MIRRAD supplies two Avolites consoles for Ben Everett’s design for producer, songwriter and performer’s headlining tour

A lot has happened in Maggie Rogers’ world since 2016, when a video of her demoing a then-newly-recorded song, “Alaska,” for Pharrell Williams at NYU went viral. Following opening slots on major tours with both HAIM and Mumford & Sons last year, Rogers dropped her own major label debut, Heard It in a Past Life, this past January, which charted in the second highest slot of the Billboard 200. Consequently, the artist has spent much of 2019 on the road in support of the album, performing a sold-out fall headline tour in such iconic venues as Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Berkley’s Greek Theatre, and New York City’s Radio City Music Hall.

The “look and feel” of Rogers’ tour this year has been a collaborative effort between the artist and Lighting Designer Ben Everett, who first started working with her when he lit Rogers’ first-ever show in London two years ago. Having toured with an impressive roster of bands over the past five years—including Bear's Den, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Dandy Warhols—Everett is now part of the UK-based MIRRAD team, which has been supplying a pair of Avolites Sapphire Touch lighting control consoles for Rogers’ 2019 worldwide trek.

Everett notes that he’s been using Avolites lighting consoles “pretty much since I started in the live music industry,” he shares. “I was lucky enough to learn on all of the early Titan software, and mainly used the Tiger Touch II and Quartz consoles to begin with. The features that kept me attracted to the desks at first were the ability to quickly create really impressive and intricate effects, and the user-friendly and multi-functional layout of the touchscreens. And while growing with the consoles over the years, the ease of being able to create cue stacks, key frame shapes, and pixel mapping really helps me in my day-to-day programming now.”

Brightline, a leading manufacturer of energy efficient lighting systems, today announced Open Signal: Portland Community Media Center, a nonprofit media arts and broadcast center in Portland, Ore., has upgraded the lighting grid in its 2,000-square-foot main studio with 30 Brightline L1.2 SeriesONE LED fixtures. The new lighting was installed in July.

Noah Dorsey, media services manager, said the upgrade in Studio A was prompted by the fan noise of previous lighting fixtures in the studio. “We want the studio environment to be as silent as possible,” he explained. “That was something that had been requested by a lot of producers.”

The new 5600K L1.2 lights are controlled through a DMX console. Open Signal contracted Brightline’s premier Pacific Northwest systems integrator, Advanced Broadcast Solutions (ABS), a division of Key Code Media, to supply the new lighting. Dorsey said the lighting “looks dynamic but not so stylized that it can’t be applied to multiple shows.”

Bruce Aleksander, a lighting director hired by ABS for the Open Signal project, said the decision to use soft lights throughout Studio A was based on the need for versatility and accessibility for the wide variety of producers who use the space. Though some productions use an ellipsoidal light for show-specific gobo projection accents, the main lighting is generally not altered.

It was an historic evening for Romeo Santos, one of Latin music’s most successful icons. On September 21, he headlined a night at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, which became the single highest-grossing concert in the stadium's history, a record previously held by U2.

Named for his latest LP, Utopia, the concert, which spanned 45 songs over four hours and included a guest appearance by rapper Cardi B, was as much a visual tour de force as a musical one, with 22 LED screens covering literally almost every square foot of the stage, including the ceiling. It was an undertaking that required the most robust video servers in the world, and video production designer YC3 Lighting Design turned to Avolites Ai servers to make the night magical.

YC3, which was in charge of the overall stage and production design, fashioned the system around eight Avolites Ai servers—two Q3, two R8, one R4, and three custom servers using Avolites-compatible hardware and Miami software licenses—plus an Avolites Tiger Touch II lighting control console.

“It was the biggest show in the history of Hispanic music!” shares YC3 Lighting Design Owner Yamil Charif of the estimated 85,000 fans who were there. “It was also the highest-grossing concert at the MetLife Stadium, even bigger than U2. It had to be perfect.”

And it was, though not without its challenges. Santos, known as “King of Bachata,” the strain of Latin music from his native Dominican Republic, rarely follows a script, and this show was no exception. “He likes to improvise, to make it up as he goes along,” says Charif. “There was no way we could do this with a single file and just program a server and hit a macro; this show required a lot of flexibility, which came from using many servers, so we could adjust the video images to follow what he was doing as he was feeding off of the crowd.”

New and recent products from The Tiffen Company at IBC Expo will include:

Steadicam M-2
The latest top-of-the-line Steadicam system designed to incorporate the revolutionary Volt horizon-assist system and offer a modularity never before seen with body-worn stabilizers. The M-2 can be configured in hundreds of different ways to suit operators from broadcast through feature films and beyond.

Brightline, a leading manufacturer of energy efficient lighting systems, today announced its new cMe2 huddle room light is shipping. The compact fixture delivers high-quality lighting for smaller work spaces that have inadequate lighting for videoconferencing and other video interactions.

Film, TV and theatre lighting supplier Flashlight has announced the appointment of Elaine Frost, who joins the company's UK sales department as a business development manager. Elaine will provide field-based sales and support for the company's expanding range of leading lighting brands.

Wooden Camera announces the Shoulder Rig v3, a major update to Wooden Camera’s popular Shoulder Rig at a lower price point. Now only $499 for the Base and $995 for the Pro!

Denmark’s BB&S Lighting announces the new Area 48 Color, which provides unparalleled color accurate illumination in both white light and RGB. With a similarly small footprint as the company’s workhorse Area 48, the new fixture is the most compact and powerful, full-color LED panel light on the market today.

IPE will continue its long association with the advanced displays available from industry leader Densitron by highlighting the latest developments of its Intelligent Display System (IDS) on Densitron’s booth at NAB Show 2019.

Peli UK introduce the innovative Peli™ 9600 LED lighting system, a linkable system of work area lighting, extending the range of maintenance free portable lighting solutions.

To meet the needs of the industry’s fastest growing sector, lighting accessary-maker DoPchoice will introduce new products at BSC 2019. DoPchoice innovations include gear for the latest LED offerings from KinoFlo, DMG, Hudson Spider, Astera, Quasar Science, BB&S Lighting, and Fargo, as well as the new extra-versatile RABBIT-EARS® X-Crossover mounting system that allows more sizes and multiple fixtures to be used with a single SNAPBAG® snap-up soft box system.