UK - Blackburn- based lighting and visuals rental company HSL underlines its commitment to providing full video production and touring packages to its clients by announcing a strategic working partnership with live event video designers and specialists, Video Illusions.

Based in Canterbury, Kent, Video Illusions was formed in 2006 by brothers Dave and Nick Whiteoak and has rapidly built a reputation for imaginative and innovative video solutions - from hardware to content creation - for all sectors of the entertainment industry encompassing live music, touring, theatre productions, special events, corporates, sports competitions and more.

Prior to this, Dave and Nick started their industry careers as freelancers working in the world of corporate AV on high profile events which constantly opened doors to new and interesting projects. Simultaneously, they were honing their live

The Netherlands - Dutch Rock band Di-Rect from The Hague celebrated their 15th anniversary in great style with a special concert on the beach at Scheveningen in front of 12,500 enthusiastic fans. The beach is one of the most visited public spaces in the Netherlands and is renowned its vibrant ambience.

Lighting designer Nick van Balen ensured that the spectacular lightshow fitted the sense of achievement after 15 years at the sharp end of the music business, and as a confirmed Robe advocate, included 99 x Robe fixtures on his rig - 46 x LEDWash 300s, 44 x Pointes and nine PATT 2013s - a vintage style fixture designed by Tim Routledge, and now being manufactured by Robe.

Nick had an open brief for the show, and the main objective was to make it look awesome - which of course he did with a good deal of finesse, attention to detail and some magic touches to ensure that a great ni

Italy / Germany - Proel has appointed Mega Audio GmbH as distributor for its Axiom loudspeaker brand and Sagitter lighting brand for Germany.

Centrally located in Waldlaubersheim, less than an hour from Frankfurt, Mega Audio distributes many professional audio brands including SSL, DPA, Ampeg, SE Electronics, and Fostex.

"I am very happy to announce that we reached an exclusive distribution agreement with Mega Audio," stated Pietro Guercioni, Proel's director of international sales. "Proel and Mega Audio have the same vision of the market, and we are very excited about this new challenge. I am sure that together we can establish a strong and long term business for the Axiom Pro Audio and Sagitter Lighting brands. Mega Audio is an established and very well known company, and the right partner for us."

"I am proud to confirm that Mega Audio has signed

Ireland - The Gaiety Theatre on Dublin's South King Street is the city's longest established theatre in continuous operation. Since November 1871 and the opening night's double bill of She Stoops to Conquer and the burlesque tunes of La Belle Sauvage, the Gaiety has been entertaining Dublin audiences with a mix of musical shows, opera, ballet, dance and drama. In more recent times, it hosted the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest, a venue in distinct contrast to the mass arena productions of today. Since the millennium, the owners have invested over €7m in the refurbishment and updating of this sumptuous theatre.

In 2013, d&b audiotechnik partner, MOSCO, provided a pro audio installation of Q-Series and E-Series loudspeakers to the venue. It proved a resounding success across all entertainment genres, particularly from Riverdance, having employed the Q-Series for

Singapore - St. Andrew's Cathedral recently installed two Allen & Heath's Qu-32 compact digital mixers at FOH in its two main worship halls, replacing the existing analogue mixers.

Located within Singapore's Central Business District, the Cathedral was consecrated in 1862 and declared a national monument in 1973. As a major place of worship, St Andrew's Cathedral faces the challenge of hosting a number of different services, with a variety of musical requirements, and quick changeovers between events. The installation of 32in/24out Qu-32 digital mixers in the traditional worship hall at the Main Building and the contemporary worship space at the Extension building, has provided a solution.

"The Cathedral has many services running back to back especially on Sundays from as early as 6.30am. With the previous analogue mixer, a 'reset' was needed during service changeovers. T

UK - For the second year running Matrix provided a full service solution to Clearscape Communications for Attitude Awards 2015. This included all production management, sound, set, projection and backline equipment.

Scissor Sisters lead singer Ana Matronic hosted the awards ceremony, an honour she enjoyed for a second consecutive year. Each award was presented by one of the many famous faces present, many of whom successfully won an award in their category including Yoko Ono, Vivien Westwood, Lorraine Kelly, Anthony Cotton and Holly Johnson.

Three hundred guests enjoyed a champagne reception, followed by a formal dinner, awards and performances by artists Adam Lambert and VV Brown. After the ceremony guests enjoyed the after party with DJ James Barr from Capital Radio.

