Powderfinger on tour
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To support their highly successful fifth album, Vulture Street, Australian rock band Powderfinger are in the midst of a sell out arena tour of their homeland.
Their lighting designer, Jason Boyd, has been with the band for four years. Hailing from New York, Jason was introduced to the band when they opened for Coldplay in New York.
"That was a great show and I was really impressed by their songs," related Jason. "I then met the band backstage and we really hit it off. We're the same age and have the same musical tastes - I just happen to be from Austin, Texas whilst they're from Brisbane, Australia."
Jason comes from a theatre background and he once had his own small theatre company in New York before "eating became a priority"! As such every song is progammed and cued.
"I spent ten years doing theatre and dance in New York before meeting Natalie Merchant and working with her for three years," explained Jason. "After that it was kind of a chain reaction."
Earlier this year Jason had been introduced to the Martin MAC2000 fixture at Splendour in the Grass where Powderfinger were one of the headline acts.
"I had seen them on other shows and people had talked to me about them," he said. "Prior to that I had been using High End x.Spots but I found the MAC2000 was far brighter. I'm also using the MAC2000 Wash which is great."
The lighting rig comprises of 4 x Martin MAC2000 Performance, 11 x Martin MAC2000 Profile, 21 x Martin MAC2000 Wash, 6 x Studio Due CityColor, 15 x molefays with scrollers, par cans and ACLs. Added to that are 11 x Martin Atomic strobes and a WholeHog II for control.
"I really like the Atomic Strobes as they're very bright and they can produce a couple of cool effects such as a lightening effect," said Jason. "The molefays play a big part in the show. The guys really like the blinder look. In fact the lighting is a real blend of old school lighting, with the par cans and molefays, and moving lights coming in when relevant. The show starts small and gets gradually bigger. I introduce the molefays during the first song, the ACL's in the second and so on."
For the first four songs a red drape is used for a backdrop. This drops for the fifth song to reveal a letterbox shaped LED wall that kicks in for a couple of songs. Then a couple of side LED walls come into action with video mainly stills of Vuture Street.
"The band really wanted a kind of Zen feeling to the stage and I really like that long horizontal look," said Jason. "Originally we were going to have four pods hanging from the sides but we ditched those. Then I was going to have a third mid stage truss but then I discovered we were going to have the LED wall and so I decided we didn't need any more lights."
Jason worked closely with the video company Fifty/Fifty to ensure that their images blended with and complimented the lighting.
"We tried really hard to integrate the colour, texture movement and tempo of everything," said Jason. "I did a lot of lighting designs with video in theatre in New York so I've had quite a bit of experience. We wanted this show to be theatrical, build and have sections."
Chameleon Touring Systems supplied the equipment and crew.
"My crew in Australia have been unbelievable - the best in Australia. Chameleon is also awesome. In fact I have had the best touring experience in eight years."
Crew
Jeff Pavey - Lighting Crew Chief
Luke Radin - Moving Light Tech
Pat Clarke - Dimmers
www.chameleon-touring.com.au

Entrepreneur of the Year Awards

Brad Wright of Lightwright Productions recently designed, programmed and operated the lighting for the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards at Melbourne Crown Casino with a rig supplied by Staging Connections (Melb), The Look (Sydney), Phaseshift (Melb) and Roger Hind (Sydney).
Before this grand final, Brad has been touring with the show over the last few months doing the regional events and this rig was a beefed up version of what he had been using for the regional events.
The event is put on by Ernest & Young each year and the winner travels to Monte Carlo to represent Australia.
The rig included: 13 x Martin MAC500, 12 x MAC250+, 4 x MAC600, 6 x MAC300, 70 x Martin Roboscan 518 (in house table lights), 20 x 1.2k fresnels, 6 x 650w fresnels, 4 x 1.2k profiles, 3 x C layPaky Shadow follow spots (2 short throw, 1 long throw), 2 x 4k Tracers + dmx converters (used inside the ballroom for finale moment), 1 x star curtain, 6 x custom light boxes (set pieces on revolves), 4 x DF50, 1 x F100, In house dimmer system, 1 x hog 1000
and 1 x Hog II.

