A proscenium arch theatre built in 1911, Launceston’s Princess Theatre stages a wide range of performances, including plays, opera, ballet, music/rock concerts, comedy shows, dancing eisteddfods, nostalgic film nights, school concerts and graduations, and even a circus or two!
Head Technician Malcolm Butters is in his 23rd year of working at the venue, and it’s safe to say he has seen many technological changes over the years! A recent highlight was the delivery of two Robert Juliat Arthur long-throw 800W LED followspots.
“The followspots we had here were getting unreliable,” explained Malcolm. “They had discharge lamps in them, and sometimes they just turn off halfway through the show. Plus, they’re always hard to fire up, rarely firing up on the first click of the button.”
Not surprisingly, Malcolm was keen to replace the errand followspots and LED, with its power-saving feature, was the only option.
“All of the lighting that comes in on stage is LED-based, and it’s all punchy and bright, so we thought we should go for LED followspots to get through that amount of light on stage,” continued Malcolm.
Malcolm has been looking for the ideal followspot replacement for nearly two years, but he says it’s harder in Tasmania to get product demonstrations.
“I can’t go down to the local shop and say, what you got?” he said. “I rely on people like Keith Bradshaw from Show Technology to come down and say, ‘Look, this is what you should be having in here’.”
Robert Juliat has an enviable reputation for designing and building the best followspots in the world. It was the obvious choice once Malcolm had seen the Arthur LT in action.
“These things are certainly performing pretty well at the moment!” he declared. “Arthur LT’s output of 2000 lux at a distance of 50m is exceptional, and the zoom range of 4°-10° is good. The light quality is outstanding, but you’d expect that from a Robert Juliat product.”
Malcolm’s team of followspot operators haven’t taken long to get used to their radically different followspots. With the old followspots, they would need two of them to pick up the lead onstage because they were not bright enough. With the RJ Arthurs, they could drop down to the one followspot.
“The controls are well designed with the zoom/focus and dimmer handles, and iris, frost and CTO filter knobs are well positioned and very easy to use,” remarked Malcolm. “Connecting them to the lighting console will make programming shows and synchronizing blackouts much easier.”
Another essential feature of the RJ Arthur LT followspots is their whisper-quiet operation, a significant change from their previous clunky discharge followspots.
In the photo above, Malcolm has demonstrated the difference between the old followspots and his prized RJ Arthur LT models!
