©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 July issue of Lighting&Sound America includes a review of Dierks Bentley’s current Somewhere on a Beach Tour, which features lighting control by a Jands Vista console.

Excerpt

(LD Chris) Reade programmed the show, and is out on the road with a Jands Vista console. “It’s the most stable console I’ve ever been on in my career,” he says. “It’s more of a visual console, so I can go into the time line—which is a lot like video editing—and I can see the parameters per instrument that are active in that cue, and I can change the parameters in seconds. It’s very logical, as well as intuitive—it makes sense, everything flows really well and I can do fairly complicated things in a much simpler way.” Reade has worked on other consoles, but keeps going back to the Vista. “The Jands Vista is my console and I love it,” he concludes

Read or download the full article [PDF 3.4MB]

This article is reproduced courtesy of Lighting & Sound America / writer Sharon Stancavage.

Gallery – Click images to enlarge

Photo © Jack Edinger

A Jands Vista S3 console and two Jands D1 Playback Processors are being used by designer, Robb Jibson of So Midwest, Inc. to provide lighting and media control for American rockers, Fall Out Boy’s current 2015 / 2016 international tour.

The high-profile US rock band are touring in support of their 2015 album American Beauty / American Psycho, currently undertaking UK and European Arena shows throughout October, following a series of US dates over the Summer.

A long-time Jands Vista user, Robb is taking the S3 and D1 combination on the entire tour. The custom setup consists of the S3 control surface, which is connected to an Apple i7 Mac Mini running the award-winning Vista v2 software, and a Wacom Cintiq Multi Touch pen tablet surface built into a custom case. The system runs with an identical back up and two Vista D1 Playback Processors, which are rack-mounted in a road-case.

“There are a total of 15,496 parameters on the tour, ” says Robb. “The Vista controls all the lighting fixtures and elements of the mBox media server that are Art-Net merged within the Time Code Controller. The D1 processors are needed due to the parameter counts, and I have to say they are performing amazingly well. They simply sit on the network and work – that is the beauty of them! ”

Photo © Jack Edinger

In addition to the massive effects lighting rig, which includes dozens of Aryton Magic Panels, Magic Rings and Clay Paky B-Eye in full parameter count modes, the show set includes a large LED screen situated high above the front of the action, a huge LED wall at the back, and LED screen strips on the three staircases centre-stage. A variety of media content appears throughout the show, including live camera feeds and striking visuals designed by Robb in his capacity as production designer, in collaboration with a creative team of animators.

“The set is custom made and faced with 6mm magnetic video tiles,” says Robb. “Being able to control all the intensity levels of the mBox map surfaces in a matrix (using Vista’s pixel mapper) gives some really cool looks and functionality!”

The Jands Vista D1 expands the DMX processing capabilities of the entire Vista range and connects via Ethernet to any Vista system – providing an additional 8192 channels (16 DMX universes) per unit.

Inside the D1 there’s a high performance Intel processor, 16GB of RAM, a Solid State Drive and dual gigabit Ethernet connections to maximise playback performance and minimise latency. Fixtures can either be connected to the D1 over a network using Art-Net or sACN, or directly via the D1’s eight DMX outputs.

Photo © Jack Edinger

“The Jands Eco system allows me to control the show with the most respect to the timings of things,” Robb continues. “It allows me to quickly dial in timings that are accurate to the musical notations, and get them right. Constraining all the parameters into timing blocks and being able to adjust them without losing the timings is a joy! I also really love the fixture selection and sorting, being able to think less of fixture numbers and ordering, and more about the overall show goal!”

“Jands continues to innovate – the Vista system really is designed beautifully. ”

Following the October Fall Out Boy shows, which include dates in the UK, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Russia, the band will return to North America for a series of dates through December, February and March.

Equally at home on tour or as a venue’s house console, Jands Vista is ideal for shows and special events, arena touring, lighting companies, AV companies, venues and rental, not to mention a fantastic investment for a designer.

Jands’ award-winning Vista lighting & media control system has been embraced by leading designers, production & rental 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 Florence + The Machine, Bring Me The Horizon, Kylie Minogue, Queen + Adam Lambert, and Dierks Bentley.