Rugby World Cup Opening Ceremony
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An estimated TV audience of one billion tuned in to the Opening Ceremony for Rugby World Cup 2003 where a total of 198 Martin MAC moving head fixtures turned Sydney's Telstra Stadium into a sea of colour, movement and pattern. With a budget of A$5 million, this was one of the most technically advanced shows ever produced in the country. The event combined culture with contemporary entertainment to salute the internationalism of rugby and the game's values of heritage, camaraderie, passion and teamwork.
"We set out to create a theatrical style ceremony using rich visual effects and a broad spectrum of musical styles," said ARU Director of Ceremonies, Andrew Walsh.
Lighting designer Mark Hammer was involved in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Ceremonies and Centenary of Federation celebrations where he gained valuable experience for this major event in his career. When he saw the schedule for the event meant that there was really no time to program the lighting, and that the dress rehearsal would be the first rehearsal, Mark decided to program the show with Martin ShowDesigner.
"Having used WYSIWYG on the Olympics I could see the benefit of having numbers in the console so at least you've got something to build off once you're in rehearsals," he said. "I wanted to go in with as much of the show programmed as possible. A lot of it then changed but at least we had a solid start."
Early on in the design process Mark realised that he was going to need some extraordinary professional help, as well as exceptional back up, so he turned to Show Technology, the Australian distributor for both Martin and MA Lighting. Show Technology's Vince Haddad and Andrew Winslade supplied 24-hour technical support throughout the design process, installation, rehearsals and actual event. Show Technology offered their showroom for in which to program the show and this begun on September 22nd, the first rigging day of the lights in the stadium.
"By then I knew everything was going in as planned and any problems would be minor," explained Mark. "I decided to pre-program the show with Martin ShowDesigner. I was particularly interested in the Ethernet element. You don't have to have converter boxes running out from the console to the system - ShowDesigner plugs straight into the console through their Ethernet. It meant we could talk to the entire system with the minimum amount of fuss."
Jason Fripp and Paul Collison programmed the show and operated the consoles on the night. Paul has used Martin ShowDesigner extensively since it was introduced.
"I was ready to expect a good result with ShowDesigner on this job, as I normally do, but I was astounded at how accurate it was," he said. "It all comes down to how well drawn it is in the first place and Peter Neufeld did a fantastic job of modelling the stadium with Vectorworks. Andrew and Vince then put in all the fixtures. It meant that once we were on site, the touch ups were very limited.
"The amount of programming we got done off site really gave us a good indication of the looks and positions we were able to deliver."
The off line ability of ShowDesigner was one of the most important elements in the whole design process of the Ceremony. The ability to plug the lighting consoles into the network and view in real time what the fixtures could achieve was off immeasurable help to the team.
Initially the team spent five days programming at Show Technology, followed by a few days at the venue before returning to Show Technology whilst the venue was in use for the NRL Grand Final.
"Again, because the drawings were so accurate it was easy to flit between stadium and the off line world without too much of a drama," added Paul. "This led to increased productivity as the few days we had to leave the venue weren't wasted."
Controlling the event were two MA Lighting grandMA consoles, bumped up to 4096 DMX channels each.
"When I told Andrew Walsh I only needed two operators he was very surprised as they had ten on the Olympics," laughed Mark. "Obviously we used less fixtures than on the Olympics but the grandMA can run eight streams of DMX whereas the Hog, used on the Olympics, could only run four.
"Being an Artisan and a Hog person, I approach the grandMA from that angle and it's such an easy desk to get around. We could always find what we needed really quickly. At first we were going to time code the show, something that's simple to do with a grandMA, but we found that the time code information we were getting from other departments wasn't reliable so I decided to call the show instead."
The grandMA is also Paul Collisons' console of choice.
"I wouldn't want to use anything else and I fully expected them to live up to the job - which they did!" he said. "Asking a console to spit out eight streams of DMX is a big ask, nothing else really does it. They performed admirably. We were in a multi-user environment where we had the main console set up in the programming area with two MA Light consoles on the field linked back into the network. This meant we could push buttons down of the field, see results and have that information recorded back on the main console. There was no need to carry desks from one end of the stadium to another. The MA Light consoles then became the tracking back-ups for the show."
The control was run through Ethernet with a fibre optic main system encircling the stadium. Off that Cat5 runs broke out to ELC DMX nodes that turned the Ethernet into DMX. DMX cables were run to DMX distribution from there. Vince Haddad configured the ELC nodes on a laptop so they were already preset meaning the whole system was ready to go before set up.
"Vince was always there when we powered up to make sure they all came on line," commented Mark. "Vince and Raff Buono looked after all the data side - I knew that would be a huge job in itself and really it was a standalone department. It didn't miss a beat because they could see the nodes come online and if there was a problem it could be solved very early on. It was a reliable system that allowed us to power up the fixtures in record time."
With the lack of rehearsal time Mark admits he had to wing a few things on the night and that there were a few late changes, however he reported that the system functioned amazingly.
The large Martin MAC rig included: 56 MAC2000 Wash (8 with barndoors), 16 MAC2000 Profile E, 44 MAC2000 Profile, 20 MAC2000 Performance, 46 MAC600, 4 MAC300 and 12 MAC550.
