A prototype of the Vector was seen at LDI in Las Vegas last October by Megan McGahan from the Australian television network GTV Channel 9. No stranger to Compulite, or to large-scale productions, McGahan spoke to network LD Rohan Thornton on her return and to Australian distributor Coemar De Sisti Australia (CDA), about the availability of a Vector for use on The Logies.
Compulite was initially cautious, as further testing of the system was still needed, but the company realized that there would be considerable benefits for the console's development cycle in being part of such an event. Following the decision to send a console and technical person 'down under', a duplicate system was set up at Compulite's head office in Israel, so that any software issues found in Australia could be duplicated, analysed and fixed immediately.
Having been LD on the annual production of the Logies for the past 10 years, Thornton had decided well in advance on a series of 'trigger-points' where he would evaluate the operation of the Vector. "If we hadn't achieved a certain amount of work by a certain time, I'd pull the plug," he explained. In this event, Thornton planned to revert to the studio's existing Compulite Sabre. However, he felt that the crew would benefit from running on the razor's edge (they were not aware of his 'trigger-points') - turning a straightforward, potentially mundane production into something a little more engaging - a "very exciting process to be part of," said Thornton.
With the Vector on its way, Channel 9 decided to incorporate multiples of High End's Catalyst system into the spec: Thornton asked about a second console, configured for Catalyst, and Compulite once again agreed, having, in fact, already begun development of the programming template for the system. Unfortunately, a snap transport-related strike in Israel meant that supplying two consoles on time became impossible. A solution presented itself in the form of two pre-production consoles which were being demonstrated in Canada: after some difficulty, two incomplete consoles arrived in CDA's warehouse five days before the show. Compulite's Alon Cohen then proceeded to install the necessary hardware and software.
Four days before the show, the consoles, along with Cohen and CDA chief Peter Kemp, were delivered to the Palladium at Melbourne's Crown Casino complex. This was the first time that Thornton had actually seen the Vector and most of the following day was spent with the operators familiarizing themselves with the console and arranging the lighting patch.
Being pre-production models, the DMX output and the SMPTE hardware had not yet been installed. The former was not really a problem, since Compulite's Emix Ethernet output was available. The SMPTE components, however, proved more of a problem. The Catalysts were to be used on the show's opening number and, in such a critical segment of the show, timecode input was needed to control the smaller Vector. There was no time for the necessary PCB to be delivered to Australia, so the decision was taken to utilize the smaller of the two consoles (which was intended for Catalyst control) for all the rig's dimming circuits and 24 moving lights, plus around 120 scrollers offstage. These new changes meant that Cohen needed to re-configure the patch on the console and also to train a second operator.
The day prior to the show was devoted to programming and familiarization for the two Vector operators, Megan and Paul Buck, who encountered a number of software glitches: when these occurred, Cohen e-mailed the console's files immediately to Israel, where a team was on standby to analyze the problem and reprogram the software. As a result, Compulite managed in a few days to iron out many of the bugs which remained in the software.
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