The Cinco de Mayo Spectacular, hosted by former Miss Universe Ximena Navarrette, featured star-studded tributes, an appearance by the Mexican president and a massive display of fireworks. It was staged at the Guadalupe Fort in Puebla; the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Televisa broadcast the event nationwide.
Lighting designer David Grill, of David Grill Associates, Inc. in Mahwah, New Jersey, specified a grandMA2 for control of some 375 moving lights during the spectacular and utilised a second grandMA2 full-size as a backup console. A grandMA2 light served as the focus console remote. Solotech furnished the complete system.
"There was a massive main stage for the headline talent," he reports. "Then there was the fort in the background. And the hill between the two that was a performance area as well. So everything in the environment was really part of the shot."
Grill opted for the grandMA2 "because of the strength of their networking," he says. "Stuff was everywhere, so we needed the efficiency of using the MA network. It made things really simple thanks to its processing speed. The way the system deals with effects enabled us to quickly do things that would have been much more time consuming on other consoles. We could also create all sorts of little visual mapping tools that made life much easier. All of this from a system dramatically more user-friendly than anything else."
He adds that, "We had great support from MA in transitioning from grandMA, which we had been using, to grandMA2. And A.C.T took good care of us."
(Jim Evans)
