Altar Boyz, The Bristol Riverside Theatre, Bristol PA.

Lighting designer David Pedemonti specified a Jands Vista S3 console, his desk of choice, to provide lighting control for a regional production of the hit US Off Broadway show, Altar Boyz.

David was particularly impressed with the Vista’s ability to combine big bold looks with the show’s precise comic timing, and how quick and easy the show was to programme using the console’s unique visually based lighting plot.

Summarizing his experience of the Vista, David commented: “As a theatrical lighting designer, I am always searching for a console that handles well the conventional fixtures along with the moving heads and LEDs. The Jands Vista, for me, has addressed the entire process of cueing a show for all types of fixtures. The Vista’s interface and timeline make the concept of lighting much more user friendly, particularly when working with video and audio in a multimedia production.”

Cliff Richard and the Shadows 2009-2010 tour

Lighting and video designer Derek Jones specified a Jands Vista S3 console to provide lighting, IMAG and video control for the 2009 / 2010 Cliff Richard & The Shadows international tour. The sold-out tour recently completed shows at major UK and European arenas, and re-commences in February for a series of dates in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

When Derek discussed the choice of control console with UK and European tour lighting supplier, Lite Alternative, they suggested the Jands Vista S3. Having jumped between using many other consoles, Derek thought it would be a good opportunity to experience for himself the Vista’s graphical based approach to programming. On the strength of trying the free Vista demo software and then using the S3 for a one-off corporate show, he purchased a console to use for the tour.

Derek commented: “I felt very comfortable using the console, particularly the timeline editing function, which appealed to me having used timeline based editing for video editing. I was a bit nervous about the idea of using an unfamiliar console on such a major tour for the first time, but after trying the desk with success on a corporate show and a few hours of the tour rehearsals, I felt completely at home with the Vista.”

Having worked separately for both Cliff Richard and The Shadows over the past ten years, Derek was keen to design a show which suited both acts’ visual style, so he incorporated a mixture of traditional and high-tech show elements.

Derek wanted a multi-functional scenic / IMAG backdrop to save on truck space and provide a dynamic above-stage show replay system which would give the audience a central view of the IMAG. He specified a 13.5m wide by 4.5m high PixLED screen, supplied by XL Video UK.

For the lighting, he opted for a goalpost truss surrounding the screen featuring MAC700 spots and MAC2000 washes, 19 ETC Source Four fixtures and additional floor-mounted MAC700 units. Video came from a Catalyst media server. The Lighting, video and live camera feeds were all triggered from the S3 console.

Summarising his experience of the Vista, Derek commented: “The Vista has served its purpose very well. I feel very much at home with it. Because Vista is very software based, I can use any of the hardware options that Jands have to offer and still feel that I’ve got a full console in front of me.rdquo;

Vista S3 and WYSIWYG join LD Glen Hunter for The Good
Fight in New York.

The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) is one of the
most prestigious theatre schools in the country, and was recently selected to
tour The Good Fight at the 2007 New York Musical Theatre Festival. Written
by Nick Enright (best known for “The Boy from Oz”), with music composed by
David King, The Good Fight is set in Australia during the first World War. It’s
based on themes such as mateship and centers around the tale of a
legendary boxer, Les Darcy, and his rise from blacksmith to the world’s most
famous boxer. Performed for the first time in the United States, the New
York Musical Theater Festival showcases new musicals from Australia,
Canada, South Korea the United Kingdom and the United States.

Lighting Designer Glen Hunter is a 3rd year lighting design student at WAAPA
and chose the Jands Vista and Cast Software’s WYSIWYG as his weapons of
choice for the tour. Glen commented: “One of the great challenges of the
show was that we opened the day following a 30 hour flight to New York,
which gave us a day to load in the set, lighting, plot, tech run and then open
that evening. I made a decision early on to completely pre-plot the show in
Perth with the Vista and WYSIWYG”.

When it came to choosing the console, Glen had no doubt that the Vista was
the desk he needed, having previously used it in major WAAPA productions
for West Side Story and Sweet Charity. “If you’re studying lighting, WAAPA
would have to be one of the best equipped schools in the Southern
Hemisphere. Due to the efforts of staff like Joseph Mercurio and Brian Anslow
we’ve been very fortunate to have the Vista since it was first released, backed
up with the power of a WYSIWYG visualization studio”, Glen said.
For The Good Fight, Glen chose to take a 1024 channel Vista S3 lighting
control system, which provides full control of a lighting rig when connected
to a laptop or desktop PC running the Vista software. “The Vista is one of the
most advanced desks on the market today, and importantly the S3 is
extremely portable”, he said.

