ETC's Eos control family - made up of Eos Titanium (Ti), Gio, Ion and Element desks - is the most prevalent on Broadway. The family was developed to be both designer- and programmer-friendly with its powerful software and direct programming syntax. "Most desks are designed solely for the programmer," explains ETC Eos product manager Anne Valentino. "We paid attention to what the lighting designer and assistant lighting designer needed, and determined how the show data can be best represented."
One reason why professionals love Eos-family desks is their ease of use in deepening levels of technical complexity. "You don't need to know everything in order to use an Eos-family console," says Valentino. "The user interface allows individuals to get important information quickly and lets users work from either an abstract visualiser or in a straightforward command sequence."
Even on huge, technically elaborate shows - such as Tony Award-nominated productions Rocky and Act One - the power of Eos-family consoles is overwhelmingly evident. Hailed as a "technical knockout," Rocky uses a Ti to control its giant lighting rig, which doubled in size after its original run in Hamburg, and includes dozens of automated fixtures, 12 Selador Classic Vivid-R LED luminaires, some 60 Source Four fixtures and almost 1,300 Source Four PAR units.
The show's Ti is also used to trigger several powerful d3 4U media servers that control the many video screens and projectors that appear throughout the show, including a 3.7m x 3m flying video wall, a real-life Jumbotron and a 24-monitor fish tank wall. Lighting designer Chris Akerlind says that "knowing how to navigate Eos via a trusted programmer made the proliferation of all this equipment much easier."
Act One at the Lincoln Centre also uses a Ti to manage its sizable lighting rig for the show's 20m, three-storey 'turntable' rotating set. "I did not know where the turntable would stop exactly and if it would always go to the same position each time we went back to a particular set," explains lighting designer Ken Billington. For that reason, the show's lighting rig uses 40 moving heads and two followspots, in addition to 21 ETC Source Four Revolution automated fixtures. "It is a complicated light plot, but it worked out well," comments Billington.
(Jim Evans)
