High End Systems Sola Luminaires Take Top Honors at Applause Awards Honoring excellence in Central Florida high school musical theater productions, this year's Applause Awards were held in Orlando's Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. To fulfill his design, lighting designer Michael Pagan's plot called for a bevy of High End Systems and ETC gear in the rig. Pagan comments, "The show is modeled off of the Tony Awards, so I needed a very versatile, large and bright lighting rig to achieve anything I needed for all of the different performances and to give it that 'awards show' feel. The Center has ETC Gateway nodes throughout the space, so it's possible to place lights in every corner of the theatre for your designs to come to life. The beautiful architecture is breathtaking and transports you to another world." Pagan used a dozen SolaSpot 2000s in his rig, four fixtures each on three electrics over the stage. "The SolaSpot's primary duties were for beams and for texture throughout the show," he explains. "My favorite feature is their intensity; some people thought these were arc lamps and not LEDs when I first turned them all on. It also offers a beautifully flat field with no hot spots -- and every single fixture looks the same!" "One hidden gem of the 2000 is its indigo highlighters. I was able to wash the entire stage and really make costumes pop out. The fixture's color mixing is fabulous -- I can get true pastel colors throughout, and go into deep saturated colors without losing any output. These are how colors are supposed to look!" "Throughout the entire event, I used almost every gobo and the animation wheel to get beautiful scenes and breakup beams through the haze. Partnering with the SolaWash 37s over the stage, I was able to get exact matching colors when I was building palettes. There was no need to add extra magenta or cyan for things to match." "I was also very impressed with the 2000's zoom range and quiet operation. We used 26 wireless mics, as well as floor mics and chorus mics -- and not once did they pick up any fan or other noise. After a week of running them full on with haze, the lenses still looked just as clean as when we loaded in. The 2000 was the workhorse of the show and is now my favorite moving light spot fixture on the market." Pagan augmented his design with 15 SolaWash 37s and eight SolaWash 19s, used on cases as dance side lights and up in the electrics to cover the stage in a color wash. "These fixtures impressed me with their color range and how much spread I got out of them, I was able to cover the stage entirely with just these fixtures." Six clusters of Source Four PARs with very narrow lenses were used "to give the old par 64 ACL look, which worked great for hits and bumps throughout the show." An additional 24 Source Fours with 19-degree lenses were employed for downlight specials, along with 22 Source Four 10-degree for front light and 16 Source Four 10-degree for balcony side lights. "They are so reliable and always get the job done right." Pagan ran an ETC EOS TI at front-of-house with a Gio @5 as backup. He enthuses, "ETC consoles were my first to learn and master, and I feel most at home behind their desks. The Magic Sheets are my favorite feature of the EOS; they make it easy to program without having to change screens or change my creative mindset. We used the Gio @5 to ring out the rig before it went up to trim, and I was very pleased with its size and capabilities." In closing, Pagan says, "The show was a true success. Producer Ande Deaton and director Dana Brazil were both thrilled with the lighting, as were the students, teachers, and audience. Master electrician Lizz Pittsley had everything perfectly prepped and the IASTE local crew 631 really made this show possible. We also got great gear and service from our lighting vendor, PRG Orlando. The moving lights and cable package all came in great condition; this made the load-in process quick and painless, and we didn't have to swap out any fixtures during the week run of rehearsals and day of show. This speaks volumes about PRG's high standards, and about how solid the SolaWash 19, SolaWash 37, and SolaSpot 2000 fixtures really are." 
|
