The 2020 League of Legends World Championship took place at the new Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai, China on 25 September to 31 October 2020, boasting a versatile production lighting design by Mat Stovall of LampedUp, featuring Robe lighting fixtures. A total of 37 Robe RoboSpot systems were part of a large lighting rig for the event – specified by Stovall and Associate LD Trevor Stirlin Burk of Visual Noise Creative – supplied by Christie Lites to the event’s main technical contractor, Creative Technology (CT) Shanghai. Robert Roth coordinated for Christie Lites, working closely with the CT Shanghai team headed…
Author: Jacob Waite
San Francisco Opera has turned to Aloha by Elk, a new real-time remote music collaboration service, to prepare its acclaimed resident artists, the Adler Fellows, for a highly anticipated live drive-in series beginning on 29 April 2021. Aloha’s latency service connects artists remotely, eliminating the lag time that interrupts the creative flow. This allows artists to collaborate and play together live, as if they’re in the same room. For the San Francisco Opera’s classically trained artists whose in-person music collaboration has been put on pause during the pandemic, this means that important musical cues such as hearing breaths, shifts in…
Absen has hired Adam Berditch as a new Business Development Manager for the UK. The new recruit will work to build upon the manufacturer’s connections throughout the UK’s LED market. With 12 years of experience across the AV industry, Berditch has worked at building businesses from the ground up in many sectors, such as retail, corporate and education. Berditch started his career at Sahara Distribution, as an account manager, and most recently was at Anixter, as global account manager before joining Absen as the UK Business Development Manager. The roles through-out Adam’s career so far has allowed him to work…
The National Theatre’s production of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ The Death of England was performed at the Dorfman Theatre in Spring 2020 prior to the venue’s closure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The one-man show was an intense study of grief and identity in Britain, performed in-the-round on a cross-shaped stage by Rafe Spall in an explosively energetic performance. Dyer’s direction, and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ’s stark set demanded equally dramatic lighting from the outset, which was provided by dance and theatre lighting designer, and NT regular, Jackie Shemesh. The LD selected four Ayrton Diablo 300W LED…
Creative Technology (CT), part of the NEP Worldwide Network, has seen its UK and Northern Europe offices invest in KAIROS, Panasonic’s IT/IP-based video production platform that’s set to change the industry. “We’ve been developing an IP strategy at CT for a number of years, but until now we haven’t had a platform that enables us to manage the exciting transition from baseband SDI to IP routing,” said Sid Lobb, Head of Integrated Networks & Vision at Creative Technology. “We see KAIROS enabling us to do just that. It allows us to offer our clients the capabilities of mixing and switching…
Arbane Groupe has hired Alain Boone, formerly of loudspeaker manufacturer NEXO, as its new international sales manager. The new recruit will oversee the development of an exclusive distribution network for Arbane Groupe and its brands (APG and Active Audio), as well as maintaining existing relationships with the company’s historical partners worldwide. An industry veteran, Boone has been active in the pro audio industry for more than 30 years: he made the shift from concert touring and system engineering to work as a product / sales manager in the Benelux region for audio distributor EML / AudioXL, before going on to…
Dan Ridd, Steven Haynes and Clearsound Productions marked the culmination of a week of #LightItInRed ‘heart’ initiatives across the UK with a livestream set featuring DJ Benji and a heart-shaped lighting rig designed by Haynes, featuring Robe moving lights. With overall direction by Ridd and camera direction by Andy Cox, the multi-camera broadcast included two drone feeds plus assorted visual highlights from the past year of #LightItInRed campaign efforts. Rose Bruford College student, Sam Jones, programmed and operated an MA Lighting grandMA console. Technician Daniel Bow was joined by George O’Connor of Dragonfly Lighting in Banbury, along with Drone Pilots,…
March saw the return of Sanremo Music Festival, an annual competition to choose Italy’s Eurovision Song Contest participants. Now approaching its 71st year, the live broadcast was handled by RAI with scenography curated by Gaetano Castelli and Maria Chiara Castelli of Studio Castelli. Under the direction of RAI Director of Photography, Mario Catapano, EVENT MANAGEMENT was tasked to bring the elaborate stage to life in the grandiose Teatro Ariston. The lighting setup comprised 5,000m of dynamic, linear RGBW LED strips, 200 m2 of transparent LED screen modules, and 520 power supplies. 60 LED controllers, two MADRIX 5 maximum LED lighting-control software…
Point Source Audio has expanded its sales team with the addition of Forrest Breese as Account Manager for the Western U.S. – a familiar face around California’s pro audio industry, Breese brings with him considerable experience from previous roles with manufacturers, distributors, integrators — and on stage as a musician. As a gigging bassist since the age of 13, Breese has been around the music and pro audio industry for most of his life. Starting his professional career as a manufacturer’s rep, Breese has worked across just about every aspect of the industry from sales to integration, and has extensive…
