Camden Haven High School is a rural school situated in New South Wales, Australia that has outstanding facilities including a Multi-Purpose Centre. Following the success of their Back to the 80’s musical in 2015, staff and students at Camden Haven High recently held their latest production, ‘The Great Australian Rock Musical’ from March 27th to March the 29th. With this year’s musical, the school where actively seeking lighting that would give the school production an added dimension with fresh new looks. As a result, lighting designer for the show Peter Dick decided to acquire CHAUVET Professional lighting fixtures from Showtools International, to help transform the annual musical held in front of an energetic audience.
The show included songs by Australian rock icons AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Skyhooks, Dragon, Choir Boys, Daddy Cool, J.O.K. Sherbet, Ted Mulray Gang, Jet, Billy Thorpe, Rick Springfield, Divinyls and The Screaming Jets performed by a live band. The fixtures used for the show included: 8x COLORdash Par-Hex 12, 3x Ovation C-640FC, 8x Ovation FD-165WW and 6 x Rogue R2 Spots.
Peter explained why the school upgraded its lighting rig to CHAUVET Professional, ‘We decided to use a fully LED rig as we are gradually retiring all our old fixtures and didn’t want the unreliability. This left us without spare fixtures for specials so we flew some Rogue R2 Spots and they did the job beautifully.’
The Rogue R2 spots were used for gobo-morphing technology and two variable scrolling color wheels for an unlimited number of shape-changing and split-color effects. Rogue R2 Spot uses a powerful 240 W LED light source in a 16.5° beam angle for a brilliant light that creates an unparalleled audience experience, and were used to spot light various performances on stage.
The Ovation C-640FC’s were used for their rich colour as Peter commented, ‘We made extensive use of the rich colour opportunities of the three Ovation C-640FCs, which washed the cyc from above. This allowed us to create a set-type mood without moving sets or flats around – for which we have limited space.’
Furthermore, the Ovation FD-165WW fresnels were added for their incredible dimming system, ‘We appreciated the Ovation FD165WW’s natural warm colour temperature. We used its DMX controlled zoom to provide a highlight in one scene and reset it for a stage wash the next. There is so much value in one fixture. We also used 4 of these on a very high bar that has no DMX. This meant they were running solely on the dimmer, and they worked perfectly,’ Peter stated.
For a fuller stage wash, The COLORdash Par-Hex 12’s were used with 4 for front colour wash and 4 for backlight powered by RGBAWUV LEDs. ‘We were able to use the COLORdash Par-Hex 12s to match the colour of the FD-165WW owing to their amber and white LEDs,’ Peter said.
Thanks to the addition of CHAUVET Professional lighting fixtures, Camden Haven High School transformed their ‘The Great Australian Rock Musical’ for 2017 which was a successful night for all involved. With the new fixtures added to their lighting rig which produced dynamic looks for this year’s production, Camden Haven High School will be able to provide amazing musicals like this for the foreseeable future to support the school motto, ‘Aim for the highest’ with Peter adding, ‘The fixtures were so versatile we’ve left them in the air for future productions and assemblies where something special is needed.’
