Rob Thorne, of Forefront and lighting designer for the project, asked Phaseshift Productions to make his design come to life for the 2010 Planetshakers Conference held at Melbourne's Hisense Arena.
"Phaseshift did a great job and I love working with them," Rob said. "I've worked with them a few times and they've always been very good."
With six weeks preparation consisting of 3D lighting programming and video content creation, the whole production setup went into Hisense arena in just one day. Restrictions on venue availability meant that the crew only had a very short time frame to get quite a large production setup and in place.
Production manager for the show was Phaseshift's Troy Brown, whilst Jeremy Nolan was Phaseshift's senior systems tech - between them they ensured the load in and out was trouble-free, they also assisted in making the gig flow smoothly with very few problems.
For the event, the stage was divided into four different zones; the back wall, the ceiling area raked at 45° and two side walls. The back wall comprised 30 Martin LC Panels, seven Martin MAC700 profiles lower down and above them seven MAC2000 profiles and seven MAC2000 washes. In the ceiling were a further 18 Martin LC Panels with 14 MAC2000 profiles and 14 MAC2000 washes. 10 Martin Atomic strobes were in the ceiling with 10 more in the back wall. Each side wall had six LC Panels plus 10 MAC700 profiles and washes. Also on stage were six MAC250 profiles and four MAC250 wash with beam kit. House lighting consisted of 16 MAC700 wash and eight MAC600 wash fixtures.
The show required a high impact design with lots of colour, visuals and movement and this time the Martin LC Panels provided a dynamic video backdrop. Rob was careful to ensure that the LC Panel visuals tied in closely with his lighting design. He also set out to take the coolux further than he ever had before in terms of amount of video in the show and time code used. For this production he had one coolux Pro Manager and four Pro Players plus a touch screen widget for the drummer.
Rob happily admits his love for the coolux media server describing it as a great product to work with almost endless possibilities. Combined with the LC Panels, coolux gives him a creative freedom with lighting and visuals.
"The LC Panel is definitely a great product," said Rob. "I think most people are surprised at how good a 40mm pixel pitch looks from 30 metres away. One thing I like to do with all my designs is layering and that's anthor important part of the LC Panels because you can have gear running behind them and shining through. Everyone does movers behind them but I've also used plasma screens, LED par cans in fact a whole heap of different products."
The event also saw Rob using eight of the Jarag which impressed him with their brightness, ease of use and pixel pitch.
This was a great time for Phaseshift as they had just taken possession of 24 Martin MAC2000 washes. The washes spent little time in the factory before they were loaded back in the truck to join the rest of the gear on Planetshakers.
Phaseshift would like to thank Cairellie Showcraft, Entertainment Installations and Resolution X for helping with the number of LC Panels it took to pull of this great show.
(Claire Beeson)
