Dave Barten's eponymous company has a long association with the event, as it does with GLP - having first been introduced to the German company's LED solutions as a result of being the 'trussing partner' of Cosmic Truss, for which GLP is the distributor for the Americas. Today they own 12 Volkslicht Zooms and eight Spot Ones, which are regularly out on duty.
"The amazing thing was that at the MOD Awards we were able to handle everything with two Spots and six Volkslichts. The two Spots managed to paint the set like half a dozen lights - the optics and gobos were a real treat to work with and in such a small package it was great."
Specializing in the trade show and corporate theatre sector since 1989, Barten says his business today is entirely LED centric. "We rarely use conventional fixtures anymore. I needed to get these [GLP] fixtures into our playing field to see what they could do and how they would look within our applications."
The Volkslicht Zoom initially stood out for its high performance-to-budget ratio.
Low power consumption and ease of deployment further sweetens the low budget projects, and Dave Barten readily admits, "As for physicality, in trade shows and ballrooms you're hit with either low ceilings or 16ft height restrictions, and if you're hanging a big mover it obscures too much of the sight lines. Because these lights are small and bright they can really be superstars with 20% of the features due to the low weight, size, and power draw.
"With the cost element, every pound of gear is charged so these advantages save our clients plenty of budget. As for features, these will do a lot more than we will ever need them to in a corporate context."
(Jim Evans)
