International News

BLACKBURN, UK – HSL supplied Electric Fly Productions with lighting equipment for The Darkness’s UK tour. LD Nick Jevons collaborated with the band to create a look – for varied sizes of venues – described as “rock ‘n’ roll meets the faded freakshow end of the circus scale.” One of the biggest technical coups of the tour was fitting the entire rig into Nottingham Rock City and filling Hammersmith Apollo with exactly the same rig.

AARHUS, Denmark – Auckland International Airport in New Zealand offers travelers a visual respite with Pou Manawa. The space features color and traditional Maori designs, reflected using Martin Exterior 410 wash lights and Martin smartMAC image projecting moving heads. Ignite Architects developed the idea and Martin distributor Kenderdine Electrical Ltd. supplied the gear.

LUCERNE, Switzerland — Walt Disney’s animation masterpiece, Fantasia, may have been released more than 70 years ago, but a special screening here that was accompanied by a live performance by the 21^st Century Symphony Orchestra relied on recent technology to keep everything in synch: coolux Pandoras Box.

SERIATE, Italy – Germany-based disributor Lightpower provided Clay Paky moving heads for the Frankfurt 2011 IAA international auto show. The BMW stand featured 930 moving lights and 700 spotlights, controlled by three full-size grandMA2s, all networked together with 8 MA network processing units (NPUs).

LINCOLN, UK – Lincoln University has invested in 30 Chroma-Q Color Force RGBA LED fixtures for its two television studios at the campus’ Media Broadcast Production Centre, which have recently been upgraded to full multi-camera and HD specification facilities. The Chroma-Q Color Force fixtures and battens have replaced all the studio’s old soft lights and cyc lights, reducing about 43,000 watts of power consumption with 3,700 watts with the new LED lighting.

CZECH REPUBLIC – Slovakian rental company Q-99 supplied 50 Robe moving lights including Robe MMX Spots to LD Martin Kubanka for “Slovakian Legends of Pop.” The TV music series airs during a nine-week run on prime time national TV channel STV1. Taking the LED-oriented set design by Michael Brna as a starting point, Kubanka needed some seriously powerful light sources on the rig to hold their own amidst all the LEDs.

LONDON – UK theatrical suppliers Hawthorns recently supported LD Jonathan Samuels’ design of the Breakin’ Convention International Festival of Hip Hop Dance with a charitable loan of nine Clay Paky 1200 Profiles. The event at Sadler’s Wells Theatre featured an international line-up of dancers, whose performances required lighting to accommodate with shuttering and gobos.

LONDON – Green Hippo introduces Adrian Gilby and Philippe Levieux as new members of the software development team. Levieux joins the programming team as Researcher and Software Developer in the production of new features for Hippotizer software. As a programmer and Software Developer, Gilby will work on specifying, designing and implementing new features for Green Hippo’s existing and future range of products.

LONDON, UK – During the last 18 months, lighting rental company Colour Sound Experiment (CSE) has designed and supplied contract rental lighting systems to four clubs in popular seaside destination Brighton. Life, Coalition, The Tube and Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar are the clubs under the Inn Brighton Ltd. company which all required a specific lighting design to suit their differing needs.

HITCHIN, HERTS, UK –  Coldplay’s 12-date European arena tour featured a set designed by Misty Buckley and Paul Normandale, with specialist pieces by UK-based Brilliant Stages. Band frontman Chris Martin envisioned the tour as a “ball of energy with a warm nucleus reaching out to the audience,” so the design had to reflect that, taking into account the size of the arenas as well as the song lyrics being sung.

BLACKBURN, UK – HSL is supplying specialist LED lightsources to the ITV quiz show, “The Chase, recorded in Studio Two at The London Studios (TLS) on the South Bank. TV LD Tom Kinane’s creative objectives for lighting are enhancing the drama as the competition unfolds and the potential prize money builds, ensuring the contestants are well lit, and keeping it visually interesting for viewers.

LONDON – Stage Electrics again supplied lighting to The Mayor of London’s New Year 2012 celebrations, produced by creative events experts Jack Morton Worldwide.  As in previous years, this show featured VARI-LITE VL3500 Wash FX fixtures in each of the capsules on the London Eye, together with Syncrolite and Clay Paky Alpha Beam fixtures. But this year, Stage Electrics proposed using Zero Wire CRMX from Cooper Controls to enable wirless control of each of the 32 pods fitted to the London Eye. It was the solution LD Durham Marenghi needed.