South Africa - Comic-Con Africa, a three-day event showcasing comic books, science fiction/fantasy related film and TV, as well as similar popular arts, was hosted for the very first time in South Africa at the Kyalami International Convention Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg. MGG was appointed as the main technical supplier for the sold-out event, enjoyed by over 45 000 superheroes, villains and sidekicks.
Geeks, gamers and superheroes were spoilt for choice with an enormous exhibition area and were enthralled by gaming panel discussions, cosplay contests and a chance to rub shoulders with celebrities like Travis Fimmel of Vikings fame.
MGG meticulously executed the technical setup for Comic-Con Africa, that included a main stage, four pre-screening rooms, two VS gaming areas, kids’ entertainment area, an MTN outdoor stage which included a VIP and screening area, and lastly, audio for both multiple exhibition floors and the food zone. Professional gear was utilised all round, which included Robe and Claypaky lighting fixtures, Prolyte trussing, Absen LED screens, L-Acoustics PA and DiGiCo audio consoles that both amplified and magnified an exhilarating event.
“Getting these shows and putting them together really excites me,” said Timothy Templeton, MGG’s technical production manager for Comic-Con Africa. “For me, 80% of an event depends on pre-production planning. This is also where you rely on the crew, and we would not have been able to accomplish, what I feel was a professional and seamlessly executed event, without them. The crew are
Indonesia - The Indonesian Choice Awards 5.0 NET, presented by the NET TV Network, aimed at families and youth audiences, is one of the leading entertainment events in the country.
“For an entertainment and music event of this magnitude and size,” explains Sadat Effendy, technical director at Total Audio, the company that produced the show, “there is only one sound system we had to consider. That’s Clair Brothers. The Indonesian market loves Clair Brothers speakers because they always deliver.”
This event always coincides with, and marks the anniversary of, the NET TV Network. This year is its fifth anniversary and the Indonesian Choice Awards show did not disappoint. Performing for an audience of 9,000, local and international musical acts filled out the evening of awards and tributes for the best in movies and music.
Effendy says: “An event of this proportion is always challenging, especially with regard to the PA, when trying to create a coherent sound acoustically.”
Wayne Grosser, managing director, Clair Brothers Australia and sound design consultant for the award show, elaborates: “I advised the production team that if too much delay was put on the main PA, the sound will not be coherent with the stage noise. The result can be unwanted slap delay, and that’s no good. So, in order to prevent that, I suggested a change to the layout of the side PA to assure timing with the main PA. The solution was the alignment of four Clair Brothers i212 8-cabinet line arrays.”
The event’s main speaker system was a combination
USA - Located in Melborne, Florida, Church at Viera holds four modern worship services in two different venues each week using Allen & Heath dLive, GLD and SQ Series mixers for FOH and streaming broadcast and a ME-1 Personal Mixing System for monitoring.
Production director Eli Higginbotham, alongside technical director Brock West, leads Church at Viera’s production team. “We had an older digital mixer with reliability issues,” says Brock. “So, when I came on board, I looked for a replacement. We considered several brands but there wasn’t another console in the same class and price range as the dLive.”
The church has standardised on Allen & Heath digital mixers for FOH, broadcast and their Youth Centre. “The architecture is very similar so it’s easy to train a volunteer to mix in one space and then move them to another,” says Eli.
Church at Viera’s dLive includes an S7000 Surface and DM64 MixRack both located at FOH. Two DX168 Expanders accept sources on stage. Wireless mic receivers, audio from video and Ableton Live tracks connect to the DM64 at FOH. An SQ-6 Digital Mixer serves the church’s Youth Centre supplemented by an AR2412 AudioRack. A GLD-112 Digital Mixer mixes streaming broadcast for the church’s website. Dante cards in each mixer implement audio networking throughout the church’s systems.
Twelve ME-1 Personal Mixers with a ME-U Hub are what Brock and Eli describe as “a killer rig” monitoring system. Six ME-1s, located backstage, feed wireless IEM’s for vocalists who can adjust their mix du
USA - On Sunday 30 September at Pine Trails Park, the Actions for Change Food and Music Festival Fundraiser took place. Born out of the tragedy of the 14 February Stoneman Douglas shooting in Parkland, FL, its goals were to provide healing by bringing love, light, and hope through the arts, register people to vote, raise national awareness about gun violence, and raise funds for organizations committed to helping all our nation’s youth.
