Last week at work I was on the setup, operation, and strike of the Vetri Great Chefs Event benefitting Alex's Lemonade Stand in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. This was a super cool event for a great cause and originally I was not going to operate it, but the week prior that aspect of the event was given to me as an opportunity to become more acquainted with the Jands Vista boards we use at Advanced Staging.
Lets look at what the event looked like and what went into it!
One of the buildings in the Navy Yard.
The event took place in one of the Urban Outfitters buildings in the yard.
The stage before the event began.
For the stage setup, we used Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast LED units to uplight the drape behind the stage, and used an array of four Martin MAC Aura units as a stage wash (overkill for a stage wash? Maybe. But easier to run power between and focus? Absolutely).
The Colorblasts uplighting the drape, this is before I focused them so they're all a bit messy and the cabling is pretty ugly. We only used one "brain" and ran all the units to it in the center. Less DMX daisy chaining had to be done this way.
The MAC Aura stage wash.
The MAC Auras were all hung from a 10ft aluminum pipe which was rigged to a jib arm in the building's architecture using 6' gak slings and shackles. I set the color of the unit's beam to be balanced as close to 5600K as possible for the convenience of our cameras, which proved to be a challenge as the Auras are slightly lavender when at their "home" color. I also set the "aura" backing light of the unit to be a bright yellow so when the units were not actively lighting the stage, they would still be proudly showing off the Alex's Lemonade colors!
One of the side areas of the event, here you can see the uplighting on the wall, which was achieved with City Theatrical QolorPoint lights.
The final element of the setup was uplighting along all of the walls in one of the side spaces of the event. This look was created using City Theatrical QolorPoint LED lights controlled using wireless DMX Showbabys. As the units have a tendency to operate with a delay from the board, I set them to an alternating yellow and orange pattern (for Alex's Lemonade of course!) and let them sit without adjustment through the event.
The obligatory console photo.
The event was all operated via a PC running the Jands Vista software, controlled by an S1 surface. I'm still fairly new to these consoles, so it was nice having a pretty basic show as my first true foray into programming it. I chose to use two cuelists with one cue each, one list for the uplights around the venue, behind the stage, and the yellow Aura backlights, and one for the MAC Aura stage wash. With these lists written, I could just use the corresponding faders on the S1 to adjust intensities as needed as the event progressed.
That's all for now, the summer is a somewhat slow time for events, so posts to this blog regarding Advanced Staging may be few and far between for now. But that doesn't mean I don't have other projects to talk about, so be sure to check back periodically to see what I'm up to!