Held in late January, the event once again presented the equipment in a real theatrical setting, Central's Embassy Theatre. There, the equipment was set up and programmed by students from Central's lighting courses to create introductory shows that showed off the potential of the equipment. The students were then on-hand to respond to requests from visitors to demonstrate particular products or features.
The day featured early appearances for Robert Juliat's new Aledin LED Fresnel, the PixelRange PixelSmart LED washlight, Pulsar's new UV LED Chromaflood, the Galaxia LED washlight newly distributed in the UK by White Light, and - demonstrating the ongoing importance of traditional tungsten fixtures - Philips Selecon's new SPX profile spot.
Also on show were products from Coemar (the Infinity ACL-S and Infinity Spot M), iPix (the BB4 modular LED fixture), JB (the A4 Zoom and A7 Zoom moving LED fixtures), Prism (the multiple award-winning RevEAL LED washlight), Robert Juliat (the Aledin LED profile spot and LeCin'k 2.5-5k tungsten Fresnel), Clay Paky (the 1500 Spot and 1500 Wash), Chroma-Q (ColorForce LED battens providing dramatic cyc lighting), Martin (the Mac350 Entour moving LED spotlight and Mac401 moving LED washlight and MacIII Performance spotlight), Vari-Lite (the powerful VLX LED washlight) and X-FLEX (the versatile LED strips, used to decorate the auditorium).
The RSC Lightlock was used, rigged from front-of-house trapeze bars, demonstrating its ability to damp unwanted movement when moving lights are rigged from short flown lighting bars. And a Martin MAC 700 featured a prototype 'mini-VSFX' cloud disk, promising to bring the high-quality tonal projected images found in VSFX projectors to moving lights.
Control from the rig was from an equally diverse range of products, including ETC's Eos, MA's grandMA2, LSC's Clarity PC-based control software and Zero88's Orb.
Those attending the event covered the whole gamut of entertainment lighting, with around 150 visitors from the worlds of theatre, television, rock and roll, opera and corporate work as well as project managers, theatre consultants and both teachers and students enjoying the ability to see products in action individually or in comparison with each other without the distractions or hard-sell of a trade show.
After the Showcase, social events continued into the evening with the second Association of Lighting Designers quiz night - White Light supplying prizes (and drinks). The quiz was actually won by the same team principals - production electrician Martin Chisnall and lighting designer Andy Voller - as last year, this time joined by Nick Richings, Chris West and Phil Supple, all again under the team banner Bastard Frost.
(Jim Evans)
