UK - Live video production specialists XL Video UK were the main Video suppliers for the Fashion Rocks fundraising event at the Royal Albert Hall, to which they supplied projection, screen, cameras, and their Digital OB truck. Clearchannel Entertainment produced the Princes Trust event, presented by Liz Hurley and Denis Leary, and featuring performances from some of the biggest names in rock including Beyonce Knowles, Robbie Williams, Bryan Ferry and Sheryl Crow, plus 17 international fashion designers, from Armani to Prada to YSL. Production manager for Clearchannel was Phil Christensen.

One of the largest video projection screens ever made, 27m wide by 14m deep covered the whole of the RAH's upstage area. XL commissioned screen manufacturers ECT to produce the Matt Bright front projection surface. It was hung and stretched onto a rectangular truss with a slight curvature, pro

UK - XL Video has been working with Artangel, one of the UK's most innovative mixed media arts and performance organizations, on its recent Kranky Klaus/BB/Spook House film tour. This saw the screening of three short, compelling film works by US artist Cameron Jamie, complete with live soundtrack played by cult conceptual rock band, The Melvins. It's the first time that Jamie's work has been premièred in the UK, and Artangel produced the joint commission in association with the Centre Pompidou Paris.

Video was naturally central to the performance, and was designed, specified and co-ordinated by Sam Collins, who also production managed the tour for Artangel. Associates who had also worked with the UK's leading live music video rental house recommended Collins to XL Video. His account was project managed by XL's Arts and Theatre specialist, Malcolm Mellows.

The movies we

UK - The Safety Focus Group, set up by the International Live Music Conference (ILMC), has won a grant of €160,000 from the European Union to produce a vital safety guide. The guide is intended for use by live music promoters and workers throughout Europe and beyond, and will reflect best practice in a number of European countries. As one of the conditions of this grant, the Safety Focus Group must now raise a further €40,000 funding from the live music industry to secure the project.

The ILMC says that the safety guide will provide a tool for concert and festival organizers to assess and manage risks, and will be useful to everyone from the new event organizer to the most established promoters. Scheduled to be ready by late autumn of 2004, it will primarily be accessible via a specially designed website, although a limited number of hard copies will be produced. With its Euro

UK - Natasha Smith has recently been appointed as manager of Steljes Hire's Loan Pool. The 'Loan Pool', a recent addition to the Steljes Hire Channel Support Services, was launched in September to provide resellers with a direct source of demonstration products. Smith has worked for Steljes Trade for over seven years and has been working in the hire division since 1997. Eddie Bance, director of Steljes Hire commented: "With over seven years of experience at Steljes, Natasha has extensive industry knowledge and will ensure reseller's loan requirements are efficiently and perfectly matched."

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

UK - Creative Technology has marked its relocation to a new 54,000sq.ft facility in Crawley by announcing a 'single brand' service operation, in which the staging services of MCL London, currently operating from within CT's premises, will now be amalgamated and operate under the CT London brand. At the same time, the company has committed to a heavy investment in new inventory and technology.

Managing director Mark Elliott said of the strategic decision to operate as a single entity: "Being able to centralize all our resources into a single building has enabled us to further develop full service capability to provide a wide range of resources. This includes video, lighting, audio, and staging equipment, together with our ever-increasing range of indoor and outdoor LED screens."

A substantial upgrade to CT's hire fleet will see heavy investment, with the company inten

UK - Pop shows don't always go hand in hand with musical integrity, but the recent XTina Aguilera tour combined real musical talent with some imaginative, Xellently Xecuted production skills, under the production management of Rob Kern. (She did a Prince on us and changed her name to XTina - maybe setting up the Xmas single - sorry, no more X puns.) We caught up with Kern (and the show) at Wembley Arena on 5 November.

Kern took on the role of production manager for the 'Stripped' tour in March when rehearsals began, leading into production rehearsals in June. Taking on the World 'XTina' style began in earnest with 46 shows in the US before her first Arena tour across Europe and the UK, taking in 29 shows, then three nights in Tokyo, before finishing with seven dates in Australia.

In addition to Aguilera there are five musicians, three backing singers and eight dancers on stag

Fourth Phase showed the Mbox system. MBox integrates the versatility of video with the flexible control of automated lighting, enabling video, stills and real-time effects to be combined for visual effects that can be displayed by any projector, LED wall or monitor.

