Golden opportunity for RoboSpots
- Details
Organised by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the GMAs recognise outstanding singing achievements in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and Formosan languages in both the popular and traditional music industries, attracting artists and audience from all over Asia. Moderated by Jam Hsiao, the 2018 show was broadcast live by Taiwan national TV throughout South-East Asia.
Hong Kong based LD Stanley Szeto lit the show, working for the Artesian Engineering Co Ltd.
Stanley is a long-time user of Robe products, so when asked to design lighting for this event, he seized the chance to use Robe Pointes on the rig to create some of the spectacular scenes and effects. He also decided to show-test Robe’s new RoboSpot system.
The RoboSpots were a recent investment by locally based company Aurora Lighting from Taipei, and although he’d not actually seen the system in action as yet, Stanley had every faith that, being a Robe product, he would get the required results.
“We were keen to break new ground – this is a high profile show and it’s important to push the envelope when it comes to technology,” he stated.
Scotty Chen from Aurora added, “The front follow spot positions in the Arena are not the best, so unless we cut into the seating areas we have to fly a ‘bridge’ to accommodate both hardware and the operators - with all the issues that this brings. The RoboSpots effectively eliminated all of that.”
Everyone was delighted at how easily they integrated into the overall lighting design without having to allow space for an operator. “There was really nowhere on the rig for near-stage follow spots and operators to go, especially in the positions where they were needed,” emphasized Scotty. “With all the flying video panels making up the set, it would have also been dangerous to have people in the roof in these positions.”
(Jim Evans)
