©Rob Sinclair

Europe – “How do we set up the control system to accommodate everything we need for a huge show including capacity for different festival rigs?” Matt Arthur, lighting director for System of a Down’s current European tour, and festival appearances asked Jack Moorhouse, Jands product manager from A.C. Entertainment Technologies.

Rob Sinclair’s ambitious creative design for the Headline European tour by the American alternative, Grammy-winning rock band contained over 800 individually controlled elements, including a touring floor package, festival house rig and a large hybrid video wall. The wall incorporated embedded RGB pixel “lights” alongside a traditional video screen. The lighting pixels themselves required 2,128 DMX channels. Matt originally planned to run the video and pixels from two separate media servers, with overall control from Jands Vista.

The solution was to network two Jands Vista L5 consoles together, alongside a Vista D1 distributed processor.

Jack commented “Doing this provided more than enough DMX universes for the entire show and festival pickups, whilst simultaneously providing tracking backup and networked processing redundancy. Additionally, running all hybrid pixels directly from Vista’s inbuilt FX engine meant that a second media server was no longer necessary.”
The resulting control system allowed Rob and Matt to easily create and manage a fully integrated visual display for the show using a combination of video, lighting and pixel mapped effects.

©Rob Sinclair

Get your demonstration of the Jands Vista range at PLASA London 2017 on the stand (E30) of UK dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies.
Alternatively, to arrange a demo or for details of the nearest Jands open house events, contact your nearest dealer.

Gallery – click to enlarge

The award-winning Jands Vista lighting & media control system again proved its flexibility and power when it provided control for this year’s out of this world ‘Ultimate Fireworks Spectacular’ – an annual end-of-season event at the UK’s most popular Theme Park, Alton Towers Resort.

To celebrate the launch of the Resort’s new rollercoaster fully dedicated to virtual reality, Galactica, the intergalactic show featured an interstellar fireworks display, striking visual effects and incredible lasers that lit up the universe’s sky – set to space themed music and the backdrop of the towers.

Alton Towers Resort specified the Jands Vista system to provide lighting and media control for the event, for the 5th consecutive year running.

The Resort’s technical team are experienced Jands Vista users, with a fleet of consoles employed throughout the park for various attractions and venues.

As in previous years, the team utilised Jands’ flagship Vista L5 console to control an impressive rig for the show featuring over 150 fixtures and 14 universes of DMX – with the lighting & audio elements synchronised using time code.

The impressive fixture count consisted of Robe BMFLs, Clay Paky Sharpies, SGM G-Spots, 7Kw Falcons, Philips Color Kinetics iColor Flex LMX Strings, and a Green Hippo Media Server.

Alexander Tweedie from the Alton Towers Resort’s technical team commented: “After using the Vista for a number of our previous fireworks shows and launch events, it was the obvious choice again – and as we expected, it worked absolutely flawlessly. We are really delighted with the outcome using Vista, which helped to make the event another huge success.”

He continued: “Our team loves how easy Vista is to set up for big time-coded shows like this event. In addition, the fact that the L5 console uses the same visual interface as other Vista console models we have around the resort means that our team of Vista-trained technical staff were able to collaborate on creating the show quickly and easily. Finally, the Jands technical support is world-class, which is very reassuring when running extra special events such as this one.”

© Lighthouse Productions

Middle East – Celebrated lighting designer, Terry Miranda used a Jands Vista L5 console to seamlessly synchronise his elegant lighting design with media content at the recent Al Burda Islamic Arts Awards, held at the Abu Dhabi National Theatre in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Open to artists specialising in calligraphy, poetry and music from across the Middle East, the prestigious awards are held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdulla Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and organised by the UAE’s Federal Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development.

For the twelfth consecutive year, Terry – at the helm of his Dubai-based company Lighthouse Productions – was responsible for designing and supplying the awards’ set and lighting design.

This year the starting point for Terry’s design was Islamic architecture – with its geometric curves, arches, complex symmetries and domed structures. The intricate calligraphy associated with individual domes was blended with a modern aesthetic. This was created by using multiple dome shapes on the set as projection surfaces, which were outlined in LED and fully mapped to receive detailed custom content. The patterning theme was also continued on the black gloss floor, so the design united all elements of the environment.

