"The grandMA range has been on our 'radar' for some time now," comments White Light's technical director, Dave Isherwood, "having proved itself on a range of rock-and-roll and corporate projects for others over the last few years. Having now supplied two systems to theatrical productions - Thoroughly Modern Millie in London and Mamma Mia in Holland, we found that many of our regular customers were asking about the console. We decided that the easiest way to let them find out more was to set up the consoles here and let people play with them, with our staff and those who look after the console for AC Lighting, its distributor, here to answer questions."
To demonstrate that grandMA is now a versatile family of consoles rather than just one product, Glyn O'Donoghue and Neil Vann from AC Lighting set up a networked system of consoles. This included the full-size grandMA console with its three colour touch screens and motorized faders, the compact grandMA Light console, and PCs running both the grandMA off-line software and grandMA 3D plus the freely downloadable 3D visualization software that fully integrates with the consoles. The networked system allowed visitors to explore consoles individually or to try the multi-user set-ups facilitating the use of multiple consoles to divide workload when programming a large lighting rig. The consoles were running the latest release of GrandMA software - version 5 - which adds some functionality theatre users have been requesting, particularly the ability to load parts of a show rather than the whole show.
"The afternoon was a success," comments White Light's general manager Bryan Raven, "with visitors taking the time to explore the consoles in some depth in between drinking tea and eating cake! All seemed impressed with the console and, particularly, the new features that MA Lighting have been adding in response to user requests. We suspect that we may be seeing grandMA consoles on more shows before too long..."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
