"First tentative discussions around The Voice began late in 2013, and December of that year, draft 1 budgets were being produced. Two years later it was on us," said Chris.
"When I eventually got sign off I was both elated and terrified at the same time," Chris shares. "I don't think I slept for four days before I could speak to anyone and say, 'Right, let's start talking and dealing with this.'
Realising the scale of the task at hand, and that lighting was such a key component of a show this nature, putting together a like-minded team of people together to do the show justice was paramount. Joshua Cutts was appointed lighting designer, and after a pitch process, Dewet Meyer of JDM Unlimited was appointed set designer. Multi-Media's Auriot Booyes was appointed head of audio, which was obviously an integral part of the show. He also backed up as assistant project manager to Chris.
From a lighting point, Joshua has control on a full MA2 System. The MA solution comprises of a grandMA2 Light, an onPC Command Wing, MA NPU, MA VPU Light, MA 4Port Node, Fibre Network Switch all on a fibre network.
The musical director on the South African show is James Bassingthwaighte, and he and Josh are the pioneers of the use of timecode in South Africa. "James and I worked very closely together," said Josh. "I did a lot of the groundwork for timecode and how to implement it very quickly on The Voice. Timecode is almost like the nervous system of the show, without it, it wouldn't work. It allows me more precision for all my cues and I'm not afraid of a zero type cue time.
"My vision was to pixel map as always. I needed big fixtures with large RGB pixel counts in them, so hence I wanted to try Robe Robin CycFX 8s for the first time as a back wall feature. I used Robin LEDBeam 100s between the pixels.
As the studio is relatively small, Josh used Robin Pointes for sharp, hard beams or he would zoom out for gobo work. The workhorses, Robin LEDWash 600s, created a blanket was of colour over the space and audience. There were also LED PARS and LED battens.
(Jim Evans)