The powerful Jands Vista v2 lighting and media control system has helped lighting designer Derek Jones to utilise an ever-changing rig of fixtures for different venues on American singer Chrissie Hynde’s latest US tour.

Derek was challenged with using in-house or locally-hired fixtures at all of the venues on the tour, which visited cities from Boston and New York, to Dallas and LA.

“Thankfully, I’ve been a long-time Jands Vista user, so I knew that it wouldn’t be a problem with the platform’s fantastic generic fixture model,”says Derek, who has used Vista to provide the tour lighting for high-profile acts as diverse as Cliff Richard, the Scissor Sisters and Yusuf Islam.

The Vista‘s generic fixture model allows LDs and operators to treat all lights in the same way, providing quick, hassle-free and accurate fixture swapping to adapt their show to fit whatever type of lights they are faced with. This proves a perfect solution when the tour picks up local production, as opposed to using their own lighting rig – adapting automatically to newly rigged fixtures from venue to venue without the need for re-programming.

This simplicity to work fast, with the power to control the finest details, means that LDs can focus on creating a great looking show rather than on programming a desk.
Derek comments: “With the help of the generic fixture model it was easy to move between so many different fixtures in so many locations. The Vista was great at just plugging in and after only 30 mins of tweaks, the show was back up and running. ”

The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self-contained consoles all running the same Vista v2 software. Derek invested in his S3 console four years ago and declared that he’d “fallen in love”with it after using it for the first time, adding, “there’s absolutely no going back now.”

Designed to be used with a desktop or laptop, the S3 is a Vista without the computer hardware components. Install the platform’s Vista v2 software to a computer, connect it to the S3 with a USB cable, and you’ve got a fully-operational Vista console.

“I’ve always liked the different sized surfaces of the Vista range that can be used with any suitable computer,”says Derek, who tours mainly with his S3 but also utilises an S1. “That, and of course the ease and speed in which you can get a show built.”

Derek’s design for Chrissie Hynde, who is probably best known as the lead singer of The Pretenders, was “simple and straightforward, without too many colours, as the artist didn’t want a flashy production. ”

The team played a 25-date theatre tour from October to December 2014 in support of Chrissie Hynde’s latest album, Stockholm.

Equally at home on tour or as a venue’s house console, the Vista is ideal for shows and special events, arena touring, lighting companies, AV companies, venues and rental, not to mention a fantastic investment for a designer.

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 Kylie Minogue, Queen + Adam Lambert, Peter Gabriel, Dierks Bentley, Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones and Little Big Town.

Get your demonstration of the Jands Vista range at the following upcoming international tradeshows in March & April:

• CITT – Montreal, Canada, 26th – 27th March, Booth 140 (A.C. Lighting Inc.)
• NAB – Las Vegas, USA, 13th – 16th April, Booth C8439 (A.C. Lighting Inc.)
• Prolight & Sound – Frankfurt, Germany, 15th – 18th April, Booth 9.0-D47 (AC-ET)

Photo ©Joshua Timmermans

Lighting designer, Chris Reade is back on the road with his Jands Vista T2, S1 and M1 consoles, controlling an even more technically ambitious rig for the latest tour by Platinum-selling singer-songwriter, Dierks Bentley.

After recently topping the US Billboard country airplay chart with his 12th No.1 single, ‘Drunk On A Plane’, Dierks Bentley and director Wes Edwards have just added the CMA (Country Music Award) ‘Music Video of the Year’ Award, to the song’s other accolades.

The country artist’s 2014 tour is called RISER, after the recent album of the same name. It kicked off in May in Charlotte, North Carolina, with sold-out shows in amphitheatres and arenas across the United States and Canada – concluding in December.

The tour further builds upon Chris’s impressive lighting design and rig for Dierks Bentley on last year’s Locked & ReLoaded Tour with Miranda Lambert – also controlled using the Jands Vista system.

“I can’t say enough positive things about Jands Vista!” says Chris, who first used the Vista platform in 2008, and subsequently invested in his own T2, S1 and M1. “I know Vista will handle whatever I throw at it. We did a massive show at one venue where we had 23 universes of instruments running, with only our tour floor package. The entire lighting rig (besides our floor package) had to be swapped over and the console handled it all.”

