Rigging / Staging

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14 December 2016

Here is a small selection of some of the highlights and the ways in which WI can provide solutions for a myriad of scenarios which require lighting, sound and video to be in specific places, or lifted and moved precisely at exactly the right time.

Dominator 2016 is organised by hard style dance festival and event producers Q-Dance and is one of the largest gatherings for hardcore techno hard trance fans, staged each year in the park at Strand Eersel, Netherlands where WI provided six 11.5m towers for the Main stage used out in the crowd for PA delays and audience lighting. Two 10.8mWI towers were used for the second stage, all

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14 December 2016

The event, which was this year hosted by Australian actor and TV presenter Mark Little, has become a highlight in the lighting and video design world, providing a platform to recognise the hard work and boundless creativity demonstrated in the industry. With over 500 lighting and video professionals attending the award ceremony, the pressure was on for Hawthorn to deliver a spectacular production, with their lighting designer Chris Green taking up the gauntlet.

Producing a lighting d

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14 December 2016

The latest Loadlink plus load cells were added to the rigging following the addition of side masking to three 4m-high LED screens that are tracked up and down stage during performances and integral to the production.

Wayne Parry, head of production at the Rose Theatre Kingston, said, "The side masking allowed for a clean, crisp finish and meant the production team could incorporate a doorway for the actors to enter and exit to the side of the screens. An additional benefit was that they solidified the screens and facilitated smooth movement."

However, the loading requirement that this pla

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14 December 2016

Star has provided technical and infrastructure expertise to Hull 2017 over the past few months, including the hugely successful Place des Anges, an aerial spectacular, which attracted 10,000 people to the city centre in July.

Roger Barrett, special projects director at Star Events, comments, "We are delighted to have been able to offer support to Hull 2017, bringing our knowledge and expertise of working on major events as they prepare for this massively important year for the city.

"All of my formal education was in Hull, and much of my informal education as well. I started my career in the 1960s as local crew for The Who's Tommy tour at Hull City Hall, where most of Live At Leeds was recorded.

"I have been back in

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14 December 2016

The Shelford Channel is built around Rupert Neve's first new transformer-gain, class A mic preamp in over 40 years. This new preamp design is complemented by the "best-of-the-classics" 1073- and 1064-inspired inductor EQ section from Rupert Neve Designs' existing Shelford 5051 and 5052 modules, a bold and powerful new diode bridge compressor inspired by the 2254 with additional functionality, a new dual-tap transformer output with high- and low-headroom outputs, variable Silk/Texture transformer saturation, and twice the operating voltage of Rupert Neve's vintage modules.

Says the company, "For decades, Rupert has often been asked to create a new design based around the same mic pre, EQ and compressor technologies that comprised his classic console modules. With the Shelford Channel, he and his

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14 December 2016

Miguel Angel Tapia Trujillo was the Front of House engineer at the Parque Chamizal in Ciudad Ju

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14 December 2016

Madrid-based PRG Spain was responsible for the audiovisual production for the festival's three main stages and incorporated Elation Professional's Cuepix Panel LED matrices into the design for Stage Three, a 10,000-capacity stage located inside the main tennis court arena.

"The Mad Cool Festival has been one of our biggest productions this summer with 98 staff from PRG Spain, one full day of set-up and another of lighting, video and sound rehearsals prior to the three days of concerts," said PRG's Francisco 'Pako' Palazon, head of production and lighting design for the three main sta

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14 December 2016

Also helping contribute to a busy stand was the buzz around all of the new features released within the system since last year's show. These included; Free Scan, an easy process to add additional items to a job, a new Costing Module, helping log all job costs and summarise projected profitability, as well as Part Invoicing and an Open API allowing rental businesses to create exciting integrations.

The Current team were thrilled to see so many new faces on the Stand: "We were rushed off our feet the entirety of PLASA, which was fant

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14 December 2016

"There is a demand to buy more gear because the word has gone out quickly and I'm doing a lot of work," he said. "Sometimes it feels unreal, if I can put it like that. I feel blessed because as you know it's a tough industry, the competition is high and I thank God that I still have the business."

