Last year saw Belgian girl band K3 search for three new members via a TV talent show, with Videohouse supplying broadcast facilities and live sound reinforcement. K3 zoekt K3, ‘K3 searching for K3’, was transmitted from the largest TV studio in Belgium, with the hopeful contestants being judged by both the audience and the group’s existing members. Videohouse’s Head of PA Ad van Beek explained: “K3 is a massively popular group here – you could compare this event with searching for a replacement One Direction in the UK – so the size of the TV venue reflected that. “The AED…
Author: TPi
PRG XL Video continues close relationship with the Golden Gods – a festival style rock ‘n’ roll awards show, as Kelly Murray reports. I always say there’s two ways you can deal with jet lag; either surrender to sleep and by day become a barley functioning, bloodshot-eyed creature of the night or (the preferable choice) stay awake by wearing copious amounts of eye make up and enjoy some rib rattlingly loud music. If you know me at all, you’ll know I’m firmly in camp B. Just three hours after landing from a US trip, I found myself London-bound and en…
TPi’s Ste Durham was at O2 Academy Brixton to see a versatile touring rig put through its paces, courtesy of DJ, songwriter, producer and musician, Kygo. Kygo, otherwise known as 24-year-old Norwegian Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll, has enjoyed a rapid ascent in recent years as one of the leading proponents of ‘tropical house’. The artist’s Cloud Nine tour kicked off with a handful North American shows in January of 2016, before continuing through mainland Europe and the UK in March and April. The tour has taken the artist and his crew into venues of all shapes and sizes, ranging from large arena…
Il Divo have commenced on their ‘Amor & Pasión’ tour and wanted an extravagant lighting design to match their unique Latin-influenced performances. Lighting and visuals rental specialist, HSL, was assigned the task of coordinating fittings and opted for Martin by Harman MAC Viper Wash DXs and MAC Aura XB moving lights on top of MA Lighting grandMA2 consoles. The design was based on using pre-rigged trussing which kept the load-ins and outs to a sensible time frame. There are six diagonally hung side trusses, three per side beneath one another, and three overheads (front, middle and back). “The design concept…
An array of Clay Paky fixtures were used to light up Die MEGA 90er Live, a host of events in Germany dedicated to pay homage to some of the best music of the ‘90s. Atlantis Audio was responsible when selecting the technical lighting equipment and adopted 16 Clay Paky Sharpys and 15 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20’s. Two MA Lighting grandMA2 consoles, two MA Lighting 4Port Nodes and two MA Lighting Plus MK2 Video Processing Units were also present. Volkmar Kusch, owner of Atlantis Audio, was pleased with the Clay Paky fixtures: “The MA system is simply extraordinary. We built…
Wales’ largest music festival, X Festival, has received a number of noise complaints from local residents since is inception in 2015. So this year Symphotech was assigned to oversee noise monitoring at the event. 11th Hour Events, the festival’s organisers and production company, created a noise plan for the event to ensure that noise levels didn’t affect residents. Symphotech then monitored the sound levels across the three stages and festival perimeter. Sites around the festival were checked every 15 minutes and the team fed certain frequencies that were causing problems back to the sound desks when noise levels became too…
American four piece, Nada Surf, have selected a variety of Rogue and Nexus fixtures from Chauvet Professional in preparation of their upcoming US and European tour. The Chauvet rig includes four Rogue R1 Spots moving fixtures and six Nexus four by one RGB linear LED washes, all operated by the tour’s Lighting Designer, Dinah Miller. “Versatility was extremely important to me,” said Miller. “I selected these fixtures because I wanted a lot of different looks from a rig that was compact and easy to transport.” Miller borders the drum riser with two Rogue R1 Spots and two Nexus four by…
Barco has added two additional models, the E2 Jr and S3-4K Jr, to its Event Master portfolio of screen management systems boasting 4K image processing on both models. Both the E2 Jr and S3-4K Jr flaunt future proof design and are perfect for small to medium sized applications in the events market. Offering 16 inputs, eight outputs, and eight mixers, the E2 Jr features the same four RU form factor as the bigger E2. The S3-4K Jr comes with eight inputs, four outputs, and two mixers in the same three RU form factor as the bigger S3-4K. Just like the…
PR Lighting has expanded its Xpar collection with the addition of the new Arc LED unit, the Xpar 1012. Adopting patented PR Lighting technology, the fixture combines 12 high powered 10W (RGBW 4-in-1) LEDs in a compact form factor. The Xpar 1012 is also extremely versatile, weighing just 10kg and silent in operation, it can even be used outdoors, since it has an IP67 protection rating. Available with or without doors, features include RGBW colour mixing (with macro), colour temperature of 2700K-10000K (linear correction), beam angle of 14° (with 10°, 20° and 40° options), dimmer 0 – 100% (linearly adjustable),…
