For fifty years the Great Moscow Circus has been thrilling audiences with acts of sensational skill and agility. Featuring over fifty International performers, from Russia, Brazil, Mongolia, and Australasia, the Circus is again touring the country with a new production.
Brian Anslow, a lecturer in Technical Production at WAAPA, designed and programmed the lighting for this latest show trusting in a Jands Vista i3 for control.
“I recommended that the Circus buys a Jands Vista i3 as I think it is fantastic!’ remarked Brian. “I really think it’s the next step forward in technology. We’ve had one at WAAPA for the past two years and I think the whole control system is very innovative; the whole idea of it, the visual reference … everything.”
When asked which features Brian favours on the Vista i3 he bluntly replies all of them!
“I do like the fact that you can put in a track and choreograph it,” he adds. “Rather than having a CD player where you press play, have a listen and then go program a bit, you can marry all that together so you can program whilst you’re listening. That allows you huge amounts of accuracy.”
Brian pre-programmed the opening of the Great Moscow Circus on his laptop with another screen connected to it so he could run both Vista and WYSIWYG with the audio track in Vista.
“It allowed me to pre-program everything,” he said. “I just like that whole technological advancement whereby you can pre-program on your computer, take your USB, stuff it in a desk elsewhere and away you go.”
Containers for the set up of the Circus were flying in to the opening in Queensland from all over the world but unfortunately the container holding the custom truss and moving lights was held up by customs. This meant that Brian didn’t receive the truss and moving lights until 2.15pm on the afternoon of the opening night!
Brian had also never seen any of the acts only a few bits of DVD footage and, due to the late arrival of the last container, a proper rehearsal was not possible.
By the time everything was set up, plugged in and turned on there was only ten minutes until doors and although Brian had the show pre-programmed in WYSIWIG he decided to run the Vista on the fly.
“I had to use a different LED par can fixture in WYSIWIG than what we had in the tent so when I cloned in the new fixtures I didn’t really have time to test them so I opted to run the show live,” he explained. “However, it was fantastic and it was easy to busk the whole thing. Afterwards, during the after show party, I ran all of the pre-programmed stuff and it all worked perfectly. I guess I hadn’t quite been confident enough, maybe in myself, to jump in and run it having never seen it run before.”
Brian had pro-grammed the show on his laptop along with a Jands S1 not receiving his Vista i3 until the day of the show opening.
“Jands actually lent us one as our paper work hadn’t been processed,” said Brian. “We had sixty LED par cans and eight Martin MAC2000 fixtures – if I‘d been using any other desk I wouldn’t have been able to get it together in time. I honestly don’t think I would have been able to run any other desk live like I did the Vista i3. I reckon that I can program a show four times faster on a Vista i3 than any other desk I’ve ever used.”
Gareth Simmonds is operating the show on tour and by all accounts is delighted and comfortable with the Jands Vista i3. Gareth helped with all of the pre preparation and programming and continues to refine the show as it evolves.
www.jands.com.au
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