Halifax, Canada-based Tour Tech East supplied both the Super WYG system for the ECMAs and technician Roy Mombourquette, who also served as the ECMA's crew chief. "The producers of the ECMA's were amazed when we were able to show them the actual camera shots!" says Mombourquette. "With the aid of WYSIWYG, we were able to demonstrate how many people would have obstructed views because of television cameras or other unforeseen obstacles."
This year's ECMAs were particularly challenging for the lighting department with six different stages, twelve musical numbers, over 150 moving lights and an extremely tight schedule. Colbert spent six days programming just the songs and house looks so that the limited amount of time in the arena could be spent fine-tuning and lighting the awards portion of the show. "It paid off big time since I ended up with over 300 cues," Colbert says, "and the only touch ups I had to make were those that I had noted while programming." Renaud adds: "I was really surprised by the results, once the rig was at trim, we could see some looks right away from what Colbert had programmed. The producers and I were extremely impressed."
The level of technical support they received from Cast Software while pre-programming the show also impressed Renaud, Colbert and Mombourquette. "We encountered a minor discrepancy in WYSIWYG with the VL 3000 spot," explains Mombourquette. "A quick call to Richard Jones at Cast, and he was able to email me the fix in mere minutes. Cast was also very helpful in shipping us more WYG-it units when we realized we only had one Vision 2000 interface in the shop."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
