UK - SES worked closely with TV lighting specialists Aurora Lighting Hire Ltd to develop some bespoke IP rated distribution boxes.

Aurora approached SES after an increase in the company's Location work. The company found it was increasingly being asked to handle all aspects of broadcast power for supplying outside broadcast trucks, mobile galleries and satellite uplinks.

Aurora came to SES with an in depth brief incorporating key switchable / variable RCD's to allow total control of all outputs. The units have gone straight into use on the BBC's forthcoming production Tumble

UK - XL Video supplied creative video projection and control to the Shangri La area at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival, helping to give this popular immersive, interactive fictional world a real edge.

XL's Nick Diacre project managed two specialist video installations working for technical producers PF Events and their technical production manager Seain Loughlin, who received their brief from Shangri La's creative director Debs Armstrong.

The main projection feature in Shangri La was in the Heaven area, involving eight Barco R22 projectors, run as four doubled up pairs for optimised b

UK - Digital Insanity have recently taken their Hippotizers to the European movie premiere of the new Godzilla. Directed by Gareth Edwards, as his second feature film after Monsters, this version of the Japanese classic has been much anticipated by movie lovers worldwide.

The premiere took place in London's Leicester Square on 11 May 2014 and saw the red carpet rolled out in front of the Odeon Theatre, just days prior to the film's official release.

Digital Insanity mapped the eight huge LED screens, all supplied, rigged and spread across one side of Leicester Square b

USA - Billed as 'A Very Special Evening With The Dave Matthews Band', the group's latest US shows are giving fans two distinct sets from DMB with no opening act, a first for the group. The tour is also debuting High End Systems' innovative new Shapeshifter automated luminaire to enthusiastic fans across the US. With production support by TMS, LD Fenton Williams and programmer / co-production designer Aaron Stinebrink are putting Shapeshifter through its paces as the fixture serves as their eye candy 'workhorse' during the second set.

Following an acoustic set that showcases classic co

The Netherlands - W-DMX by Wireless Solution Sweden brought beautiful light to the latest performance of the Leidse Koorboeken (The Leiden Choir Book) concerts in The Netherlands. The concerts are from the six choir books that are kept in the Dutch Leiden Archives, made in the sixteenth century and written for church. They make up Europe's largest collection of its kind. The concerts run for four days across The Netherlands and are always a popular attraction.

W-DMX dealer and client Keylight Design & Supply took charge of the 2014 production, using W-DMX built into 30 Clay Paky GlowU

USA - The Roosevelt Road area of Chicago suburb, Berwyn, has its share of up-and-coming music clubs, including recent addition, Wire, which opened last fall in the former Oakwyn Theatre.

Built in 1934 and formerly a mid-century movie house and Teamsters union hall, the 10,000sq.ft space has been completely renovated with an expansive rebuild to house the 400-seat club as well as a mezzanine level with offices, recording studio and VIP area. Further setting Wire apart from the other venues in the area is a RoomMatch loudspeaker system from Bose Professional Systems.

Installed by regi

USA - Robert Juliat and A.C.T Lighting have entered into a strategic agreement for A.C.T Lighting to become the exclusive distributor for all Robert Juliat products in the US.

The RJ USA Wallingford office will remain operational through the end of the year, but A.C.T Lighting will manage all sales and customer service issues going forward. RJ USA's Fred Lindauer and Pete Engel will join the A.C.T Lighting sales group and the entire team will work together to provide a smooth and seamless transition.

Founded in 1993, A.C.T Lighting is a leading distributor of entertainment lighting

Switzerland - When The Olympic Museum in Lausanne reopened recently after a two-year renovation, it made extensive use of audio-visual and interactive techniques that take visitors on what's been called "a multidimensional journey across the Olympic Universe".

Electrosonic designed the AV system, which is simple for visitors to use and offers maximum flexibility for the museum, under subcontract with media producer Centre Screen Productions of Manchester, England. Electrosonic handled the system engineering and integration under a separate subcontract with Paragon Creative o

Lebanon - The country's first public television network Télé Liban and pan-Arabist satellite television channel Al Mayadeen have tuned in to the power of Philips Selecon LED and professional studio lighting solutions from Philips Strand Lighting in a major upgrade to existing kit.

State-owned Télé Liban and private Al Mayadeen are both significant channels in the region. Télé Liban is one of the longest established TV stations in the Middle East whilst Al Mayadeen is a wide-ranging news channel, owning offices in Tunisia, Cairo and Tehran, and

Silver Clef Awards - Justin Timberlake won the best live act award at the Silver Clef Awards, beating artists including Arcade Fire and the Rolling Stones. Timberlake picked up half a million votes in the only award voted for by the public. Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page won the 02 Silver Clef prize and told the audience, "Thank you so very much - it's been an incredible day today." Sir Tom Jones was honoured with a lifetime achievement award. The event, which took place at London's Hilton Hotel, raised £531,000 for Nordoff Robbins, the music therapy charity.

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UK - The fifth annual PLASA Rigging Conference will be held on Monday 6 October 2014 in the North Hall Gallery Rooms, alongside the PLASA London Show at ExCeL London. For the first time, the conference will be delivered as a one-day package - a move that will improve accessibility and reduce cost to the delegate.

Building on the success of previous years, the programme, which is again curated by Chris Higgs of Total Solutions, will comprise seven sessions in one day, as opposed to eight over two days. The first session details to be announced are that of keynote speaker, Bill Sapsis,

UK - Martin Audio's groundbreaking Multi-Cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) system has made Glastonbury history by delivering the highest sound levels to the audience without exceeding noise pollution levels beyond the perimeter.