Annie Bracken from Clearscape Communications comments, "Glitz and glomour, the Attitude Awards ran per

UK - Rosco, a major manufacturer of products for the entertainment industry, has once again shown its support for the new charity Behind the Scenes UK by donating the year's proceeds from sales of Rosco 313 Light Relief yellow.Mark Engel, CEO of Rosco, stated, "Our industry is constantly changing. Designers and technicians move from show to show, and technology advances by the moment. Ours is not a community that sits still. In such an environment, stability is critical. Knowing you have a safety net, that your friends are there for you, is essential. Behind the Scenes UK is that safety net, and we are so pleased to be able to help fill that net year after year. This year's contribution, thanks to every designer and technician who used Rosco 313 Light Rlief Yellow, is £1,398.51."Upon receiving the cheque presented by Cristian Arroyo, director of sales for Rosco EMEA, John

UK - Sheffield metal titans Bring Me The Horizon have chosen Shure's flagship Axient wireless system and PSM1000 in-ear monitors for their latest tour.

Jared Daly signed on mid tour in 2014 to help fill the monitor engineer position and has exposed the band to the benefits of Shure's PSM1000 IEMs, AXT600 spectrum manager and the AXT200 wireless vocal mic. With input from each of the band, he has subsequently upgraded their in-ear monitoring and helped them to use Shure wireless technology more extensively throughout 2015.

"The band have always used in-ears; they all have very specific mix requirements, including click tracks and cues," explains Daly, who is currently in the USA with the group on tour. "The band and crew have been using Shure PSM900 units for a few years on stage; they owned those when I joined.

"Oli always used wedges for monitoring on-st

USA - A maintenance revision to AES67-2013 - the AES standard for high-performance streaming audio-over-IP interoperability - has been issued. The revision, called AES67-2015, clarifies some of the interoperability requirements, based on general implementation and 'plugfest' experience.

The possibility to incorporate these revisions was identified during the AES 'Plugfest' 1 testing, carried out in cooperation with the European Broadcast Union (EBU), in October last year, and held at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT), in Munich, Germany. During these tests ten companies tested 16 currently available networked-audio products with AES67-specific extensions against each other to confirm interoperability.

The participating manufacturers were ALC NetworX GmbH, Archwave AG, Axia Audio, Digigram SA, DirectOut GmbH, Georg Neumann GmbH, Lawo AG, Merging Technologies S.A., SOUND4

USA - Electric Zoo is New York City's premier electronic music festival, attracting over 100,000 fans to Randall's Island Park each Labour Day Weekend. This year, the festival's Main Stage featured a spectacular phoenix-themed design outfitted with Elation Professional lighting gear, including Lumina Strips, Cuepix Blinder WW2s and the debut of the new Elation ACL 360 Bar, all supplied by Burst Sound & Lighting Systems of Detroit.

Now in its seventh year, Electric Zoo was revamped this year in an immersive zoo-themed atmosphere that included bigger stages, brighter lights and an overall recharged production. Their first year doing the festival, Burst provided lighting and rigging for all five stages, a 15 truck pull that included some 2000 moving lights and over 2000 feet of truss.

A highlight of the event and one of the animal-themed aesthetics that raised the bar at this yea

UK - Clay Paky's beam light, the Sharpy, has proved the ideal festival lighting tool on The Great Stage at Secret Garden Party (SGP), one of the UK's most popular independent arts and music festivals.

This year's SGP saw over 30,000 revellers hit Mill Hill Field in Cambridgeshire for a long weekend of festivities ranging from performances by big name music acts such as Angus and Julia Stone to theatre workshops and boat rides.

London-based event supplier Colour Sound Experiment was responsible for kitting out the festival with "the perfect technical package", under the direction of Jonathan Ricketts, head of lighting for SGP's production team, The Dark Horses.

Choosing 18 of the award-winning Clay Paky fixture, Ricketts knew the Sharpys would be suitable for the numerous designers making use of the main stage's rig over the four days.

"The Sharpys were put o

USA - On 25 September, ANSI's Board of Standards Review approved the reaffirmation of the 2010 edition of ANSI E1.30-4, EPI 26, Device Description Language (DDL) Extensions for DMX512 and E1.31 Devices, and the revised version of ANSI E1.37-2, Entertainment Technology - Additional Message Sets for ANSI E1.20 (RDM) - Part 2, IPv4 & DNS Configuration Messages. ANSI E1.30-4 does what the title says: it defines protocol-specific extensions to the Device Description Language for describing DMX512 devices. ANSI E1.37-2 is another part of the multi-part, open-ended E1.37 standard. It provides Get/Set parameter messages for configuring network interfaces, routing information, and DNS settings on devices with IPv4 addresses.