Because it's a small company, Kgomotso is there for every event, from set-up to strike, the first one in and the last one out. "My family give me support", he says, and he will always be grateful for his mom, a nurse,

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14 December 2016

Once again, PLASA's high quality free to attend seminar programme was a key element of the show and featured extremely well attended presentations by Durham Marenghi on lighting the Olympic ceremonies in Rio as well as a Production Masterclass from Ola Melzig and Fredrik Jönsson on Eurovision 2016.

This year's content-rich show also featured the seventh edition of the Rigging Conference, hands-on console training opportunities, the Innovation Gallery, and an exp

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14 December 2016

Dan Phillips, project sales co-ordinator at Doughty explained, "The Articulated Carriage is a piece I'd been working on for a little while and thought it would be worth taking along to PLASA to try it out and see just how well it would work. If it didn't perform as expected, I was ready to go back to the drawing board to fine tune the design. But we built the stand and it worked perfectly - and went on to become the talking point of our stand at this year's show."

The new Articulated Carriages allow the Studio Rail perimeter tr

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14 December 2016

The Movecat PLUSlite 1000-4 is based on the current DIN 56950-1:2012-5 standard and satisfies in full the BG requirements. The mechanism is designed for twice the nominal load and the chain exhibits dynamic and static safety factors of 8:1 and 10:1 respectively.

With its compact aluminium housing, a 9x27 load chain, two robust handles and a total weight of only 115 kg, it is suitable for day-to-day touring and rental applications.

Above all, when used as a climbing hoist in combination with the Movecat Case, which was developed in close cooperation with users, ideal operation is guaranteed, as the chain-hoist can climb and retract independently drawing its power from the case.

Features include: overhead or

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14 December 2016

Delivered by creative agency Imagination, the event was designed around the seven seat Discovery's family and adventure priorities, action man Bear Grylls descending from a helicopter to place the final brick on the structure.

Twelve months in the planning, the Tower Bridge model had to lift and support two Land Rover Discoveries while Ben Ainslie, the most successful sailor in Olympic history, drove his team underneath, pulling a Lego replica of their Land Rover BAR racing boat.

John O'Gorman, director of Setsquare Staging, comments, "Our relationship with Imagination has been getting stronger over the years

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14 December 2016

Established to run in parallel with the UK manufacturing base in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, the new 5 Star China operation will primarily service the burgeoning domestic Chinese and wider Asian markets which are demanding high quality products - for which it's simply not practical to ship from the UK.

The idea has been on the horizon for some time explains 5 Star's MD Keith Sykes, but several elements needed to fall in line before the plan could be successfully implemented.

Running the new 1000 metre plus production facility will be 5 Star's local business partner James Zhang, a well-known, respected and highly successful entrepreneur who manages other manufacturing companies in the town, including travel bag / handbag and polythene carrier bag

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14 December 2016

A familiar face to many, Suzanne has over 20 years of experience within the industry working with textiles and associated products, servicing theatre, hospitality, special projects and the Event sectors.

Gerriets GB Ltd based in London are suppliers of theatrical curtains and flame retardant fabrics, track systems, screens and stage equipment.

(LSi Online)

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14 December 2016

"Some of our customers don't even know about the service we offer; but last year we made over 100,000 bespoke assemblies, using half a million metres of cable, for the professional entertainment industry," said Jonathan Walters, UK sales and purchasing director for distributor A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd (AC-ET). "This included power, signal and multicore for lighting, video and audio. If we get an emergency call we often turn orders around in 24 hours, so the show can go on."