There was a good mix of speeches in addition to both live and recorded music to keep the action going and, to ensure the best audio performance, a loudspeaker system drawn from the Aero Series 2, Action, Road, and UX catalogues of DAS Audio was utilised.
Dynamic Productions USA of Orangeburg, NY, a full-service events production company, was contracted to handle the sound reinforcement requirements for the festival. Brian Rosenblum, the company’s president and CEO comments: “As an outdoor event with an audience of approximately 3,500 people, it was crucial that we provide a setup that not only had the ability to deliver both a high level of speech intelligibility and solid music reproduction, we had to ensure even coverage throughout the area.
“To accomplish this, we deployed a sound system consisting of DAS Audio Aero 40 active, 3-way line array enclosures, Aero 20A active compact line array enclosures, Action 12A point source loudspeakers, along with UX-218 and UX-221 subwoofers.”
The primary setup involved ten Aero 40 enclosures per the left and right sides - flown on motors from truss. For front-f
USA - E-sports - the world of competitive video gaming - has become an international phenomenon, with millions of fans watching both in person and on Internet livestreams, rooting for players that might take home millions of dollars in winnings. Where better to build a premium Esports venue than in the gaming capital of the world - Las Vegas?
That’s what Allied Esports International set out to do, with a new venue in the Luxor Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. “Our mission was to build a turnkey infrastructure to do many different live events, as well as produce content in a style and quality that meets or exceeds current broadcast standards,” says Drew Ohlmeyer, head of content, Allied Esports International and Esports Arena Las Vegas. To repurpose a former nightclub space, Allied hired CBT Systems to design and build an A/V system tailored for high-availability streaming video broadcasts.
Darrel Wenhardt, president & CEO of CBT Systems, knew from the start that the space’s previous audio system was insufficient for the demands of Esports. CBT chose a Lawo mc²36 console for front-of-house duties, and a second mc²36 to power the streaming broadcast production control room.
“We’ve worked extensively with Lawo, who have developed consoles specifically for these types of challenges,” explains Wenhardt. “[They] are used around the world to manage major global events including sports, live performance and networked production infrastructures. Lawo was an easy and obvious choice and provided exactly what was needed, while also being able
UK - With the festive season now upon us, theatre stages up and down the country are being filled with dames, beanstalks, flying carpets and glass slippers. White Light is once again suppyling a range of pantomimes this Christmas.
Pantomimes are many venues’ biggest production of the year, with these classic childhood stories often starring household names. An all-time favourite is Aladdin and, this year, WL is supplying several versions of the show, including one at Hackney Empire which is lit by David Howe. He comments: “Hackney Empire’s Aladdin evolved a lot in the rehearsal process, with a lot new music being written specifically for this production. My brief, as ever, was to enhance the whole look of the show and help the audience focus on each story-telling moment.”
WL is also supplying Aladdin in Cambridge, Crawley, Norwich, Yeovil and Swindon, with the Wyvern Theatre production starring EastEnders’ Adam Woodyatt. The lighting programmer for the show is Eden Thornton, who comments: “I’ve now worked on ten pantos over the last six years. They can often be hard work as you’re trying to create a big show in what’s not a great amount of time. That said, it’s very exhilarating. It’s also important to have a good team around you as well as the services of a reliable hire company; hence we try and use WL whenever we can.”
Other popular titles that WL is supplying include Snow White in Bolton and Malvern, along with The Wizard of Oz at the Birmingham Rep and Bolton Octagon. Cinderella is goin
UK - For International Day of Persons with Disabilities, also known as #Purplelightup, installation company CSR Lighting illuminated various of Microsoft’s UK internal offices as well as the exterior of their Reading office. For these eye-catching purple illuminations, CSR Lighting decided to use SGM fixtures.
“We have continued to invest and specify SGM products as they work for us in every environment we visit,” says Gary Willn from CSR Lighting.
“To allow the client to get the most from the #Purplelightup, we used SGM’s G-Profile Turbo to frame the client’s logo on the front of the building in the pure white available from the Turbo. We have had G-Profiles in hire since their launch and it made total sense to go with the new Turbo version of the fixture to have the extra light output from the same sized fixture,” says Willn. “The building was lit overnight, so as the staff arrived the next morning, they had the full impact of the installation. As expected from SGM, every fixture ran faultlessly.”
The exterior of the distinctive Microsoft office block was lit with six of the powerful P-10 lights using Elliptical lenses to give a rich punch to the purple colour across the entire building.