Both standards are now published. They may be downloaded at no charge from http://tsp.plasa.org/freestandards; the free download is sponsored by Prosight Specialty I

Italy - Francesco De Gregori has appointed lighting designer Andrea Coppini to design the lighting at his concerts for several years now. In recent years, Coppini has often relied on Clay Paky equipment.

How did Andrea get to know De Gregori? "I have been working with Agorà for more than ten years. I met De Gregori in the summer of 2008, when I stood in for his previous lighting operator, who was no longer available. From that moment on, I started working continuously with the artist and the production team. This means I present new designs whenever a new tour starts. I have been designing the lighting for De Gregori for six years.

"I have grown together with Francesco. In the early years, Francesco had a minimalist idea of show aesthetics: he preferred a plain stage, with no particular special or lighting effects. Over time he developed the idea that stage design a

USA - Bandit Lites is supporting lighting design firm Pulse Lighting in supplying lights for Grace Potter. The multi-instrumentalist powerhouse is currently touring the country with songs her from her newest album, Midnight.

Pulse Lighting specializes in designing rigs that provide big looks with the most bang for a buck and a small trailer footprint. Lighting designer Preston Hoffman redesigned Potter's summer floor package with 12 GLP X4s for a compact wash that double as a beam when focused tightly, eight Robe Pointes for versatile graphic and textural looks, and 12 Cuepix Blinders.

Four towers of truss each features three X4s, two Pointes and two Cuepix Blinders, giving Hoffman the opportunity to build large looks both behind and through the band.

"Grace conveyed to me that she was looking for a highly versatile rig that can provide lots of different feels, a

Belgium - Creative lighting, video and visual design specialist Painting with Light brought their imagination and flair to six special live recordings of popular Belgian comedy / impressionist TV show Tegen de Sterren Op, designing the set, lighting and visuals for producers Studio 100 and DEDS IT. To be broadcast on VTM, the action took place over three days at the 6000 capacity Lotto Arena in Antwerp.

The Painting with Light team was led by Luc Peumans, who has also designed set and lighting for the most recent series of Tegen de Sterren Op studio based shows.

Wanting to replicate key visual elements from the TV show, but enlarged to capture the scale of the arena sized production, the design featured a striking LED screen portal / pros arch measuring 8m high by 16m wide.

Upstage was a 9m high by 18m wide LED screen made up of two sections which tracked apart

USA - Robe underlines the importance of the American market by announcing a major new product launch at the 2015 LDI expo in Las Vegas - the BMFL Wash and BMFL Wash XF (Extra Features).

There will also be a host of other exciting new products making their US debut at Booth 2521 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre 23-25 October.

BMFL Wash and BMFL Wash XF are the ultimate 1700W lamp based wash lights, and the latest fixtures to be added to Robe's 'game-changing' BMFL range of luminaires. These are powerful workhorse wash lights, packed with innovative and creative features.

A large 200 mm diameter front fresnel lens provides a high quality traditional wash output ranging from a punchy and tight 4.5° to a super-smooth 55°.

Custom interchangeable frost filters offer three grades - light, medium and heavy - giving an extremely subtle and natural 'soft touch'.

Both CMY

Germany - In order to make people aware of the achievements of those working behind the stage and of their frequent ingenuity the Karlsruhe Chamber of Industry and Commerce has set up an award that recognises Germany's best and most creative trainees.

On 4 December 2015, taking place for the seventh time, the Baden Baden Awards 2015 will be honouring outstanding final papers by recently graduated set artists and set sculptors, make-up artists, sound and image media designers, event representatives, event technicians and property masters.

The creative industries are among those affected by demographic change and are faced with falling numbers of young people taking up technically skilled and administrative jobs. With competition for specialists increasing on the home and international employment market the situation demands that the industry react. From 20 to 22 June 2017 Stage

Denmark - Cirkus Dannebrog is a circus with much history dating back to the second half of the 19th century and thus holds an important role in the Danish circus traditions. However, this circus is following the technological developments and hence using the latest innovations within lighting.

Since 2001, Cirkus Danneborg has been focusing and working with lighting as an important element for the audience experience in relation to artists, animals and the overall circus tent atmosphere. Lighting designer Liza Van Der Voorn has been working with the circus troupe for the last three seasons, designing and programming light for a circus solely deploying LED technology.

