Once again Mandylights has turned Canberra’s Floriade into a spectacle of light for the annual Nightfest. The key fixtures this year were eighteen Claypaky B-Eyes and twelve Sharpys supplemented by 150 ShowPro Hex PARs, 24 ShowPro Ex36 LED Floods and three Martin MAC101.
Mandylights required a fixture that could wash an expansive flower bed in colour whilst also providing effects and the Claypaky B-Eye was perfect.
“They’re used for galaxy-inspired lighting of a large flower bed,” explained Richard Neville, managing director of Mandylights. “We’ve used the beam shaping effects to get an illusion of ‘particles’ exploding across the beds. The fragments of the beam rotate in an almost explosive quality, they all go into the centre and then explode out, and that’s a great effect for this theme.
“The B-EYE is definitely the best in that class of wash light that also does effects. It offers the most pronounced range of effect whilst also still being an incredibly powerful wash light.”
The Claypaky Sharpys are located at the lake installation where they act as small searchlights.
Mandylights regularly use ShowPro Hex PARs and EX36 LED Floods for their projects, with Richard saying they make a great solid base and are a fantastic outdoor fixture.
This year saw Mandylights deploy an extensive W-DMX set up as the site has expanded and there are new installation areas that have no infrastructure.
“We’ve relied quite heavily on W-DMX to get signal around the site,” commented Richard. “For control we’re running four separate MA systems; the main site is controlled by MA2 light with other, more isolated interactive areas of the park running on NPU’s and four port Nodes. The main installations are all triggered on stand-alone MA systems, there are actually six MA networks running separately in different areas of the park.”
Mandylight’s newest employee Clint Dulieu programmed the site.