Elation Professional has announced the launch of a new collection of high-definition LED panels designed for professional, yet artistic video layouts. Elation prioritisied creativity and practicality when designing the EVHD series, equipping the panels with a lightweight, durable aluminum frame ensuring utmost reliability. There are three different pixel pitches available: 2.8mm, 3.9mm and 5.9mm all of which can be mounted in tight spaces, accessible both from the front and back for easy installation. Designers can create seamless curved video displays (convex or concave) and the EVHD displays can even permit full circle designs while maintaining pixel pitch without any visible…
Germany’s largest cruise ship company, AIDA Cruises, has launched their new luxury flagship, AIDAprima, and installed a variety of Clay Paky fixtures to organise and operate the spectacular light show, which celebrated the ships unveiling. The show was fashioned by lighting designer, Björn Hermann, who specified 100 Mythos and eight new super powerful Scenius from Ambion. “This was my first encounter with the Scenius and I must say it is a wonderful projector,” said Hermann. “I will undoubtedly use it again in my future projects.” The Clay Paky Scenius’ advanced optical unit and new 1.4kW OSRAM discharge lamp provides a…
Mumford & Sons Front of House Engineer, Chris Pollard, has chosen the Solid State Logic L500 console for the band’s An Arrow Through The Heartland tour, which comes to an end in October 2016. Having used an analogue console on previous tours, the SSL Live digital console had to deliver. “First and foremost,” Pollard said, “The sound quality is amazing.” The FOH path count for Mumford & Sons is large with around 76 inputs so Pollard added the robust L500’s Stem bus type. This grouping bus is equipped with discrete send levels that can be picked from any one of…
The standard-setting, boundary-pushing entertainment behemoth that is the Eurovision Song Contest returned once again to its spiritual home in Sweden. TPi’s Ste Durham was in the eye of the storm for what was possibly the biggest production of the year so far. Whether you are talking about viewing figures, the number of performers or the staggering amount of pre-production, it really is hard to put into words the scale of the Eurovision Song Contest… but I’ll try. The entire time I was in Stockholm, travelling to and from the imposing Ericsson Globe arena, I couldn’t escape the Eurovision juggernaut. I…
Garth Brooks’ Man Against Machine tour has seen LD Dave Butzler introduce Robe BMFL Spots to his lighting rig. A total of 44 BMFL Spots replaced the previous hard-edged spot moving fixture of choice, and these are being supplied by Garth Brooks’ regular lighting vendor, Bandit Lites. The BMFL Spots were chosen after the show changed mid-way through 2015 to include a much larger LED video screen – a cube measuring 40ft wide by 20ft deep. The Robe fixtures are located on the upstage and downstage trusses along the cross-pieces of 10 chevron-shaped triangular truss pods that move into different…
Belgian engineering specialist WIcreations has designed and supplied motion control, customised staging and hardware/infrastructure for Russian singer and superstar Philipp Kirkorov’s current tour, which features show design by renowned Creative Director Franco Dragone. The first task for Project Manager Koen Peeters and his team was to create 14 aluminium flying wings and a kinetic system to make them move. All of these flying elements have an integrated LED lighting system that allows for a variety of lighting effects. All 14 wings were used for five shows at The Kremlin in Moscow that launched the tour, after which 10 wings continued…
Cape Town-based rental and technical production company, Ampere, has now added Robe Pointe to its collection, integrating eight new fixtures into its already impressive hire stock. Founded in 2009 by University of Cape Town student (now graduate), Justin Fish, Ampere quickly developed and now supplies full technical production: sound, lighting, video, staging and rigging and even has its own show design division. In the past couple of years Robe products have regularly featured in Ampere’s projects and from this experience Fish knew Pointes would meet its creative and quality requirements. “We think Robe is making the best multi-purpose beam fixture…
Ayrton has introduced the MagicDot-XT, an amplified version of its hugely successful younger brother, the MagicDot-R. Operating on a similar circular footprint while maintaining the same cylindrical design, Ayrton has made the MagicDot-XT much more powerful than the MagicDot-R, optimised for use in larger venues. The MagicDot-XT is equipped with Ayrton’s new proprietary 126mm diameter collimator that distinguishes the ‘XT’ product line. Weighing in at 550g, this new high-efficiency lens is the world’s largest collimator which, when coupled with an ultra-powerful RGBW emitter, enables MagicDot-XT to project a 2° beam with centre beam efficiency of 580 candelas per lumen, making…
The problem of converting unbalanced signals into a balanced output has now been solved with the new 4-channel Di4 from dbx by Harman. The Di4 is suitable for mixers, PAs and recording consoles while also functioning as a multi channel stereo line mixer. This feature permits full connectivity of keyboards, samplers and modules into one unit on stage. Independent XLR balance outputs are supplied to the stage box for a FOH engineer allowing independent mixing for stage monitoring. To use the dbx Di4 as a DI Box Connect the unbalanced signal to the Di4 via a 1/4-inch unbalanced jack to…
