Chris McKenzie (left) and Simon Garrett (right)
Earlier this summer Oceania, the biggest lighting rental company in New Zealand, invested in 24x X4 L LED heads from GLP, which went out the same day they arrived to support the British & Irish Lions’ rugby tour down under. Over six weeks they were ever present on all regional games and the three All Blacks test matches.
At Auckland’s Eden Park, also New Zealand’s national sports stadium, the company supplied all technical rigging, lighting, vision and sound equipment, technical management and crew, both in the venue spaces and the large fine dining 1200 and 2000-capacity party marquees on the practice ground, measured a colossal 400sqm and 350sqm respectively, requiring a lot of truss and expertise.
“The GLP X4 L and X4 Bars really impressed us both,” confirmed Oceania general manager, Simon Garrett. “The X4 L offers both workhorse and bling modes. A fast, very compact wash light with a source range from low to very high 10,000K color temperature, giving some beautiful cold variation in straw, steels, lavenders etc. as well as some bling, with a myriad of looks. I particularly liked the straight lines and V shapes of the pixels, and the randomized strobes using macro mode.”
He said his company had needed some mid-sized LED wash for some time as their previous fixtures “ran out of puff at around 8 metres”. But none of the other options were inspiring him until he and designer Jeremy Fern ran into the impression X4 L at last November’s LDI Show in the States.
Oceania also supplied the same range of technical services at the Queen’s Wharf Auckland Fanzone Activation. This provided the Auckland hub for the DHL New Zealand Lions Series and the nationwide Rugby 2017 Festival, with live match screenings, free entertainment, live performances and exhibitions.
The 80ft. DHL Dome was animated using just 12 of the GLP fixtures. “This look had six ‘dots’, which gave the beams a pretty hard edge, and a further six in Wash mode as a backing color,” continued Garrett. “As the DHL Dome was pretty opaque it would have required between 24-36 compact LED washes to have animated this as successfully.”
Although it’s still early days he says they are delighted with their choice so far. “The 12 onstage provided a really big look, taking a six-channel distro feed. With their small footprint, they were delivered quickly to site in three cases, rigged easily and took up very little ‘musician and backline’ space.”
So successful did they prove on their first major outing that Jeremy Fern turned to them again more recently, using them on a major Darts tournament, “where they really filled the camera periphery shots,” according to Oceania.
Summing up Simon Garrett said, “It’s hard being the first adopter in any territory, and even harder on new product as it’s not yet on specs or available as a sub-hire resource. But to date we are extremely pleased with the investment.”
