UK - Mike Glover of Essex Sound & Light (ESL) has spent 2011 engaged in installation projects as far afield as Delhi and Spain - but he saved one of his best creations for a nightclub right on his own Southend doorstep.

Chameleon has been a landmark venue since it first opened as Mr. B's Discotheque in the mid-80s. The venue subsequently underwent many iterations and corporate ownership changes before falling into demise following the collapse of CanDu Entertainment three and a half years ago.

As a result, enterprising local entrepreneur Dick De Vigne (whose eponymous 500-capacity Dick De Vigne's nightclub is the lynch-pin of the burgeoning Warrior Square scene nearby), snapped up Chameleon on Lucy Road from the receivers.

Not only does Lucy Road provide the traditional nightlife heartbeat of Southend but De Vigne also owned this place previously (first as Discotheque Buzz a

UK - December is a time for panto, as Britain's theatres stage their annual Christmas entertainments, all using lighting technology to create the magical effects these shows demand - many turning to entertainment lighting specialist White Light to supply the gear they need.

White Light will this year be supplying 27 pantomimes - including nine Cinderellas, four Aladdins, four Peter Pans, four Sleeping Beauties, three Dick Whittingtons ,one Snow White and one A Christmas Carol. All of these shows, plus many other festive entertainments produced by professionals, schools and amateur companies, are drawing on not just White Light's comprehensive ranges of conventional and moving lights, but also a diverse selection of effects including smoke, haze, UV light, snow, bubbles and pyrotechnics.

White Light is also once again supplying t

UK - MilTec is undergoing a major re-structuring of its manufacturing and distribution operations. The existing company, MilTec (UK) Ltd will control the manufacturing and export businesses of the LEDHead and MT Pro Audio ranges of products. A new company, MT-Pro Ltd, will distribute these products within the UK and Ireland along with their existing ranges of conventional lighting and special effects. The changes will take effect from Tuesday 3 January 2012.

Sales director David Faulkes explains: "We have been increasing our export business over recent months and the time is now right to separate the business into two definable operations. This will enable us to improve our services to our existing and future customers around the world. We will now have better control of design, quality control, availability, export and service functions.

"Continuity is very importan

UK - Following the announcement yesterday (20 December) of Westminster School's purchase of Lawrence Hall from the Royal Horticultural Society, organisers of the ABTT 2012 Theatre Show moved swiftly to announce the event will be transferring to a new venue.

The Show's director, Roger Fox, spoke to assure both exhibitors and visitors that the 2012 Show would be going ahead, explaining: "This announcement has come as a surprise to us today and at a time when planning for the 2012 Show was well advanced. Discussions to secure an alternative venue are already in progress, which we see as also an opportunity to offer improved facilities for our exhibitors and visitors."

At present it is unsure if the Show's previously published June 2012 dates will be available at an alternative venue, but all effort is being made to avoid changes to the timing of this important annual ev

Germany - Kaiser Showtechnik recently purchased Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 1500 lights. When first used to illuminate the iconic Augsburg building, the town hall, the Italian company's moving lights provided proof of their wide performance range.

Managing director Maxx Kaiser explained, "We used 20 of our Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 1500 lights for the project. The city of Augsburg fully supported us in the project, turning off the Town hall's lighting and street lamps. In return, we lit up the Town Hall with the FC Augsburg football team colours since they were playing the last game valid for promotion, which they won."

Kaiser continued, "The installation was created after the Town hall closed. At around midnight we recorded the first videos and snapshots, and the entire production set was fully removed from the Town hall square before the beginning of the next work

Norway - LumenRadio's CRMX is now a trusted member of the touring ensemble at Ostfold Teater in South-Eastern Norway.

This regional theatre organisation develops performances with specific appeal to children and youth and also co-produces many productions with talented independent theatre groups. Part of their mandate is to bring dramatic theatre out to the people and that is done in the form of touring productions that play in local schools and performing arts centres.

The challenge is that most of these venues are not equipped to accommodate the sometimes-elaborate productions. Many of the venues, in particular the schools, also have Wi-Fi networks that need to be functional at all times and interference from visiting wireless systems is not acceptable.

The solution came in the form of a portable LumenRadio CRMX Nova system. Performing in a variety of venues without adequa

New Zealand - Lighting designer Ben Cooper utilised 24 Robe Robin 600 LEDWash moving light fixtures - amongst others - for the 2011 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards (VNZMAs), which honoured the very best of established and emerging talent spanning a diversity of genres.

