Grayboy Entertainment has enjoyed a long association with the cruise industry acting as producers, consultants, event coordinators, and agents for a number of domestic and international organisations. One company they regularly work with is P & O Cruises and their latest commission was to design two fantastic shows for the popular Pacific Sun’s showroom. The resulting shows, Music, Music, Music and Cinematastic, have been lauded as the best yet.
A totally new set was needed that could cater to both productions and set designer Justin Green turned his creative thoughts towards LEDs.
“I’ve used Pulsar LEDs, including ChromaBattens, on a previous cruise ship and I loved them,” said Justin. “I was looking for something new to play around with and had a good look on the internet. I had a chat with Mark McInnes from Show Technology and he suggested a few ideas including the ChromaPanels. Once I realised what they could do, I thought they were a great option.”
Consequently the backdrop for both of the productions is designed around the use of sixty Pulsar ChromaPanels controlled by six ChromaZone PS12 units and supplied by Chameleon.
“Originally Grayboy were spending an enormous amount of money on soft LED cloth for the backdrops but the results, in my point of view, were quite poor,” commented Justin. “With 100 mm spacing between the LEDs you needed to be a mile back before you got any resolution out of it! On any one cruise you can have five different shows running so you need something that can give you variety.
“What I love about the ChromaPanels is that you can use them subtly or you can be really gaudy with them to create lots of different effects. The idea behind this installation was to create a tiled background that we could treat as a cyclorama if we wanted to by warming them all the same colour or, at the other end of the scale we could do a full Saturday Night Fever dance floor effect.”
To achieve a successful wall of colour the LED panels need to consistently provide extreme evenness of colour and colour consistency across all of the fittings; something which is hard to find in less professional panels. Whilst their low power consumption was not a huge attraction to Grayboy, the fact that they run so cool was a big draw card.
Justin is currently working on a third show to be produced in front of the Pulsar ChromaPanel wall and he has enjoyed discovering the different ways in which the wall can be altered.
“With the last show I did, I put a lot of perspex in front of the wall with silhouette cut-outs so that the wall was used subtly to create things like sunrises,” he said. “Gavan Swift was responsible for the lighting of the production – I come up with ideas as to what I would like the lighting to do whilst Gavan is the brains behind the fiddly parts, programming and getting different effects. Gavan has such a bank of knowledge and he has used LEDs extensively in the past. He can always come up with a bright idea in a flourish.”
“The ChromaPanels look great, my client is very happy with the product and the difference they have made to the look of the showroom in general and more specifically the two new shows we put on board,” added Gavan.
www.showtech.com.au
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