“The P-10 gave us a powerful output from a small footprint, without having the area scattered with lighting across the front of the building. This saved the client valuable parking spaces, which worked for us and the client,” explains Willn.
The big weather changes during this installation was no issue to the IP classified fixture
Kuwait - In a move that has significantly enhanced the meeting and conferencing experience of its corporate customers, the Sheraton Kuwait has upgraded to the latest wireless conferencing system from Sennheiser.
Implemented across the property’s two large ballroom-style conference facilities as well as its many meeting rooms of varied sizes, the audio specialist’s ADN-W system delivers crystal clear audio conferencing with the convenience of flexible and secure wireless connectivity.
Intuitiveness and customer satisfaction were priorities as Eng. Mohamed Monieb, maintenance manager at Sheraton Kuwait explains: “Our hotel’s world-class facilities meet the needs of very large to extremely intimate gatherings and the wireless conferencing system allows the equipment to also be ‘right-sized’ exactly as per customer requirements.”
Beneficial for Eng. Monieb and his team has been the system’s ability to eliminate the RF interference issues that plagued the microphone system they had previously utilised.
“Prior to selecting Sennheiser, we conducted a test between ADN-W, our existing system and another manufacturer’s solution and this not only demonstrated vastly superior sound quality, but also convincingly addressed our concerns around interference,” he explained. It is the ADN-W’s ability to hop between frequencies in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ranges that makes this performance possible.
Robust and reliable wireless connectivity was also assured through the direct involvement of Sennheiser’s team in the design and deploy
UK - River Audio has installed a new Martin Audio WPM line array in the main hall at Plymouth University.
The university wanted to replace its small vocal PA in this location with an upgraded system that would be suitable not only for speech but also music and drama performance. When a delegation of the University’s AV technicians attended a live sound training course with the local Base Sound, to improve their mixing capabilities, they were introduced to Martin Audio’s signature sound, and were immediately impressed.
After reviewing various systems they opted for the WPM line array and chose Base Sound sister company, River Audio, to supply and install six of the WPM tops, flown each side of the proscenium, with and a pair of WX218 subs on the ground, all running from a pair of Martin Audio iKon 8-channel amps.
As the two clusters are trimmed around 6m from the ground, they have also installed five Martin Audio CDD6’s, running in mono, on the front of the stage, to deliver infill clarity for those sat underneath the main clusters.
According to River Audio’s owner, Howard Williams, it had been an easy decision to recommend Martin Audio. “I have used their equipment since 1995 both for live events and on installs and have always liked their
broad range of live and installation products. I also use Martin Audio to teach live sound engineering on, and it has now become my speaker of choice for installations. “
The university is delighted with the sound quality and coverage of the system and is enjoying using if for both pres
UK - Adlib was back on the road with pop rockers 5 Seconds of Summer - fresh from winning the 2018 ARIA Award for ‘Best Australian Live Act’ - supplying a Coda sound system, monitors and an Adlib crew to work alongside the band’s engineers Phil Gornell (FOH) and Pavan Grewall (monitors).
Richy Nicholson project managed for Adlib, Sam Proctor was the systems engineer on the road and he worked alongside Marc Peers - another talented Adlib engineer - who co-ordinated all things in monitor world.
Phil and Adlib have worked together before on several previous tours including All Time Low and Bring Me The Horizon; the Liverpool based company has been his preferred equipment supplier for the UK and Europe since around 2010.
The decision to spec Coda was a joint one made by Phil, Richy and the Adlib team. Adlib has used it very successfully on numerous tours, events and installations covering various genres of performance - from comedy to rock - and it has proved especially appropriate in theatre style environments.
Phil was very happy to go with that, as he needed something “flexible and easily scalable whatever the situation” to deal with the differences in venue size and shape.
The Coda speakers are extremely light and easy to rig, so they were a practical solution, and their sonic excellence has been proven many times over.
The main hangs were Coda AiRAY. A total of 28 were carried on the tour giving 14-a-side for the largest configurations, plus up to four Coda ViRAY downs per side.
For in, out and front-fills, there
UK - The festive season is well underway and Triple E has gone underwater to provide a magical window display in the centre of the West End.
You wouldn’t usually associate Shaftesbury Avenue with a yacht-chandler, but Arthur Beale has been situated here for over 400 years. Traditionally known for manufacturing ropes for ships, climbers and explorers the company often takes advantage of their central London location to supply the local West End theatres with specialist rigging.