The high profile event - produced by J and A Productions for the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) - was staged in the Vector Arena in Auckland. It is the largest and highest profile Awards show in the country.

This 46th edition of the VNZMAs featured live performances from a host of stars including Brooke Fraser, The Naked and Famous, Ladi6, Six60, Tiki Taane and Avalanche City and legendary Kiwi band Supergroove. It was telecast live on national Channel FOUR.

Cooper was lighting it for the second year, bringing a fresh and innovative style to the visuality, with all the lighting equi

Canada - The Canadian Football League championship, the Grey Cup, is Canada's biggest annual sports and television event. Held at Vancouver's BC Place Stadium on 27 November, halftime of this year's game featured a performance by Nickelback using a Martin lighting and video package of 98 MAC 101, 30 MAC 2000 Beam XB, 20 MAC 2000 Wash XB and six MAC III Profile moving heads with supporting graphics on two large Martin LC Series LED screens.

The moving light package was supplied by Christie Lites Vancouver with the LC panels with P3 upgrade coming from Epic Production Technologies. Production and lighting design for the event was by Robert Sondergaard who incorporated a large amount of Martin's compact MAC 101 wash lights into his design.

"Since the 101s have come out they have become integral to the shows we do," he says. "Because they are inexpensive to rent, we

Russia - Established in 1885, Moscow's historic Theatre of Nations reopened in September following a four-year reconstruction period. The theatre offers a rich variety of experimental drama, international theatre tours and festivals.

Clay Paky distributor DOKA Center was actively involved in the renovation of the theatre. "We have never performed such a large and varied amount of work in supplying for a theatre before", said DOKA's director Alexander Fokichev. "We were involved in all aspects from designing the scenic technology to supplying, installing and implementing the stage lighting equipment."

DOKA Center supplied 10 Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 575s and 14 Alpha Wash 575s for the main stage. The fixtures give the theatre's lighting designers free rein to create limitless graphic lighting effects. The prestigious nature of the project required extremely

UK - Lighting rental company HSL supplied all lighting equipment to the 2011 British Military Tournament at Earls Court in London - for LD Steve Sinclair's dynamic design which helped showcase the action presented by a cast of 700 troops, 100 horses, massed bands and featuring the famous 'field gun run'.

HSL tendered and won the contract for lighting contractor, which was project managed for them by Thor-Andre 'Spantax' Saether. "It was a great honour to be involved in a project with such long traditions and we are proud to have picked up the ball on this contemporary version," he says referring to its origins as The Royal Tournament, a spectacle that ran from 1880 to 1999 returning to the live event calendar last year in this new format.

Spantax adds that it was also good to be working with Sinclair again following HSL's recent supply of lights to Top Gear Live

Malaysia - When Indonesian singer Ruth Sahanaya celebrated her 25th anniversary, lighting designer Bernard Chew from Jakarta, was challenged with creating a lighting design for the landmark event, which he faced with a grandMA2 full-size control console on his side.

Staging a night to remember in the Plenary Hall of the famous Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, Malasia, right underneath the Petronas Twin Towers, Sahanaya was easily able to convince her audience that there are many more years to come. Best known for her ballads, Sahanaya has won several national awards and is well recognised internationally, frequently touring and playing music festivals as far afield as Finland and the Netherlands, in the process winning many fans across the globe.

Working together with Jeffry Waworuntu, Ruth Sahanaya's husband and manager, Chew came up with a lighting design fitting for the occa

South Korea - The Gaya Theatre in Seoul, South Korea, recently hosted a spectacular hologram performance called VR BreakOut.

Zenex Wave, a Korean design and production company, used Medialon Manager Show and Media Control Software with an iPad to give a chance for the audience to enjoy and experience a 3D world of virtual reality on stage.

The performance is a musical and dance story about prisoners who lead a routine life, isolated from the outside world, and dream of freedom through a mysterious Bi-guep (a book with supernatural power), which happens to fall from the sky.

In VR BreakOut - selected for the 2010 Virtual Reality Content Support Project of Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), Zenex Wave applies holograms to a commercial stage for the first time in Korea, realizing virtual reality on the stage by combining technologies like 3D projection mapping

USA - Three Jands Vista T2 consoles, each running the next generation Vista v2 software, are controlling lighting and media at White's Chapel United Methodist Church (UMC) in Dallas, Texas, USA.