As well as portable, Glen found the whole process of setting the desk up
faster: “Until you use the Vista, you have no idea how much faster patching,
and updating a patch can be. I practically got rid of my cheat sheets because
you can create graphical views in the Vista which look pretty much how you
like – either like the physical rig or in color groups, like on a cheat sheet. The
flexibility is infinite”.

“Each week before the show I would receive an updated plan of the generic rig
in the venue from the festival LD, then I would update my configuration in
WYSIWYG. Before the first rehearsals began, I built all the looks, palettes,
positions and around 200 cues in the Vista over a period of about 1 week”,
Glen said. “I was able to see exactly how each of the cues would look in
WYSIWYG, refine them and then show them to my Director to more clearly
convey my vision for each scene”.

Another aspect of the production process was that Glen was really impressed
by the speed and flexibility of WYSIWYG. “I was able to create the entire venue
and rig in under a day, and connecting it to the Vista was a breeze. WYSIWYG
has some great tools for getting a controllable rig up and running really
quickly, such as the Quick Tools feature”, Glen said.

I was very nervous about the Wybron scrollers as I had never used them and
had no way of testing my plot with real scrollers before leaving Perth – other
scrollers I have worked with can be notoriously unreliable. The fact that I
could build looks and control them in WYSIWYG gave me a lot of comfort!
When I got to New York everything worked perfectly. If I get the chance I will
use the Wybron scrollers again as they work beautifully and produce great
colors”, Glen said.

During blocking and dress rehearsals with the performers, Glen had Vista and
WYSIWYG set up on the plotting desk next to the Production Manager, Daniel
Jongen. “Dan would call the cues during rehearsal, I would practice playing
them through and I could see the results immediately in WYSIWYG. The
beauty of the system was that I could immediately identify any blocking
changes with the performers and update the positions and cues on the fly.
Extra cues could be added very easily. In particular, timing changes could be
made instantly and I could play back the results in WYSIWYG”, Glen said.
At the end of the 2-week rehearsal period the show had been fully plotted,
and all that remained was to head for New York and load in the show. The
Vista’s generic fixture model proved to be vital. “One of the big challenges
was that there were other shows using the venue, and as such we had a
generic rig with a mix of around 100 ETC Source 4 generics and Wybron CXI
color scrollers. Early in the design process we expected to be using City
Theatrical AutoYokes with Wybron CXI scrollers. You can imagine my
surprise when we arrived in the venue, hours before opening, and discovered
they had been replaced with Vari-Lite VL1000’s! The Vista allowed me to
change the fixtures in under 1 minute without having to re-plot the show.
The venue techs were really blown away, they had never seen anything like it”,
Glen said.

Another challenge was that none of the lights in the generic rig could be refocussed as the rig being used by other shows. “Despite my best efforts to
faithfully reproduce the venue and the rig in WYSIWYG, there were some looks
that just didn’t work as planned. The afternoon before the show opened we
needed to add or change around 60 cues to get the best out of the rig. The
Vista made this a breeze – for the movers we simply re-plotted the positions
and updated the color and intensity palettes. For the generics I would rework
a look and then simply copy and merge the new look into all the other cues
that needed updating. The Vista’s visual timeline made it extremely simple for
me to check that I had updated all the instruments correctly and that the
attributes were tracking correctly.”

Glen knew from previous experience that when you’re a million miles from
home you can never have too many backups. “Once again, the Vista came to
the rescue. I set my Production Manager’s Macintosh Powerbook Pro up with
a copy of the Vista software and the show, next to my own desk, with a spare
1024 channel USB-DMX dongle. That way, if there were any problems, all I
had to do was plug the DMX into the Mac. During testing of the backup in
Perth, I was genuinely impressed by how easy it was to set up the software on
either a PC and Mac and get it up and running”.

Glen’s conclusion: “I’ve really gotten to know the Vista well over the past 3
years and its hard to imagine using another desk for theatre shows where
you have a lot of moving lights. I’ve only just started to scratch the surface
with WYSIWYG and I’m truly impressed by how this software made the process
of touring a lighting design so easy”.

About WAAPA
The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) has an
impressive range of production, rehearsal, teaching and performance
facilities available to support students in their pursuit of excellence.
WAAPA provides production and design students with the most
performances and the greatest diversity of any arts training institute in
Australia.

Lighting Designer Shailesh Gopalan and Programmer Becket Tundatil carried a Vista S3 system for the Indian star’s tour of North America.

India’s Top Film Composer And One Of The World’s Most Popular Musicians, A R Rahman is the pride of his nation, having sold more than 100 million albums. The 3rd Dimensional Tour kicked off on the 27th of May 2007, taking in 9 cities across North America.

Lighting equipment for the tour included

• 30 x Mac 2000
• 12 x Mac 600
• 8 x Mac 2000 wash
• 20 x Source Fours 750′
• 14 x Par 64
• 2 x DL2 Digital Light
• Led Curtain

Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair has specified Jands Vista T2 and S3 consoles for award-winning UK band Keane’s current world tour.

