This conference attracted more than 26,000 Christians from 68 nations representing 19 denominations who call the Acer Arena home for five days as part of the annual Hillsong Conference. Considered Australia's largest annual conference, each year it attracts pastors, worship leaders, musicians, community workers and individual believers representing hundreds of churches.
During the conference, the rig has to light everything ranging from the contemporary worship music that Hillsong is famous for, through to ballads from Guy Sebastian and Paulini, African Children's Choirs, modern dance pieces, as well as the key note speaker presentations which have to be broadcast quality suitable to be shown on various TV networks throughout the world.
Working off a concept sketch and a brief to have some LED archways and "forests" of lights, Yates went searching for the product to achieve the vision. The LED archways were the easy one; the new Martin LC panels were "the obvious solution, especially since they had to be hung on an angle". These were fed content from a Martin Maxedia media server system; standard library images as well as clips collected by Hillsong over the years.
"The LC panels were great," said Yates. "I used 32 of them and they looked really good. The resolution on them was not too high and not too low. You could still write text and have good definition yet also have them as background with patterns or graphics and they looked good too. They caused lots of 'oohs' and 'ahhs'! We had people/clients come to the conference to look at them and consequently we'll be using them on other projects."
The rig consisted of around six MAC 2000 Profiles, 20 MAC 2000 Washes, 18 MAC 700 Profiles, 20 MAC 700 Washes, 18 MAC TW1 washlights, 16 ChromaBanks, 70 ChromaStrips, 24 ChromaCans, 4 VL 1000 TS, and 6 VL 3000 Spot as well as conventional profiles and Fresnels. Control was via an MA Lighting grandMA controlling twelve streams of DMX. Four Look Solution Unique hazers supplied atmospherics. Lighting was provided jointly by Lots of Watts and Chameleon.
(Jim Evans)