Terry chose the Jands Vista L5 as his control console, so he could deftly and easily synchronise his sophisticated lighting design and the awards’ video content. Designed to cope with the complex demands of modern shows, the powerful Vista system makes controlling a mix of lighting, LED and media server technology fast and incredibly simple.

© Lighthouse Productions

“As a lighting designer who also programs, I wanted a desk built for a lighting designer rather than a programmer,” explains Terry, who is both managing director and creative principal at Lighthouse Productions.

“I saw the first demo of a Jands Vista console back in 2011 – and realised that the design and programming format was created in a way that inspired creativity in the quickest way possible. ”
“I like a desk that allows you to be creative, as opposed to spending the first hour programming and patching. The ease of access to everything across the physical console and the Wacom screen has made my lighting designs come together more quickly on site, allowing us to be more creative in the process.”

The lighting rig was kept minimal, because low weight loading in the 30-year old Abu Dhabi National Theatre is a major challenge. A selection of small, lightweight and bright Robe fixtures were selected. Nearly 100 graced the rig, including Robin 300 Beams, ColorWash 575 ATs, MMX Spots, PARFect 100s, Pointes and CycFX 8s.

The awards’ programmer and console operator was Adrian De Guzman, also of Lighthouse Productions. As video and lighting were so interwoven, he found the Jands Vista L5 proved itself adept at connecting easily to the media server without triggering latency issues.

© Lighthouse Productions

The fact that our AV department also now uses Jands Vista consoles to trigger media tells you everything you need to know about the ease of learning the desk for people without a lighting background. The layout of the large screen and how reliable the product has been for us over the last five years speak volumes about its build quality,” says Adrian.

“The quick programming capability of the Jands Vista, as well its reliability on operating multiple cues flawlessly, has helped maintain Lighthouse Productions’ reputation as one of the best and most consistent entertainment production design companies in the Middle East.”

Lighthouse Productions originally purchased their inventory of Jands Vista consoles from dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd.

© thefifthestate.co.uk

Renowned lighting designer, Rob Sinclair and programmer Louisa Smurthwaite used a Jands Vista L5 lighting console to deliver a memorable performance for Florence + The Machine’s triumphant Friday night headlining slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival.

One of the most famous and celebrated music festivals in the world, Glastonbury has provided a global stage for some of the world’s leading rock and popular music artists – with many giving career-defining performances on the iconic Pyramid Stage.

When Florence + The Machine were promoted to top of the bill just one week before the show, after an injury to Dave Grohl forced the Foo Fighters to pull out, Rob and Louisa were faced with the challenge of completely re-designing the show to incorporate the production values of a headliner slot – with only two extra days of production rehearsals available.

Willo Perron’s innovative overall show concept and set design for the band’s current How Big 2015 international tour, along with Rob’s elegant lighting design, formed the basis for the Glastonbury performance’s production values. The band’s brief was to come up with a timelessly classic look which wasn’t era-specific. Set pieces included rows of Par Cans custom painted in a metallic copper finish, providing side and back lighting for the band – as well as creating a visually appealing aesthetic look on stage.

In addition, the upstage featured a huge 48ft by 28ft ’kinetic wall’ animated by 22 DMX fans, which reflected front light and glistened at various points of the performance – creating amazing reflections.

With the band’s tour underway in Europe when the new Glastonbury headline slot was confirmed, Rob had to make the tour’s rig design, which consisted of 5 angled trusses to light the back wall, work for the Pyramid Stage’s rig of three straight trusses, which had already been specified for the Foo Fighters’ performance.

The process began with Rob and Louisa sitting down together and reviewing every technical aspect of the show, and how they could change it to make the very best of the rig that they had at their disposal. With the help of Neg Earth Lights, the lighting rig supplier for the Pyramid Stage, Rob was able to add an additional two front trusses containing 30 Martin Viper Air FXs, to light the back surface.

Although a considerable amount of work to reprogram the show, Louisa knew that Vista’s Generic Fixture Model and FX Engine would make light work of this task.

She commented: “There was plenty of fixture swapping required to reprogram the touring show for the Pyramid Stage. The thing that I love about Vista is that once you ask it to swap one fixture to become another, it simply works. I don’t have to go in and update additional elements or manually link features from one fixture to the next – I am instantly ready to continue my work.

