Robe lighting recently staged an Open House event in partnership with The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Arts at Trinity College Dublin. The Open House platform proved ideal for showcasing some of the manufacturer’s latest products and technologies – including Robe PAINTE, iFORTE and LEDBeam 350 moving lights, the T11 static luminaire range, the T11 Profile manual follow spot and the popular RoboSpot system – to lighting professionals and students from Lir’s Stage Management and Technical Theatre course. Visitors travelled from all across Ireland – northern and southern – a lively mix of lighting designers, rental companies, venue managers and…
Author: Jacob Waite
Returning for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, PlugFest aims to improve the connectivity of lighting products and provides a unique opportunity for manufacturers, developers and technicians to test and debug their products. First time attendee, Vincent Bouquet of Robe France, commented: “PlugFest has been a really great opportunity. Here on mutual ground, we can put our competition aside and all together test things and work out issues to help the industry go forward.” TAIT’s Dan Murfin added: “PlugFest is a great opportunity to talk to people, to think more about standards, to see what manufacturers are doing, and…
a/political and WikiLeaks present: BEAT THE SYSTEM on 8 April at EartH Hackney as the closing event for the States of Violence exhibition at a/political. The night brings together artists and musicians to raise awareness around the importance of press freedom and to empower the public to create positive change. BEAT THE SYSTEM features a back-to-back line up of acts including: Bugzy Malone, Lowkey, Eva Lazarus, and My Nu Leng. Shangri-La’s creative team, wondercloud creations, are creating stage sets and installations for the show in collaboration with ShangrilART and artists from the a/political network. Taking place just ahead of the…
22live has welcomed two new recruits with Aaron Boothe and James Gebhard joining the Redditch-based pro audio outfit as Hire Consultant and Technical Supervisor, respectively. Boothe began working with 22live in 2022 as a Hire Consultant bringing some of his projects to the team led by Paul Timmins, namely Central Cee, D-Block Europe, Beenie Man and Rema to date. Boothe wears many hats as a Production Manager, System Engineer and Sound Engineer. In his new role, Boothe will be responsible for bringing clients to 22live. 22live’s Spencer Beard commented: “We are very pleased to welcome Aaron to the 22live team.…
KB Event has unveiled a new London depot in Wandsworth. Working in partnership with Glen Rowe and SW19 Studios, the space will provide a local and time-critical transport service, not only to SW19 clients, but to KB Event’s London client list. Speaking about the new site, a satellite to the SW19 Studios, KB Event Managing Director, Richard Burnett, said: “KB Event were on the verge of opening a new depot in Wembley when the pandemic hit. COVID-19 instantly put pay to the venture at the time, but it has always remained high on our list of priorities. KB & Glen…
Comfortably the top-earning country music tour of 2022 and one of the highest of any genre last year, Kenny Chesney’s Here And Now Tour grossed over $135m and saw him perform for 1.3 million fans across 41 shows, including 21 stadia, making him the most popular touring country artist of the year. The tour was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 but was, like so many, derailed by the global pandemic. Chesney eventually moved the tour to 2022 and named it after his album of the same name, bringing support acts Dan+Shay, Carly Pearce and Old Dominion with him.…
Rock Lititz is adding an education centre to its 108-acre production campus. Partnering with Production Park and Lancaster-based Pennsylvania College of Art and Design (PCA&D) the team is eager to announce the Academy of Live Technology (ALT) at Rock Lititz. The goal is to support an immersive, experience-driven, technical education at Rock Lititz, while attending general education classes through PCA&D’s downtown Lancaster facilities. Graduates of this unique four-year programme will leave with hands-on familiarity to the industry, and having earned a four-year BFA degree in Live Experience Design & Production. “We have an opportunity to impact the level and access of training…
To ensure that Pitbull’s backing band, The Agents, are hearing themselves and each other in the most natural and beneficial way amid Pitbull’s 52-show Can’t Stop Us Now tour of North America, Monitor Engineer, Matt Holden recently added a DMI-KLANG card to his staple DiGiCo Quantum5 console. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Holden has served as Team Pitbull’s dedicated monitor engineer for the past eight years. However, Can’t Stop Us Now marked his very first opportunity to literally plug KLANG’s immersive platform into the monitoring setup, utilising the DMI-KLANG to supply six immersive band mixes — drums, percussion, bass, guitar, keys,…
Miley Cyrus returned to US screens recently for a massive live-broadcast party with a host of star guests. Taking place at Miami’s Telemundo Studios, it featured classic rock ‘n’ roll lighting effects mixed with a Miami club style setting, achieved using Vari-Lite VL5LED Wash luminaires from Signify. DX7 Design delivered the lighting design, specifying a series of the VL5LED Wash fixtures which were mostly rigged to the arches of the main scenic structure over the main stage. “This was our third TV show with Miley and on each one, she has opted for a more lighting-based design with almost no…