Under the leadership of Alasdair Flint, a theatrical chandler who also has a passion for sailing, the company has revived itself in recent years to provide rigging and ropes to the theatre sector alongside their more traditional sailing business. And each Christmas the company draws on this theatrical side and puts on a window display to rival any other shop in Bloomsbury or the West End!
Triple E has worked in collaboration with Alasdair Flint to provide a magical underwater themed display based around 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. As a leading provider of drape and scenery tracking to the theatre sector, Triple E has frequently been known to provide tracks to support other well-known West End retail emporiums such as Harrods and Selfridges with their ‘wow factor’ window displays.
Triple E was charged with specifying and building a chain track system to allow the aquatic life in the window display to be in continual motion. Chain Track is Triple E’s proprietary tracking system and was perfect for the very precise and continuous movement of scenic element
USA - While many churches struggle to attract new members or keep current ones, Cascade Hills Church in Columbus, Georgia, has found success by keeping things fresh and presenting church as more than just an hour-a-week event to endure. With the knowledge that AV and dynamic lighting systems can positively impact the overall worship experience, Cascade Hills chose a flexible Elation stage lighting system to raise its profile and help grow its ministry.
Cascade Hills personnel called on local Columbus-based Absolute Audio Systems for a lighting solution that would enhance both the live and broadcast aspects of their worship services. “Cascade Hills is an active church that was in need of a lighting upgrade so they could improve the look of their weekly services and TV broadcasts, as well as special events like musical performances,” explains Todd Buckner, owner of Absolute Audio Systems.
The Absolute Audio team identified what production technology changes to undertake and delivered a dynamic lighting rig that complements the wide variety of events the church presents in its main sanctuary each week. “We did comparisons in the venue with various products and they chose an Elation lighting package because, simply put, they looked the best.”
The lighting upgrade in the 2500-seat main sanctuary, which came on the heels of a video, camera and house lighting upgrade late in 2017, consists of eight Platinum Beam 5R Extreme moving head beam lights, nine Chorus Line 16 LED battens, and 4 Fuze Wash Z350 single source PAR moving head luminaires. The
UK - Finnish bluegrass rockers Steve ‘N’ Seagulls, have recently hit the UK for a series of shows supporting their third studio album Grainsville - released earlier this year - while accompanied by an Allen & Heath dLive Wings system.
The band’s set-up comprises a dLive C1500 surface (fitted with a Waves V3 card, which is used for multitrack recording, virtual soundchecks and running plug-ins during live shows), an IP8 remote controller and a CDM32 MixRack.
The Wings set-up was chosen due to the customisation options and its size - which is perfect for flying. FOH engineer, Antti Laitila, explains: “Steve ‘n’ Seagulls tour around the world all the time, so I was looking for a compact and good sounding console for fly-dates. I’d heard a lot of great things about the dLive-series from my colleagues, so I decided to give it a try.
“Pete Kaltala from Allen & Heath’s Finnish distributor, F-Pro, hooked me up with the demo set and from the very first show I was blown away by the sound quality and punch that dLive delivered! The band had never sounded so good. I love the fact that I can customise the surface the way I want and with the IP8 attached, I have all the control that I need to be able to focus on mixing without jumping between different layers and menus during the show.”
The single surface set-up is used to handle both FOH and the musicians IEM mixes. The IP8 is connected to the surface, providing an additional bank of 8 faders for further hands-on control, while the CDM32 is situated on stage for all analo
USA - Completed in 1915, St Paul, Minnesota's massive Cathedral of St Paul is the country's largest church outside of New York and Washington, D.C. Its Saint Cloud granite exterior walls are matched in grandeur by the American Travertine marble coating the 3,000-capacity interior, which reaches 175ft up to a dome nearly 100ft in diameter.
It's a big, reverberant space. "If you took the Statue of Liberty off its pedestal and set it in here, it would fit under the dome," observes Randy Keeley of St Paul AV systems integrator Metro Sound & Lighting. "And everything within this space is very reflective: Travertine marble all over the walls and floors, hardwood pews, different angles, glass-you've got sound literally going everywhere." These are not friendly acoustics for any kind of amplified sound, yet a sound system is the only way every worshipper can hear what is being said and sung.
