NEWS – Philips Selecon PL1s Provide Versatile Solution for Questacon

Australia - Canberra’s National Science and Technology Centre Questacon has become the first Australian institution to invest in Philips Selecon’s fully tunable high output LED PL1 luminaires.

The centre – which attracts more than 420,000 visitors each year – has purchased 20 of the PL1s, which draw on Philips’ pioneering technology to meet the everyday challenges of illuminating the world’s museums, art galleries and stages.

“As an interactive Science Centre our requirement for lighting is based on more of a theatrical approach than traditional museum lighting,” says Christine Hendry, Creative Manager at Questacon. “We use a combination of focused light and colour washing luminaires and needed to have an integrated approach to our gallery lighting with a plan for implementation over several years. The PL1s were seen as the perfect solution for us.

“Our main criteria were the capability for individual luminaire adjustment, pre-programmed lighting scenes, which could be controlled from one point, the ability to colour change walls/floors to create different environments, to reduce maintenance costs associated with replacement lamps and labour, and the ability to achieve colour in a variety of ambient lighting levels. We were also looking for a product that could be integrated into our existing infrastructure with minimal cost.”

The first 20 PL1s supplied in Australia were used to great effect as Questacon launched its permanent exhibition ‘H2O – Soak Up the Science’ – an interactive display exploring the behavior of water, how it shapes our world and how we use this precious resource.

“The Selecon PL1s are performing perfectly,” continues Hendry. “We are able to change the lighting environment to suit the needs of the various exhibitions in our space, and have had a marked improvement in maintenance cost savings as we haven’t needed to change any lamps in the galleries with the PL1s.”

As an educational institution, Questacon says it’s important to lead by example not only by showcasing new technologies through exhibitions but to be seen as a leader in adopting sustainable practices throughout its buildings.

“The PL1s were designed to provide a much-needed breakthrough in display lighting, and they are indeed that – the PL1 is the first light source that delivers full control of the beam colour composition regardless of intensity,” says Philips Marketing Manager Pete Borchetta. “The resulting luminaire is a fully tunable high output LED light engine supporting colour temperatures from 3000K to 5600K and full colour mixing with a maximum output similar to that of a 70 watt metal halide powered luminaire.”

In addition to the H2O exhibition, Questacon has gone on to complete the Excite@Q gallery, which utilises the Philips Selecon PL1s and also the Philips Selecon Accent Display luminaire.

“We are so pleased with the results that we achieved with the PL1s and the flexibility the fittings provided that we have started a replacement program throughout our other galleries,” Hendry concludes.

As an educational institution, Questacon says it’s important to lead by example

ENTECH Audio Engineer’s Lunch

Audio Engineers’ Lunch 

The latest addition to the new ENTECH Technicians’ Lunch Series is the Audio Engineers’ Lunch.  This informative  two hour session will cover two diverse and important topics with a view to offering practical advice and guidance on both.  With a limited number of seats available, don’t miss out on joining hosts BOSE as they facilitate the following sessions over lunch.   Ticket Price Includes Light Lunch

Influence of Radiation Performance of Sound Reinforcement Speakers on Tonal Balance Consistency

Room acoustic characteristics, such as reflections and reverberation, often change the performance of speaker systems in a room. It has always been challenging to maintain the tonal balance of a single speaker module when multiple modules are used to form speaker arrays. Both phenomena are unique to sound reinforcement speakers and are mainly determined by a combination of the radiation characteristics of an individual speaker module and the interactions between modules, known as arrayability. First, this study reviews the performance of conventional speaker systems. Next, the acoustic characteristics of speaker modules desired for forming an ideal speaker array are discussed.  A new category of speaker system, the Progressive Directivity Array, is introduced to realize the theory as a practical solution.

Presented by Soichiro Hayashi,  Bose Asia Pacific Senior Systems Engineer.

Mastering for iTunes

Apple’s Mastered For iTunes program has arguably been the most successful initiative to date in establishing a mainstream standard for higher than CD quality audio. Studios 301′s Leon Zervos (Senior Mastering Engineer) and Anthony Garvin (General Manager) will discuss topics around the key technical points of MFiT, a listener’s experience of low vs high resolution audio, the Apple codec’s effects on mastered audio and the future possibilities for both MFiT and hi-resolution audio.

