The Manning Entertainment Centre is a cultural hub that offers a 505-seat theatre in Taree, serving residents of the Manning Valley, Great Lakes, Gloucester and Camden Haven regions. They offer first-class facilities for the performing arts, from school productions and amateur theatre to artists of national and international acclaim.
Recently the venue had a large upgrade of their lighting system thanks to Show Technology who supplied an MA Lighting MA3 onPC command wing XT, ELC NodeGBx 8 stand-alone, Theatrelight 4-way DMX splitter, four Martin ERA 400 Profile CLD, eight ShowPRO Pluto 350, 16 x ShowPRO R3 wash, 25 x Prolights EclProfile CT+, eight Prolights EclCyclorama 050, Theatrelight Contact 12 RCBO and a couple of Look Solutions Unique 2.1.
All of this amazing gear has obviously put a big smile on Senior Theatre Technician Nathaniel Keegan’s face!
Nathaniel specified four moving profiles and eight moving spots and the Martin ERA 400 profiles and ShowPRO Pluto 350 were the perfect fit for his budget.
“The Martin ERA 400 are amazing,” he exclaimed. “Their framing shutters can shape the beam to create various specials, bring in the CMY flags to give subtle colour hints, change the movement and all whilst not having to leave the console. They’ve certainly made life a lot easier. When shows come in, we can focus specials on the go.
“The ShowPRO Pluto 350 filled all the specs that we were after. They have a good zoom range but we were particularly interested in getting CMY colour mixing. Obviously being a moving spot, there’s no need to refocus anything.”
ShowPRO R3 fixtures were chosen as the main wash light with Nathaniel saying he loves their super-tight, punchy beam.
“But you can zoom out to get a nice even coverage full stage wash with minimal fixtures,” he added. “Their warm white LED has been very nice to work with, especially with theatre performances where you want that warmer white. I can just pull up that single channel without having to play with other colour elements to tint the colour to be warm.”
The Prolights EclProfile CT+ were chosen after Nathaniel was given a demo of them and he was impressed by their bright, clean output as well as their natural whites and saturated, vivid colours.
“We talked to a lot of other venues around the state and the majority of them recommended the Prolights EclProfile CT+ over any other fixture,” remarked Nathaniel. “We also got Prolights EclCyclorama 050 for cyc lighting and potentially footlights. To be able to match their colour with the EclProfile CT+ is a huge benefit.”
The venue is benefiting from an LED rig with Nathaniel remarking that they did the math and they’ve gone from a power consumption of 121kw with all fixtures at full to now a measly 40kw, whilst also improving the functionality of their rig.
Nathaniel is very happy with his two Look Solutions Unique 2.1 hazers saying they produce a much finer haze than their previous machines whose haze was so dense they were almost foggers!
For control, an MA Lighting MA3 onPC command wing XT was chosen along with an ELC dmxLAN nodeGB x 8 stand-alone and a Theatrelight 4-way DMX splitter.
“Our previous console certainly didn’t have enough parameters for the kind of rig we were getting!” said Nathaniel. “Of course, we would have loved to have gone with the full MA3 console but our budget didn’t allow for that however the MA Lighting MA3 onPC command wing XT ended up being the perfect solution.”
The MA platform is new to Nathaniel but he says that he’s picking it up quickly and is confident using it on shows. The ELC dmxLAN nodeGB x 8 stand-alone was added as the new rig is a three-universe rig with one spare universe for touring and they configure the four remaining ports as a copper input.
“That means we can accommodate lower-spec consoles if they are not able to output sACN data as we can patch copper DMX straight into the console,” added Nathaniel. “We added the Theatrelight 4-way DMX splitter as we were going from a one-universe rig to three universes. As we were already at our limit for our hot-power distribution we had to get another distro, in this case, a Theatrelight contact 12 RCBO.”
Nathaniel concluded that their clients have all been super happy with the new rig adding that they’ve had many touring shows come through and they’ve all commented on how quick and easy it has been to do a focus and plot out their show.
This project was made possible by grant funding from Create NSW and is proudly funded by the NSW Government in association with MidCoast Council.