In the run up to Christmas a spectacular show, Celebrate The Light, is being projected onto the front of the impressive 250 ft wide by 150 ft high façade of the church building. Drawing crowds of up to 5,000, and running six times a night, a Vista T2 is in control of this popular show.

Tim Georgeff, the Church's Creative Director, had been dreaming about producing a Christmas projection presentation on the building for some time. With the help of Steve Alford of leading technical production company Alford Media - who supplied three Barco 20K FLM projectors and a pair of Green Hippo Grasshopper media servers - as well as local graphic designer David Koss this became a reality.

Ukraine/USA - Lightconverse 3D Show Platform Version 52 continues to provide a powerful photo-realistic solution for integrating and visualizing multiple show related disciplines in real-time, including lighting, video (in and out), 3D Mapping, laser, pyro, water effects and moving objects.

Among the most anticipated features in this release of the ESTA/PLASA Award-Winning (2009, 2010 & 2011) software are its integration with VectorWorks 2011/12 (PC & Mac), providing the ability to do your design and paperwork in VectorWorks before exporting directly to LightConverse in order to see your work truly come alive; a real-time live object tracking system, which allows performers and objects such as moving set pieces and video screens to be automatically followed by moving fixtures and projectors during their movements on stage, and an increase in fixture capacity to 1,536 devices wit

USA - Two New York City public schools have dramatically reduced the energy consumption of their stage lighting systems by more than 80% after replacing their existing conventional lighting rigs with LEDs from Elation Professional.

This plunge in energy usage occurred at Walton High School and PS 86X, an elementary school. The two schools installed the new lighting systems as part of an experiment conducted by the Division of School Facilities, Board of Education, City of New York to gauge the cost-saving potential of LEDs.

The experiment began about four years ago, said Michael A. Fink of Magical Designs (Brooklyn, NY), who works as a design consultant to Prince Electric, which is under contract with the Division of School Facilities. "At that time, one of the division's inspectors approached me and asked if we could put in an LED (stage lighting) system at one of the sc

Olympic Countdown - The Olympics will cause "a bloodbath of a summer" for London theatres in 2012, Andrew Lloyd Webber has predicted. "Nobody's going to go to the theatre at all," the composer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, predicting that "most of the theatres in London will shut".

"It's going to be very tough," he said, revealing advance bookings were "about 10%" of their normal level. Three major musicals, he added, "are not going to play over the Olympics" - but he would not name them. Lord Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group owns seven London theatres which are currently hosting shows including War Horse, Matilda and The Wizard of Oz.

The impresario said "big, big, big hits" like his own The Phantom of the Opera would continue during The Olympics. But he said some of his

Belgium - Over 100 Robe Robin 600E Spot and LEDWash moving lights were used to illuminate the Blue Room, one of five arenas at the 2011 I Love Techno (ILT) event - one of the biggest and most successful rave experiences in Europe - staged at the Flanders Expo, Ghent, and attended by a sold out audience of 35,000 enthusiastic ravers.

The Robes were specified by the event's lighting video and production designer Thomas Boets of LD Productions, and supplied by rental company L&L Stage Services from Herentals, Belgium.

Boets designed visuals for all areas across the whole event - in which he has been involved for over seven years.

Seventy-six Robe Robin 600 Spots and 26 Robin 600 LEDWashes were used in the Blue Room, rigged onto to a series of trusses over the stage/DJ booth and on two box trusses - one inside the other - with curved edges that were flown above the audience. The

USA - American DJ's Mega 24PRO is a compact 16" RGB colour bar with 24 brilliant 1-watt LEDs (eight each red, green and blue) that can be adapted to different uses - from uplighting walls and ceilings, to overhead illumination.

Producing a 10° vertical x 40° beam angle that's suitable for wall washing, the Mega 24PRO features DMX or manual control, RGB colour mixing, 32 built-in colour macros, a colour strobe effect and 0-100% electronic dimming. Its multitude of features, along with six operational modes, give the Mega 24PRO the ability to create whatever ambience or colour effects are needed, says the company, making it "ideal for theatrical productions, nightclubs, special effects installations, party venues, DJs, mobile entertainers and more".

"The Mega 24PRO is a great fixture to use for uplighting, which of course is currently a big trend in e

Sweden - Reality TV talent competition Idol has aired on Sweden's TV4 since August 2004, and became one of the most popular shows on Swedish television. This year's edition was the final one and lighting designer Per Ax voted for a grandMA2 control system.