Presented by  Anthony Garvin,  General Manager,  Studios 301 and Leon Zervos, Senior Mastering Engineer, Studios 301.

Date :Tuesday 23 July
Time :12:00 – 2:00pm

The Knight of Illumination Awards Announces Ceremony Event

UK - The Knight of Illumination Awards has revealed details of this year’s much anticipated glittering ceremony in London.

For the first time London ExCel’s Platinum Suite will host the KOI Awards. The event will kick off at 18:30 on Sunday 6 October

For the first time London ExCel’s Platinum Suite will host the KOI Awards. The event will kick off at 18:30 on Sunday 6 October

For the first time London ExCel’s Platinum Suite will host the KOI Awards. The event will kick off at 18:30 on Sunday 6 October

For the first time London ExCel’s Platinum Suite will host the KOI Awards. The event will kick off at 18:30 on Sunday 6 October to allow plenty of time for networking between old friends and colleagues. As is traditional the Awards coincide with the opening day of PLASA London, which also takes place at ExCel for the first time this year.

“Last year, hundreds of top creative lighting professionals donned their finery and put on their dancing shoes to celebrate the outstanding creative achievements of lighting designers working on productions in the UK,” says Pio Nahum, Chief Commercial officer for Clay Paky. “This year’s KOI Awards have already seen a record number of submissions, so we will be showcasing an incredibly high level of talent from all sectors of lighting design at KOI 2013.”

The popular awards, organised by The Society of Television & Lighting Design (STLD), The Association of Lighting Designers (ALD), Clay Paky, and Ambersphere Solutions, continues to forge closer ties between the world of lighting design and the lighting industry as a whole and provides a social platform for great lighting design to be recognised and celebrated by the industry. The Awards is sponsored by Osram, Chroma Q, Hawthorn, MA Lighting, Robert Juliat, and XL Video.

This year organisers have allocated more time for those attending to enable them to network with colleagues and friends before the awards ceremony kicks off. The Awards is also embracing a number of other changes to better reflect the diverse talent and applications of the lighting design community. In addition to the Rock sector being renamed ‘Concert Touring & Events’, each sector will now contain a new category as follows: Video Graphic Display (For TV), Video Electronic Content (For Concert Touring And Events) And Projection Design (For Theatre).

“There has been an explosion of truly impressive creativity and artistry within the field of video, and it is now becoming an integrated part of visual design. With this in mind, it was a logical step to include this new category in each of our sectors,” comments Durham Marenghi, KOI Awards coordinator.

An individual panel of industry experts will assess each of the following sector categories:

Television category includes awards for: Drama; Light Entertainment; Small Studio Events and Video Graphic Display.

Concert Touring And Events (previously Rock) includes awards for: Concert Touring Stage; Concert Touring Arena; Live Events and Video Electronic Content.

Theatre category includes awards for: Dance; Opera; Play; Musicals and Projection Design

Finally the Enrico Caironi Award For Lifetime Recognition will be presented to an individual who has made an outstanding impact on the industry. Previous winners include lighting designer Richard Pilbrow in 2011 and Bryan Leitch in 2012. The category is named in recognition of former Clay Paky commercial director Enrico Caironi (1947 – 2011), whose inspiration and enthusiasm created and subsequently shaped the Knight Of Illumination Awards.

Submissions are open until the end of July. More information can be found at the KOI 2013 website – www.knight-of-illumination.com

PCSTAGE – A Review

What is it?

There seems to be a whole range of lighting software on the market that you can use to control your lighting system with by just connecting a DMX dongle between your PC and a bunch of dimmers or movers.  Some of this software is free and you just purchase a dongle from the relevant Software Company. Now a lot of the software is wonderful and you can control a multitude of moving lights from a whole host of manufacturers. Supposing you only want to drive dimmer racks and the occasional DMX intelligent light. Most of the software out there is really geared to the moving light market but there is one piece of software that I have been using over the last 2 years that should fit the bill for those that want to control dimmers as their primary focus. The software in question is called PCStage . This is a PC lighting software solution that works with its own USB to DMX device, the software is designed to work only with its own device. The software is available online for free. So once you have downloaded you can give it a try it out, and if you like it you can then purchase a PCStage USB to DMX Device that outputs a single universe of DMX.

