Fred Mikeska, VP of US Sales & Marketing for Jands’ distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc., receives the WFX award on behalf of Jands from Brian Blackmore, Editor of Church Production Magazine.

Jands Stage CL lighting control console has been awarded two Worship Facilities Expo (WFX) 2013 New Technology Awards for innovation in Dallas, Texas.

The WFX New Product Technology Awards are an integral element of the high profile annual WFX show, and are designed to honor the most innovative and pioneering entertainment technology products for the House of Worship market.

A panel of distinguished members of the WFX Advisory Board and WFX Management, and Editors from the industry’s leading specialist Worship magazines, selected Jands Stage CL as Winner – Best Conventional Lighting Console; and Winner – Best Overall Lighting Product.

“The response from the market to the needs of churches over the past few years has been astounding,” says Jim Wagner, Managing Director of WFX. “As a result, the competition to be recognized as best in category in the WFX New Product Technology Awards is more fierce each year. The Jands Stage CL Lighting Console entry was evaluated by our panel of judges, who selected it as the winning entrant and a worthy recipient of the 2013 WFX New Product Technology Awards. Congratulations.”

Designed to get the most out of LED fixtures for smaller lighting rigs, the Jands Stage CL offers simple, intuitive manual controls and easy storing of looks. Each of its twelve channels has a Saturation encoder and a Hue encoder that LDs can adjust to set the desired color. As the dials are turned, an LED on the channel shows the color being created. And of course, each channel has the traditional fader and flash button to set the intensity of the light. The Stage CL also offers a wide selection of quick, easy to use pre-set colors and effects via its touch screen interface and can control up to 512 DMX channels, connecting either through the DMX-512 output or the Ethernet output (if the fixtures support Art-net).

The two WFX new Technology Awards follow the Jands Stage CL’s win at the SIEL Show in Paris, France. One of the premier international tradeshows for the live shows and events industry, the Stage CL was recognized with the prestigious “Les Etoiles du SIEL 2013” Lighting Product Award after impressing the expert judging panel with its easy operation and innovative design.

“The Jands Stage CL continues to be a major success for us,” says Fred Mikeska from A.C. Lighting Inc., which is the exclusive North American dealer for Jands. “We’re thrilled that the Jands Stage CL is being recognised with so many awards and that it’s making a real difference to lighting control and design in so many venues globally. It offers the flexibility to be a powerful control for experienced LDs, and intuitive enough so that users with little experience of lighting can achieve great results – making it ideal for the Worship market.”

Although designed specifically for LED fixtures, the Jands Stage CL is just as suitable for conventional lights and is incredibly easy to use.

Previous WFX New Technology Awards Winners include the Jands Vista lighting and media control system and Chroma-Q® Inspire™ LED house light – both exclusively available from A.C. Lighting Inc. in North America.

For more information or to arrange your demo of the Jands Stage CL, please contact:

North American Sales:

A.C. Lighting Inc.
Tel: +1 (416) 255 9494
Email northamerica@aclighting.com
Web www.aclighting.com

European Sales:

Jands Europe
Tel: +44 (0)1494 838 365
Email info@jands-europe.com

The smallest pair in the Jands Vista lighting and media control range won the award for ‘Best Moving Light Console – Small Format’ at the 2011 WFX expo in Dallas, Texas, USA.

The portable and compact Vista M1 and Vista S1 shared the spotlight, together with the second generation of software for the range – Vista v2 – which was launched earlier in the year.

The Awards are an integral element of the high profile annual WFX show, and are designed to honor the most innovative products available. The winners are selected by a panel of industry experts.

This is not the first time that the Jands Vista family has received one of the prestigious awards from WFX, in the past being honored not only with ‘Best Automated Lighting Controller’ but also ‘Best Overall Lighting Product’.

The 2011 WFX Award was collected on behalf of Jands by VP of sales and marketing at North American distributor A.C. Lighting Inc, Fred Mikeska. On accepting the award Fred commented “The team at Jands is really in tune with the market, they listen carefully to all of the input and feedback they receive from our extensive list of users. The Vista range is a great example of a company listening closely to its user base, then delivering a product that meets their needs. Vista v2 gives users of all levels the tools to deliver great looking events quickly and easily without having to resort to hours of complicated programming. A.C. Lighting Inc. is honored to receive the WFX Award on behalf of Jands.”