Glendale, California-based Kinetic Lighting has added 80 Ayrton Zonda 9 FX fixtures to its lighting rental inventory, supplied by ACT Entertainment. Kinetic Lighting provides theatrical and studio lighting services worldwide in studio, corporate, exhibit, theatre and live-event markets. The company’s range of services includes equipment rentals, sales, lighting design, previsualisation and related show services. Zonda 9 FX is considered as a versatile fixture that combines the main features of the Zonda 9 Wash with stunning 3D volumetric effects and complex LiquidEffect graphic effects. “We hadn’t been actively searching for new wash fixtures when Eric Abad, Western Regional Sales for ACT…
Lightware Visual Engineering has revealed the appointment of two key roles, with a focus on growth in the Australian market. Gordon Anderson becomes the National Manager for Defence, Intelligence and Government, while John Garfi is named the Regional Manager for Victoria and Tasmania. In his role as National Manager for Defence, Intelligence and Government, and working from Canberra, Gordon Anderson will ensure that Lightware’s hardware delivers the highest quality in AV & UC system security, with the reliability and performance demanded by these key sectors. Anderson brings over 25 years of experience in systems integration, business development and sales management…
The Dirty Rigger brand of workwear played a popular role in the latest TOMCAT University (‘TOMCAT U’) five-day entertainment rigging training course, hosted recently at the company’s custom-designed training facility in Thousand Oaks, California. Hosted by TOMCAT USA, a part of Area Four Industries, the annual event provides ETCP (Entertainment Technician Certification Programme) renewal credits for those working in production rigging. This year’s event attracted a diverse mix of 45 attendees from across the USA and Canada, from students to seasoned touring riggers, business owners, stadium production managers and everything in between. The course includes truss training, taught by TOMCAT’s…
In a bid to support the next generation of live production talent in the north of England, 4Wall UK – which recently scooped Favourite Video Rental Company at TPi Awards 2023 – has taken residency in a dedicated large-scale space, Unit 2, a live event facility Production Park in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire. The company has also promoted Darren Poultney, formerly Director of Global Client Strategy, to Managing Director – EMEA. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi274_digitallr/88 Words: Jacob Waite Photos: 4Wall Entertainment www.4wall.com/unit-2
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi274_digitallr/122 What was the idea behind Touring and Mental Health: the Music Industry Manual? “I tour managed Anna Calvi across Europe on the Grinderman 2 Tour in 2010. I realised that I had been sending bands I was managing out on the road and underestimating the toll it might take on them. Late nights, changeable sleep environments, stress, travel and stimulation contributed to sleep deprivation. Quite quickly, I became bored of living off party food, but we had very little money and, as I was stressed, I wasn’t making good lifestyle choices. I was getting ratty. I often think back to…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi274_digitallr/98 For TPi Awards 2022, with events slowly starting to reemerge post-pandemic, we made the decision to include livestream projects within the Production of the Year category. One of the shortlisted performances was Mayday’s Fly To 2021. With their tour temporarily grounded, the Taiwanese band opted to create several online concerts to keep fans engaged – one of which took place on New Year’s Eve and was watched by 29 million fans. A showcase of the potential reach of online performances, the level of production in these livestreams was on another scale to anything seen before, with the band playing…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi274_digitallr/118 Brompton Technology’s release of Tessera G1 is set to disrupt the LED industry. As the first receiver card to support 10Gb fibre connections direct to the panel, Tessera G1 is also capable of supporting a staggering one-million-pixel capacity for a new generation of ultra-fine pixel pitch panels, or up to 1,000 fps (frames per second) to get the fastest esports experience or to enable slow-motion in-camera visual effects without artefacts. This is made possible by a 20x increase in computing power compared to its Tessera R2+ receiver card. This innovation marks a major advance in the company’s mission to…
What were some of your goals going into ISE 2023? “We had several important goals for ISE. These included: Equipson’s new brand strategy. We have been building a strategy based on vertical independent brands (WORKPRO for audio, LightShark for lighting control, FANTEK for lifting and staging, etc.) for some time. At ISE 2023, we were able to highlight the final structure by showcasing the various brands, as well as renewing Equipson’s own brand. We believe these developments and the new image for our WORKPRO brand were well received by our customers and visitors. This revamped image was also received well. …
What was the idea behind the launch of Proteus Rayzor Blade? “We wanted to create a powerful IP65 zoom tilt bar that adds additional creative layers and fits well into our other Rayzor LED fixtures that feature our proprietary background SparkLED sparkle effect. For those unfamiliar with SparkLED, it is a background illumination system of 2W white LEDs placed inside the lenses to create an additional layer of effect, depth on stage and fill idle space with something more inspiring. The strobe lines that flank the lenses across the entire length of the fixture was a concept added to offer…
