Manchester company dbn Lighting supplied lighting, LED screens and crew to the main stage and four other performance spaces at the 2016 Lost Village Festival, plus site-wide scenic and environmental illumination highlighting hundreds of organic artworks made with natural materials found on the site. It was the second year of the unique festival staged by Lost Ventures, with site and production management co-ordinated by Andy George, Jay Jameson and Ben Atkins. dbn Lighitng’s Nick Buckley project managed for them, commenting: “A huge increase in production values this year underlined Andy, Jay and Ben’s commitment to the event, and making it…
Author: TPi
A.C.T Lighting served up big helpings of home-cooked BBQ with sides of the latest products from Clay Paky, Robert Juliat, ChainMaster and Eurotruss at a showcase special event during the recent CMA Music Festival in Nashville. “We wanted to give back to the Nashville community where we have a lot of loyal customers,” said Brian Dowd, Vice President Sales at A.C.T Lighting. “We decided to host a product showcase and barbecue during the week of the CMA Music Festival, the largest country music event in country music’s home.” A.C.T Lighting selected Nashville rehearsal studio Soundcheck for its showcase venue, where…
Justin Bieber, one of the most universally recognised pop icons of the 21st century, is enjoying the commercial success and critical acclaim of his fourth studio album, Purpose, the campaign for which includes an extensive world tour. Lighting for the tour was designed by Cory FitzGerald with the rig including Robe Pointes and two BMFL Spots being utilised as rear follow spots. It’s FitzGerald’s first work tour with Bieber. When he came on board, the production design created by Production Manager Chris Gratton and Creative Director Nick DeMoura was already evolving, together with video content produced by Michael Figge of…
Conceived and created by Italian DJ Benny Benassi to coincide with the prestigious Italian Motor Show, Benny Benassi & Friends has grown into a highly anticipated national dance event. Clay Paky supplied much of this year’s lighting technology, with LD Jerry R. Romani choosing to illuminate the fourth edition of the event using Sharpys and A.leda B-EYE K10’s, rigged on a hanging structure consisting of straight battens placed at different heights. The space was huge and the battens were also used to mark out areas adjacent to the one reserved for the live show, like the dressing room area, the…
WorldStage has expanded its LED department with two new hires and an internal promotion. Josh Perlman, Senior Project Manager at WorldStage, has been named Director of LED Services and Wayne Romanowski and Stewart Douglas have joined as Senior LED Technicians in New York and California respectively. The LED department was launched to support the extensive investment WorldStage has made in LED display technology, with the company having expanded its inventory greatly in the last 18 months. New products include the ROE Hybrid 18 dual-resolution display. “LED technology is specialised to some extent and to insure clients are optimising LED’s capability,…
This summer saw Graham Jones Music organise Project 70, a 70th birthday celebration that took place at the Tower of London. The event featured a 70 piece marching band and a live performance from soprano Laura Wright. White Light was called upon to provide AV support. The logistics of Project 70 were overseen by Event Planner Graham Jones. He commented: “The theme of the day was quintessentially English. This involved high tea at the Royal Horseguards Hotel, a boat ride along the Thames and even a private bus tour of London. The main dinner and reception took place in the…
Audio specialist tube UK, working for outdoor arts experts Walk The Plank, provided nine different sound systems in six locations and on two parade floats around Manchester city centre for Manchester Day 2016. The high profile event was enjoyed by huge crowds who were thrilled by the elaborate floats, incredible costumes and vibrant array of music during the parade section of the day, as over 80 community groups snaked their way down Deansgate via Albert Square and on to the finish at Exchange Square. tube supplied the first float in the parade – the Orrery – as well as the…
Robert Arnall is just one year into a Level 3 Extended Diploma in Production Arts course at York College, and yet he has already made his mark by being a member of the winning team at the 2015 Lighting the Locomotives Competition that took place at the National Railway Museum, sponsored jointly by Ambersphere Solutions and Pulsar Light. The team’s imaginative lighting of the steam locomotive that became famous in the film The Railway Children was programmed and controlled by a console from MA Lighting’s dot2 range and provided to all the teams by Ambersphere Solutions. Outside of his college…
Lighting Designer Larry Foote rented 24 of Chauvet Professional’s Nexus 4×4 LED panels from 4Wall Entertainment for his tour rig for US crooner Tyler Farr. Foote spoke of his criteria for the tour: “We’re playing a lot of festivals and venues of very different sizes, so I wanted a rig that could be set up fast and was also space efficient.” Foote, who is serving as the Tour Director for Tyler Farr in addition to being the star’s lighting designer, built his rig on set carts, presenting him with some significant challenges. “Designing around the set carts was the most difficult…
