Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Projects

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UK - St. Paul’s Cathedral is a venue that is steeped in tradition, even when it comes to lighting, the traditional PAR 64 has always been the fixture of choice for lighting designers. However, for the Queen’s Jubilee Thanksgiving Service, lighting director and BAFTA Award winner David Bishop stepped away from tradition, opting for an all-new LED lighting rig, with the new Martin Mac Aura PXL taking the leading role as the main lighting fixture.
Bishop explains: “For the Queen’s Jubilee, it was important to maintain the traditional feel and the natural look, yet I wanted to increase the flexibility and efficiency of the lighting rig.
“The new Martin MAC Aura PXL was ideal. The high lumen output, colour rendering, and zoom range is exceptional for such a compact fixture and perfect for this application. It allowed me to have much greater control of the colour

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USA - At this year’s Experiential Marketing Summit (EMS) at the MGM Grand Las Vegas, The Verge Aero drone team flew a drone show high above the ballroom next to Harry Reid International Airport.
Taking off from the MGM Grand parking garage – situated just 100 yards from the airport tarmac - presented the Verge Aero team with a challenge. While a focus on safety and precision execution are always part of standard operating procedures, the tight confines of the flight envelope in an urban environment required extreme precision and attention to detail.
“The Experiential Marketing Summit team commissioned us to deliver an on-brand drone show to wow conference delegates, to be flown over the MGM Ballroom roof,” says Verge Aero’s Chris Lutts, who oversaw the project. “We had a tight timeline to design, program and create the show, and some interesting challenges.

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UK - The Falklands Hall primary presentation auditorium at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM) required an urgent replacement for their original tungsten lights, and ETC ArcSystem was chosen to upgrade the space.
The tungsten lights had come to the end of production and spare parts and bulbs were unavailable which led to a health and safety issue as they fell below the legal level required. ETC dealer, Stage Electrics, selected ArcSystem fixtures and drivers to transform the space with LED.
CTCRM, is based in Lympstone, Devon, and is the official training base for the Royal Marines. The auditorium space previously had 66 150-watt tungsten lamps which repeatedly failed and caused issues with maintenance as they were mounted over the seating rake. These luminaires were all replaced with ETC’s ArcSystem Pro One-Cell fixtures and ArcSystem Pro D4 CC Drive

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Australia - Hennessy and the NBA unveiled Australia’s first floating basketball court on Sydney Harbour recently, with live music performances from ASAP Ferg and B Wise. This was part of the latest version of Courts Beyond Limits, a programme from Hennessy, the official spirit of the NBA, in celebration of the league’s 75th season.
Guests were transported out for a courtside view of the event on the Hennessy Superyatch. In addition to the celebrity hoops exhibition, they got to enjoy performances by FERG, along with AIR Award-winning hip-hop artist B Wise and other stars.
Setting the scene for the event was a courtside lighting display by Jay Productions that featured 24 Chauvet Professional Well STX 180 fixtures that the production company purchased from Showtools International, which imports Chauvet products.
Showtools International notes that it added the

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Australia - After a three-year hiatus, Vivid Sydney 2022 is now underway. Millions of expected visitors will descend on the 8km Vivid Sydney Light Walk that’s packed full of large-scale projection mapping, LED screens, wayfinding and high-powered media server technology linking the Festival’s 50 installations and projection artworks from Sydney Opera House to Central Station.
Festival director Gill Minervini, who directs her first Vivid Sydney in 2022, explains: “For 12 years we’ve relied on TDC working behind-the-scenes to deploy the brightest, most powerful technology on a grand scale helping to reinvent Sydney’s urban landscape and using it as a unique and colourful canvas capturing the essence of Sydney’s soul.”
Michael Hassett, founder and managing director at TDC - Technical Direction Company - adds: “Each year, Vivid Sydney gets bigger, brighter

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UAE - Adam Bassett, lighting designer and founding partner of Woodroffe Bassett Designs, specified a wealth of IP65-rated Ayrton fixtures for the entertainment lighting rig for Expo 2020 Dubai’s central venue, the Al Wasl dome. The rig included 182 Ayrton Perseo S profiles, 116 Ayrton Domino S profiles and 16 Ayrton Huracán LT long-throw profiles.
Postponed for over a year due to COVID, Expo 2020 Dubai finally ran for six months between 1 October 2021 and 31 March this year, and was the largest event ever to be held in the Arab world. The indisputable centrepiece was the Al Wasl dome, a 130m-diameter by 67m-tall arching steel trellis that also became the world’s largest 360° projection surface.
Its translucent dome crowned the central Al Wasl Plaza which, as the ‘beating heart’ of Expo 2020 Dubai, encompassed gardens and restaurants during the day and transfo