Chris continues: “Dierks is really into the visual aspect of his performances, and the Vista platform, in my opinion, puts me in the best situation to succeed in making his shows detailed in a shorter amount of programming time.”

Chris is using his S1/M1 as a tracking backup on the RISER tour, in addition to his main T2 desk. The consoles network through a Pathport VIA switch and output DMX via Pathport OCTO Artnet Nodes.

“It all works wonderfully, and it’s extremely fast,” says Chris. “I also love the speed of editing very detailed timing via the timeline.”

In addition to the larger venues, the tour also plays a selection of fairs, festivals and casinos, meaning that Chris has to reconfigure the lighting rig based on venue capabilities.

“Without the fixture swap/cloning features of the T2, I would not be able to get through a touring cycle without having to start from scratch on the non-tour dates. The timeline is one of my favorite things about the Vista platform. When I’m programming I can bang out my cue lists and then go back and get into the details per cue, per instrument, per parameter, to adjust all of my timing, etc. It is extremely fast to edit a song once the looks are in. I do quite a few ‘follow’ cues, and making detailed timing adjustments is a breeze within the timeline.”

For the RISER Tour, Chris is using a huge rig (provided by Rod ‘Red’ Gibson of Christie Lites), including the new Martin MAC Quantums, MAC Viper Wash DXs, MAC Vipers, MAC Auras, MAC 700 Profiles, Elation Platinum Beam 5R and Atomic Strobes, along with some conventionals.

Gallery – click to enlarge

The T2 is an all-in-one lighting package providing all the features that make the Vista such a great live desk: big LCDs, 15 playbacks (10 with faders), four DMX outputs and timecode input, and three encoder wheels for manipulating intensity, position, color, gobo and beam.

The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self-contained consoles all running the same Vista v2 software. The award-winning 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 Queen + Adam Lambert, Peter Gabriel, Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones and Little Big Town.

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.

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

American rockers Fall Out Boy recently toured Australia to support their new album Pax Am Days which reached No. 2 on the ARIA Album Charts.

Lighting designer Robb Jibson toured a Vista L5, the latest addition to the revolutionary Jands Vista range of consoles and control surfaces, with a Mac Mini based S3 as a system back up.

Robb has been a Vista user for over eighteen months reporting that he was instantly blown away by the simplicity of the interface and the intricate timings that he could dial in.

“My favourite feature is probably the swing based FX,” he added. “Not having to create multiple macro-based cue lists and the ease in which you can lock sync with the band and those FX. Close second would be the way the console deals with multipart fixtures and matrix FXs.”

Robb further commented that he particularly likes how the software is designed and developed. “It’s not a hodgepodge of many programming styles, it stands on its own two feet. That said, it’s really powerful and super flexible, but does not try to dabble with concepts from here or there, and the networking abilities on the Vista L5 are amazing. ”

“Vista finally allows me to refine my work flow. I can be in After Effects, Photoshop, Vectorworks and all the keyboard commands system wide, that I’m used to, work. I can command tab between my apps and keep things flowing. It’s also a very musical software, being able to build FX and cues that relate to BPM and then divide and multiply, means that I can get dialed in quickly for any project I’m working on.”

With Fall Out Boy, Robb is sometimes touring a system and sometimes not, fortunately the Vista L5 platform allows him to quickly and effortlessly swap, merge, expand and contract all the programming that is being built very easily. “By using matrix FX and global based personalities, I can swap from our rig to spec one day and a hodgepodge of knock off equipment the next!” he said. “I’ve been told a few times by house staff and vendors that other shows have a hard time getting things going quickly or are waiting on fixture personalities to be built, whereas the Vista software has you up and going quickly! I live for the fixture editor we have, scared no more of the abyss of knock off fixtures in remote countries!”

Gallery – Click images to enlarge

Renowned lighting designer, Rob Sinclair has used a Jands Vista L5 lighting and media control console to deliver an atmospheric visual feast for the latest Peter Gabriel ‘Back to Front’ world tour.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of hit album ‘So’, the tour spans Peter‘s illustrious career, including a performance of the album in its entirety and features the original ‘So live’ 1987 band lineup. It is described by the innovative artist himself as a ‘three course show’.