This comprised one grandMA2 full-size and one grandMA2 light console, four MA NPU (Network Processing Units) and three touchscreen computers, with grandMA2 on PC software running as backup. It all performed faultlessly while controlling 450 LED fixtures and moving lights from Philips Vari*Lite, Color Kinetics, Clay Paky and Martin Professional as well as a whole bunch of conventionals.

Lighting designer's assistant and head electrician Tobias Winerdal commented, "I have worked on Swedish Idol for seven years. We started out with another console and used it for a few years. We moved on to the grandMA full-s

Sweden - Lund's City Theatre recently invested in a wireless DMX/RDM distribution system comprising LumenRadio's CRMX Nova products.

Lund, located in the southern most part of Sweden, is home to Lund's University that was established in 1666 and is now one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research. Lund's City Theatre is the centre of the local performing arts life. Productions range from visiting avant-garde dramatic theatre to locally produced crowd-pleasers like the recently featured musical Sweeny Todd.

When it was time to redo the signal distribution system for their main venue, major considerations were ease and cost of installation, as well as the need to accommodate future expansions and new technologies such as Ethernet and RDM. The theatre is located downtown and co-existence with other neighbouring radio systems was an absolute requirem

Germany - High End Systems new Technospot automated luminaire and DL.3 Digital Light took centrestage on the recent sold-out tour of Germany with two artists, Nik P. and Andreas Gabalier. The show also featured other High End Systems lighting and control products supplied by Getec-Eventtechnik.

The tour required a lighting and set design rig flexible enough to fit a variety of venues, said Preworks' Andreas Reinbacher. Lighting operator Michael Mayler jumped in to help in the design - "to make the messages of the songs visible to the audience," Reinbacher said. Both artists are Austrian. Nik P. and his band perform what's known as Schlager, or easy listening pop music. Andreas Gabalier is a folksinger. Mayler used 10 Technospots, two DL.3 digital lights, two Showpix and two StudioPix LED graphic display fixtures and 10 Studio Beam automated luminaires. All were control

Denmark - To mark Martin Professional's quarter of a century in the entertainment lighting industry, Martin will be celebrating with a variety of special activities in 2012, including anniversary events at trade shows throughout the year.

Incorporated in 1987 as a producer of disco lights and fog machines, the Danish-based company has grown over the past 25 years into one of the leading manufacturers of dynamic lighting and video displays. Martin's MAC line of moving heads alone has sold over 350,000 units and the company's growing line of LED products is among the fastest selling on the market.

The anniversary is also being marked on the Martin website, as well as Martin Professional's Facebook page, where industry professionals will find special opportunities to interact and share in Martin's look back at 25 years in the lighting industry.

"2012 marks our 25th anniver

UK - The first batch of Source Four Fresnels to be shipped to the UK have been delivered. The largest sales have been to Villa Marina on the Isle of Man, which took 60 units, Clwyd Theatr Cymru (40 units) and Stockton Arts Centre (18), all of which were supplied by Stage Electrics.

Davie Bell, divisional sales manager at Stage Electrics, says: "We have been extremely pleased with the reception to the new Source Four Fresnel from ETC. Customers like the light output and with a wide choice of 375W, 575W or 750W lamps source it is showing itself to be a very versatile unit for a variety of performance spaces. We are out showing as many customers as we can our demo units and they are invariably impressed and placing orders. It is a strong addition to the ETC fixture range."

Other venues to which Stage Electrics supplied the new Source Four Fresnel include Bridgend Colleg

France - Lighting designer and DOP David Seligmann-Forest from Lite4Life used Robe Robin MMX Spots, Robin 600E Spots and LEDWash 600s to light La Grande Battle, a live TV presentation aired on French network France 2.

Ten major European stars from a diversity of musical genres - rock, pop, rap, flamenco, opera, brass band - battled it out to win the final of this popular series for the best re-interpretation of classical songs and music. They were selected from over 300 bands by the public vote via the website.

Hosted by popular TV presenter Nagui and classical musician Jean-Francois Zygel, the artist line up for the final included Italian opera singer Roberto Alagna, Anguun, France's 2012 Eurovision Song Contest hopeful and French jazz singer and guitarist, Thomas Dutronc. The show, recorded in the large Euromedia Studio 217, at the Studios de France in Paris, also inc

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