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Spain - National state-owned public-service television broadcaster RTVE recently teamed up with Antonio Banderas’ television production company, Teatro Soho Televisión (TST), to produce the 10-episode series of Las Tres Puertas, a new arts and culture show for its flagship TVE La 1 channel.
Presented by María Casado, a distinguished journalist and news presenter, and a key member of Banderas’ production team, the show featured guest interviews with luminaries from the worlds of culture, science, politics, business and sport, together with live performances by artists from Spain and around the world.
The weekly programme was produced live in RTVE’s Studio 6 in Sant Cugat, just north of Barcelona. A striking feature of the production was the stark visually arresting set, the appearance of which changed every week. In keeping with the set design, the sound

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USA - After two years of waiting, fans of the Hangout Festival returned to the Gulf Shores beachfront for a weekend of live music. Headliners included Post Malone, Fallout Boy, Halsey, Tame Impala and Megan Thee Stallion. More than 40,000 fans turned out for the sold-out, three-day event, and Bandit Lites provided the festival lighting system for the main Hangout Stage and the Surf Stage.
Bandit’s vice president of production, Dizzy Gosnell, has designed the festival lighting rig for many seasons, and he meticulously works to ensure the headliners on each stage have a plethora of lighting to work with from washes, spots, beams, strips/strobes and blinders/safety lights spanning across both rigs.
“The first thing I try to get is to layer the lamps on each truss,” explains Gosnell. “For example, having lamps perched from the top chord, outrigged down from the t

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UK - Located in the heart of Newcastle’s vibrant city centre, The Lofts, which opened in August last year, has already earned a reputation for being a new ‘super club’, welcoming high-profile artists and delivering some of the liveliest nights out in the city.
The 1,500-capacity venue was co-founded by directors Rob Seaman, John Dance, and Marty Smith, whose extensive nightlife experiences in the Balearics and beyond drive the ethic at The Lofts. And that ethic extends to the L-Acoustics K3, which is a key part of the overall experience, designed and installed by Adlib to deliver excellent coverage and crystal-clear audio throughout the venue.
“The club’s owners approached Adlib after we’d been recommended to them by a mutual acquaintance,” recalls Nick Whitehead, Adlib’s project manager and project lead on The Lofts. “They came to us with an ambitio

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Norway - Det Norske Teatret (the Norwegian Theatre) in Oslo houses three stages in its main building in downtown Oslo, plus one more in another venue in the city run by the same team, all of which work on a busy repertory schedule. Together at least 25 original productions are created annually, in the Norwegian language of Nynorsk, and some guest works are hosted.
Also known for high production values, the theatre has recently invested in 15 Robe Esprite moving lights for its 250-capacity Scene 2.
The theatre’s resident lighting designer Torkel Skjærven, explained that they previously had Robe ColorWash 750AT Tungsten moving lights in the black box Scene 2 space, and these have worked hard and reliably for over 10 years. However, the time arrived to replace them with a more modern LED light source.
The drive to convert the theatre’s lighting to LED has bee

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Europe - Gary Numan took to the road in April with a moody and ethereal lighting design created by award winning LA-based designer Dustin Snyder.
An essential objective of the design was to ensure that the fans could see Numan and his band’s expressive faces from all parts of the room and also on camera. For that reason, Snyder sought out the precise framing capability and familiar CMY colour palette of the VL2600 Wash from Vari-Lite.
Atmospheric and moody, the design is inspired by Numan’s three red stripes of facial war paint, from his portrait on the cover of the Intruder album, and centres around a heavily backlit, multi-layered, video and lighting design.
The main scenic element on stage is a huge video wall that oozes ominous, cinematic insights into a broken planet, destroyed by humanity, as Numan manifests as the planet’s own lamenting voice.