June saw the legendary Isle of Wight Festival once again launch Europe’s season of summer celebrations, with this year’s edition benefiting from relatively hospitable weather and the auspicious debut of Meyer Sound’s new LEO family system at the main stage. Supplied by Wigwam Acoustics of Heywood, the new system powered performances by headliners like The Who, Faithless, Stereophonics, and Queen for crowds of up to 60,000. The system was popular with Vanguardia Consulting, which was responsible for assuring adherence to festival license conditions. “Isle of Wight has been quite tough over the past few years due to the close proximity…
Chief Design and Technology Officer of Ayrton, Yvan Péard, has recently been expanding the scope of several of the popular Ayrton ranges, with the latest innovation to come from the company being a new addition to the MagicPanel series, the MagicPanel-FX. With its front face comprising a five by five array of new squared lenses with isolated, high-powered RGBW LED emitters, the MagicPanel-FX offers exciting new possibilities for creating 2D graphical effects. Each of the 25 squared 65mm output lenses have an optical surface equivalent to that of an 80mm round lens, allowing the MagicPanel-FX to produce an extremely powerful beam…
BAFTA, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg’s hit 2015 play The Spoils has made its way to London’s West End, with the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice star lining up alongside The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar, Olivier Award winner Katie Brayben and Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen for a run at Trafalgar Studios. Written by Eisenberg and directed by Scott Elliott, The Spoils was first performed in 2015 at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, Off-Broadway in New York, and was directed by Scott Elliott, with Set Design by Derek McLane. For the London transfer,…
This year’s Champions League final in Milan was not just a sporting event for football fans. During the UEFA Champions Festival 2016, from Thursday 26 to Sunday 29 May, there was a whole host of entertainment, including meetings, exhibitions, shows and events, culminating in the final kick-off at San Siro. During the Champions Festival evening shows, Italian company Clay Paky took the field with its lights: 28 Alpha Beam 300’s and 15 Alpha Spot HPE 700’s. The Champions Festival stage set up in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo was illuminated thanks to the work of Lighting Designer Massimo Gasbarro from BOTW, while…
Adele gigs are not known for virtuoso musicians, high-tech special effects or complex dance choreography. Audiences from around the world flock to arenas to see, or rather hear, one thing: that voice. Production on the London singer’s world tour has therefore focused on her strongest asset, with Black Box Music providing the perfect tool for achieving that focus: an L-Acoustics K2 system. The show design dictated that audio equipment stay invisible, yet provide powerful, clear sound and, above all, be unfailingly reliable. As FOH Engineer Dave Bracey noted, “It’s a classy show and, even more than usual, nothing is allowed to go…
Hyundai’s Football Heaven, in an upgraded Star Events’ Orbit structure, was exactly that for expat Portugal fans as they saw their national team defy the odds to overcome hosts France and win Euro 2016 in Sunday’s final. The broadcasting of 45 European Championship matches in the Hyundai FanDome was a first for Lewis Cubitt Square, the new civic space behind King’s Cross station, with production company Produce calling on Star Events to design and deliver the structure, enveloping a 360° screen. 45,000 tickets were available for free via Ticketmaster over the course of the tournament. The modular design of the…
When the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (REMT) came to the Westpac Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand in February 2016, production supplier, MJF Lighting, decided the scale of the production warranted new followspots and invested in four Robert Juliat Merlin 2500W HMI followspots specifically for the spectacular show. “There were no quality 2kW HMI followspots available in New Zealand to match this event, with all previous shows of this scale and high production standards having relied on units out of Australia,” said MJF Lighting CEO, Michael Farrand. “It was time for a change.” Having worked with Robert Juliat followspots on the…
While headliners The Chemical Brothers and Major Lazer wowed audiences on-stage, one of the less conspicuous stars of Manchester’s Parklife festival this year was dbn Lighting, returning to support the festival’s fourth year at Heaton Park. A crew of 28 led by Pete Robinson supplied lighting, rigging and LED screens to five of the main performance areas, ensuring that each looked unique, original and like nothing that had come before it. The project entailed the supply of approximately 580 lighting fixtures including 224 moving lights and 75 strobe lights. For the festival’s main stage dbn Lighting’s Stephen Page designed a…
Set against the backdrop of Bristol’s iconic Harbourside, headliners Catfish And The Bottlemen, Sigur Rós, The Last Shadow Puppets and James Bay led four nights of music at the end of June, with lighting company Utopium called upon to light up this year’s Bristol Summer Series. Utopium’s Colin Bodenham and Jon Newman combined their skills to help create a stunning setting for organisers Metropolis Music through the supply of a comprehensive lighting production, including newly acquired equipment from Utopium’s extensive inventory. As well as on-stage lighting, Utopium also designed and delivered architectural lighting to illuminate the Lloyds Amphitheatre building. For…