Belgium - At this year's ceremony of the International Laser Display Association (ILDA) awards at the Brussels Plaza Theater, German laser specialist Lobo not only won more awards than any other company (for the sixth time running), but with a total of 12 of the 'Laser Oscars' also won more awards than ever before.

With its 12 awards including four first prizes, almost one third of all the ILDA Awards for outstanding creative achievements went to Lobo during the glamorous ceremony. This brings the Aalen-based company's total in just 10 years to 69 ILDA awards, including more than 20 first prizes.

Four of Lobo's 3D beam shows were awarded prizes, including two first prizes. All winning beam shows originate from the Lobo's Software Contract - a show subscription service that offers subscribers one beam show per month.

Key to many of Lobo's achievements is its laser and multi

UK - For the Glow Project 2003, large-format projection specialist E//T//C UK provided this one-night installation celebrating community spirit and art in Palmiera Square, Brighton. The brainchild of local resident Nathalie Vin (pictured inset with E//T//C's Ross Ashton), Glow Project this year involved over 30 local households supplying artwork to be projected onto the buildings.

E//T//C UK supplied two 6kW Pigi projectors with double rotating scrollers, and a Barco G10 video projector. All hardware was located 50m away on the green in the middle of the Square, protected by heavy-weather tents. All PIGI artwork was created by E//T//C's Ross Ashton and video artwork by Vin. Vin and Ashton are looking at the possibility of staging Glow Projects in other cities around the UK and Europe.

UK - "At first there wasn't going to be any grid, we were asked to rig a system off the king poles." Bryan Grant of audio contractor Britannia Row Productions describing the preliminaries of what is always a big event in the music industry calendar, the MTV Europe Awards (EMA's for short). Unrealistic as that might seem - this is after all Europe's premier music awards show (isn't it?), the initial belief that you could stage a world class event off some tent poles proved a partial blessing.

"The design was very different this year," continued Grant, "they brought in Mark Fisher [creative director was Ray Winkler] and he produced a quite minimalist set design, a big departure from previous years. Plus the show was characterized by multiple performance points, with many presentation areas as well."

The concept predicated a highly distributed syste

Under the creative direction of Richard Belliveau, the High End Systems stand was one of the highlights of the show. Eschewing the 'architectural' approach to stand design which seems to have predominated in recent years, their demonstration of the Catalyst DL1's considerable capabilities was conducted in an enclosed 'black box' - and was all the more powerful for it. The stand was continuously packed with visitors - if some thought the aisles were quiet at times, High End could be to blame. Interestingly, the Catalyst DL1 (running off the new Catalyst Version 3 Media Server) now incorporates a Sony camera in its head, and was therefore able to simultaneously film and project the audience, stylishly incorporating us into the demo. This show was a reminder of what powerful lighting effects - combined with strong imagery and a thumping soundtrack - can do.

UK - On 15 November 2003, Kylie Minogue launched her latest CD 'Body Language' at an exclusive concert in London's Carling Apollo Hammersmith, backed by a breathtaking design of Barco ILite 10 and MiPIX LED displays. The show, aptly named 'Money Can't Buy' and with no tickets being offered for sale, was strictly by invitation only. The show cost £1m and featured costumes designed by Helmut Lang, Chanel and Balenciaga, alongside state-of-the-art Barco LED displays totalling 100sq.m, which served as backdrop to Kylie's high energy performance.

The LED display and backdrop, supplied by Barco Rental Partner XL Video, consisted of a 20sq.m ILite 10 indoor LED display surrounded by 80sq.m of Barco's revolutionary MiPIX LED blocks. The Barco ILite 10 indoor LED and MiPIX displays were used as one seamless display on which high resolution graphics and animations were shown throughout t

UK - Creative Technology has followed its move to a new 54,000sqft facility in Crawley by confirming the purchase of three Vista Montage processing systems. Two of these will be deployed in the USA and the third at the company's new UK headquarters.

Already featured by the company on the Mercedes stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Montage will allow CT to expand on its already advanced multi-image capability, by offering sophisticated high quality screen content manipulation.