"I have to say that I've been a Vari*lite person for many years, and there's still a place in my heart for them, but I think that Martin has really changed the whole moving light market," said Mark. "There was an elitist element with Vari*lite and Martin have bashed that door down! They've made moving lights a standard in any lighting system. I really enjoy working with them especially as they're so reliable."
When designing the lighting for the opening ceremony, Mark had to take into account budget and power as well as the creative element. The majority of the lighting system was designed around how much power the venue could supply.
"I'd rather spend the budget on lights than cabling and generators," Mark said. 'It wasn't that hard. The output on fixtures today is so much better than at the Olympics where they had a team of people to deal with power alone. The MAC2000 Wash outputs 33,000 lumens whereas the Cyberlight Turbo used on the Olympics, have only 12,500 lumens."
Mark was particularly impressed with the MAC2000 Performance fixtures that were situated around the field of play.
"The Performances were definitely my pick of the show," he stated. "I've used them before and I knew that they'd do well, but I was really happy with them. They're a fantastic light and the fact that we could shutter off on a fifty-metre throw and still get great intensity was amazing. That was the clincher in the deal.
"There were three areas in the stadium from which to light the field: one up high on rigged trusses, at Level 3 and at ground level. Each of the twelve trusses held four MAC2000 Profiles and four MAC2000 Washes.
"The only manually focused fixtures on the trusses were Studio Due CityColor," said Mark. "All the fixtures focused on the field of play were automated because I didn't want to lose time manually refocusing after a windy night or truss adjustment. At least with a moving light you can adjust your presets. The Washes and Profiles were great. When we first powered up the Profiles on the night of Friday September 26th, we put them into a colour roll across the stadium. Andrew Walsh was at rehearsals down the road and he had to race up to the stadium to find out just what the lights were!
"The MAC2000 Profiles did a great job highlighting certain areas whilst the Washes coloured larger areas. It was good to be able to interchange between the two. If I weren't using them on the field I'd kick them out into the audience for camera effect. Also, when you go into the tight zoom mode on the MAC2000 Washes, the zoom lens kicks out and you get even more light output which was tremendous and we used that a lot."
The sixteen MAC2000's with electronic ballasts were rigged on the Level 3 area, eight on the east side and eight on the west side, where they could shoot flat across the field. Their extra output, 23,000 lumens compared to a magnetic ballast of 19,000, was used for the specially designed gobos, named the pizza gobos and manufactured by Gobotech, which were used extensively in the last segment. Pizza gobos were also used in the MAC Performances placed on the field where they could shoot up into the stands.
"We talked about producing more gobos, like the IRB logo, but decided that the Pigi could do all of that," said Mark. "That was fine by me as it gave me more budget!"
The large Pigi element in the Ceremony meant that Mark had to work closely with Peter Milne of The Electric Canvas to make sure the lighting worked in with the large projected images.
"That's when I decided that the Martin MAC2000 Washes with barndoors would be ideal on the ground," Mark told. "When the Pigi is dominant the lighting comes from the ground level and MAC2000 washes with barndoors prevented light spilling onto the PIGI images, whilst still picking out set elements or people. By being able to shutter them down I could avoid hitting the audience or field of play. We tried it one night without the shutters and we realised then just how good they were!"
The first MAC550 fixtures off the assembly line were sent to Australia for this important event. Twelve of them were used on the roll out rugby ball shaped stage.
"It's a great little unit," remarked Mark. "We needed something to give the stage emphasis and then kick out from there. I used the animation wheel on a few looks - when the band George were onstage we were kicking them around the field and they were hitting the audience behind too. They really are a neat little fixture, lightweight with lots of punch. I'd like to have done more with them but for this application, which was more of an effect type, they were great. The zoom capacity is really good; you can throw them out and get good coverage or kick them out for effects."
A circle of MAC600's on Level 3, set out symmetrically as they were often on camera, was used for audience lighting.
"Most of the photographic cameras were situated near Level 3 and so the MACs supplied a bit of a lift for them."
For further audience lighting, Mark used 8 Studio Due CityColor 2.5K and 8 CityColor 1.8K. Six more CityColor 1.8 were placed on vertical trusses, north and south, lighting the walls behind the screens. Six Minicity 250 fixtures provided colour and shape to the Orchestra Stage.
24 Martin Atomic Strobes were placed in a circle on the underside of the stadium roof to deliver effective strobe chases around the venue.
When Mark put the equipment spec for the Ceremony out to tender he made sure that the lights requested could be used regularly in a hire department after the event.
"There's nothing worse than someone requesting a light for a major event that then just sits in the factory. There is a lot of MAC stuff coming through - the MAC2000 Washes are good, the MAC2000 Profiles are reliable and have been around a while. I knew companies already had some of the gear. Martin has certainly nailed a few markets and, what's even better, is that they've made some. The MAC's have become an industry standard and that's good."
Chameleon Touring Systems, who supplied the equipment and crew for the Ceremony, already had an extensive stock of Martin gear and were more than happy to buy some more.
"The Chameleon crew were fantastic, the way the system was prepped and the way it worked impressed everybody," said Mark. "There were a lot of long hours spent there but they were very positive, I was very impressed."
Crew
Lighting Designer: Mark Hammer
Console programmers/operators: Jason Fripp and Paul Collison
Production Coordinator: Brad Gander
Followspot Caller: Peter Neufeld
Technical Manager: Nick Eltis
Technical Assistance: Vince Haddad
Lighting Crew: Raff Buono, Steve Richards, Pat Clarke, Rob Baker, Cliffe Bothwell, Luke Radin
Rigging: TriPoint
Rigging Consultant: Tiny Good
www.showtech.com.au