Making its Glastonbury debut, the system deployed on the Pyramid Stage was impressive in every respect, utilising cabinets from the entire MLA range of loudspeakers. This comprised a total of 72 MLA for the main hangs, eight MLA Compact for stereo in-fill at the pit barrier and four delay positions of 14 MLA each. The latest addition to the range, the MLA Mini,

Hungary - The Palace of Arts in Budapest (locally named Muvészetek Palotája and abbreviated Müpa) is one of the most prestigious concert halls in Central and Eastern Europe, designed by leading architect Gábor Zoboki in 2005.

Its previous colour-changing lighting system, installed a decade ago, had become outdated and did not provide the deep, highly saturated colouration desired by the architect. Therefore, with TriGránit Management Ingatlankezelö és Hasznosító Kft. on board as investor, a tender was initiated for modernisation of the façade lighting system, whi

Malta - When is an opera house not a house at all? Well, a visit to the centre of Malta's capital city Valletta will soon answer the question. In the very centre is the site of the Royal Opera House, in its heyday a landmark building designed by British architect Edward Middleton Barry who is best known for designing Covent Garden Theatre.

From its opening in 1866 it remained the cultural centre of Malta until 1942 when it suffered extensive damage during a bombing raid. Since then there have been several attempts to reconstruct the site, all of which came to nothing.

Finally, in 20

UK - Sir Elton John recently partnered with UK charity SportsAid to deliver a solo concert at Stoke Park Country Club in Buckinghamshire. London based lighting specialist White Light was chosen to supply lighting solutions for the special event, which raised more than £300,000 to help young athletes in their pursuit of Paralympic or Olympic success.

White Light worked closely with production manager Mark Berry and technical manager Jon Ricketts to ensure the event's success. Lighting designer Andy Pygott, Elton John's regular LD, determined the lighting plan for the stage to be

The Netherlands - The Purple Group in Schijndel is one of the most respected entertainment technology rental companies in the Netherlands and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year having built its reputation on offering "fantastic service by fabulous people with the right attitude and a passion for their work ... together with continual investment in the best brands" - which in recent years has included Robe.

The company was founded by the charismatic Harry Zinken in 1989. By the time he was in his late teens he was already a seasoned entertainment professional, having l

UK - The Knight of Illumination (KOI) awards has announced that East London's art deco Troxy will host the ceremony for the first time, on Monday 5 October.

The venue, once one of the largest cinemas in 1930's England, is a grade II listed building that has played host to stars such as Vera Lyn, Jarvis Cocker and London Grammar. The KOI awards will take place during PLASA London.

Pio Nahum, sales and marketing director at Clay Paky, one of the organisers of the event says, "We are really excited to move the awards to this popular new venue. We wanted to give a new feel to the a

The Netherlands - A new reality format is breaking all the records in the Netherlands: Utopia is a hit with both TV and Internet audiences. Devised by John de Mol and produced by Talpa, Utopia has invited 15 inhabitants to leave their usual lives behind for a full year to create an ideal mini-society of their own in Blaricum, near Hilversum.

Multimedia company Dutchview was faced with the big challenge of covering a 12,500 square metre area with both video and audio recording equipment to follow the Utopia inhabitants. In order to provide coverage to this vast area with

Japan - Allen & Heath together with Japanese distributor, Comodo Mattina, recently held a training seminar for its growing digital mixing range in Tokyo. The event was attended by more than 90 industry engineers and technicians, and included operation overviews for Allen & Heath's iLive, GLD and Qu series digital systems.

There was also a session about digital audio networking and the various standards and their implementation and integration into Allen & Heath mixing systems. On display, Comodo Mattina showed a number of QU-16 and also QU-24 mixers as well as a number of GLD systems.

South Africa - Nobody, least of all its set and lighting designer Denis Hutchinson, had an inkling that 20 years down the road, A Handful of Keys would be South Africa's most successful musical to date, clinching at least nine international awards along the way.

This year, the much loved performance, featuring two men behind two grand pianos and a mix of comedy and songs from Elton John to Norah Jones, and The Beatles to Alicia Keys, will celebrate its 20th anniversary and will run at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town from 9 July to 10 August, and then at Pieter Toerien's Mon

USA - Lasertainment was exclusive laser show supplier for the main stage Kinetic Field at EDC Las Vegas 2014.

Over 30 high power laser systems were used to provide an extraordinary illumination effect. Lasertainment as laser show partner from Laserworld, used all high end gear from German production. Insomniac Events, the organizers of EDC, named Lasertainment to be the sole supplier of laser show equipment on the main stage Kinetic Field.

Electric Daisy Carnival is known worldwide as a series of extremely big events. Huge stages and the most famous acts in electronic music are guar

USA - Michael McDonald joins 1980s super-group Toto this summer for a North American co-bill that stops at The Greek in Los Angeles and The Fox in Atlanta. McDonald's front-of-house engineer Curtis Flatt was first introduced to Spectrum Sound of Nashville while in college and went to work for the company in 1986. Through the long association, Flatt's career has spanned the best consoles and musicians of the last three decades, including Wynona Judd and the Judds, Donny Osmond and Michael W. Smith. He also filled in for a short time for Robert Collins on Eric Clapton. Today, he can be fo

USA - Soccer might not be the most popular game in the USA although it has had a major boost from the latest World Cup. Undoubtedly the involvement of David Beckham with the LA Galaxy team made it the most well known team internationally. Their home venue is California's StubHub Centre, which is way more than just a football stadium. This is also an Official U.S. Olympic Training Site with state-of-the art stadiums and facilities for tennis, track & field, cycling, lacrosse, rugby, volleyball, baseball, softball, basketball and other sports in addition to the soccer.

Playing music, ma

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