On 16 April 2022, 88rising descended on Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival’s main stage with performances from NIKI, Rich Brian, Warren Hue, BIBI, Jackson Wang, MILLI, CL, 2NE1 and Hikaru Utada as part of the record label’s Head in the Clouds Forever set. Production Designer, Ricardo Rojas reflects on the lighting, set, and special effects design of this landmark set. What is your history with Coachella? “Coachella has played an important role in my journey as a designer. It was the first place where I really noticed and appreciated the art of lighting and production design. I used to…
Author: Jacob Waite
Following in the footsteps of other industries that have taken steps to raise awareness of the importance of Mental Health, Backup has created an industry specific Mental Health First Aider logo to help signpost people in need of support on a production, raise awareness and promote discussion around the subject of mental health in the live entertainment sector. Backup’s goal is to ensure that in every crew there is at least one trained Mental Health First Aider crew member for every 20 crew members. We trust that venues, promoters and production companies will engage with this and it becomes part…
Goose’s US summer tour, Dripfield, united the talents of two lighting professionals – Andrew Goedde and Tony Caporale – who with the assistance of some Robe Tetra2 moving LED battens among other lights, have created a unique, eye-catching look as the band delights fans across America. Indianapolis-based Goedde has worked as Goose’s LD for four years and also owns a busy lighting rental business. When he and Caporale – well known for his ground-breaking lighting work with Billie Eilish among others – met randomly at a Goose show, they hit it off as friends and realised that a design collaboration…
Naostage has appointed experienced pro-AV professional Alexis Reymond as its new sales manager. Reymond has worked as a freelance audio engineer, electro-acoustic consultant, sound designer and music producer for more than 20 years, most recently in a sales engineering capacity with fellow Nantes-based company Arbane Groupe (APG/Active Audio). His other experience includes spells with event specialists Videlio and Magnum, where he worked as a sound engineer for 17 years, and Disneyland Paris, where he served as a freelance AV technician. In addition to his hands-on industry experience, Reymond holds multiple academic and professional qualifications, including certificates in sound and AV…
Droneberger Showtechnik of Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, is the latest company in Austria to invest in Ayrton fixtures, adding more than 40 Ayrton Karif LT and Ayrton Perseo Beam to its lighting inventory. “With the relocation of the company to our new business premises in Gerberweg 44 in Klagenfurt, we are excited to have expanded our portfolio of Ayrton moving lights for the first time,” says Freidl Droneberger. “The first order is already successfully in use.” The Ayrton fixtures were initially purchased for the television show, Starnacht, and have since been taken into Droneberger’s dry hire stock and project area. “We…
Lighting Designer, Tom Kenny selected a complement of Ayrton Khamsin lighting fixtures, provided by Solotech Las Vegas, for The Who Hits Back! Tour. The month-long North American spring leg of The Who Hits Back! Tour kicked off in April in Hollywood, Florida and wrapped in May in Bethel, New York. After a summer break, the tour resumes in early October 2022 with another month of dates starting in Toronto and concluding in Las Vegas. “I’ve been fortunate to have used Ayrton fixtures before, whenever I came across them,” said Kenny. “Solotech offered me Khamsins for this tour, and I remembered…
In May 2022, Burning Man artist, David Best, in conjunction with Artichoke UK created Sanctuary – a public artwork and COVID-19 memorial for the nation, to pay tribute to those lost during the pandemic. It was also a moment to mark rebirth, recovery, and regeneration. Built by Best and his crew, together with the local community, in the Miners’ Welfare Park in Bedworth, North Warwickshire, individuals from the local community took part in the project, employed to assist with the build and volunteering as Sanctuary guardians and guides once it was open to the public. Unusual Rigging was contracted to…
Atmospheric FX Specialist, Joey Olaerts has joined Elation Professional’s atmospheric effects brand, Magmatic. Olaerts will work with Elation’s R&D and sales teams to ensure that current Magmatic products meet customers’ needs, as well as conduct product research, testing, and viability studies to develop and market new atmospheric effects solutions. Designed, engineered and exclusively distributed by Elation, Magmatic specialty effects encompass dependable haze, fog, snow, CO₂ cryogenic simulation, and UV LED lighting products that are built to last, along with a complete line of specially formulated effect fluids. Olaerts will also be overseeing Elation sister-company ADJ’s atmospheric product line. Olaerts is…
AVA Festival made a storming return to Belfast’s Titanic Slipways on 3 to 4 June 2022, living up to its name with two days of audio, visuals and art, wrapped around a dynamic programme of electronic and live alternative music. Sunshine and 16,000 partygoers flooded the iconic setting, where Hertz-U Soundsystem delivered Funktion-One sound across the festival’s two performance spaces, including a debut outing for Vero VX on the Main Stage. Since launching in 2015, AVA has earned its reputation as one of the leading electronic music and arts festivals in the UK and Ireland. This year’s line-up brimmed with…