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USA - The NAMM Show finally made its much-anticipated return to Southern California last week with international delegates from the music production and pro sound industries coming together at the Anaheim Convention Centre.
Alongside all the booths and exhibits, visitors enjoyed a series of outdoor shows from a variety of bands and musicians on the Grand Plaza Stage, located directly outside the main convention centre entrance, with sound provided by a Nexo STM modular line array system supplied and deployed by Minnesota-based events services company Reach Communications.
Side by side hangs of 12 each STM M46 main and B112 bass extension modules with two M28 down-fills were used on either side of the stage, while six pairs of Nexo Geo M10 cabinets were used as front-fills. With other buildings in close proximity, a controlled low frequency dispersion was a particular r

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UK - The new 3,500-capacity Swansea Arena forms a central part of the new £135m Copr Bay regeneration programme in the Welsh city.
The latest of Ambassador Theatre Group’s (ATG) 58 operator run venues, the venue has been equipped with a JBL VTX A8 line array, installed by Glantre Engineering following a competitive tender issued by main contractors, Buckingham Group Contracting. Consultant on the project was Neill Woodger Acoustics and Theatre Design. Glantre’s contract as system integrator was a turnkey, covering rigging, drapes, full AV (including IPTV) and lighting, as well as the audio component - not only in the main event rooms but also the meeting rooms.
However, the recommendation for JBL’s compact line array had come from ATG’s head of technical operations, Stuart Graham, who had been involved in the project from the outset. “We were able to have so

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USA - Over 16,000 athletes representing 800 teams from 40 countries participated in the 2022 Allstar World Championship in Orlando this spring.
Craig Huddleston, the designer and show director, comments: “This is a competition, but it needs to be fun. We wanted to highlight the athletes and make them feel like rockstars when they ran out on stage.”
Huddleston and his team at AVOS agency succeeded in doing this in spectacular fashion. Athletes competing in 50 different divisions were greeted with a walk-on light and video display reminiscent of a NBA championship game, complete with flurries of strobing and aerial effects, as well as dynamic neon-like video wall patterns heralding their arrival.
Helping them accomplish this on the event’s main stage was a 4Wall Entertainment Nashville supplied rig that featured over 300 Chauvet Professional F 5IP LED panels

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UAE - Lighting designers Travis Hagenbuch and Bob Dickinson lit the Expo 2020 Dubai Closing Ceremony and turned to Elation Professional’s powerful Proteus Excalibur beam moving head to create a spectacular finale look that brought to a close the six-month Expo journey.
The Emmy-award winning designers - who also lit Expo’s Opening Ceremony back in September - sought a compact, IP-rated beam light with power to project an impactful ring of light out of the Al Wasl Dome. “We were tasked with how to make it happen within the constraints we had,” comments Travis Hagenbuch, who notes that the brief came from Expo 2020 director-general Reem Al-Hashimi. “It was a beautiful poetic moment, simple and elegant, and a fitting way to end the Expo.”
The Expo story began during the Opening Ceremony when a young Emirate girl was given a ring, which unlocked a world of dis

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UK - The eyes of the world were on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Concert to witness a host of big-name singers perform on a specially created stage in front of Buckingham Palace. As the royal family, politicians, dignitaries and the public looked on, a show fit for a queen unfolded, backed by LED screen content driven by Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 media servers.
More than 200sq.m. of Roe Black Quartz LED screens, supplied by Creative Technology, were erected on the stage, which surrounded the famous Victoria Memorial statue in front of the Palace. These were split into one large LED screen upstage centre, and eight LED pillars edging out toward the audience.
Tasked with media server programming was Matthew Lee, who was approached by lighting designer for the event, Nigel Catmur. “We had two Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 servers, one main and one backup,” says Lee. “LED sc

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UK - Britannia Row Productions is providing equipment and personnel for Scottish rock royalty Simple Minds as they play an extensive world tour consisting of over 80 shows across more than 18 countries.
Simple Minds’ 40 Years of Hits Tour (see LSi June 2022 for an in-depth feature on the production), which included a homecoming show at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro, celebrates an impressive four decades in music for the genre-defying band and features a set spanning their back catalogue.
Britannia Row Productions - Simple Minds’ audio supplier of choice since 2012 - re-joined the band for this ambitious arena run to provide a full PA system, FOH and monitor consol

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UK - Great Britain marked the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's reign with thousands of events and street parties over a long weekend, including a large-scale live concert at Buckingham Palace. 22,000 spectators gathered in front of the three stages, where Queen & Adam Lambert, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys and Ed Sheeran played, among many others, and another 13.4 million watched the BBC's mega-event live on TV. For the lighting of the main stages, Buckingham Palace and the Tree of Trees sculpture designed by Heatherwick Studio, Version 2 Lights supplied more than 600 cameo spotlights, including over 60 of the new hybrid outdoor all-rounder Otos H5.
The forecourt as well as the Palace itself was staged by 62 Otos H5, 156 Zenit W600, 392 Flat Pro 7 G2 and 72 Flat Pro 12 G2. The lighting design was done by Nigel Catmur, who used the Cameo spotlights for the numerous live