CT chief executive Graham Andrews said: "Creative Technology continually strives to not only keep up with our clients' imaginations, but to exceed their expectations. We've pushed existing technology to its limits and now, with Montage, we'll be able to provide the sophisticated alpha-channel based keying, the DVE-like PiP moves and the pixel-perfect resolution that our clients demand. With this syst

UK - Three high-resolution Lighthouse LVP1650 LED video screens were in action for the half a million rugby fans who flooded central London to witness the England team parade the World Cup on 8 December. As the team's open top double-decker buses threaded through the crowds at Piccadilly Circus, the giant 'Coca-Cola' screen towering over Eros, installed in September, showed footage from the cup final and messages of congratulations to the team from 'Coca-Cola', a major sponsor of the tournament.

The panoramic screen, which wraps around the façade of a building overlooking the Circus, was designed by Lighthouse to be capable of interactive video, with a satellite-linked control room feed that allows real-time live video to be delivered direct to the screen from a remote location. Measuring 32m wide by 6.6m high, the screen is made up of 88 standard LVP1650 panels and 170 bespoke

Worldwide - XL Video has supplied Muse's lighting and video designer Oli Metcalf with video production equipment for their current "Absolution" world tour, which is among the most visually innovative tours to kick off in 2003.

For control of the video, Metcalf is using a Catalyst digital media server run from his WholeHog II console. Additionally he has six camera inputs - three Toshiba 'lipstick' devices, two Sony surveillance cameras on the drums and a handheld DV cam, operated throughout the show by the band's video co-ordinator Tom Kirk. These are also fed into the Macintosh, where Metcalf manipulates and adds them to the overall mix as he would lighting fixtures.

The video feeds are output to three upstage LED screens - hung in portrait format - on motors that track in and out vertically to different positions through the show. The screens are made up from 82 pa

Hong Kong - In August 2002, The Hong Kong Tourism Commission engaged Laservision to develop the idea of creating a permanent light show based on the illumination of significant buildings in Hong Kong and Kowloon, which overlook Victoria Harbour.

Laservision's objectives included the selection of suitable buildings and key viewing areas. A draft design for each chosen structure was completed, taking account of energy efficiency and light pollution issues. A series of reports was then sent to the Hong Kong Government and Laservision was invited to showcase techniques incorporated into the Harbour Lighting Plan during Chinese New Year of 2003. The demonstration consisted of illumination of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the creation of a multi-media show, attracting a public audience of up to 45,000 per night.

The Hong Kong Government engaged Laservision to prepare a launch e

UK - The largest curve projection screen ever assembled in the UK will be unveiled at a conference held at the Park Lane Hilton in January, claim audio-visual specialist Quadrant Visual Solutions. The rear projection screen, which will be used to show PowerPoint presentations and sales literature, will be assembled by Quadrant for an event that is being held in the Grand Ballroom of the London's Hilton Hotel on Park Lane.

Three projection units will display images onto the 12m by 3m screen. Quadrant estimate that it will take up to 18 hours to install the equipment. "We had been providing AV support for this particular client's events for about six years and each year we try to make our sets bigger and better than the last," says Quadrant's events manager, Mark Oakland: "The decision to use what we believe to be the largest ever curved projection screen in the cou

France - Large format projection specialists E//T//C Audiovisuel supplied 16 PIGI 6kW DDRA Xenon projectors and two Pigi'S 700 projectors to the 2003 Fête des Lumières (Festival of Lights) from 5-8 December in Lyons. Equipment from Paris-based E//T//C, pioneers of large format scrolling projection equipment and techniques, was used in three sites across the city during its famous four-day lighting festival.

The popular Fête des Lumières - a rich fusion of light, colour and architecture - has been taking place for over 150 years, and this year's theme was 'Light in motion: dynamic light, interactive light'. Staged in Lyon's imposing central square, the Place des Terreaux, Skertzò (renowned for their work with light and projections) created the 'Zone d'ombres' (Theatre of shadows) show. This centrepiece show of the festival used 16 PIGI DDRA (automatic rotating double scrolle

UK - Lighting designer Bryan Leitch and video designer Nick Whitehouse have created an innovative visual mix for Feeder's latest European tour, utilizing six RADlite digital media server systems - the most RADlites toured together to date. The RADlites were supplied by rental company Siyan - the first UK company to invest in this then new technology, back in 2001. Siyan now owns eight RADlites and Leitch and Whitehouse pioneered its use on the epic Coldplay tour that ended earlier this year.

