Lighting designer, Steve Cameron utilised Vista by Chroma-Q’s Vista 3 lighting & media control system to deliver full concert production values for the Wella 2019 TrendVision Awards, held at London’s iconic Roundhouse venue in Camden.
The Awards are the pinnacle of the annual contest, which recognises some of the UK and Ireland’s most impressive hairdressing talent. Hosted by TV’s Vernon Kay and hairdressing legend, Patrick Cameron, it was attended by 800 industry peers.
With the event putting creative talent centre-stage in a venue steeped in rock ‘n’ roll history, and music’s inescapable influence on the fashion world, the occasion called for a concert-style lighting rig to give it an energetic, theatrical look and feel, whilst at the same time still delivering for its corporate AV requirements.
As a long-time Vista user, Cameron knew the control system would deliver his vision, and be able to produce both corporate and rock ‘n’ roll aspects.
He commented: “Vista’s creative visual workflow and graphical interface make complete sense. I can use my time more productively by getting the design into the desk quickly and, in combination with the fantastic FX Engine, keep my attention on the show itself.”
Taking advantage of the Roundhouse’s circular space, Cameron’s design was based on the clock face, with 12 spines splaying from a circular truss above the stage and guests.
He utilised Vista 3 to provide lighting & media control for a rig of over 300 fixtures and over 16 universes. In addition to over 130 Martin VDO Sceptron 10 pixel-mapped LED video battens, the rig featured Claypaky Sharpys; PROLIGHTS ArenaCOBs; Martin MAC Auras, Viper Profiles & Viper Performances; Ayrton MagicDots; Color Kinetics IW Blasts; Vari-Lite VL500s; Robe Robin 100s; Philips SL eSTRIP 10s; plus 2K & 1K Fresnels.
Cameron commented: “With the Sceptrons placed in Vista’s matrix, I could easily create some stunning, pixel-mapped effects along the spines using Vista’s FX engine. This negated the need for pixel-mapping in an external media server.”
Recently upgrading his Vista consoles to the Vista 3 software, Steve has been impressed by the add-ons. He commented: “The additional features in Vista 3 are fantastic. I am now a true convert to the upgrade!”
Prior to the event, Steve spent some time offsite pre-planning his design for the three segments of the show and the Awards presentations. He added: “Although not visualised in a 3rd party 3D visualiser, I was amazed at how much pre-programming you can do on Vista 3, thanks to how much visual feedback Vista natively provides. The schedule on-site was quite tight, so the preparation beforehand really helped me to deliver. The show went very well and the client was extremely happy with the end product, thanks to Vista 3!”
The full lighting rig was supplied by Lite Alternative, project managed by John Ginley and crew chief, Gareth Pritchard.