These features allowed Rob and myself the time to meticulously concentrate on getting other show elements perfect. Examples of these elements would be restricting ourselves to a limited, yet precise colour palette which was in keeping with the timeless look and feel of the lighting design. Rob also spent a lot of time working out angles to light the back wall.”

© thefifthestate.co.uk

Having only used the L5 on one previous tour, for Kylie Minogue, Louisa was further impressed with its overall ease of use and reliability.

She commented: “The L5 definitely makes a big difference – just having that wide screen to work on is invaluable, it seems to make your mind that extra bit cleaner. Plus having the extra faders at your disposal is great.

I have used all of the consoles within the Jands Vista family over the years and I find them to be incredibly reliable and robust, but I am always impressed on just how far you can push the L5, and it simply continues to deliver on performance.”

Rob and Louisa used their touring control system – a Vista S1 connected to an Apple Macbook running the same Vista v2 software – as the backup for the Glastonbury show.

Both Vista operators are used to regularly switching between the various hardware models within the Vista range on a tour, to suit different size venues and scale of shows, whilst maintaining all of Vista’s functionality.

Louisa commented: “The Vista range allows me to seamlessly transfer my programming or operation of a show from one size console to another, without any restrictions – the desks are totally interchangeable. This is ideal for programming a show offline before getting onsite for production rehearsals, and for switching between Vista systems for different legs or dates on a tour.”

The Florence + The Machine international tour resumes at the beginning of July in Europe, and is followed by dates in North America and Australia before a UK tour leg. The full tour lighting rig is supplied by Nashville-based Premier Global Productions.

© Chris Green

USA – Georgia’s Gwinnett Church has invested in four Jands Vista lighting & media consoles to provide powerful yet simple-to-use control for different zones in its recently opened house of worship site.

Gwinnett prides itself on inviting volunteers to assist in running the site operation, including technical production aspects such as lighting for its worship services.

Lighting and Scenic Director at Gwinnett, Josh Mobley, oversaw the Church’s investment in Jands’ flagship Vista L5 all-in-one console, as well as three smaller size Vista control consoles – an S3 and two M1s.

The powerful L5, which features a massive 21″ widescreen tablet for simple control of lighting and media on one screen, is installed in the Church’s main theater. The S3 is in the ‘middle school/high school’ room, and the M1s are in two smaller spaces.

As well as being very popular with houses of worship on account of Vista’s volunteer-friendly operation, all models in the hardware range run the same Vista v2 software, making it effortless for users to program, transfer and operate shows across different models being used at the same site.

“The process of using volunteers for cuelist playback on preprogrammed cues is the process that our organization has found to be successful,” says Josh. “After the volunteers watch the Jands training videos and spend some one-on-one time with me – hands-on with the various Vista desks – they catch on quickly!”

In the Church’s main auditorium, the L5 is controlling a performance rig including Mac Vipers, Mac Auras, Colorado Tri Tours, and Epix strips. The Vista is also being used to control 100 Chroma-Q® Inspire™ color-changing LED house lights, which can be synced via DMX to the stage lighting for a seamless look and truly immersive worship experience which transcends the usual barrier between stage and audience.

“I love the freedom of customization that Jands has, which is one of the main reasons we specified the Vista consoles throughout the Church,” Josh continues. “I have years of experience operating shows on the fly as well as programming and operating songs as a single cuelist. I typically program in the main room for reasons of consistency and detail, and freestyle in the student environments, and both styles are easy to setup with Vista. I also enjoy the freedom to access certain elements of the rig on the fly, while most of the content is pre-programmed.”

Gallery

The powerful L5 utilizes an Intel Quad-Core i7-2600 (3.4GHz) processor and 8GB of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). As well as its massive screen, the state-of-the-art desk also features a backlit keyboard, and Linux operating system. This combination is ideal for big shows where using lots of fixtures, LEDs and media servers can place significant demands on the console’s processor.

The S3 is controlling a rig which includes Mac 350s, Chauvet Legend 412z fixtures and Colorado Tri Tours. The two M1s are controlling a smaller rig of LED pars and Chauvet Intimidators.