CBS Saturday morning TV show, Innovation Nation – which spotlights change-making technologies – recently called on the expertise of Verge Aero to discover how aerial technology is transforming live entertainment events and celebrations. Produced by The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Litton Entertainment, Innovation Nation presents inspiring stories of history’s technological turning points, as well as looking at the innovations that are changing the world around us. With drone light shows offering spectacular additions – or even alternatives – to traditional fireworks displays, the technology was ripe for further investigation by the educational program. As a pioneer in…
Optocore has appointed RMS Proaudio as its new Spanish distributor. Expressing his delight, Miguel Ángel Jiménez, CEO of the Seville-based RMS Pro Audio said: “We have known Optocore particularly from the relationship with DiGiCo, which we have distributed for more than 15 years, and we consider their technology to be excellent. “For that reason we approached them, and it is an honour to now be able to provide solutions based around their advanced technology in our Spanish market. We know their products to be extremely reliable and offer flexible audio communication solutions.” Optocore Sales Distribution Manager, Dawid Somló, was equally…
Cutting Edge recently announced the formation of Edge Lab, the company’s latest Virtual Production (VP) venture based in Brisbane, Queensland. The facility is a research and development (R&D) hub for production industry professionals, developed in partnership with Big Picture, part of the NEP Worldwide Network, and motion caption integrator Logemas – built with Brompton Technology processing for the main LED screen as well as ambient reflection and lighting walls. Whether it is end-to-end post, 7.1 Dolby Digital mixing, DI or remote operational setups, Cutting Edge is able to facilitate all its clients’ needs across commercial, television and feature film productions.…
Outline’s FPGA-based Newton processor has been awarded an Italian Patent, N° 102018000004143. The company has also filed the appropriate application for an international patent. Newton was introduced to the global pro-audio industry at Frankfurt MusikMesse in 2017 to immediate acclaim. It has subsequently been adopted by a number of the world’s leading audio hire operations and system engineers, delivering a unique feature set in a robust and user-friendly package. Innovation is woven into Outline’s DNA, with many of its products already protected under international patents. The company is justly proud of this latest acknowledgement and commented: “It’s well-known that our…
Lucca Blues Festival continues its celebration of blues music with a series of livestreams broadcast from Amandla Productions Studios, a versatile broadcast facility set up inside the city’s 1,500 sq m event space curated by Amandla Productions. Helping to create an immersive, camera-friendly environment for the blue performances, as well as the wide variety of other shows filmed at the studio, is a flexible lighting rig installed by Audiosales Entertainment Solutions that features 34 Maverick MK2 Wash fixtures, 10 Ovation E-910FC colour-rendering ellipsoidals, and 25 COLORdash Batten Quad12 units from CHAUVET Professional. Controlling this rig are a ChamSys MQ500 Stadium…
Rental company CGS Dry Hire, based in Denkendorf in southern Germany – known nationwide as CGS – and headed by Christian Geyer, has recently invested in a large quantity of Robe FORTE moving lights, delivered on behalf of Robe Germany. Now available for dry hire at CGS, the acquisition marks the first FORTES to be received in Germany. “Investing in premium brands and solid technology has always been a CGS trademark,” Geyer explained. “It has helped enable us to build the company’s reputation for excellence, and we see FORTE as a smart option for rental stock that will help expand…
Considered as one of Europe’s biggest esports companies in the sector, PGL has recently invested in four custom flyaway kits, built around Blackmagic Design URSA Mini Pro G2 4.6K cameras and ATEM Constellation 8K, to support its global esports events schedule. PGL delivers big screen, livestream and broadcast content for its range of international esports tournaments, including the 2021 Singapore Major, the first offline Data 2 Major following the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on in-person competitions. PGL’s 2021 schedule will be a hybrid of online and offline events, as restrictions lift. With such a varied and complex schedule,…
Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) has revealed the opening of several key full-time roles following the recent appointment of Lisa Mart as General Manager at the new, state-of-the-art venue, Swansea Arena. The senior roles of Head of Marketing & Sales, Operations Manager, Technical & Building Manager and Conference & Events Manager at the new 3,500 capacity indoor Arena are now open for applications via careers.atg.co.uk. Successful applicants will be part of a team that is expected to host 160 performances across music, comedy, esports, sport and conference events for an estimated 230,000 visitors each year. The newly assembled team will be…
WorldStage has reported the passing of Michael “Mikey A” Alboher on 24 March 2021. The event technology solutions company commemorates his with the following heartfelt message [sic]: “Michael’s long tenure as a video engineer began at Scharff Weisberg Inc in 1994 and he remained a company stalwart until the very end. A friend to many in the corporate event community and a constant source of stability in a volatile environment, Mikey excelled at his profession and was always sought after for the toughest assignments. “An inveterate prankster, Mikey could enliven the most interminable backstage sessions, but he was also the…