"We've got a great manufacturing facility in High Wycombe, skilled technicians, and we are keen to promote and grow this part of our business - we

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14 December 2016

Now, Puy Du Fou has taken things to the next level once again with their newest production - Le Dernier Panache - probably one of the most daring shows they ever created. The team at Puy Du Fou commissioned ShowTex with the production and installation of all masking drapes, printed fabrics, projection screens, rails and motion control systems that brought Le Dernier Panache to life.

Performed in a completely custom-built and 360° rotating theatre, the 2.400 members of the audience are immersed in the story on a multi-sensory level, smoothly rotating to watch the performance taking place on six different stages.

ShowTex rose to the challenge and installed the most solid an

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14 December 2016

The 20m high by 20m wide Monolith is 10m deep and was created by production designer Es Devlin working in close conjunction with Beyoncé herself who is involved in all the major details of her stage presentation. It takes the striking beauty, isolation and simplicity of a Monolith design concept to amazing new levels.

The object opens 7.3m in the middle, tracks - as two sections on sliding grids - and rotates 360 degrees, a feat of engineering enabled by Belgian automation specialist WIcreations who designed the rotation and slid

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14 December 2016

The festival invited audiences to rediscover the City of London and beyond, past and future, through a series of art installations and performances. Jim Dugan who headed the event management team at Unusual Rigging said, "This event offered an opportunity to understand just how much of an impact the fire had on the architecture, outlook and infrastructure of the City, including some of its most iconic buildings and landmarks, and we worked with Artichoke to demonstrate this through their very unique perspective."

He continued: "Unusual was brought on board just eight weeks before the i

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14 December 2016

A bespoke built laser etching machine has also been designed and installed for adding logos, letters, numbers and other customisations to aluminium and steel rack panels, giving Penn the ability to offer further flexibility to its clients.

The move is in response to an increased demand for both standard and bespoke cable and rack manufacturing products and services after the launch of the Penn Elcom Online global web portal in January of this year. A boost in international business is seeing cables, leads and racks being shipped worldwide.

"We want to e

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14 December 2016

Stanley Jilesen headed up Mojo's summer tours in Europe, supplying enough specially designed touring barrier to cross from France to England across the English Channel.

Featuring on five of the summer's biggest tours, Mojo supplied all 42 European tour dates of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' The Getaway World Tour, 28 European dates of Bruce Springsteen's The River Tour 2016, including his open-air concert at the Malieveld in The Hague, 33 AC / DC dates featuring Axle Rose on vocals, 23 European tour dates of Rihanna's The Anti World Tour and 50 European tour dates of Muse's The Drones World Tour.

All the tours benefitted from Mojo Barriers' stage barriers, with s

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14 December 2016

As SVP of Live Event, Curbishley will focus his efforts on driving customer service, generating new business, and continuing to grow TAIT's position as a global market leader in live experience.

"I cannot think of a more imaginative, innovative and progressive group of people to join." Curbishley commented. "Over the years, I have worked on so many projects, side by side with TAIT, and have watched as they have taken the fantastical, ambitious and, at times, outright crazy dreams of designers, and turned them into tourable, slick, pieces of art!"

"Mickey has been my close friend and colleague in the industry for 30 years," shared Jame

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14 December 2016

The new Verto truss will be shown in action or you may give it a try in the Verto challenge. Pop by, request for a demonstration and get your limited edition Verto T-shirt at the stand!

Prolyte will further highlight the Verto truss during the New Technology Breakfast on Saturday 22 October - another opportunity to learn all the technical details of this truss.

(Jim Evans)

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14 December 2016

ANSI E1.4-1 - 2016, Entertainment Technology - Manual Counterweight Rigging Systems, is a revision of the old standard for manual counterweight systems. The E1.4 project has been broken into three related parts. The other two parts are for dead-hung battens and manually powered winch systems.

ANSI E1.22 - 2016, Entertainment Technology - Fire Curtain Safety Systems, is a revision of the 2009 edition to better align it with the requirements in the current NFPA 80. The standard describes the materials, design, fabrication, installation, operation, testing, and maintenance of fire safety curtains and s