Part of North Point Ministries, Gwinnett Church is the latest campus to adopt the Jands Vista lighting and media control solution for their operation. The Vista consoles for each North Point campus were supplied by SVL Productions in Rockford, IL, and are distributed exclusively in North America by A.C. Lighting Inc.

The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self-contained consoles. Equally at home on tour or as a venue’s house console, Jands’ award-winning Vista lighting & media control system has been embraced by leading designers, companies and venues all over the world on a wide range of shows. Covering entertainment, education & drama, installations, corporate, events and worship, there’s a Vista system to suit all levels of user and almost any scale of show.

Other houses of worship to utilise lighting or media control by Vista include Elevation Church in North Carolina, Tomoka Christian Church and Celebration Church in Florida, Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, White’s Chapel in Dallas, Lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma, Westover Church in North Carolina, and Grace Community Church in Indiana.

International concert tours include Kylie Minogue, Queen + Adam Lambert, Chrissie Hynde, Bring Me The Horizon, Dierks Bentley and Thompson Square.

Get your demonstration of the Jands Vista range at an upcoming international tradeshows in May & June

Photo © Handerson-Yau

Lighting designer, Ben Inskip selected Jands’ flagship Vista L5 console to control his technically ambitious design for British metalcore band, Bring Me the Horizon, who recently played London’s iconic SSE Arena, Wembley.

Ben has had success for some time touring on Bring Me the Horizon’s (BMTH) shows with a portable Vista setup consisting of S1 & M1 wings, combined with a Macbook Air, but selected the Jands Vista L5 for this particular arena performance, which was the band’s biggest show to date.

In addition to having plenty of computing power to deal with the demands of today’s largest shows, the Vista L5’s sleek design is dominated by a stunning 21 inch High Definition Wacom tablet that provides a crisp, detailed image of the same Vista v2 software that is used across the entire Vista console family.

“Having used an L5 on some previous Australian shows, I really got to experience how quickly and comfortably you can program with it,” says Ben. “I chose it for Wembley because I knew the bigger screen and extra faders would be really useful when dealing with a show of this scale. Having the 21 inch screen meant I could fit my entire rig in a single layout and have absolutely everything I needed right in front of me.”

“Furthermore, I also really like being able to lean into the Wacom tablet and use the stylus without accidently selecting things, or my arms starting to ache.
I think it’s a much better solution for controlling lights than sensitive touch screens or other alternatives.”

In addition to this, Ben is impressed with Vista’s simple approach to lighting control whilst still enabling programming of complex shows, commenting: “BMTH’s music is very fast-paced most of the time, so I needed a way to make complex cuelists easier to program and trigger in a live show environment – Vista’s ‘learn timing’ feature was perfect for this.”

Learn timing enables a whole number of cues, or cuelists, to be triggered from a single button press after the sequence has been played through once by the programmer.

“Having the ability to build quick but complex looks, set precise timings in Vista’s timeline feature, and then fire them from a much simpler action opened up a new, faster way of programming for me. I found myself creating hundreds of events for even the smallest little inflections in songs, simply because Vista allowed me the time and creative freedom to do so. Vista has definitely made a difference to the final look of the show.”

In addition to playing the show back on the L5, Ben used his existing S1 and M1 combination to pre-program the show offline. “Hopping between Jands’ Vista consoles couldn’t be easier. The way you can organise your entire show and use ‘virtual consoles’ means that 90% of my programming was done in advance on a laptop, and everything was already set up for the L5’s fader layout exactly as I wanted it, when I eventually loaded the show into the L5,” says Ben. “All of this is made even better by the fact that the software runs on a Mac – having access to my show files literally anywhere at any time means I can be editing show files long before I set foot near a console.”

For this show, Ben ran the L5 as his master console, with an M1 wing connected for additional hands on control. Ben’s S1 and Macbook then provided a fully tracked backup system.
“All in all, the L5 is a really intuitive and enjoyable console to use,” Ben concludes. “I think the community around Vista is fantastic: reading the forums and noting how many suggested features actually get added into the software – and a steady stream of interesting new features being released – is really cool.”

Recent shows featuring lighting or media control by Vista include international concert tours by Queen + Adam Lambert, Kylie Minogue, Peter Gabriel, Dierks Bentley, Thompson Square, Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones and Little Big Town.

Gallery

The Jands Vista system was used to control the lighting & visual media elements for Texas-based WaterTower Theatre’s spectacular production of Bonnie and Clyde.

