The Burdekin Cultural Complex, located in Queen Street, Ayr, includes the Burdekin Theatre, music loft, foyer, plaza and the Burdekin Memorial Hall function centre.
The 500-seat theatre has played host to hundreds of national and international stars during its history and has fostered the cultural abilities of many locals through musical productions and eisteddfods.
David Bourke is the venue’s Head Lighting Technician and he has been using Jands Vista at the Burdekin Theatre and the Burdekin Memorial Hall for a couple of months now.
”The Jands Vista is a great product and I have recommended it to a number of my colleagues and am happy to recommend Jands Vista to anyone who wishes to have a versatile powerful and, most important, scalable product to place in their lighting inventory!” boldly stated David. “The ability to be so versatile has been a great improvement and we are gradually making Jands Vista the only lighting platform to be used in all our venues.”
The venue had been happily using an ETC Express 250 console but once David saw the Vista in use, he fell in love with it and just had to buy one!
“For us, Vista is not a console – it’s a system to be used across different venues,” he said. “It’s very versatile and can be used in the main venue, a smaller area of the venue or even on an outdoor application which we’re starting to do. You just throw it on a laptop and away you go. Due to the versatility of Jands Vista we are able to select the channels required and the processor (desktop, laptop etc) and the interface which suits the needs at the time.”
David started out with one dongle and a lead; today he has three dongles, two DMX leads, an S1 and a M1 as well as three laptops and two stand alone computers.
For David, the most impressive feature of the Vista is its’ speed; the speed at which you can do something and the fact that what used to be paperwork is now easily accessible on the screen.
“You just click on the icon and that’s what you’ve got, it’s that fast,” he continued. “There’s no rustling through bits of paper. We’ve actually reduced our plotting time radically – in fact I’d say by about sixty percent! That’s how quickly you can do things with a Vista.
“I also like the fact that the Vista is modular so you can have it just on a laptop with a USB to DMX or you can add a wing board or an even bigger wing board. I love the fact that when you patch moving lights it’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping the icon and everything is done for you.”
According to David the technical support offered by Jands is brilliant – in fact it’s the best technical support he has ever experienced.
“Plus the web based forum answers almost every question you’d ever have about Vista,” he added. “This is particularly important for us as we are a regional theatre a 100 kilometers south of Townsville. To have instant technical support at the end of the computer 24/7 is important.
David describes the Vista as a revolution in lighting; fast, easy and brilliant. He reports that his lighting crew also loves the Vista, so much so they have problems reverting back to conventional lighting consoles when they are occasionally required to for touring shows.
”They find conventional consoles so slow and sluggish. They think numbers, whereas the Vista thinks visually.”
www.jands.com.au
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