Each evening in July at sunset, the Port of Quebec's 81 monumental Bunge company grain elevators on the banks of the Bassin Louise were transformed into an immense projection screen. The Image Mill was visible from many vantage points, including across the St. Lawrence River, displaying Lepage's four-part vision of Quebec history from the 17th century-themed Water Highway to today's telecommunications-fueled Air Highway.
Lighting designer Hubert Gagnon of Ambiances Lighting and Visual Design was part of the original design team when the process began three years ago. "In 2007, we really started to look at the lighting and lighting control solution which was a challenge because of the number of DMX channels we had to control," he points out. "I had worked with the grandMA before but never to that kind of scale."
The grandMA provided the DMX-control capabilities and the onsite flexibility he required for the mammoth project. "We used over 36 DMX universes to control the 3,000 pixels of LED lighting above the screens," he notes. "Since I already knew the console, I knew its capacity to do time-based show control, and it was really an easy creative process for me."
Dominic Minguy-Jean, in charge of programming and operations for Ex-Machina, says the innovative Image Mill was "a show not to be missed. It was mostly a video show; the lighting was the icing on the cake."
The grandMA full-size and grandMA light controlled 110 x SGM Genio moving lights, 88 x iColor Flex SLs, one Synchrolite, three HES Studio Colors and six City Colors plus 24 x ZR33s and 24 Versa Fans provided by Christie Light.
"We pushed the grandMA and required additional MA NSPs once the console was onsite," Gagnon reports. "As far as the programming was concerned, it was quite easy. The bitmap animation wizard feature was useful to play with the pixels, and we stacked cues and multiple layers. Everything was linked to multiple timecode sequences, so it was quite efficient and tight."
(Jim Evans)
