Ravenswood School for Girls is an independent Uniting Church Day and Boarding school for K-12 girls, situated in Gordon, an Upper North Shore suburb of Sydney New South Wales Australia. The school has been leading the way in terms of large scale theatre production with investments to its performing arts theatre, specifically with the implementation of Chauvet Professional fixtures to their lighting rig. These Chauvet Professional fixtures were been put into action with dazzlingly displays of drama and music to present shows such as Ravo Presents: ABBA, Grease The Musical, and numerous Dance performances over the last few years.
To start 2018 Jason Grimsted, Production & Events Technical Coordinator for the school went searching for lighting fixtures that would enable the school to maintain, as well as bring new levels of professionalism and looks to its school theatre for its upcoming production schedule. After having much success with its Chauvet Professional range in the past, Jason couldn’t look past the brand and again acquired fixtures to add to the schools impressive lighting inventory. The acquisition included 32 Chauvet fixtures including 12x Maverick MK2 Washes, 12x Rogue R1X Spots and 8 x Ovation E-910FC’s from Showtools International.
The Maverick MK2 Washes rewrites the rules on wash fixtures with its flawlessly even output and custom designed optics. Jason was impressed with the output and design possibilities the fixture provides, “The MK2 Wash is Powered by 12 (40 W) Osram RGBW LEDs and it will handle any application, even aerial washing, with ease, combined with a fully-featured RGBW LED yoke wash fixture with pixel mapping and zoom, 16 bit dimming with built-in colours for quick design possibilities and virtual gobo wheels which will allow us to accomplish impressive atmospheric effects, fast movement and zoom.”
The Rogue R1X Spot comes with a rotating 3-facet prism, a motorised iris and focus for beam shaping, as well as two gobo wheels, one of which rotates and has 7 interchangeable gobos for custom looks. Rogue R1X Spot shines brightly with a 170 W LED light source in a 16° beam angle for crisp gobo projections in a range of eight beautiful colours. “Previously, we had invested in the Rogue R1 Spots with tremendous success, so upgrading to the new Rogue R1X Spot was an easy choice, especially with a 170 W LED light engine for punchy, solid beams and Iris/3-facet prism for stunning visual effects. It’s the perfect light for innovation and creativity for drama productions. We also value the ability to reduce the output of the R1X to match our current stock of R1 Spots,” stated Jason.
With moving heads acquired, Jason was also looking for an ellipsoidal that had great output and dimming options and decided to acquire 8 of the Ovation E-910FC. The Ovation E-910FC is a high-performance ERS-style fixture with full RGBA-Lime colour mixing and colour temperature presets of 2800 to 6500 K that match the output of a tungsten source to perfection. ‘With full colour LED lighting, the Ovation E-910FC was a perfect choice for our upcoming theatre productions such as our Senior Musical, The Sound of Music. Combined with ultra-smooth 16-bit dimming, flat event field of light with superior colour mixing and Virtual Color wheel with colour matched to popular gel colors, and virtually silent operation this fixture is a great addition to our inventory,” claimed Jason. “An added bonus has been the ability to interchange our existing stock of Source Four profile zoom lenses with these fantastic fixtures,” he said.
With the addition of these new Chauvet Professional fixtures to the Ravenswood lighting rig, the school will now have the required lighting to enable different looks for their large-scale productions and continue to bring a level of theatre professionalism for years to come.