Founded in 1996, the multi award-winning WaterTower Theatre is a not-for-profit professional theatre company in Addison, Texas. It produces six main stage shows each season in its flexible, state-of-the-art facility, which is part of the Addison Theatre Centre.

The Centre already owned two Jands Vista consoles – the ultra-compact M1, and the original Vista T2 model, but recently added the range’s flagship L5 console to their inventory.

Dan Schoedel of FullStageProductions.com, who was the lighting designer for Bonnie and Clyde, comments: “We actually upgraded from our existing Jands Vista T2 to the L5 during the show run. This is one thing that I love about the Vista line – the fact that the software is the same across the entire hardware range, making the transition from console to console totally seamless.”

Dan specified a fairly large rig for the show, which included Elation Design Spot and Power Wash fixtures, Chroma-Q Color Scrollers, and K-9 Pup and Bulldog fixtures.

“I rarely let the board ops program on the Vista system since it’s so much fun to design with!” Dan continues. “I find the ease of programming saves me time and effort, and as a result, it lets me refine my design. The Timeline Editor lets me quickly add depth to transitions and cues that I wouldn’t spend the time doing on other consoles. The Vista also helped me manage the variety of movers/color changing fixtures with ease.”

One of the major successes of this production was the inspired projections and visuals. These were created by set designer, Sarah Brown, working closely with in-house technical coordinator, Scott Guenther, who did the media design for the projection surfaces.

“The projections were handled by ArKaos MediaMaster Pro 4.0 software running on a Mac Pro, with two projectors. A Panasonic TP-DW830 8500 lumen projector was used for the center hanging cloth and a BenQ SH960 5500 lumen projector for the rigid side projection screen,” says Scott.

“ArKaos was used in Fixture mode on the Vista system. We were very happy with the level of control from the ArKaos Profile, while maintaining the ease and workflow of Vista. In fact, the integration with Vista was our favorite feature. Running the media from the lighting console allowed for great control of the images and great flexibility in connecting the media and lighting together, as well as being able to run / trigger these from just one device.”

Dan adds: “In addition, we set up the Vista to trigger all of the audio cues on a separate computer that was running QLab. This enabled us to fire off lighting cues and sound cues at the exact same moment. This was critical, especially when it came to gunshots.”

The Jands Vista consoles and the ArKaos MediaMaster Pro 4.0 software were demoed and sold to the Centre by North American distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc.

The Addison Theatre Centre is currently celebrating its 21st anniversary year of providing live theatre to the Dallas area, and has won numerous major awards in this time.

Jands’ award-winning Vista lighting & media control system has been embraced by leading designers, companies and venues all over the world on a wide range of shows. Covering entertainment, education & drama, installations, corporate, events and worship, there’s a Vista system to suit all levels of user and almost any scale of show.

The Jands Vista console range and ArKaos Pro media servers hardware and software line-up will be showcased at PLASA Focus, Orlando, in February on the booth of exclusive North American distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc. (booth 413).

Gallery – click to enlarge

Photo by Stephanie Brunner ©44 Designs

Jands’ flagship Vista L5 console is controlling a large rig on popular American country music duo Thompson Square’s ‘Just Feels Good’ tour, which features over 80 moving lights and a large configuration of HD video screens.

Thompson Square consists of husband and wife, Keifer and Shawna Thompson. The group have received three fan-voted American Country Awards, a CMT Music Award, and were crowned the 2012 Academy of Country Music’s Vocal Duo of the Year – the first new duo to win the award in 20 years. They are now one of America“s biggest country acts, selling more than 2 million copies of their GRAMMY-nominated hit single, “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not”.

Jeff Lavallee from Nashville-based lighting, rentals and production company, 44 Designs – which holds a large fleet of Jands Vista consoles – supplied the Vista L5 to lighting designer Larry Foote for the tour.

“Jeff and I had a vision for something simple but powerful, with a different, big look – that would push the visual boundaries and be unique on the Country Music touring circuit,” says Larry. “Jeff and 44 Designs surprised me with a brand new L5 for this tour – I love the T2, which I used on last year’s Thompson Square shows, but now I’m obsessed with the L5, and especially its big screen!”

