ADJ and Elation out of this world in Alabama

With the 68,200sq.ft museum also housing a 350-seat auditorium and commercial kitchen, the Centre has been a popular venue for events of all kinds since it opened in 2008. So when Sutherland Sight and Sound (Sheffield, Alabama) was called on to provide lighting for a presentation programme at Davidson hosted by Oakwood College, the production company wanted to make it a truly cosmic event.

Josh Johnston of Sutherland Sight and Sound employed fixtures from American DJ and its sister company Elation Professional. Inside the Davidson Centre, the lighting designer used eight ADJ Mega Bar LED colour-changing bars, two ADJ Galaxian red and green laser effects, four ADJ PAR 64 LED Pro PAR cans and two Elation Design Spot 575 moving heads. The PAR cans and moving lights were hung on trussing from another sister company, Global Truss. An additional four ADJ Mega Bar Pros were used to light the outside of the building. The whole production was run with Elation's Compu 2048FC PC-based lighting control software.

Wanting to showcase the museum's main attraction, the Saturn V rocket, Johnston beamed the two Galaxians onto it. A 'solar system' type laser effect, each Galaxian unit produces over 500 red and green laser patterns, making it suitable for covering the surface of the massive spacecraft. "The Saturn V hangs from the ceiling and we wanted to draw attention to it," said Johnston. "The Galaxian's awesome shower of beams certainly did that - even its name is perfect for a fixture used to light a rocket." The stage itself was illuminated with ADJ LED RGB colour-mixing fixtures. The Mega Bar LED, an ultra-bright colour bar containing 252 red, green and blue 10mm LEDs, cast changing colours onto the stage's scenic elements, which included large sconces on each side. Johnston chose the Mega Bar LED because "it's the best thing for the budget out there. You get a nice, even wash and it's super useful. You can do anything from face it toward the audience and run effects, to washing walls." ADJ's 64B LED Pro par cans were flown overhead on SQ-4114 square truss from Global Truss. "We use Global Truss because all of their products are in stock all the time, so there's never any waiting to get them. They have excellent customer service, their product is at a price point that's very affordable - and it works," said Johnston.

To wash the exterior of the building, Johnston used ADJ's Mega Bar Pro, a brighter version of the Mega Bar LED, containing larger, more powerful 1W LEDs. He used Elation Compu 2048 FC PC-based software to control the lighting. In today's era of LED-powered fixtures, he says, "it's not practical to use a console with the amount of DMX channels you're taking up. I pretty much always use Compu software now - whether it's the church market, the theatre market, any market."

Compu software is also easier for most end-users to operate than a DMX console, Johnston suggested. "Unless it's a professional venue, the people who are running the lighting are typically volunteers and not very experienced with controllers. So when you have a visual interface like with Compu, and can actually see what you're doing, it makes it a lot easier for the customer to use."

(Jim Evans)