Blasted Mechanism Tour. ©Vasco Lopes.

Jands Vista I3 lighting consoles have provided show lighting control for the latest tours of high-profile Portuguese artists Blasted Mechanism and João Pedro Pais.

Portuguese lighting design company, Lamp On! Creative Solutions have three Vista I3 lighting consoles in their rental stock for use by its team of lighting designers; Vitor Azevedo, brother Pedro Azevedo and Rui Rodrigues. The company chose the mid-range Vista I3 model due to its combination of affordability and built-in Linux operating system, providing their ideal touring solution.

LD Vitor Azevedo used one of the Vista consoles on the recent João Pedro Pais Portuguese tour to launch their latest album, A Palma E A Mão. The wide variety of venue sizes, ranging from small clubs to large outdoor arenas, necessitated using different local suppliers and rigs on a daily basis. As with his previous tours using the Vista, Vitor found that the console’s generic fixture model allowed him to easily change fixture types as the rig changed from venue to venue.

Joao Pedro Pais Tour. ©Paulo Maria

He commented: “Touring means a lot of different things. We have to swap between different lighting equipment suppliers, different festival rigs with a lot more fixtures and theatre shows that involve a different patch every night. The Vista gives us the ability to cope with these daily changes and still maintain the same high quality stage looks. The console’s generic fixture model enables our shows to grow and be easily adapted.”

Lamp On! LD Pedro Azevedo has been impressed by the Vista’s visually-based user interface, which has enabled him to build his shows more effectively.

Pedro commented: “I have found the Vista much faster for creating the stage looks and effects I want than on previous consoles I have used. In commercial terms, this means I can give the customer a more rapid and efficient show, and as a result exceed their demands for the final production.”

Other Lamp On! clients whose shows have recently been controlled by the Vista include Buraka Som Sistema, TeraTron and the Anjos.

The company introduced freelance lighting designer, Cristóvão Veríssimo, to the Vista for the current international tour of electro-rock band Blasted Mechanism. After the introduction, Cristóvão received training and technical support for his first Vista tour from Portuguese dealer, Garrett Audiovisuals.

Blasted Mechanism have a reputation for their highly theatrical live shows, which involve elaborate
alien-themed costumes, visuals and unique musical instruments built for them. The Vista’s timeline has proved the perfect tool for the band’s vision, which requires perfect synchronisation between sound, image and light.

Featuring a main lighting rig supplied by Coimbra-based production company, Stageland, the show is timecoded, with a separate cuelist for each of the 27 songs and about 700 steps.

Cristóvão commented: “With the Vista’s timeline I can modify all parameters of fixtures and times of cues in a way that takes much less time than on other consoles I have used. I have finally found a lighting desk that really shares my visual way of thinking. Now I can do more sophisticated shows.”

© Dabney Forest

Once again, a Jands Vista T2 console has provided lighting control for an event winner at the InfoComm / LSA Staged Events Awards. Freeman received the 2010 ‘Best Overall Staging for a Corporate Industrial Entertainment Event’ award for their work on the American Library Association’s Annual Conference.

The annual awards are held at the InfoComm tradeshow and represent achievements in AV excellence in some of the most unique and challenging environments. One judge commented on the winning Freeman event:
“It is difficult for a lighting submission to grab attention when it’s up against so many great total staging projects with video. But lighting is one area that can own a show if it is done properly and this event exemplifies the power of light over the audience.”

Freeman, a world-leading provider of integrated services for face to face marketing events, provided full lighting, audio, video and scenic elements for the winning conference. The multi-day event featured 20 guest speakers discussing their works as well as an awards ceremony.

The event lighting design was by Freeman AV Chicago’s in house LD, Anne Sedlock with programming by Dabney Forest. Anne let Dabney choose her console of choice, the Jands Vista T2, a popular choice in Freeman AV Chicago’s rental inventory. Anne commented:
“We use the Vista T2 on almost all this style of show. It provides us with the flexibility and the ease of use we need to get our shows up and looking great in very little time.”

The challenge was how to give the single stage a unique look for each day of the conference presentations, as well as for the awards ceremony. Anne’s lighting concept was to make the stage scenic elements really stand out by using numerous unique looks to keep the lighting fresh.

For the main scenic element, a massive curved frame covered in white spandex material, Anne used Chroma-Q™ Color Split™ LED fixtures to provide subtle looks of gradiant color uplighting from the base of the structure. Chroma-Q™ Color Block™ compact LED units were used to get into the many curves of the scenic piece and add highlights where needed, as well as adding a hint of colour to the drape line upstage. In addition, Vari-Lite VL3500 Spots provided a layer of downlighting and texture. All fixtures were chosen from Freeman AV Chicago’s in-house inventory.

Summarising her experience of the Vista, Dabney commented:
“It’s not often we get such a great canvas to paint our lights on. As with many shows, for the ALA we got very little time to program. The Vista allows me to create looks efficiently and quickly. I know I can rely on the speed that the Vista’s interface offers to do the things I need to both fast and easily, whether ‘drawing’ precise shutter cuts on my VL3500s, quickly moving icons around my layouts as the rig changes, or copying whole looks across different fixture types. Then of course, there’s ‘extracts’. In the current economic environment, it’s rare for a show to allow for the kind of programming time that was standard in years past. Frankly, without the Vista I could not have made the intricate looks the show needed in the time I had available.”

Rent at SUNY Geneseo. Photo ©Benjamin Gajewski

The State University of New York at Geneseo has purchased a Jands Vista T2 full size console for its School of the Arts faculty, which provides degree courses in stage lighting design, technical theatre and stagecraft.

Located in the historic village of Geneseo, the University is a premier public liberal arts college with a rich tradition of academic excellence. The campus facilities include a state-of-the-art theatre used for practical lessons and assessments, as well as an array of faculty-directed and student-directed productions, community-produced shows, dance concerts and musical theatre revues.

With a focus on teaching students to use the very latest industry technologies, Johnnie Ferrell, associate professor of theatre and technical director at the School of the Arts, decided it was time to upgrade their lighting console to something more modern, powerful and capable of handing the increasing number of intelligent fixtures.

Being active in the U.S. Institute of Theatre Technology, he decided to visit the USITT show to get hands-on experience of the latest lighting consoles available. After evaluating several popular industry consoles, Johnnie was impressed by the Jands Vista so arranged a demonstration for himself and his students at the University, provided by Jands exclusive North American distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc.

The Vista’s modern, graphic interface, pen-tablet control and ease of use made a big impression on Johnnie and the students, so he purchased a full size T2 console for the University’s theatre via local company, BMI Supply in Queensbury, New York.

Johnnie commented: “I have never had a lighting desk that is so easy to use. You can set cues faster and easier than anything I have ever used. The patch is always a snap as well.”

The console is primarily being used in the University’s 386-seater Alice Austin Theatre to control a lighting rig which includes various Altman, ETC, Elation and Vari-Lite intelligent and conventional fixtures. The Vista has also been used in the campus’s 950-seater Wadsworth Auditorium and 150-seater Robert Sinclair Black Box.

Student productions programmed on the Vista include The Clean House, Fool for Love, Rent, Pirates of Penzance, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, as well as dance concerts every semester.

In addition to using the console on-site, the students also frequently edit their shows away from the campus using the free PC and native Mac-based Vista offline editor software.

Summarizing his experience of the Vista, Johnnie commented: “As my mentor stated about the Vista: did I want a lighting console that students could learn to program, or did I want a console that the students could light with? The students love the Vista and it has quickly become their console of choice.”