Dealing with the ever increasing use of both media and LEDs, the Vista L5’s sleek design is dominated by a stunning 21 inch High Definition Wacom display that provides a crisp, detailed image showing a huge amount of information in a flexible, clear and easy to understand way.

“One of my favorite features of the Vista system is the Timeline, as that’s where the bulk of my programming is done,” continues Larry. “Another great aspect is having multiple layouts. I have my main whole rig layout, a house rig layout, a fast programming layout (just all my fixtures in straight lines by groups), and a matrix layout. The L5’s big screen makes the job of programming using Vista even easier than before.”

Larry’s rig for this year’s enhanced Thompson Square tour is comprised of Platinum Beam 5r, Mac 301, Krypton Kr 25 and Atomic 3k fixtures. The video rig utilises PixelFlex 18mm panels on custom frames, and Ayrton Magic Panels.

“I also love the Vista’s fixture editor feature,” says Larry. “I like to go in and tweak the profiles, so that I can personalize the fixtures – for instance, giving names to macros that best suit them.”

Larry is also using the L5 to drive ArKaos Pro media servers running the new MediaMaster Pro 4 software, which output content to the HD video screens.

“We have all the Kr 25s and Magic Panels pixel-mapped through two ArKaos machines that I built specifically for this tour,” explains Larry. “We’re using a mixture of custom and found content, and the L5 is handling it all with ease.”

The L5 has an Intel Quad-Core i7-2600 (3.4GHz) processor and 8GB of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). This combination is ideal for even the biggest show, where using lots of fixtures, LEDs and media servers can place significant demands for power on the console.

The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self-contained consoles all running the same Vista v2 software.

Florida’s fast-growing Celebration Church is utilising Jands’ flagship Vista L5 console to control state of the art lighting and video productions during worship services for its 12,000-strong congregation.

The services held at the Jacksonville-based Church’s newly constructed worship Arena are often broadcast internationally via web stream. They are renowned for being an energetic, immersive next generation praise and worship experience that infuses diverse genres and styles.

Celebration Church’s Lead Lighting Designer and AVL Technician, Trey Smith, specified the Jands Vista L5.

“The Jands Vista L5 is so user-friendly and easy to grasp that it’s a hit not only with us tech guys, but also with the church’s volunteers, who often operate the lighting and media during shows,” says Trey. “The L5’s Timeline feature was a key factor in us specifying it, making it easy to control media via timecode, and to make changes on the fly.”

“In the Arena alone, around 700 fixtures are controlled by the Vista L5. For the entire building, there are 2,200 fixtures, including 93 Chroma-Q® Inspire™ LED house lights. Only 140 of these 2,200 are not LED, and all the fixtures are controlled by the L5 via Pathway’s Pathport Connectivity system, which we use to link together the lighting throughout our building.”

“Currently, our L5 is connected via Ethernet and Fiber to our Pathport nodes onstage and in the catwalk – two nodes for onstage, and two for catwalk that run all of the house lighting and wall lights around the seating,” says Trey. “We also have Pathport throughout the rest of the building, to control lobby lighting, kids’ lighting, nursery hallways, and the Loft Cafe.”

“Everything is on one large network, but data is managed using VLANS so that lighting data doesn’t cross into the Arena. However, we have made it possible for the L5 to control the rest of the building if the situation calls for it.”

Trey and his team are currently using more than 30 universes for the entire building.

In addition to the L5, the Church uses 2x Jands Vista M1s in the Kids’ Ministry rooms, 1x Jands Vista S1 at its nearby Orange Park Campus, 1x Jands Vista I3 for tracking backup in the Main Arena, 2x M1s at the Midtown Location, and 2x M1s at its nearby St. Johns Campus.

In the Main Arena, the L5 is used to trigger media content as well as lighting, which is designed in-house and loaded onto a Coolux Pandora’s Box media server. The Vista range is also compatible with other media server solutions.

“The L5 is able to send Art-Net data to the Pandora’s Box Media Manager,” says Trey. “Pandora controls our stage 60’ x 20’ projection wall (15x 8,000 lumen Titan Projectors edge blended) as well as our 32x Sony LCD TVs that surround the projection wall.”

“We set up Jands to be able to control 6 video layers in Pandora through Art-Net. During regular Sunday services, Jands triggers almost all graphics and videos that go up on the projection wall and TVs. During special events and video elements, Pandora runs the visuals and sends LTC Timecode back to Jands Vista to trigger lighting cues.”

Trey adds that the Celebration Church had been using their Vista I3, M1 and S1 consoles for four years before upgrading to the L5 for the new Arena. “Vista has always worked well for us, and moving up to the L5 meant more power and features – but without a steep learning curve, as it uses exactly the same v2 software as our other Vista consoles.”

The L5 comes with the world-renowned Vista v2 software, a program that has been embraced by its growing number of users for being innovative, intuitive, powerful and easy to use, all at once.

The Church’s show planning is very precise. Songs are often planned a month in advance, with lighting and media programming happening weeks before the service.

“Using the L5 to control so many fixtures and demanding media, we are putting a lot of responsibilities on the console, but it works beautifully,” says Trey. “And due to the L5’s integration with Pathport, it’s a seamless operation.”

Featuring a massive 21-inch High-Definition TFT screen, the L5 offers a lot of space to add and re-arrange windows, making data easy to view and respond to.

The Jands Vista was supplied to the Celebration Church by design firm WAVE, which was contracted to design, supervise and install the new lighting and sound system.

Gallery – click to enlarge

The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self contained consoles all running the same Vista v2 software.

Jands’ award-winning Vista lighting & media control system has been embraced by leading designers, companies and venues all over the world on
a wide range of shows. Covering entertainment, education & drama, installations, corporate, events and worship, there’s a Vista system to suit all levels of user and almost any scale of show.

Recent shows featuring lighting or media control by Vista include international concert tours by Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones, Dierks Bentley and Little Big Town.

To arrange a Jands Vista demo or discuss your requirements contact your nearest distributor.

Or for more information and a list of international Vista users, visit jands.com/vista/users.

Neil Finn is on the road with his Dizzy Heights tour, a show full of lush aural landscapes and exotic arrangements complimented by evocative lighting and a large, fluffy tapestry backdrop created by Noel Crombie and partner Sally Mill.

Lighting designer David Harding began his relationship with Neil way back in the 80’s when he was the Vari*Lite tech/operator for Crowded House. Over the years he has built a solid relationship with Neil who didn’t even have to brief David on what he wanted for his lighting on the Dizzy Heights tour, such is their relationship.

“I opted for practical lighting for the band and Neil is quite minimalistic,” explained David. “Colours are either in contrast, or, complimentary to how the backdrop is lit. The backdrop is the cornerstone for setting the scene. It reacts brilliantly and in a great number of ways to light.”
David deployed two truss system with VL550 for tungsten wash colour, VL3000 Spots for air art and stage floor texture, plus 8 x VL3000 Spot for backdrop art. UV picks out hidden highlights in backdrop whilst LED lighting is used for the rear cyc and front up light of backdrop.

“I have always loved the optics of the VL3000,” said David. “While some other fixtures on the market are very appealing, they don’t have the zoom range I need working in smaller theatres. I was an early fan of the original VL5 when that series was released and used them for a Wendy Matthews tour. I am a huge fan of varying colour temperature through the dimming range. Only tungsten can provide that effect. The VL550 is the perfect small tungsten wash for small theatres.”

David also has VL1000 TS in his rig, again for the tungsten effect as well as the shutters. He describes the fixture as the perfect key light particularly as Neil’s show is too theatrical for follow spots.

As David was a major contributor in development of the Jands Vista control platform, it was no surprise that he chose it for this tour! For the USA and Europe legs of the tour he travels a Vista L5 as the master and his own S1 console as well as two M1 wings with a Dell touch screen as backup and for hotel programming. “The manual interface is perfect for when there is a need for lot of on the fly manipulation,” David commented. “It allows for a fluid, organic show.” David also favours the Vista’s assignable surface functions as well as the timeline.

Equipment Highlights

• Vista L5 Console
• Vista S3 Control Surface
• 2 x Vista M1 Control Surfaces
• 16 x Vari*Lite VL500 w/external dimmer
• 14 x Vari*Lite VL300
• 6 x ChromaQ ColourForce 48
• 6 x ChromaQ ColourBlaze 72
• 6 x Red Heads
• 6 x DWE 8 light floods