I’m Gareth Kays, owner and creative director of ‘GK Productions’. GK Productions is a medium-sized production company based in Hobart. I handle all the day-to-day admin and lead my team in the field. I also design all the large theatre productions we do.
My passion has always been musical theatre. I’ve always enjoyed it, but creatively, I love being able to do something scripted, knowing what’s coming next, and creating those magic moments.
I was 10 years old when I was involved in my first theatrical production with a youth drama group, I assisted with backstage, before taking on the audio and lighting duties not long after.
I was first introduced to Avolites by the former Tassie production company ‘Production Works’ while at college. I ended up working there for 12 years running their lighting department. They had just purchased a Pearl 2000 Rollercue and a Sapphire 2000, having just sold their Diamond 3. The first product I purchased was a Titan Mobile; I still use it as a backup.
I often program smaller shows we do on a console and then leave a Titan Mobile in place for an operator. During the production week, I network a Mobile or T3 to either our D7-215 or Quartz consoles, allowing me to do fixes on the fly while the operator manages the cueing.
Avolites just makes sense to me! The first computerised console I used was an ETC Express 48/96, I knew it very well, but control of moving lights was very much an afterthought. I find Avolites so intuitive, no need for memorising syntax or numerous modifier key shortcuts. There are so many ways to operate the console, and once you’ve learnt the basics of Titan you can follow the same process to undertake many more complex operations.
The recent acquisition of the D7-215 has been great, having a console with more real estate and extra screens has sped up programming, and having some extra dedicated buttons has sped up updating cues as well. The Quartz has been great for theatre where nearly everything is pre-programmed, but on our other larger outdoor events the extra playbacks and executors, motorised faders will really be a game changer.
I don’t use syntax programming, it’s far quicker I find with a mouse click, selecting groups etc, and I love the attribute editor workspace for speed of programming. The Cue-List workspace is straight forward for configuring changes and editing cues and individual attribute times. The Shape Generator is also fast and intuitive to create most basic demands.
I tend not to change to many user settings, but I recently learned there was an option to leave fade times etc in programmer when hitting clear.
We currently have a couple of school productions in progress, and we just did a corporate fundraiser which our D7-215 was on. It was the first real busking gig for the new console, so that was exciting.
We are currently in the process of moving into a new warehouse which will be the first time all our inventory will be under one roof. The end of year is always busy with various dance concerts, plus Hobart’s Carols by Candlelight, before getting back into the Theatre early next year for a few different productions.
gkproductions.com.au
avolites.com
Australian Distributor: LSC Control lsccontrol.com.au
