Chameleon welcomes 2019 with StageSmarts
- Details
From 9.30pm, Charlie Pickering and Zan Rowe ramped up the celebrations and dialled up the volume, presenting the live show featuring a star-studded line-up of artists performing songs from a playlist voted by the Australian people. Artists rocking the night included Tim Minchin, Ben Folds, Casey Donovan, Christine Anu, Client Liaison, Baker Boy and crowd favourite Daryl Braithwaite.
With millions of people watching the show live on television, iView or Social Media, lighting this event was a little nerve wracking for the Chameleon Touring Systems crew. No hiding from mistakes on this gig.
With power distribution at the heart of any modern event providing power to show-critical and highly valuable equipment, Chameleon rolled out their recently purchased StageSmarts smartPDU72.
“The smartPDUs were very easy to set up, plugged up like other racks but the back end of the system was a lot nicer due to their design,” commented Anthony Carlon, Chameleon’s project manager. “They are very clean and easy to use. The power monitor allows us to check voltages on all the three phases before we even turn the main breaker on.”
Lighting designer for the show was Hugh Taranto who chose a rig that was mostly waterproof IP rated lights allowing them to stay operational through storms just before the show and intermittent showers during. These included the 70 ShowPro LED FusionBAR Q XV, 40 of which were mounted on eight custom frames, Chauvet Colourdash Hex Pars and Colorado Zoom Pars, Elation DTW 4 Lite Blinders and ProLights Panorama IP Wash. Also in the rig were Claypaky Mythos, ETC ColorSource Pearl, Robert Juliat Victor followspots and Unique2 hazers.
Control was an MA Lighting grandMA2 full size with an MA2 light for backup and MA2 NPUs. Ziggy Ziegler who was the lighting designer for the bridge joined Hugh and the crew at the concert site to control the bridge lighting for the city and together, they were able to coordinate some special lighting moments.
(Jim Evans)
