Thanks to Bluebell's ShaxX Lite, we didn't need to design and build a new cable bridge between buildings to reach the gallery from the studio," said Steve Usher, project manager, ITV. "Eliminating those steps saved us time and money."

The refurbished studio, which is used for live broadcasts of This Morning five mornings a week, has been relocated a long distance away from the master control room, and the ducting was too congested to run SMPTE hybrid cable between them. Thanks to the ShaxX Lit

UK - Arena Group supplied 59 temporary tower structures and 2,031 temporary tiered covered seats to the Virgin Money London Marathon.

Along the 26.2 mile route through the UK's capital city, Arena Group installed all the mile and kilometre marker towers, beginning at Blackheath Common's start line right through to the last marker before the finish line on The Mall, in front of Buckingham Palace.

Each tower measured 1.077m wide by 2.115m deep, stood 6m high and was cladded with Virgin Money branded Mile Marker boards. The towers that stood on opposite sides of the road were adorned with red and white helium-filled balloon arches.

Arena Group installed a total of 2,031 temporary seats across the course, with 579 seats within two covered grandstands lining either side of the Start Line. A further 1,452 seats in 12 grandstands lining The Mall offered optimum views of runne

The Netherlands - Rigging Box, the rigging dry-hire company, has used the favourable conditions of the Truss Exchange Programme to further invest in Prolyte truss.

Rigging Box, part of the Ampco Flashlight Group, is a dry-hire rigging company with a wide range of truss, chain-hoists and other rigging equipment. Rigging Box started in 2004 and serves a large part of the Dutch market, as well as projects throughout Europe, like events, festivals, theatres or tours.

Rigging Box always has put a high emphasis of supplying well maintained and top quality products to its customers' base, just what you like to see in a rigging supplier. Although dry-hire is their main business, their outstanding service and support is what customers come back for.

Prolyte Group and the Rigging Box have worked together for a long time. A warehouse full of Prolyte truss, ranging from X30D truss

USA - For Selena Gomez's Revival Tour, TAIT Towers, the global company known for designing and fabricating live staging equipment and scenic design for world tours including The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, U2, Madonna and more, innovated stage design and set elements.

With ongoing relationships with Gomez's production management team and set designers, Robert 'Hydro' Mullin, Tamlyn Wright, Baz Halpin, and Chris Nyfield, TAIT executed stage designs and artistic set elements. To meet the production teams design, TAIT constructed a 49ft. rolling stage with band risers on both sides and a scissor lift behind the stage. TAIT provided a painted 32 ft. thrust performance deck which is painted to give the illusion of three runways immersing into the audience.

The thrust performance deck includes nine traps that drop into the underworld and house nine medicine ball trampolines fo

UK - The Royal Windsor Horse Show (RWHS) plays host to The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebration this year which takes place every evening from Thursday 12 to Sunday 15 May. The last night will be broadcast live by ITV when The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, along with other members of the Royal Family, will attend.

Sourcing smaller grandstand roofs for a more intimate atmosphere, organiser H Power had to find another means to support the significant weight of lighting required for the birthday broadcast.

The solution came in the shape of a ring of Star Events' new 20m Zee-Towers and 16m T-Towers. Strong enough to carry the 250 moving head lights and eight operated follow-spots, it holds them at the right height to hit the arena floor from behind the grandstands without impacting on sightlines. The towers' tiny footprint was another key feature for the organiser. It meant th

South Africa - Johannesburg-based rental company, LaserX, have taken delivery of four new ProLyft 250kg motors. "Having used them a number of times, the consensus now is how did we ever manage without them," said Troy Bentley, owner of the company.

For close to 20 years, LaserX have entertained both South African and international audiences with spectacular laser shows. "During this time we have tried to keep up with the changing needs of our clients and to stay fresh," explained Troy. Having seen an international trend for other "special" effects at conferences and trade shows, LaserX decided to incorporate a WaterGraphic water curtain.

"When we were planning how to support the WaterGraphic we phoned DWR Distribution and spoke to Robert Izzett, who came out to our premises to advise us on the best way to do this. It was decided that initially we would use a Prolyte trussi

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline