©Richard Rhys Thomas

London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall used their Jands Vista T4 console to provide thrilling lighting for Christmas Spectacular – the venue’s first festive show co-produced by the Royal Albert Hall and renowned popular classic music promoter, Raymond Gubbay.

One of the leading providers of concerts, opera and ballet to major venues across the country, Raymond Gubbay’s popular Christmas Festival concerts have become part of a festive tradition.

Christmas Spectacular was the perfect event for keeping Christmas spirits high – with a stunning combination of favourite music classics, breathtaking dance, thrilling lights, sensational lasers and a fantastic indoor firework finale! Special guests included West End star Kerry Ellis and acclaimed chorister, Jack Topping.

Royal Albert Hall (RAH) Lighting Design and Systems Manager, Richard Rhys Thomas utilised the venue’s Jands Vista T4 console to control the ambitious lighting production.

©Alex Griffiths

“The vision for my design was to produce an exciting and dynamic light show in conjunction with lasers and pyrotechnic effects, to complement the music, dance, ballet, and vocal performances,” says Richard. “The music programme was quite varied, with music from well-known ballets, operas, musicals and the movies, and therefore the lighting reflected this with a combination of subtle and colourful looks to more bold and dramatic lighting effects.”

The design utilised the RAH lighting rig, with extras, and consisted of some 130 moving lights – including Clay Paky Alpha Washes & Spots, Vari*Lite VL 3000 & 2500 Spots, Robe Pointes and ETC Source 4 Revolutions.

“The Vista helps by making the job of creating looks with large numbers of fixtures very quick and easy,” says Richard. “You are able to spend more time looking at the stage, focussing on the lighting and less time worrying about the programming, which for a show with a load in, a morning rehearsal and two performances in one day makes a real difference.”

“I love the speed and power of the Vista console as a simple interface to create exciting shows with minimal effort.”

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

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 ‘The Smiler’Rollercoaster launch at Alton Towers (UK) Resort, and international concert tours by Peter Gabriel, Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones, Dierks Bentley and Little Big Town.

The Jands Vista console range will be showcased at Prolight & Sound, Frankfurt in March on the stand of UK dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (stand location 9.0, E63).

Three Jands Vista T2 consoles, each running the next generation Vista v2 software, are controlling lighting and media at White’s Chapel United Methodist Church (UMC) in Dallas, Texas, USA.

In the run up to Christmas a spectacular show, “Celebrate The Light”, is being projected onto the front of the impressive 250 ft wide by 150 ft high façade of the church building. Drawing crowds of up to 5,000, and running six times a night, a Vista T2 is in control of this popular show.

Tim Georgeff, the Church‘s Creative Director, had been dreaming about producing a Christmas projection presentation on the building for some time. With the help of Steve Alford of leading technical production company Alford Media – who supplied three Barco 20K FLM projectors and a pair of Green Hippo Grasshopper media servers – as well as local graphic designer David Koss this became a reality.

The Vista controlled the Grasshopper media servers to create the detailed Video presentation the team were after. Vista‘s graphical interface made the process fast, accurate and smooth.

Throughout the duration of the festive season White’s Chapel run events including a major annual Christmas musical. This year‘s production, “Born Where the Shadows Lie”, has lighting designed by Keith Allen from Alford Media.

Fixtures include VARI*LITE VL 3000s, Martin Professional MAC 550s and GLP Volkslicht LED washes , Chroma-Q™ Color Block DB4™ LED battens, plus ETC Source Four profiles, PARs and fresnels.

Tim comments that the ease of programming on the Vista made creating both these shows a very time-efficient process, remarking on how simple it is to get the most from whatever technology they choose to use – whether moving lights, conventionals, LED, or media servers.

White’s Chapel has been running the Vista v2 software for some time, with Tim highlighting that information is clear and readable; its fast setup is “fantastic” and it is “so easy” to navigate.

Tim explains that they loved the first Vista T2 they bought so much that they went out and purchased a second for their smaller venue! Both are in constant use with the busy schedule in its two worship facilities – the main 2,500 capacity auditorium and the second 650 capacity facility, ’The Bridge‘.

The Vista consoles were supplied via Jands exclusive North American distributor A.C. Lighting Inc. VP of Sales and Marketing, Fred Mikeska said “We hear from so many of our users that they know they can create a show by putting all their effort into programming a console, but with Vista they just don‘t have to. That gives them, and their clients, the freedom to create whatever they choose without having to think about the complexity of programming it. Vista v2 really shows that powerful doesn‘t have to be complicated…..”

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The Star-Telegram Texas

Recently Giancarlo Vannetti, Jands Vista product specialist for Italy, was pleased to help his friend and new owner of a Vista T4, Lighting Designer Paolo Firulli with a special event in Bari Italy.

The event was the “Meraviglioso Modugno” a tribute to Domenico Modugno, a songwriter, actor and one of the best known Italian singers from the 1950s. The show was held on November 25th in one of the largest and most beautiful theatres in Italy, the Teatro Petruzzelli located in Bari. The challenge for LD Paolo Firulli and Giancarlo was to create a unique atmosphere for each of the 13 Italian artists who performed different Modugno’ songs, each of them featuring a different stage setup.

The lighting rig was simple but effective. Rigged across 3 overhead trusses were 20 Robe MMX Spots, 20 Robe ColorWash 575 ATZoom and some conventional fixtures. The background was lit by 20 Robin 300 LEDWash, all supplied by International Sound owned by Franco, Paolo and Gianni Firulli, one of the biggest rental company in southern Italy.

Commenting on Vista v2 Byron, Paolo says “I’m really impressed how quick and easy we could create a lighting show performing live with less time than usual and with a bunch of different artists on stage with different setups. Giancarlo introduce me to the Livetime feature which is great in this conditions and busking the show is so simple and fast!”

This was also an opportunity for Giancarlo to demonstrate the Vista, running the v2 software to the theatre staff who have shown interest in the using the console on other shows. Giancarlo commented, “People are always surprised how the v2 software can make simple the programming work, Copy/Paste commands let people literally go WOW! Live Timing and Timeline are really appreciated features for theatres were a detailed control and manipulating of pre-programmed events is required and allows the operator to gently control any type of effect or feature with smooth fades”

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Westover Church in North Carolina, USA recently upgraded its Jands Vista T4 console to the new Vista v2 software, providing even greater lighting control for its busy 3,000 capacity main auditorium.

Part of the non-denominational Church‘s 300,000 square foot facility, the main auditorium hosts a diverse range of events. In addition to regular congregation services and at least two major events per month, the Church hosts its own internal events and concerts featuring a choir, worship band and orchestra. The auditorium is also home to the Greensboro Symphony Pops Orchestra.

The Jands Vista T4 console was specified and purchased six years ago for Westover Church by Production Director Jeff Neubauer, and supplied by Barbizon Lighting via exclusive North American distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc. Jeff was an early adopter of the Jands Vista and all the power and flexibility this brings to his events. Since then, Jeff has not looked back in terms of lighting control – he simply loves the Vista!

The Church also has two Vista PC systems – used as a backup to the Vista T4 and for running timed lighting events in the Church’s atrium area. Says Jeff, “Vista v2 has been an amazing upgrade. It’s added a lot of new functionality and made programming even easier and quicker.” The ability to add external touch screens is “fabulous” he comments – and immediately made the most of it. Jeff does the majority of the show programming himself, working with a team of regular operators, and so has plenty of hands on experience and knowledge of exactly what is needed.

He is very impressed with the freedom that Vista v2 brings to customise the user interface and lay it out exactly as users wish, “I can organise myself better, and customise icons to precisely match the way I work. I like to be able to jump around the Cue Lists and the way that the Time Line works now, along with other aspects, it is all even more convenient with v2” he enthuses.

He is also thinks the fact that he could upgrade his existing console to get even more value from his investment, and allow him all the latest programming tools is very cool.

Another excellent feature, he thinks, is being able to see thumbnail displays of the media server clips, which is ideal for fast and intuitive access to video content played out through the desk. This becomes even more important as he incorporates more video into all his events.

The lighting fixtures and visual elements currently being controlled by the Vista T4 in the main auditorium include VARI*LITE VL3000 and VL3500 Spots, Martin Professional MAC 250 Spots, High End DL1 moving head projectors and a Catalyst media server. In addition, there are over 300 Source Fours, 55 Nexera colour changers and a selection of fresnels and PARs for general lighting.

The majority of the lighting stays in the main room, with some rigged in the atrium, where it is controlled by the second Jands Vista PC.

Jeff’s technical team at Westover Church – which includes four full time and two part time employees, along with about 40 volunteers – has a core group of lighting operators, all of whom also really like Vista v2. “The jump from v1 to v2 has been incredibly smooth and straightforward for all of us” confirms Jeff.

It is also an excellent learning console and software platform for those seeking to increase their knowledge and understanding of lighting control. Westover Church currently runs an intern programme for students studying Entertainment Technology at the local Guilford Technical Community College, offering a great opportunity for them to get hands-on experience with the latest technology.

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 lighting, LED, or media. Available in a wide range of hardware, Vista v2 offers both the simplicity to work fast, with the power to control the finest details, so everyone can focus on creating a great looking show rather than on programming a desk.

A.C. Lighting Inc‘s VP of sales & marketing, Fred Mikeska commented “Jeff and his team deliver a wide range of events, always within a short timeframe, and all of which have a consistently high standard. Churches such as Westover are another real world example where the power and simplicity of Vista v2 helps everyone, regardless of their experience level, focus on the main goal of delivering a great looking show that they can be proud of.”

Jands exclusive Russian dealer, Show Atelier, recently held their first Open Day events to launch the new Jands Vista v2 software to their diverse customer base.

Show Atelier also took the opportunity to announce the winners of their online “Get Your Own Vista” competition, which Jands Europe sponsored with the donation of the first and second prizes – a Jands Vista M1 console with an 128 channel dongle and a Jands USB-DMX interface with 128 channel dongle respectively.
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The first Jands Vista T2 lighting desk and Jands Vista M1 control console with the Vista v2 ‘Byron’ operating system to be sold in the Middle East by the new IBS Group division, IBS Solutions, are already proving to be a great purchase for Lighthouse Productions, according to its MD.

Terry Miranda, managing director and chief lighting designer at Lighthouse Productions visited the IBS Solutions stand at CABSAT in February, and said he found exactly what he was looking for in the Jands Vista with the new Vista v2 software.

“In the past two years I have had my eye on the latest developments in lighting consoles in order to purchase something that fit my idea of what a lighting desk should be. Having seen the first demo of the Vista v2 Byron operating system at PALME 2010, it had piqued my interest till it hit the sweet spot in 2011. The system allows a designer/ programmer to dictate terms to the programming aspect and to decide how simple or powerful it should be,” said Miranda.

“I would say the new Jands Vista is one of the finest, most intelligent lighting desks the industry has seen.”
Gavin Coxon from IBS Solutions, the official UAE distributor for Jands, added: “”With the new Vista v2 Byron, Jands has an even stronger product range to compete with the other top lighting consoles available on the market, we expect big things from the range in the UAE.”

Lighthouse Productions created the design for the BURDA event held on February 15 at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, where the new console took centre stage. Using the mosque as backdrop to the main stage Lighthouse used a Watchout system and bitmapping to project the images onto the entrance of the mosque, using the Jands for all the lighting cues preprogrammed via wysywig.

Also included in the sale were custom-built flight-cases for each console, manufactured and supplied by IBS Flightcase, another IBS GROUP company.

Lighthouse Productions used the new equipment again at the Zayed International Prize for the Environment on March 14 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The JANDS Vista was utilised to the maximum with all the lighting cues as well as a Wi-Fi link with an iPad for focusing and fine tuning while walking around Rashid Hall.

Mcgriff Mascarenhas, assistant lighting designer at Lighthouse Productions is also very happy with the new equipment: “JANDS Vista is one of the simplest operating desks that I have ever used that allows me to think visually and work visually.”

Photo ©Peter Rubie

For four nights only, the Sydney Festival transformed Sydney Town Hall into swing-dancing heaven featuring a huge dance floor, a fabulous floorshow and sizzling swing music played by Sydney‘s spectacular all-girl Sirens Big Band, just as it did in its halcyon days – but with plenty of 2011 edge.

Sydney‘s original Trocadero had its heyday in the 1940s and 50s with lindy-hoppers, swingsters, rockabillies and cha cha cha-ers dancing the nights away in all their finery. It was demolished in the 70s but its spirit jives on in the gloriously re-imagined new night club named the Trocadero Dance Palace.
The lighting in the venue, designed by Matthew Marshall and including around fifty moving lights and a collection of LED fixtures along with generic theatrical lights, was programmed and operated by Peter Rubie who opted to use a Vista T4 running a beta version of the Vista V2 ‘Byron’ software.

“After beta testing Vista V2 in it’s early stages I was impressed by its feature set and vast improvements on Vista 1,” remarked Peter. “A lot of the things that were missing or not quite there yet in V1 have been added in the new version – Jands have really listened to the user feedback.”

As both plotted cues for the structured show and on the fly operating was required for the Troc Party Nights after the show, Peter was keen to use the V2 beta over V1 with its improvements in the theatre elements as well as the busking ability. As the show was also very flashy with a lot of cues and effects, he was eager to use the new improved effects engine.

“I was a little nervous using the beta software, but did some extensive testing and trials before moving in to the venue which went successfully,” said Peter. “Once the plotting stage came around, we experienced a few bugs but these were met with great support from Jands who were able to solve the show critical ones very swiftly. We were also running a secondary Vista with a backup of the show which I would always recommend when using any newly released software / consoles.”

Peter comments that the Vista V2 beta retains all of the great V1 features and that the intuitive patch system has been made even faster with an instant search function for fixture profiles.
“The timeline which is one of the main areas where Vista differs from other consoles has received various improvements too,” he added. “The speed at which I can look at multiple cues at once and clearly see tracked values and all parameter info supersedes other consoles where I find myself having to retrace my steps and think harder about what I am editing and how it will affect other cues in a tracking environment. All the cue timing properties are much improved in V2 so they now much more closely follow the same structure expected in theatre consoles such as split up and down timing and follows.”

Peter particularly favours the flexibility of having separate live timing for each different parameter and the speed in which this can now be changed on the fly.
“That is one of the many improved busking features,” he said. “The major overhaul of the look and appearance of the GUI has resulted in a much more professional looking console and is very user-customisable including personalised user colour themes. The visual representation of everything down to a mimic of gobo and colour wheels with gobos that actually animate is fantastic. I particularly like the button that reverses the direction a gobo is rotating whilst retaining the speed.

Peter reports that the shows went off really well and he was glad to get the chance to test the V2 beta in a show environment.

Despite the bitter cold, thousands of people attended the European Capital of Culture opening ceremony

Lighting designer Stephen Page from UK-based DBN used Jands Vista T4 and T2 consoles, running with the new v2 software, for the high profile Opening Ceremony of Turku 2011, celebrating the Finnish city’s year as joint European Capital of Culture.

The event, produced by Manchester-based Walk The Plank, was staged in the fabulous Wärtsilä Shipyard on the River Aura, Turku, in temperatures of up to minus 26! An audience of 50,000 people braved the cold and enjoyed the action, which was also broadcast live on Finnish TV.

The Vista T4 was the main console, controlling over 400 lighting fixtures – including Clay Paky Alpha Beam 700s and 1500s, Robe ColorWash 2500E ATs, Martin Professional MAC 2K & 700 Profiles, Studio Due CityColors and a host of LEDs and generics including conventional PARs, LED PARs, 500W floods, 4-lites and i-Pix BB4 LED wash lights – totalling seven DMX universes of control.

A Vista T2 was running in full tracking backup, and with an in-line Visualiser system.

Comments Stephen Page, “I found the v2 software to be very reliable. I like the new Effects Engine, and the timing control is straightforward to use whilst allowing lots of complexities to be programmed into the cues.”

Most of the equipment was supplied by RMC Sound & Light OY from Helsinki, including the Jands consoles – Stephen’s desk of choice – with the Clay Paky fixtures coming from DBN, also based in Manchester, UK.

DBN has a stock of Jands consoles which have been supplied via UK distributor, A.C Entertainment Technologies.

Robot (Endhiran) is a Tamil language science fiction film directed by award winning film director S Shankar. With music by A. R. Rahman, cinematography by R. Rathnavelu and starring Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai the film had one of the biggest ever budgets for the Chennai film industry.

One of our forum regulars, Becket Tundatil, was called in to light the set for a futuristic dance sequence shot at the at the Ramoji film city in Hyderabad, India.
Becket used a Vista T4 to control a rig that included 18 Clay Paky Alpha beams 300, 24 Alpha 1200 spots, over 300 Color Kinetic iColor cove units and 150 LED pars.

Shooting, for the dance sequence lasted for 10 days and ran from 7am to 10 pm each day. Talking about the shoot Becket said the song sequences were only explained to him few minutes before the camera starts to roll. Even so he was able to produce the spectacular looks seen in the movie and the crew were impressed with the speed and ease of programming on the T4.

Robot premiered in early October 2010

A temporary nightclub installation in Kristiansand, Norway used a Jands Vista T4 lighting console to control a state of the art LED digital lighting, projection and video system featuring Robe DigitalSpot fixtures and a large Chroma-Q™ Color Web™ video effects wall.

Club Salamander was part of the five-day Quart music festival. Built partially over a pond in the middle of a forest, the 3,000 capacity venue was packed out every night to house and electronica performed by leading international DJs including Bob Sinclair, Guru Josh, DJ K-Mixx, Inkfish, Trulz og Robin, Kenny Shifter and Andy Carvell, to name a few.

Stage Concept A/S provided the main production, with additional system equipment sourced from Norway-based production suppliers including Konsertsystemer A/S, Baerum Lyd, Norsk Sceneteknikk A/S and UK-based HSL.

The club‘s lighting design was a creative collaboration between Stage Concept A/S, Thor-André Sæther and Baerum Lyd. With little time available for programming the ambitious temporary LED installation, the Jands Vista T4 console was specified due to its stability, fast programming and user-friendly interface, which the team felt would be ideal for their collaboration.

The lighting rig was hung from an 11m by 13m ground support roof over the dancefloor area. Fixtures included Robe‘s DigitalSpot 7000 combined digital moving light projector and LED-based wash light, ColorWash 2500E AT and ColorSpot 700E AT moving lights, high power strobes and strip light battens. Further Robe moving lights, Griven Colorado fixtures and LED Par Cans were scattered around the venue to uplight the surrounding trees and create reflections over the water alongside the club. The DJ booth featured a 7m wide by 8m high Chroma-Q Color Web LED video wall, pixel-mapped via a Madrix system and lit through by ColorWash 575AT Zoom fixtures. A Green Hippo HippoCritter media server also fed content to two 50” plasma TV screens in the DJ area.

The Jands Vista console used 12 universes to control the various conventional, moving light and digital lighting and video sources. In addition to using the desk‘s four DMX outputs, eight universes were distributed via Art-Net output using the new Chroma-Q Magic Box™ EtherSwitch 7™, a robust, high quality network switch that supports seven simultaneous Gigabit Ethernet network connections.

Club Salamander lighting co-designer, Thor-André Sæther, commented:

“I was the first to take on the Vista in Norway and I have never looked back since. As one of the Club Salamander lighting co-designers and having responsibility for the system set-up, in my opinion there really was no other suitable option than using a Vista T4. We were pressed for time and wanted a console that could handle the 12 universes we needed, as well as having the physical playbacks to make a lot of pre-programmed stuff available without having to cycle through page after page to get to what we suddenly needed. The Vista amazed me again with its ease of setup. Everything connected and worked flawlessly on the first attempt. The speed of programming achievable was a huge factor; along with the encoders it gave total control.

As for the Color Web, I personally don‘t know of any other product that could have done the same job.
It comes together easily and it’s lightweight. Two hours with two people was all it took to configure, assemble and hang it. It created a fantastic visual framing for the DJs and drew a lot of attention from the clubbers towards them during the nights, which was what we wanted.”