Electric Canvas deliver Rugby Heroes
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The Electric Canvas projected stunning images of past and present rugby heroes onto the side of Sydney's 26-floor AMP building at Circular Quay during the recent Rugby World Cup. The 90m x 13m images were created by four Pigi projectors tiled together each with different keystone correction determined entirely by CAD simulation.
www.theelectriccanvas.com.au

CLS debut their new Martin MAC550 fixtures
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Keeping up with the latest in lighting technology, CLS have purchased twelve of the new Martin MAC550 moving head fixtures for their hire department. Hot off the production line, the MAC550's are already in demand by CLS customers.
The new MAC 550 features unprecedented illumination for a 400W fixture, astounding graphics and animation, all wrapped within the award winning design of the MAC 2000. Combined with its motorised zoom and new colour and gobo motors and unique gobo animation system, it is a small revolution in the world of quiet, mid-sized fixtures.
The MAC550's had their debut at the October Toybox Dance Party held at Sydney's Metro.
Equipment included:
10 x Martin MAC2000
1 x Hog Lighting Console
6 x Martin MAC550
1 x Jands Echelon 1K Console
1 x 32amp Distribution Board
4 x 3m CLS Radius Circular Alloy Tri Truss
4 x 2m CLS Radius Circular Alloy Tri Truss
9 x 3m CLS Alloy Tri Truss
4 x Steel Base Plates
2 x DF50 Diffusion Foggers
Pictured is CLS' Managing Director Trevor Lloyd with one of his MAC550
www.clsa.com.au

MAC250 Entours dazzle Melbourne events

Eighteen year old lighting designer Arosh Fernando recently had the great opportunity of securing two major events in Melbourne through his company WooHah Productions.
On the 26th of September Arosh had the privilege of designing the lighting for the 'Melbourne Festival of Praise' a religious event held at the Robert Blackwood Hall in Monash University.
"As I have always been a major user and fan of Martin lighting I naturally looked to their range first," said Arosh. "I chose four of the newly released Martin MAC250 Entours along with two Martin Roboscan 918 and four Martin Robocolour Pro 400."
The four Entours were placed on 3 metre trusses on each corner of the stage with the front two trusses holding the Roboscans as well. The trusses were illuminated with the Pro 400s. These were used in conjunction with the 48 Par 64s already rigged in the hall.
"From the moment the Entours were up and running I fell in love with them!" stated Arosh. "I was amazed to see how quickly they moved. Having worked with the Martin MAC250 for many years, these new Entours were amazing. Not only the movement, but also the light output was second to none. I would have to say that in my opinion, the Entours are the brightest 250W lamp fixture out in the market right now. And since these fixtures were brand new they gave a matching output to the 575W Roboscans. The extra gobo wheel worked like magic when I needed to project images on to the wall and through the smoke the beams were mesmerizing. The feedback from the audience was impressive and the Entours received great praise for their slick design, fast movement and amazing light output."
The following week, Arosh also designed the lighting for 'Bathiya & Santhush', who are Sri Lanka's platinum selling artist. Held at Kingston City Hall the concert attracted close to 1000 people from the local Sri Lankan community.
"Having been dazzled the previous week, I couldn't go past the Entours for not only its features but also for its price," continued Arosh. "I used four Entours on the back bar along with three Martin MAC600 and two Martin MAC250 on the floor, with another two MAC600 and one MAC 300 on the front bar."
Arosh reported that all of the Martin fixtures used in the course of the two weeks worked absolutely flawlessly. And being an amateur, he found the fixtures very easy to use.
"I'm eagerly waiting to use the brand new Martin MAC550," he concluded.
Phaseshift Production supplied the equipment apart from the MAC250 Entours, which were supplied by Pro Light & Sound.
www.showtech.com.au

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