It's a tough problem but all in a day's work for Metro Sound. "In the more than 40 years since Metro Sound's founding, we have performed installations in numerous churches and spaces with tough acoustics, so we understood the nature of the challenge," Keeley explains.
Keeley's solution was a left/right system of two Renkus-Heinz Iconyx Gen5 IC32-RN digitally steerable line arrays, which enabled him to keep sound off the walls and on the congregation. To preserve the cathedral's aesthetics, the loudspeakers were colour-matched to the marble.
Every IC32-RN houses 32 purpose-designed, 4-inch coaxial transducers, each with its own amplifier and DSP channel. Each
USA - Comedian Nick Cannon returned to his hometown of San Diego, which presented him with a plaque and declared an official ‘Nick Cannon Day’ in America’s eighth largest city.
The highlight of the visit was Cannon’s sold-out Wild ‘N Out show at San Diego State’s 12,000-capacity Viejas Arena. Featuring appearances by Eman Hudson and a bevy of other guest stars, along with games like Wildstyle and Let Me Holla from Cannon’s hit MTV programme, the show served up a full Wild ‘N Out experience, one that was made all the more intimate for his hometown fans by its open circular stage.
Although the stage setup strengthened the connection between Cannon and his audience, its open design created special challenges for lighting designer/technical director Marc Wasserman of 3 with1 Grab Productions. Wasserman, who has worked on the star’s tours many times in the past, addressed these issues in stunning fashion with help from Chauvet Professional Maverick and Rogue fixtures, supplied by Pro Systems Event Solutions.
“The Viejas Arena was designed for basketball games,” says Wasserman. “Having our show on a 360° stage here meant we had to do some inventive things to create a sense of depth without breaking up the fans’ sightlines. Our stage was positioned directly under the arena’s circular scoreboard. We used this positioning to our advantage as far as hanging the lights was concerned.”
Wasserman flew 60’ x 70’ box truss centred and trimmed just above the scoreboard. Spreading 12 Maverick MK2
USA - ABC News’ live coverage of the nation’s Midterm Elections counted on High End Systems LED lighting to do the heavy lifting for the November 6 broadcast.
LD Dennis Size of the Lighting Design Group was called in to ensure that the anchors, reporters, political consultants, statisticians and other guests were seen in their best light. To meet that requirement, Size specified 42 HES SolaFrame 750s and 12 SolaSpot 1500 automated luminaires from Main Light to supplement his conventional fixture package and to keep up with the continuously-changing action.
“I’m strictly a High End guy,” the New York-based LD explains. “I was once a strong Vari-lite user, but HES has made great strides with the advances in the Sola line. That is all I specify now.”
ABC’s senior production designer Seth Easter created the special two-story high set for ABC News. The bottom floor featured desks for 20 different anchor positions surrounding the centrepiece - a circular centre floor (of Roe black marble 3 mm LED) through which stunning 3D graphics were created for the TV viewing audience. The second floor featured ABC Live’s Digital Studio. Video walls spanned both floors. The entire production was rife with reflective surfaces, ambient lighting and moving anchor positions - all of which provided lighting challenges.
More challenges appeared a month before rehearsals once the studio rig was hung. Size couldn’t get machinery such as snorkel lifts or genie lifts back onto the video floor to make any adjustments for position moves in his convention
Poland - Tommex Żebrowscy Sp. J. has recently completed the design and installation of the audio system for the new Centrum Praskie Koneser in Warsaw, Centrum Praskie Koneser is a modern urban space combining restaurants, apartments, shops, commercial premises, a museum, an indoor exhibition centre and a hotel. The complex also has a large open public square, which is also used to host exhibitions and cultural events.
The Centrum Praskie Koneser is a project that incorporates the revitalization and adaptation of the post-industrial buildings of the Koneser vodka factory. Once employing more than 400 people, the factory could produce a quarter of a million bottles of vodka a day, with globally recognized brands including Wyborowa, Luksusowa, Żubrówka, Żytniówka and Siwucha.
In addition to the main production buildings, the original complex included warehouses, workshops, residential buildings and a school. The modern development retains a post-industrial atmosphere by combining authentic architectural elements of the old factory buildings with new buildings on the site. The complex also has its own underground car park and video surveillance.
The audio system provided by Tommex for the public areas of the complex includes the walkway zones between buildings, the covered shopping centre and the multi-purpose open square. The system provides both background music and music to accompany events. It can also be used as a paging system and is operated and controlled by a Dynacord PROMATRIX 6000, using Dynacord mics and amplification.
