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…
Author: TPi
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…
American funk/blues collective Here Come the Mummies have once again looked to Elation Professional for their 2016 LoveFest tour which plays throughout the US until the end of October. Venues have included large clubs, theatres, festivals and casinos, where an Elation Professional lighting floor package of Rayzor Q7 LED moving heads, Sniper 2R multi-effect lights, Cuepix Blinder WW2 white light LED blinders and Proton 3K strobe lights have been used to augment house and local lighting systems. “The role of the Elation gear is to bring the ‘wow factor’,” said Lighting Designer and Programmer Thom Roberts. “But there are specific features…
Management of the prestigious Blackpool Illumination Switch-On Festival will be overseen by Richmond Event Management (REM) this year, after a competitive selection process culminated in VisitBlackpool appointing the company, which has worked on other North West projects in the past such as Liverpool International Music Festival and Liverpool Capital of Culture in 2008. The three-day festival, beginning on Friday 2 September, will take place on The Blackpool Tower Festival Headland and will follow last year’s immensely popular switch-on, when around 30,000 people gathered to see music, comedy and the turning on of the famous illuminations by Hollywood director Tim Burton.…
This year’s Anugerah Juara Lagu 30 event, an annual awards ceremony for Malaysian pop music, was held on Sunday 24 January 2016 at Stadium Malawati, Shah Alam. Clay Paky fixtures were used extensively to light up the night. Distributor Acoustic & Lighting supplied 70 Clay Paky Sharpys, alongside 20 A.leda B-EYE K20’s, 22 Alpha Wash 1500’s and 10 Alpha Spot HPE 1500’s. MJ Event Management was chosen as one of the sound and lighting equipment supplier for the event. www.claypaky.it
The UK’s premier rock and metal event, Download Festival, got underway at Donington Park for the 14th consecutive year under its latest moniker. TPi’s Ste Durham and Stew Hume broke out the waterproofs to talk festival production with some of the industry’s best. Production Manager Neil McDonald has been involved with all but one Download, having jumped on board in 2004. Since then the arena has moved twice within Donington Park, from the old Monsters of Rock location, to the Sunday Market area, before settling in its current resting place. Despite this occasional flux, the planning process has begun to…
This year marks the diamond anniversary of The Duke of Edinburgh Award, the charity that challenges young people through volunteering, physical tasks and expeditions, and is being celebrated with a variety of special fundraising events and initiatives. Produced by Jeremy Hartley of Entertainment Industries, a Diamonds are Forever gala was held in early June at the Stoke Park venue in Buckinghamshire, and featured a dinner, entertainment and a performance from Sir Tom Jones. Acclaimed creative Nicoline Refsing of Rockart Design provided production design, having previously worked on several major events including The BRIT Awards and Eurovision, while Steve Greetham, PRG XL…
Allen & Heath Qu and ME systems were chosen to manage sound reinforcement for the recent National Mountain Bike Championships in Australia. Held in the southeastern state of Victoria, the event was run by Australian event and PA company DURT, with DURT MD Russell Baker describing its scale: “The location for a major mountain bike event can be the size of 10 football fields, there will be several concurrent events, each with their own audio requirements, plus briefing, meeting and conference areas which require audio but also minimal background noise. The trails can be upwards of eight square kilometres, and the…
Allen & Heath’s dLive digital mixing system has been out on tour with German band Brings, culminating in a concert at the 50,000-capacity Cologne football stadium. Celebrated as a homecoming gig for the Cologne-based group, with support from three local bands, the setup for the concert included two dLive systems, several expanders, and digital splits for the monitor console and an OB van for live streaming and recording. The dLive system comprised S7000 Control Surfaces with DM64 MixRacks and DX32 expander racks. A MADI network card was fitted in the MixRack, as well as a Dante card provided for the…