Now some of you may have heard of this software, as it has been around for a while. There is also a large group of people that are active in supporting the software and writing a variety of plug-ins to make the software even more versatile. This software does not require much in the way of resources from your pc. It runs on most windows platforms. It has a very simple install and auto detects the device. If you are using a 64-bit system you will need to download additional drivers for the dmx device to be recognised.  Now once you have installed the software you will notice that it is rather old fashioned looking and  The software is in fact quite versatile and the more you explore it the more you realise how powerful it is. One of the neat features of this lighting program is that you can also get it to play all of your shows audio files.  In fact you can play up to four sound files simultaneously. Great for those shows with only one operator.

So how does it perform?

Well once you have got your head around how it operates it actually works quite well. The major huddle that might crop up if you are coming from MAXIM style lighting is desk is that when you have set up the lighting state that you want it stores the information as a cue and a preset. The preset is essentially a snapshot of the desk output and the cue recalls that and adds things like timing, audio triggering and any other function you may want to control. Now the benefit of this becomes more apparent the more you use it. With some shows you are likely to re-use a lighting state, well with this software that is really a very easy thing to do. All you need to do is tell it. When making a cue you even have the ability to make complex split cues. You can also record chases, have sub-masters do your normal soft-patch functions. It has all of the features of a normal lighting desk.

As with any software it takes time to get familiar with how it works, but the more you use it and experiment with the more you can achieve. This software is ideal for those productions that only have one operator, as they can at least control audio and lighting with the press of the space bar. Ideal for touring type shows.There is support available from the manufacturer and there is an active community of users willing to help.

There is also a range of plugins that are available that extend the capability of the software. Plug-ins that can control CD-audio, ASIO sound cards, multi-track playback, and executable commands for PowerPoint shows. So with a little bit of work this software package is very suited to small venues, schools, touring shows and the like. In fact you are more and more likely to see this system being used in professional situations, Bob Weatherly, Production Manager, for Patch theatre (internationally recognised children’s theatre company) uses this system for all of their shows, whether touring Australia or the rest of the world. They are not the only ones using this software professionally.

Would I recommend it?

Yes I would. It is very reliable and does not a very powerful pc to run the software. It takes some time to get familiar but it works well. Great for schools(every student can have a copy to learn on), community theatre groups, and even professional companies. The average lighting techie should be able to get a show up and running in no time, and the beauty of this software is that you can play with it without having the DMX box.

Where to Get it?

Contact: http://home.clara.net/lowernab/index.html

NEWS – Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat Get A Lift From Jands!

For the last 22 years Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat has been working with an old mobile scissor lift to move stage sets and equipment from street level to stage level, a distance of 6.3 metres. Not only was it an arduous task to have to wheel it into position, it was becoming an OH&S concern.

“In order to load it you were reaching above waist level and we had no facility to attach it to trucks so it was very difficult to load from them,” remarked Liz Mundell, Technical Operations Manager. “There was always a gap between the lift and the back of the truck. Also if the winds got above 15 kilometres an hour we theoretically weren’t supposed to use the lift – and in Ballarat that’s a gentle breeze!”

Other issues included the size of lift and the amount it could carry so council made funds available for a new lift and the project was put out to tender. Prerequisites were a lift that was fully enclosed and was able to be adjusted to line up with the back of the trucks that were being unloaded, which ranged from small 3 tons to large semi-trailers. The historical venue also had heritage issues that needed to be taken into consideration.

Jands, the staging specialists, won the tender and took on the challenge and the end result is basically one very large dumb waiter!

“Jands created a steel framework that attaches to the building and this can be removed to adhere to heritage guidelines should it ever need to,” explained Liz. “Inside the steel framework sits a steel cage attached to two chain motors (capable of holding 2000kg) and held together with 2 pink shackles. We have a controller to operate the unit, we push and hold buttons which move it and a series of limiters have been programmed in to ensure that it stops and starts safely where it needs to. It has a large door that raises up at the front and Jands have created a ‘jog window’ – when the cage is at street level we have the facility to put in a jog controller and adjust the cage to be level with the rear height of the truck we are unloading. We can then record that height, then every time we move the lift we can accurately take it back to the height of the truck we’re using that day.”

The lift can take sets and equipment up to four metres in height, it has a floor area of 2.6m x 1.9 m and it can move up to 2000 kilos – a big jump from the previous allowance of 500 kilos. According to Liz, the lift has worked brilliantly.