Like all evergreens, the Rave Tree, which stood in the centre of Glastonbury Festival’s Greenpeace area, had a story of its own to share with all who came to admire it. “The Rave Tree was the main focus of our Glastonbury offering,” said Bailes+Light’s Benji Bailes, who served as Lighting Director and Director of Creative Technology for Greenpeace. “It boasts a canopy made of 1,250 LED pixel lights woven amongst chandeliers of recycled plastic, and an arrangement of spots. Each year we further develop the ‘ecosystem’ within the tree, with artists on our team creating illuminated bracket fungi and mycelium/mycorrhizal…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/112 How did it feel to be recognised by your industry peers at this year’s TPi Awards? “It has been an incredible honour to have been recognised by the amazing folks from within our industry. I genuinely had no idea I was going to win and as soon as the VT started and I heard a scouse accent I went into immediate panic mode. The first thought was can I run away, the second was no you can’t run away but you are going to have to say something and my third thought was, ‘bloody hell, it’s a blessing I…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/96 What was the idea behind the launch of the LARA line array system? “LARA is the result of years of research, design, and evolution. We have learned a lot from our previous line arrays and the needs of new event productions. Nowadays, technology grows exponentially, and when we introduce a new product, we have to be aware that a state-of-the-art solution launched today may be obsolete in a year. When we design a product like LARA, we oversized its amplification and processing capacity to offer our customers the capacity to simply update the system firmware and enjoy future technologies…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/95 What was the idea behind the creation of the 4055 Kick Drum Microphone? “The ambition with this product was to create the best solution possible for this application, where the kick drum would sound exactly like the drum the artist has chosen, independently of the played genre. Acoustically, we decided to challenge the industry standard and deliver the absolutely flat frequency response, both on- and off axis, and this has generated a lot of excitement among the sound engineers. “With 4055, they have the freedom to be creative instead of spending effort on fighting against the given characteristics of…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/94 What was the goal behind PIXERA four RS? “We wanted to offer our customers a pre-configured version of our new, powerful PIXERA four media server, that would be perfect for cross rental scenarios. When renting or buying additional media servers for larger projects, it is important for many of our customers in the live event industry to be able to easily specify servers, without having to worry about whether they include some necessary basic components or not. The PIXERA four is a direct result of in-depth conversations with some of our key customers in the rental and staging market.”…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/93 Where does MLT² fit within the live entertainment market? “The MLT² is the further development of the Moving Light Truss 1. We wanted to develop a pre rig truss that would even better respond to evolving customer needs. Therefore, we developed the MLT² closely with our key customers and implemented more than 90% of our customers’ needs and ideas. The goal of the MLT² is to offer professionals the most efficient pre rig truss possible in order to make the setup and dismantling at the venue as easy and efficient as possible.” How has MLT² been tailored to support…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/92 Following the release of their debut album, Kids Off The Estate, The Reytons sold out Rotherham’s 4,500-capacity Magna Science Adventure Centre in less than 10 hours. As well as being a landmark moment for the band, there is an equally inspiring story surrounding the band’s young production crew. “It felt like everything was leading up to this one show,” explained Production/Tour Manager and FOH Engineer, Jake Mazzuca of Advocate Audio Visual, who brought in 24-year-old Lighting Designer, Jonathan Myers to devise the visual elements of the show. The duo share a good working relationship with the band, who are…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/90 Taking place at The BRIT School’s Obie Theatre, What’s Going On was a showcase of protest music in a variety of eclectic styles, performed and written by year 12 music students, amplified by AED Audio, which provided a range of equipment to help bring the students’ creations to life. This included two line arrays consisting of eight FLEX6 speakers and one SOLID15 low cabinet/subwoofer, as well as a ground stack of SOLID28 and SOLID15 subs with a FLEX6 in point source to provide infill to each side. The AED Audio system integrated with the Obie Theatre’s existing Dante network,…
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpi270_digitallr/88 The Continental Drifts Festival Lab programme is designed to support the next-generation of event producers in developing their ideas, skills, and knowledge through a mixture of talks from industry specialists, workshops, and hands-on experience. Over 12 weeks, young producers discover the art of production, programming, marketing, sponsorship and audience development, culminating with them planning their own programme of activity at London Remixed Festival. Young creatives and producers-to-be – Monica Solari, Bertie Evans and Kaine ‘BXGGZ’ Hamilton-Mills – operating under the moniker of Vybe Engyneerz, curated a new stage on the Friday evening of London Remixed Festival, spearheaded by pioneer…