As a new acquisition this year, Liza Van Der Voorn has introduced six SGM G-Spot moving heads to the circus lighting rig. She is very enthusiastic about these luminaires, their quality and flawless operation, night

USA - NBC's 2015 Sunday Night Football Open with Carrie Underwood features 34 x Robe BMFL Spots which were specified by Los Angeles based LD Benoit Richard from Millennium Lighting Design, Inc. who was charged with creating all the theatrical and effects lighting for the shoot. This follows his success utilizing Robe Pointes and CycFX 8 fixtures for last year's intro.

The high energy 2015 SNF Open features another new and rousing rendition of Waiting All Day for Sunday Night sung by Underwood. The shoot location changed this year as the production team took over one of the large sound stages at Warner Brothers Studios in L.A.

The creative concept revolves around showing numerous behind-the-scenes situations including player interactions with Carrie and even a cameo of Benoit weaving his magic at the lighting controls. The build-up leads to Carrie's exciting perfo

UK - Having just celebrated its 13th anniversary the Green Man Festival - held in the Brecon Beacons in August - has built a reputation as one of the UK's best music events. Typically featuring a line-up of alternative, indie and folk and dance acts, Green Man 2015 included Leftfield, Hot Chip, Super Furry Animals and Television among the highlights.

During the event, Audio-Technica supplied an array of microphones from its Artist Elite, Artist Series and 40 Series ranges and an Allen & Heath Qu-24 digital mixer for the filming of The Green Man Sessions - intimate live performances of acts appearing at the festival. In charge of proceedings was Charlie Allen from video production company Naked Noise, who faced both a challenging schedule and technical hurdles during the project.

"The Green Man Festival had commissioned us to film and record 14 artists over three da

USA - Drew Carey mentioned it in his autobiography. KISS mounted their comeback by playing on top of its bar. Jamie Foxx liked to celebrate New Year's Eve there. Ben Affleck was a regular. Even by the standards of Las Vegas nightspots, the Center Bar at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino has been a celebrity magnet. Perched under a domed ceiling in the middle of the hotel's 30,000sq.ft casino, it has long been the place to see and be seen.

However, even icons need updating to remain fresh and vibrant., which is why this June the Hard Rock Hotel had a "Final Call" party for its famous bar, and promised to reopen the 20-year-old landmark with a new design that would make its future as glittering as its past. This goal was accomplished in stunning fashion, thanks to a massive and dazzling abstract design by LD Robert Athey of All Things Integrated that drew on the pixel mapping

Spain - Proaudio Granada recently debuted its new Meyer Sound Leopard linear sound reinforcement system at two major outdoor music events in the Spanish city - Jazz en La Costa (Jazz on the Coast) Festival and a concert by the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada (City of Granada Orchestra).

"Ninety percent of our work is supporting classical and jazz music, and Leopard is the perfect system for these applications," says Henry Gómez Rey of Proaudio Granada. "At a Leopard demo in Paris, we listened to a recording of Diana Krall. I closed my eyes and thought, 'It's impossible, it's like she's playing right here in front of me.' It was not like a recording at all.

"With jazz music, people know good sound, and they are very critical," Rey continues. "They loved the sound of the Leopard at Jazz en La Costa. With no delays, we had uniform coverage of the whole a

UAE - The eclipse Group's success over the years is credit to their continuous investment in talent and staff, which in turn is testament to the level of quality experience and education that is available in the region. As a result, the group has begun an initiative that is focused on contributing to the advancement of education in the industry by helping to develop the skills of young and enthusiastic students. The initiative is a combination of the recruitment of young graduates, participating in local awards programs and conducting college seminars and demonstrations.

This initiative meant seeking graduates looking to expand their technical knowhow and gain extra experience within the busy events environment and also in some cases, individuals willing to re-locate. The search to hire interns began before the summer to coincide with the break for college students locally and i

Italy - The Fraschini Theatre in Pavia, Italy, has recently purchased two dot2 consoles (a dot2 XL-F and a dot2 core) to use for their touring shows. The theatre hosts several visiting companies and is also an opera house. Furthermore, like most Italian theatres, the venue is hired out for dance exhibitions and other events during the season.

The technical staff decided to look for a solution which could meet their many requirements, namely a versatile console on which they could programme complex cue lists even when programming time is very short, or that was ideal when the operator has to improvise a show in a professional manner. Therefore they decided to invest in the dot2.

Intuitive operation is at the core of the dot2 philosophy, and with a comprehensive set of connectivity hardware on all console models, the dot2 range is suitable for most theatre, touring, corporate, t

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