For music q
South Africa - Ultra Events is a technical supply and production company based in Cape Town, South Africa, owned and run by Costa Champanis and is the latest in several rental companies in the region to invest in Robe’s MegaPointe multi-functional luminaire. Ultra took delivery of four units initially with the rest to follow soon.
The company started commercial life as Ultra Sound, specialising in professional audio for assorted events markets.
Immediately the Pointes were onboard, the demand was so great that they upped the initial four units to 24 in less than a year.
Based on their success with the Pointes and the intense demand on riders for MegaPointes, they ordered these from South African distributor, DWR.
The first event for the new MegaPointes was lighting the runway show for the two-day #COSMOFest2018 fashion extravaganza, staged at Canal Walk Shopping Centre, Cape Town. Lighting designer JP Wilson integrated them with the rest of the lighting at the entrance end of the runway, where they were rigged to the sides of a trussing border running around a large LED screen.
(Jim Evans)
Europe - “I wanted a bit of additional craziness going on behind the band,” says Prodigy lighting and set designer Tim Fawkes. He is utilising eight Kinesys Elevation motors to move four special 4m long lighting trusses up and down, just upstage of the band, for the current European leg of their No Tourists tour.
The four pods in their home position made up two apex shapes to blend in with the rest of the structural trussing design. Each one is lined with four Martin Sceptron LED battens, five GLP JDC1 strobes, four Robe MegaPointe moving lights, four Showtec Sunstrips and five old-skool PAR cans with CP60 bulbs for a classic ‘ACL’ look.
All lighting and rigging equipment is being supplied by Blackburn based rental company HSL.
Having these pods automated on the Kinesys motors using a Vector controller enabled Tim to add lots of extra dynamics to the mayhem.
Another recently completed HSL tour utilising Kinesys featured an elegant and slick show design by Andy Hurst.
Andy’s design featured two identical large LED screens - one upstage and one downstage. The downstage one moved up and down on four Kinesys points controlled by Kinesys’ flexible and straightforward Vector software.
Summer and early autumn saw the Chemical Brothers on the road completing a hectic festival schedule followed by a week of high-profile headline shows, complete with another visual experience created by show designers Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall.
The fully integrated Chemical Brothers lighting and video show featured a large LED scr
USA - One thing that pretty much any experienced touring mix engineer can agree on is that you always pad your input/output number request to a certain degree because rare is the tour where those needs will not increase as the tour progresses. So it might seem odd that when the current Post Traumaticsolo tour by Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda got started, mix engineers Mike Fanuele and Kevin ‘Tater’ McCarthy were sharing a single DiGiCo SD12 mix surface.
After that first show, the SD12 was shipped off for the tour’s Asian and European legs, and McCarthy, who has been associated with Shinoda for more than a decade, spec’d a pair of DiGiCo's ultra-portable SD11i desks for the promo tour that preceded the Asian dates. He says he’s fielded more than one question about why he made that choice.
“A lot of people have asked me why I choose the SD11i,” he reports. “Originally, it was just Mike Shinoda and no other band members. The band and additional crew where added after all of the gear had shipped to Hong Kong for the Asian and European tours. After a few shows, I was comfortable with the all the new inputs and with the 12-fader format, so I decided to keep it. It never came off that table rack. I just popped the lid every day and was ready to go.”
Fanuele is on his first outing with Shinoda after working with a wide variety of artists ranging from Meghan Trainor and Fifth Harmony to The Chainsmokers and Garbage. “Mike began this tour cycle on stage by himself playing keys, synth, drum pads, and triggering samples from a Maschine. For
USA - New Albany High School in New Albany, Indiana, recently completed seven sold out performances of the timeless classic The Wizard of Oz and used their new rig of Elation Professional lighting fixtures to help bring the musical to life.
With three top-tier theatre programmes only miles from each other, Southern Indiana is a proven mecca for high school theatre. After sister school Floyd Central High School received a lighting upgrade of Elation fixtures a couple of years ago, New Albany High School was ecstatic when their opportunity came.
“When funds came around, we were next,” said New Albany High School’s resident lighting and sound designer Crit Fisher, who was employed by the school five years ago to help resurrect what he says was an increasingly neglected programme. “Although New Albany High School has roots in theatre the program was in dire need of an upgrade when I arrived. We had a hodge podge of instruments and no LED units or moving heads at all. I was renting $4k of lighting for our shows.”
