Send
as PostcardLD Patrick Marks has
found the Avolites Diamond 4 lighting console’s Fixture Exchange facility a life
saver during their extensive summer festival style tour!
He’s touring his own console everywhere and picking up a variety of local
productions across the UK and Europe. The schedule has also encompassed a 3 week
Swedish tour with lighting sound and trucking all supplied by Copenhagen-based
Nordic.
Having the D4 and using Fixture Exchange has not only meant “No more
re-programming shows on sunny afternoons with no time!” says Marks, it’s also
saved him from worrying about whether the fixtures for the day are Martin, Robe,
Vari*Lite. Whatever they are, his show remains the same.
Marks ‘converted’ to the D4 at the beginning of the summer after many years of
running Status Quo’s show on a Diamond 3. Now he’s using the D4 and the very
latest software versions which refine Avo’s dynamic Fixture Exchange facility
yet further. He’s delighted with the results, “It’s absolutely rock solid, and
has done more than I ever expected. It’s quick, user-friendly, hugely flexible
.. and really makes for a stress-free day on any festival tour”.
He actually has 12 different shows stored in the desk, and can choose the
closest one to “today’s” rig, wherever he happens to be and with whatever kit -
to recall all his positional and palette information and all cues and programmed
effects.
He also saves each show to his USB key (there’s capacity of 80 on one key) for
additional security. This further enables him to edit and programme on his
laptop using the Avolites Visualiser and the D4 Virtual Panel.
Send
as Postcard
He visited Avolites’ West London HQ for two days before the tour
kicked off to convert the summer show from D3 to D4 and also to get the feel of
the D4. An Avo user for many years, he says of the console, “The ergonomics are
great – really comfortable to use and work on. I didn’t need any formal training
on it, picking up the basics in about 10 minutes, and from there, it’s either
really obvious where to go or the console prompts you what to do next!”.
Quo’s summer festival touring rig is based on 4 straight trusses with four
floor-mounted vertical sections of truss at the back. For the Swedish tour, the
trusses were all trimmed at different heights – with the front being at 30 feet
– headroom permitting – and the back at 16 feet high. This enhanced the general
spatiality and perceived depth of the stage.
As always with Mark’s rigs, every lamp has to work hard! The rig consists of
twelve 6-lamp PAR 64 bars, 8 strings of ACLs (i.e. 16 bars of 4), 8 Source Four
key lights, four 4-lite and ten 2-lite audience blinders, 20 Martin MAC 700s and
6 MAC 600 washes – so not a large rig for the stages and audiences they are
playing - ranging from 3000 to 8000.
The moving lights are the element that changes most frequently, and so far this
has swapped many times between different types of MACs, Vari*Lites and Robes –
all effortlessly dealt with by Fixture Exchange.
