Now widely regarded within the industry as the 'Vogue' of hairdressing award ceremonies, lighting designer David Miller needs to provide a rig that caters for an exceptionally broad range of venues and stage set-ups. "This tour is organised by Fisher Productions who are renowned for their high end production values. I went to Point Source Productions for control and lighting fixtures for this show as they could provide the quality of control and luminaires that I was looking for: MA and Clay Paky. The combination of using a grandMA2 light, an MA VPU Plus along with an MA 2Port Node for backup gave me everything I wanted for control and more.'
'The vagaries of such a varied type of locations for the regional finals often meant that this show has to be completely pre-programmed due to very limited or tight timescales. The off-line editor facility on both the grandMA2 light and the MA VPU Plus means I don't need the hardware for too long beforehand.
"I am particularly impressed with the hardware of the VPU, from the overall build quality and software stability to the extras such as professional balanced audio output, EDID, the high quality HD-SDI input and the down to little details like knowing the software backup is on a USB drive attached to the unit should I ever need it. This all means it really can be used right out of the flight case without plugging in lots of extras peripherals, such as keyboards, mice, additional soundcards etc... As with the rest of the MA system, the networking is incredibly easy for control, tracking backup, loading and syncing the media. The blind preview feature is very useful when we have to load and check edited media during the show."
MA Lighting enjoys an exclusive sales and service agreement in the UK with Ambersphere Solutions along with lighting manufacturers Clay Paky and Robert Juliat. On this show, Miller chose to use a variety of Clay Paky fixtures. "All the fixtures I chose from the Clay Paky stable have a particular role to play," says Miller. "The Alpha 700s are a very good, general purpose profile; bright yet low power, small and lightweight but still have the features you'd expect on larger fixtures. They are simply great for corporate jobs where everything seems to be limited nowadays from budget and truck space to power and rigging."
(Jim Evans)
