Clearlight Shows in Melbourne has supplied St Leonard’s College in Brighton with an ETC Ion lighting control console for use in their main hall where they produce three major musical per year.
With the College wishing to expand its horizons in production it was necessary to upgrade their existing lighting console, an aging Jands Event console that had delivered many years of trusty service but needed to gracefully retire.
“We needed a console that could control LED’s and moving lights,” commented Ron Gavin, St Leonard’s Multimedia Administrator and Production Technician. “Initially I looked at a Strand console until Clearlight recommended the ETC Ion and after looking at the training DVD’s for the Ion, I decided it looked relatively simple to operate and experiencing it reconfirmed this.”
Providing fully integrated control of conventional and moving lights, the ETC Ion has a powerful effects package, alongside marking and timing functions.
“We’ve only done the one musical with the Ion so far so it’s still all quite new to me,” admitted Ron. “However, it certainly has the ability to do what we want it to do. Operating moving lights with the Ion proved to be very easy, easier than I thought. The LED control is even easier because the colour picker is just fantastic.”
The ETC Ion has a solid reputation for making operation as simple as possible for the users. With its extensive fixture library, Ion already has a pre-programmed profile for just about any moving light or fixture you would want to use. Once you patch in the right fixture from the library, it is incredibly easy for users to focus the lights and create a cue or lighting look.
“For this application, it was the perfect fit,” added Ron. “You don’t need to have someone on staff who has been programming a console professionally for years. A user can walk up and with relative ease get it to do what they want it to do.”
Ron highly rates the training DVD’s for the ETC Ion stating that they are a must.
“The way the presenter explains how to use the console is much better than the manual,” he said. “To actually see someone actually pressing the buttons makes it is much easier to understand the console.”
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