Lightswitch redesign preserves lighting magic for adaptive driving experience

For The Morton Arboretum, the idea of not running Illumination this past holiday season was not an option, says Lightswitch principal John Featherstone about the popular wintertime lighting display in Lisle, Illinois. Illumination continues to shine through after being redesigned for a drive-thru experience using additional Elation luminaires, the eighth year for the project.

The Collectv, the Emmy award-winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy, will be playing an instrumental part in ensuring that ITV Studios Entertainment’s smash hit Dancing on Ice reaches a live audience of millions when it returns to UK screens on 17 January. Shot at a purpose-built facility at Bovingdon Airfield, just south of Hemel Hempstead, the show has been remotely produced at ITN Productions in London since the 2019 season. The Collectv ensures this process runs smoothly by providing media management, integration, and support on location at Bovingdon, helping to ensure not only that the right material gets into the main broadcast OB, but is also supplied back to the production team in London to provide content for ongoing social media clips, VTs, and more.

With six huge shows behind it and 12 more running until the end of January, Summer Sounds in Adelaide’s Tulya Wodli (Bonython Park) is Australia’s first month-long, financially independent, and COVID-safe outdoor music festival. A shining example of the way forward for the industry as a whole, promoters Five Four Entertainment, Groove Events, and Secret Sounds have partnered with Novatech Creative Event Technology and Nexstage to bring a diverse programme including Bernard Fanning, Groove Terminator, Ball Park Music, Ruel, and Lime Cordiale to a 2,100 capacity audience sustainably over 18 shows.

Axiom Events is the major new rebrand from North East based equipment rental company R&M Productions Ltd and production management company Immersive Precision Ltd. Axiom Events is a new and unified, joint brand aimed to bring continuity to the companies’ combined full event production service.

With fireworks forbidden and Covid-19 keeping people isolated for New Year’s Eve, Ton Nieuwenhuis and Martin Ciesluk of design firm Outside the Circle decided to bring a bit of lighting inspiration to the people of the Dutch town of Hengelo.

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association held the 2020 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo at Globe Life Field on Dec. 3-12. The culmination of the rodeo season features the top 15 contestants in bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, barrel racing and bull riding competing to take home top honors and their share of a multi-million dollar purse.

London welcomed in 2021 with a spectacular city-wide display, sending a message of thanks and hope to the nation and the world.  Jack Morton, the global brand experience agency, helped to develop the original concept and worked in partnership with the Mayor of London’s office and a dedicated team of experts to create the extraordinary experience. 

The Amir Cup Final 2020 Ceremony, the biggest football cup competition in the State of Qatar, and the inauguration Ceremony of Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium, the fourth FIFA World Cup™ stadium to open in Qatar following Khalifa International, Al Janoub and Education City was recently performed using 2 x grandMA3 full-size and multiple MA Network Switches. Qatar Vision Company developed, produced and managed the inauguration and final, that took place during Qatar National Day and exactly two years before the country hosts the FIFA World Cup final. Mohammad Assaf and Mark Anton were the lighting designers.

After arguably the toughest year in recent memory, Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California, one of the largest churches in the Sacramento area, wanted to do something special for its congregation this holiday season. As a special holiday gift to the community, Bayside built a Christmas village complete with ice-skating rink, towering Christmas tree and special Christmas light show, a festive holiday experience enhanced using dynamic IP-rated luminaires from Elation Professional.  
 

With governments in the UAE and other Middle East countries taking commendable actions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, confidence is gradually returning to the market, which in turn is paving the way for live events – which were conspicuously absent for the significant portion of last year – to make a comeback. In line with its #DontStopTheMusic initiative, Sennheiser was quick to extend its support, expertise, and equipment to Breakout DXB, the highly successful two-day live music festival held at the Rove Downtown in Dubai, UAE in the last quarter of 2020.

With the entire world ready to bid adieu to 2020, the city of Nashville added its own brand of Music City magic with its annual 'Jack Daniel's Music City Midnight: New Year's Eve in Nashville.’ The live televised concert featured music from Moon Taxi and The Shindellas as well as highlights from previous years’ celebrations. Bandit Lites provided the lighting system for the production which took place at the Steel Mill with no spectators due to COVID restrictions. The show was streamed on visitmusiccity.com and aired locally on NewsChannel 5 Nashville and Lightning 100.

Christ’s Church of the Valley’s annual holiday spectacular spread out across its ten Phoenix-area campuses this December, and Clearwing Productions deployed 210 L-Acoustics loudspeakers with P1 and M1 for maximum consistency across all locations
 

Danish lighting designer Johnny Thinggaard Lydiksen counts himself lucky to have had a busy autumn, engaged in working on several different television productions, all of them using Robe moving lights. This has included music show “Here’s Your Hit” for DR2, a flagship channel of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and two major TV Awards shows, one for radio station P3 Guld (Gold) at the Aalborg Musikkens Hus and the high-profile Crown Prince Couples Awards staged at the Værket Randers.

Essential elements of the show broadcast on Christmas Day – 25th of December 2020 – were recorded at the vast Halle 6 of Dusseldorf Messe, complete with a stunning production lighting designed by award-winning LD, Tim Routledge. Due to coronavirus restrictions and the relatively short lead-time in which these segments of the show had to be produced, neither Tim nor acclaimed camera director Paul Dugdale – also based in the UK – could physically be there in person. So, to ensure that the lighting design was installed and ran smoothly, Tim brought German LD Michael Kuehbandner onboard as lighting director to oversee the project in Dusseldorf.

Global music superstar David Guetta, France’s most iconic DJ and music producer playing a unique set live at one of the world’s most visually, architecturally, and historically impressive site-specific locations, Musee du Louvre in central Paris … Celebrating the monumentally symbolic roll-over from 2020 to 2021 in this breath-taking environment with style, cool, poise and some superlative dance beats, 116 x Robe iPointe moving lights on the rig helped make it THE New Year’s Eve livestream to remember from the year THAT WAS.