The 16 month tour to promote latest album Under The Iron Sea began last Apriland has incorporated every size of venue, ranging from intimate club shows to arenas. The shows culminate in August with festival headlining slots.

Keane embarked on the North American leg in May, which includes dates in LA, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, District of Columbia and New York.

LD Rob Sinclair has enjoyed a highly successful working relationship with the band since taking over lighting duties – something which is mirrored by his partnership with the Jands Vista console since its launch back in 2004.

Rob commented: “I absolutely adore the console. It’s made my life so much easier and more productive, and makes me look like a much better LD than I really am!”

For this tour, Rob’s brief from the band was to make the stage look as cluttered as possible and give it a sense of space and depth. Rob worked with video pioneer Kevin Godley, who came up with the concept of a forest of aluminium vertical poles with light shining through it to give the set a very 3D perspective.

The rig for the US leg was supplied by Chicago-based Upstaging Inc. and is a scaled-down version of the European arena show. Featuring MAC 700 spot and wash moving lights along with a mixture of Airstar balloons, conventional fixtures and Atomic Strobes, the rig also includes a Kinesys motor control system using custom Pantographs specially built for the tour by Blackburn-based HSL Group.

There is also a strong video element in Rob’s design, which consists of a mixture of abstract images and live close-up feeds from four remote cameras. Three Catalyst media servers supplied by UK-based Scenographic provide the custom video content, which was made for the tour by Rob and Tom Palliser from Whitehouse Pictures.

The wide popularity of the band has meant the production has visited a variety of venues in Europe, North America, Asia and South America.

In this respect the Vista’s ease of use and time-saving features, such as the generic fixture model, have really helped Rob deal with the unpredictable nature of playing completely different size venues from night to night and the challenges of using locally sourced rigs.

He commented: “After having such a good experience with the Vista on the last Keane tour it really was a no-brainer when it came to choosing a desk.”

Commenting on the increased benefits with this tour he added: “I did the first date a year ago and am still using the same Vista show file from day one, it’s just grown and grown with the tour. I only need to work on a song once and the console keeps it. If I’m using new fixtures I just change fixture types.”

Rob’s also been impressed by the overall user-friendliness of the console, leading him to control absolutely everything you see on stage with it, including the camera close-up shots which he cuts from the Vista using a preview monitor.

In addition to using a Vista T2 as the main production console, Rob has also been using a Mac-based Vista S3 to cope with some of the more intimate shows where the lighting was supplied locally.

As with previous Keane tours, the Vista consoles were supplied by UK-based Lite Alternative, who Rob has worked with for many years.

Lighting Designer John Rinaldi of Stage Light Design is one of the first UK customers to take delivery of a Jands Vista S3.

The company specialises in providing a full lighting design and production service for the exhibition and corporate events market, with major clients in the broadcast, telecommunications and electronics sectors.

Intrigued by the Vista’s overall concept and philosophy, John had been following its progress with much interest, but was waiting for the launch of a more compact and affordable version which would be a better fit with his budget and regular pattern of work.
He commented: “The majority of our work is exhibitions, which usually means packing all the lighting control equipment into a tiny little cupboard space on client’s stands. The S3 is ideal for this as I can use it with a laptop to program shows on the stand, and then when I’m happy with the show I can remove it and just play back from the laptop itself – solving any storage problems.”

The S3 control surface becomes a fully operational Vista console when connected to a PC running the Vista software and fitted with a separately purchased software unlock key for DMX output of up to 8,192 channels via Ethernet.

Before ordering his S3, John rented a T2 Vista on a large rig for the Intel stand at this year’s CeBIT exhibition in Germany. The rig consisted of 80 generics, 114 LED battens, 18 Pulsar Chromastrips, various Mac moving heads and well over 1500 channels of DMX.

He commented: “I felt that both the nature of the show and the lighting design leant itself really well to Vista’s way of working. As well as generics and moving heads for lighting the main stand itself, I had 114 LED battens top lighting the enormous ceiling. The brief was to change the ceiling colour, but I went one better and choreographed the colours with the content of the video walls, using SMPTE to lock the Vista onto the Video timecode.”

John split the 114 LED battens into four separate heads per unit to achieve some very bold, dynamic colour sweeps from side to side and front to back of the ceiling. He found controlling the fixtures very easy using the Vista’s layout screen as it created almost a picture of the ceiling from separate icons representing all 456 lights.

The show was programmed by Mark Jones. Stand design and project management was by 2LK Design Ltd.

John used the Vista T2 on several other corporate events before taking delivery in May of an S3 control surface with separately purchased 1024 channel dongle software unlock key.