In response, Rob’s inventive and dynamic lighting kicks off with the house lights up, then slowly slips into performance mode. Rob chose to use Jands’ Vista control platform for a number of reasons: “Firstly, it’s fast and instinctive to use. At The O2 arena, London I needed to modify every cue for filming and it only took me a couple of hours!” Rob says it feels like it’s actually an extension of his brain.

Secondly, the latest Vista v2 software release has Rob impressed: “Some of the time I need to do relatively simple programming and the console makes that easy and frictionless. However sometimes I need to set up more complex sequences. This is where the console really comes into its own, allowing me to burrow deep into the detail of a cue.”

“Thirdly, I use the cloning, copy and pasting features regularly. I can change an entire rig, and by adjusting a few presets I know my show will run as I expect.”

Rob has used the Jands Vista platform since 2005. “The console operates visually, so I don’t need to do any unnecessary math,” he explains. “The timeline shows me exactly what I’ve recorded and allows me to identify where something needs adjusting. The ability to copy and paste events between completely different types of fixtures in different songs is nothing short of miraculous!”

Rob comments. “I love that the show file is constantly evolving. Every small change, every slight move forward gets me closer to the never attainable dream of perfection.”

The premise of the design began with an idea to re-use and re-engineer the camera style boom arms from the original ‘So live’ tour. The design featured over 100 Martin Mac Auras, Mac 2k washes and Clay Paky QWO 800s.

For Rob, the Jands Vista platform is the only choice. “The Vista helps me by being powerful yet simple, enabling me to get the artist’s and my ideas from our heads and onto the stage. It’s quick to achieve the simple, yet I can also delve deeper and deliver complex programming quickly. The added bonus is the support. It’s comforting to know that there are always people on my side if ever I have a problem, regardless of where I am in the world.”

The European leg of the ‘Back to Front’ world tour commenced in September, culminating with a series of UK dates which were recorded for a future DVD release. Following the phenomenal response, Peter recently announced further shows in April/May 2014.

A Jands Vista T2 console was chosen by US based Lighting Designer, Chris Shrom, to control lighting for the Grammy Award-winning vocal harmony group Little Big Town, currently touring North America until mid-December.

Chris was challenged with programming a rig which would have as much impact outside in daylight as it does when the band moves inside arenas.

Chris worked closely with the band, Tour Project Manager, Chris Diener and Show Designer, Raj Kapoor in designing something that worked well in all scenarios – choosing a dynamic rig featuring Sharpys, Atomic 3000s with color scrollers, Nocturn UV lights with Eclipse Shutters and Mac Auras.

“I know the Jands Vista T2 well and I can program it very quickly. I’ve been using the Vista software now for almost five years. I love the timeline feature: Its simple, easy to look at and work in. The less thinking I have to do when building cues with complicated timing, the better. I can compact two or three steps into one by arranging various attributes to happen chronologically. Click, Drag, Done… moving on.

The other item I find the most helpful is the visual interface – I click on the icon, interact with it, and I’m done. There are no numbers to memorise or type in, it’s so easy to use and very, very quick.”

Chris reveals that during the tour, all flown items are provided locally, requiring regular fixture swaps.

“Every day I’m changing luminaires and the Vista was designed to do this seamlessly,” explains Chris. “Most days I only need to update a few palettes and I’m rolling.”
Despite using the Vista for many years, Chris continues to be surprised in new ways by its flexibility and ability to make light work of creative challenges.

At one festival recently, which was held on a Saturday, it meant that Chris’s access to helpful advice from a lighting manufacturer was limited.

“I had a bunch of LED lights that were brand new,” explained Chris. “They were just released and I had no profile for them. It was my most challenging show to date and I had a whole rig of lights that I couldn’t use. Vista has a fixture editor in it, but at that point I had never used it. I opened the program and within two to three attempts I had built a working profile. Every time I walk into a challenge I am thankful I have that console – it takes large catastrophes and seems to make them minor inconveniences.”

Bandit Lites, based in Knoxville, TN, USA, provided all the lighting equipment for the tour.

“As far as service is concerned, between Jake Tickle at Bandit, who introduced me to the Vista, and the staff I’ve worked with at US distributor, A.C. Lighting, I’ve been very happy. If I run into trouble, on the rare occasion they can’t help me, they know someone who can.”