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USA - In 2010, The Wonder Years released The Upsides, followed a year later by Suburbia, I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing.
As the 10th anniversary of these albums approached, the band intended to celebrate with successive tours. But with the pandemic lockdown putting a crimp on live music, The Wonder Years had to hold off until this spring to mark the anniversary of the LP releases with a coast-to-coast US and UK tour.
Supporting them every step of the way is a David Summers lightshow featuring Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Squeek Lights.
True to the spirit of a tour that celebrates not one, but a pair of albums, Summers’ design has two distinct personalities. “Dan Campbell, the singer of The Wonder Years, told me he wanted to do a special set up for their double album anniversary tour,” explains Summers. “In essence, h

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Indonesia - Leisure and entertainment brand, Holywings, has partnered with PT. Electro Audio Engineering to bring Funktion-One sound to its latest venues. The group, which has over 30 café, bar and club venues across the country, has set its sights on growing to 100 outlets and is in the process of creating ‘Asia’s largest beach club’.
The design concept of each Holywings venue is guided by the latest trends, taking inspiration from major cities around the world. “We bring ideas that we’ve picked up from other countries that are new to Indonesia,” explains Holywings Group’s Marvin Saputra. “Then we tailor them for our audiences and add a unique energy that can compete with other countries.”
This includes the Funktion-One sound systems that are helping to bring a new level of experience. Saputra reveals: “We think Funktion-One offers the best sound

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UK - Digital Stages, five dynamic digital events celebrating Chichester Festival Theatre (CFT) across the decades, will be released over CFT’s birthday week in July for audiences across the globe. The events range from VR tours and online performances to a new virtual game created by CFT’s community companies for adults with learning disabilities.
In Visionary Stages, actors Sir Derek Jacobi and John Simm, author and playwright Kate Mosse and designer Joanna Scotcher join CFT artistic director Daniel Evans and the artistic director of the Stratford Festival Theatre in Ontario Antoni Cimolino, for a virtual meet-up using modern technology to recreate Chichester’s 1962 stage.
During lockdown, the Festival Theatre auditorium was scanned by the specialist company Preevue with LiDAR technology, enabling them to recreate the 1962 stage using plans, photog

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South Africa - Blue Array Productions, a professional rental and production company, has invested in two Fenix Stage Hercules 8 front-loading lifting towers supplied by DWR Distribution. The units were put to work for the first time at Liefde by die Dam, a festival attracting 8 000 revellers and held recently at Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg, where Blue Array supplied the audio solution.
The Hercules 8, made from aluminium, is the tallest tower by Fenix at 8m high. The system lifts line array systems, trussing or LED screens with a maximum load of 300kg from the floor and is height adjustable.
“We initially tried out the smaller AT-906 Fenix towers, only to find that we had some weight limitations which forced us to go for the bigger towers,” explained Nathan Thiart, senior sound engineer at Blue Array. “It was a happy coincidence because we definitely had a ne

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Chile - The city of Viña del Mar is renowned for its colonial architecture, vibrant nightlife, and the annual Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar (Viña del Mar International Song Festival).
Coupled with a Mediterranean climate and beautiful, abundant greenery, the city, nicknamed Jardín Ciudad (Garden City), is one of the country’s most-visited spots. In 2010, a devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake severely damaged some of the city’s best-known buildings, including the heritage site Teatro Municipal of Viña del Mar.
Today, the Teatro been fully restored and fitted with the most advanced L-Acoustics Kara sound system in the country, delivered by L-Acoustics certified provider distributor for Chile, VGL.
Built between 1925 and 1930 by famous architects Renato Schiavon and Aquiles Landoff, the Teatro Municipal de Viña del Mar features a f

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USA - Outline’s Newton FPGA processor played key operational roles at Coachella and Stagecoach Festivals. Both returning after two-year layoffs caused by Covid, the back-to-back festivals and their big crowds returned to the Californian desert in style this year.
With its roots going back to 1993 and still held at its original venue, the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, and now one of the world’s largest music festivals, The Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival was staged over two consecutive weekends in April, once again showcasing an array of established and emerging artists.
Presented the following weekend in the same location, its sister production The Stagecoach Festival is a leading event for folk, mainstream country, bluegrass, roots rock, Americana and alt. country.
As they have been for every Coachella since 2000, Camarillo-based Rat Soun
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