All that changed over the summer of 2018 with a lighting upgrade made up of seven of Elation’s award-winning Artiste DaVinci LED moving head spots along with six Platinum Seven LED moving heads, 18 Arena Zoom Q7IP and 15 Arena Par Zoom LED Par lights, 7 SixBar 500 LED battens and four Cuepix Blinder WW2 units, all supplied by Phoenix Lighting of Louisville, Kentucky.
“All students learn the basics of lighting and I come in and teach the specialized instruments,” Fisher explains, noting that all shows are student r
World - Keith Urban’s 2018 world tour in support of his tenth studio album, Grafitti U, kicked off in North America in June 2018. Since then the talented country/rock singer, musician, songwriter and record producer from New Zealand has covered 59 venues in six months.
The tour’s production design firm, FragmentNine, chose 68 Ayrton MagicPanel-R fixtures, supplied by Upstaging, to add depth, dynamism and texture throughout this creative and dynamic show.
Video designer, Jackson Gallagher and lighting designer, Jeremy Lechterman of FragmentNine explained that part of the reasoning behind their choice of MagicPanel-R was largely due to its square face and special abilities, which fit into a mostly geometric and ‘square’ design. Forty-eight panels were rigged to four custom-built pods which automated as the most upstage visual element on stage, with two more pods left and right at stage level to provide low-level sidelight on the band.
“The MagicPanel-Rs are the workhorse of the show,” says Gallagher. “Originally Keith, who was quite involved in the design process, wanted a show that was entirely of video, with no lighting, to give a modern look and tone that was a departure from the traditional country style. However, knowing that video only wouldn’t provide us with enough key-light to see Keith and his band, we guided him away from this towards some form of illumination, and the compromise was to use non-traditional sources of light, something more atypical, which is where the MagicPanel-Rs came in.
“The MagicPanels he
Europe - Swedish artist Kristian Matsson is better known under his stage name, The Tallest Man On Earth.
His recent European tour, in support of his album When The Bird Sees The Solid Ground, has seen LD Anders Heberling using GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 in his stage design. He deployed 13 fixtures as a floor package with the remaining batten in the roof, directly above the head of an artist who is known for his dynamic stage performances.
The fixtures were mounted in almost completely sealed custom made boxes, allowing just small cracks for the light to shine through. According to Heberling, the inspiration for this was old barns where the sun shines through the walls.
Of his choice of lighting the LD said: “I needed a pixel batten that could move but most importantly be rigged vertically to fit inside the boxes. The wide zoom was very helpful in terms of changing the look of the stage and decreasing the risk of blinding the audience too much. The fantastic output and wonderful colours were also a big factor in choosing the fixture.”
Inventory for the European leg was provided by Bright Group but Christie Lites will be responsible for supplying the kit as the tour transfers to the US. More dates will then follow in Europe as the tour runs for over a year.
Joining Anders Heberling’s team were Wilhelm Egnell, who assisted with programming and operated several shows, and Andreas Berthling who made the custom boxes.
In summary, the LD opined: “The X4 Bar 20s are of high quality and deliver great colours. That just ab
UK - Signify reports that its Philips Vari-Lite VLZ Profile LED luminaires were chosen to meet some specific stage lighting demands on the recent Savage tour by British electronic music pioneer Gary Numan.
For special tour dates, including a showcase performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Numan and his band were joined on stage by an orchestra and choir. In response to this, the visual design, by Luke Edwards of Cue Design, successfully referenced the post-apocalyptic theme of the Savage album, while combining softer theatrical touches to complement the orchestra’s presence, both on the stage and in the music.
“To light the orchestra, we needed fixtures with a really nice light quality,” said Edwards, “but with so many tuneable instruments on the stage we also needed lights that wouldn’t throw out lots of heat. The VLZ Profile was a great option: the optics are beautiful, the colours and the colour temperature are beautiful, and it keeps the orchestra members and their instruments cool.”
Placed on high side-trusses at each side of stage, the VLZ Profiles gave side-light, colour and texture for the orchestra and choir in the upstage area, as well as for Numan and the band downstage. “Mostly, we’re using the gobos and prisms to put textured light on the orchestra, to light them in an interesting way,” said Edwards. “But I’m also using the VLZs a lot in open colour, just frosting it slightly to soften the light and get everyone lit really beautifully.”
In covering such a broad stage area, Edwards was aided by the pow