The Jands Vista control system has been enthusiastically adopted by many users, where its combination of simple, fast and flexible access with the power of controlling fine detail has made it a winner with users looking to deliver great looking shows quickly and efficiently.

Vista v2 was designed from the ground up to allow all levels of user to get the most from whatever mix of technology they have available, whether dimmers, moving lights, LED or media.

Vista continues to make a big impact worldwide with recent tours and shows including Third Day, Sara Bareilles, Adele, Pulp, The ‘Year of the Forest’ WWF Fund, Vienne Jazz Festival and Finland‘s European Capital of Culture Opening Ceremony.

© 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.”

The Jands Vista lighting control system has been selected as a finalist in the 2008 ESTA Rock Our World Awards for its product application in the casino at the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods in Connecticut.

The Rock Our World Awards recognize groundbreaking achievement by ESTA Members in new products, product applications, or projects. These awards were created to acknowledge the genius of both the creator of technology and the designer or integrator who applies the technology in a real world environment.

The Jands Vista solution was provided by Barbizon lighting company via Vista North American distributor A.C. Lighting Inc., to control the lighting system for the casino‘s 50,000 square foot Premier Ballroom – the largest in the Northeastern USA.

The MGM Grand is part of the overall Foxwoods resort, the biggest casino complex in the world, with more than 40,000 guest visits each day.

Designed to be extremely flexible, the casino‘s 50,000 square foot, column free Premier Ballroom and smaller Celebrity Ballroom feature movable air walls that enable the spaces to be broken down into smaller room zones for banquets, gatherings and other functions, and between them re-configured into over 230 possible combinations.

Foxwoods Entertainment Lighting Supervisor, Tom Roach, worked closely with Barbizon lighting company to help specify, supply, install and integrate the ballrooms‘ architectural and entertainment lighting systems.

Each ballroom features nearly 300 channels of ETC dimming and a variety of fixtures, including Robe 700 spot and wash moving lights.

Due to the huge number of possible room configurations, each with a different lighting plot, Foxwoods wanted a solution that would provide seamless integration and intuitive control of the ballrooms‘ complex lighting systems using both wall stations and performance lighting consoles.

Following a demonstration to Foxwoods, Barbizon System Integrator Scott Stipetic of the company‘s Boston office specified the Jands Vista lighting control system.

He commented: “The Vista is sophisticated, powerful, and the right solution for this environment.
I knew that being able to see each room layout‘s lighting plot visually, combined with a timeline, would make it so much easier for the staff to operate the lighting fixtures than on a traditional console. The Vista‘s user interface also makes it very quick to manipulate cue structures, saving valuable room setup time. I was also confident that the support would be there from Jands and A.C. Lighting Inc., should it be needed, when installing such a technically complex product application. After Foxwoods saw the Vista demo they were adamant it had to be Jands Vista for this particular lighting control application.”

The Vista provides a flexible lighting control system that can handle the variety of ballroom layouts in a visual way. Control of each room‘s lighting is represented graphically on a pen tablet screen. If an air wall is moved, the Vista simply updates the lighting and the control screens of the newly adjoined rooms, so the operator can always see what they are controlling.

Lighting for each of the 15 smaller room zones is controlled by a dedicated Vista PC, which is operated via VNC on a pen tablet screen from within the rooms. The casino also purchased 2 full size Vista T4 consoles and 4 Vista S3 playback control surfaces to operate conference or performance events taking place in the larger room configurations. All Vista products were supplied to Barbizon from A.C. Lighting Inc., the exclusive North American distributor for the Vista range.

The Vista lighting control system and all associated equipment was installed by Jason Hoots, Andy Aldous, Tracey Costa and Mike Goudzwaard in Barbizon‘s Technical Services team.

Foxwoods Entertainment Lighting Supervisor, Tom Roach commented: “When I approached Scott Stipetic with the concept of having a permanently installed moving light system in the ballrooms which could be operated by banquets staff, he immediately recommended the Jands Vista for the application. The Vista allows us to offer a top of the line lighting system to our clients with out all the costs associated with trucking, rigging, flying truss, hanging fixtures, programming, running the event and strike and restore of the room. The banquets staff themselves are able to turn on and operate the moving lights, which helps reduce the turn around time between events – meaning more revenue for the company. The Vista is the top notch lighting control system we were looking for.”

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