The Coldplay tour was instrumental in boosting general interest in the technology: Whitehouse wanted to use RADlite again on Feeder, and was brimming with ideas about what could be achieved by running the video in this configuration. The Feeder show was heavily video-based - a medium they have always enthusiastically embraced. Whitehouse operated the RADlite servers using a Avolites Diamond

UK - XL Video is supplying equipment to the award-winning Jerry Springer The Opera production, now enjoying a successful West End run at The Cambridge Theatre - so successful that the production has just extended its booking period by more than nine months, to 8 January 2005.

Video is a vital production element of the show, and equipment includes two of the new Catalyst V.3 digital media servers - specially purchased for the show along with a Jands Wholehog 500 DMX lighting desk. The show's video designer is Jon Driscoll with whom XL has also collaborated on Up For Grabs (starring Madonna) and the Madness musical Our House. XL's clients are JSTO Ltd for Blue Box Entertainment (Iain Gillie - production executive) and The Production Desk (Dan Watkins - production manager)

The XL equipment supplied also includes two flown NEC XT5000 DLP projectors, matrix rou

Belgium / USA - Belgium-based Barco recently announced the acquisition of Folsom Research Inc, based in Sacramento, California. Folsom, which employs 75 associates, is a profitable company with product lines covering solutions for image processing, image communication and image functionality and interactivity. In these dedicated markets Folsom has a 30% share in the USA and 17% worldwide. As Barco has only had 4% market share in these segments until now, it is clear that this acquisition means a fast leap forward for Barco in providing total solutions beyond displays-only functionalities.

By far the largest part of Folsom's sales are realized in the Events (Rental and Staging) market, which makes it an ideal match for Barco, as today Barco already dominates two segments of this market with its LED displays and its large venue projectors. The acquisition of Folsom offers Barco t

UK - A giant portrait LED screen supplied by CT Screenco enabled audiences on Eddie Izzard's Sexie tour to see a macro image of the performer as a giant stage backdrop. CT Screenco have worked with Izzard on a couple of one-off performances, including the comedy event We Know Where You Live - Live, which Eddie conceived and directed for Amnesty International.

The huge portrait screen proved so successful that the Amnesty live show producer and Eddie's tour manager and promoter, Mick Perrin, wanted to repeat the concept on the artist's Sexie world tour - and CT Screenco was tasked with creating a touring version of the one-off display that had been seen at Wembley.

This time, the 25mm LED display was designed to be scalable from 72sq.m down to 42sq.m at the smallest venues, and form the centrepiece of a five-screen display. The large portrait display was fl

UK - Metropolis AV & FX has designed, manufactured and installed a spectacular new curved LED screen at the Rotunda entertainment and leisure complex in Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey. The 1m high by 12.9m wide 25mm pixel pitch screen is completely bespoke, and is among the first curved LED screens in the UK.

It was commissioned by property developer LMS, operator of the Rotunda, for use as an advertising space for the facilities and businesses operating within the venue - including restaurants, cinema, health and sports clubs - and a message board highlighting promotions and special offers. Metropolis's product manager was Nick Ford who oversaw the entire operation.

The screen is mounted 3.5m above ground on stainless steel cabinets, offering full weatherproofing and robust build quality. The screen is in action from early morning till last thing at night, when the Rotunda close

UK - At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Philips has launched its first full range of flat screen TVs to include NXT's patented SurfaceSound technology. The new Matchline range includes 32", 37" and 42" LCD and 50" plasma FlatTV models, all with built in NXT Distributed Mode Loudspeakers (DML). Disguised into the frame of the FlatTV models, the DML panels dispense with the need for speaker grilles and help Philips realise a design that matches consumers' increasingly high demand for products that blend in with designed environments.

The high definition television units also feature Philips' Ambilight technology, an advanced lighting system that provides emotive environment lighting and enhanced picture quality, and PixelPlus 2 technology, which creates sharper, more detailed pictures with a greater impression of depth, say Philips.

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