“It’s fully enclosed so now we are protected from the weather and more importantly, the ability to adjust it to the truck height means that manual handling risks have been reduced,” she added. “It also means no one can be tempted to do something that is unsafe. Nothing can fall off the lift which was an issue with the old lift. It’s a significant improvement and has done everything we asked of it. It’s quiet, smooth and we’re particularly happy with the way the ‘jog window works’.”

For more information on how Jands Staging can assist you with your project visit www.jands.com.au

Her Majesty’s Theatre Lift

Her Majesty’s Theatre first load new lift

NEW Products from Greenlight

Grenlight Lighting are again busy releasing new lighting gear into the market. Some of you may not be familiar with Greenlight Lighting but to quote from their web page:

​Greenlight is committed to the development and production of lighting for the entertainment industry.
With over 20 years of experience stemming from live events, television, film and festivals on the Eastern coast of Australia.
We work towards better ways in both emphatic design, efficiency and functionality to deliver and exceed on our clients expectations.
Our products are manufactured to a high standard using the best quality available to us.
From the electronic components that drive our fixtures to the housings we take every step to ensure reliability and quality as we seek to forge long term business relationships with our distributors and clients around the world.
Developed with the lighting designer in mind we focus on providing logical and user friendly interfaces, innovative design and unique effect systems to stand out from the plethora of lighting manufacturers in the East.

This company has been busy developing and marketing a whole range of moving lights and LED fixtures into the Australian market.

So what have they got for us?

FLASH

This is a range of SMD LED strobe lights. There is 3 models – Flash 50/150/300.

Flash 50-Specs

132 x 5050 7000K LED
VOLTAG E:90- 264VAC 50- 60Hz 60W
DMX, AUTO,SOUND,MASTER SLAVE SELECTIONS
3 CHANNEL DMX CONTROL
3/5 PIN
DMX I/O
P-CON I/O

Flash 150-Specs
396 x 5050 7000K LED
VOLTAGE:90-264VAC 50-60Hz 180W
DMX,AUTO,SOUND,MASTER SLAVE SELECTIONS
5 CHANNEL DMX CONTROL
3/5 PIN
DMX I/O
P-CON I/O

Flash 300-Specs
792 x 5050 7000K LED
VOLTAGE:90-264VAC 50-60Hz 340W
DMX,AUTO,SOUND,MASTER SLAVE SELECTIONS
10 CHANNEL DMX CONTROL
3/5PIN
DMX I/O
P-CON I/O

But that is not all that the clever guys at Greenlight have been busy on.

There is the molefay rig with their Pulse 200.
160watts of Bridgelux LED power at 3200K.

And another neat project is the  worlds only dual sided automated LED fixture with unlimited pan, up to 540 degrees of tilt. More info soon.

So for more info about these and other lighting gear that this company has visit their website HERE

NEWS ENTECH Announces PLASA International Speaker: Karl Ruling

ENTECH has officially confirmed that Karl Ruling, PLASA’s Technical Standards Manager will make his only Australian appearance at ENTECH  2013 this July.

Karl has spoken at numerous international shows around the world and recently spoke at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt am Main, the USITT Conference in Milwaukee, and LDI in Las Vegas, to some of his largest audiences to date.  Karl Ruling as an Industry guru administers the ANSI-accredited Technical Standards Program and writes about standards, legislation, technology, and trade shows for PLASA’s members.

Karl has developed his education seminar especially for ENTECH,  entitled; “International Standards in a Globalised but Not Homogenised Entertainment Industry: Reflections on Cooperation”.

The session will talk about the various forms of international standards, how they are developed, how they serve or fail to serve today’s entertainment industry and society.
The talk will explore why having one international standard, universally recognized for a subject, such as stage machinery, sometimes is not desirable or possible.

Stephen Dallimore, Event manager said; “We are delighted to bring Karl over to the Australian industry thanks to our partnership with PLASA.  Anyone in the entertainment sector with an interest in international standards, international trade and cultural differences will want to attend this key seminar to be in the know for what the industry holds”.

Karl Ruling says, “I am delighted to be visiting Australia to have a chance to talk about international standards. Australia’s unique cultural history and location make it a great place to talk and think about consensus documents that bridge cultures and countries.”

Karl Ruling’s Session will be taking place on Tuesday 23 July, from 12.30 – 1.30pm

Registrations for all keynote and training sessions are via www.entechshow.com.au