Lengthy tech specs are nothing new for us at TPi, but we’re not ashamed to admit when we were sent the kit list from the Jiangsu TV NYE Gala, we did a double take. The annual event once again saw the team from Arf & Yes oversee a lighting rig of over 3,000 fixtures, all of which were controlled by several ChamSys desks. With the event being broadcast live, the show design had to be on point for the entire four-hour run time, with 53 songs performed by a plethora of artists.
This year, the staging was design by Skywalker and Arf & Yes.Arf & Yes’ Ignace D’haese took on the role of Lighting and Show Director with Tijs Coene handing Lighting Designing responsibilities. Kris Huberland was Technical Director and Joeri Pluym, System Engineer. Timothy De Mets was then brought in as Programmer and Operator alongside Olivier Demoustier, Korneel Wilkin and Key Light Programmer and Operator, Jarmo De Blaeij.Other key members of the team included Spot Caller, Robin Verlinde; Rendering Lead, Emiel Vancraeynest; Junior Lighting Designer, Margo Van Hoorebeke; System Engineer, Joeri Pluym and Giovani De Schampheleire from the Legal Department.
“This massive production always features ChamSys,” began De Mets. “We’ve always used one show file for the initial programming in previs, then when we go into the venue, we split the workflow, so we have another desk running key lights with mine running the rest of the rig.”
With so many fixtures used on the rig, networking of the desk was vital – ChamSys supports up to ten consoles in a network session. The team used the MagicQ MQ500M+ Stadium Console capable of outputting 400 universes direct from the console. “Both Olivier and I each had a MQ500M+ with mine being the master and his being the slave.”
One of the biggest benefits was the use of multiconsole control, which enabled the pair to work seamlessly. “Olivier, had his own macros and layouts stored in his user profile,” explained De Mets. “He had his own group of lights he always controlled but he could easily take control of the complete rig when I was away or take a part of my fixtures to program some extra’s if I was busy with another part of the rig. For example, I was able to ask Olivier to do something with a group of fixtures that are usually under my control while I was programming something else.”
This year, the lighting team were presented with another challenge with the set incorporating a lot of mirrors in the show design. This meant extensive tweaking of lighting looks due to the reflections caused by the stage.
Due to these labour-intensive rehearsals, De Mets discussed how ChamSys, as a company, provided support to give the creative team a clever way to have each desk sending it’s own data to separate Syncronorm Depence systems. This meant that three desks were simultaneously sending a full lighting rig of sACN data to each Depence while programming on the same showfile with multiple desks.
De Mets was quick to compliment the work of Chris Kennedy from ChamSys; “Each year, Chris checks in to see if we’re doing this show and is on hand to help with any problems that might crop up. The entire team at ChamSys are doing an amazing job and I have nothing but good things to say about them.”
Continuing the ChamSys conversation, De Mets was also keen to emphasise the benefit of the “group effects” and “palettes” on the desk, which made it quick to adjust looks in the rehearsal period. “We needed to tweak and create the looks very fast during rehearsals. Group FX with pallets on grid layouts allowed us to quickly create complex looks in seconds,” De Mets stated.
“Using these two functions together are super-fast and there were cases where we’d program a song and the artist during rehearsals decided they preferred to use a different colour for the song. All I needed to do was filter all cues and replace the colour and it was done.”
Moving away from the console, he spoke of the large lighting rig at his disposal. With all fixtures being provided by Vision, the rig comprised 3,809 fixtures in 1,547 groups. “The FX console managed 117,769 channels, 107,138 parameters, and 241 universes,” chuckled De Mets, citing the sheer size of the show. Most of the lights were ACME fixtures including the LEO, Pixelline IP, Strobe6 IP, Gemini, Skybar, ThetaFX and Tornado. The team also utilised the Aeco 20 for followspots and Key lighting. With such a great deal of multi-element fixtures De Mets praised ChamSys for its part in the production.
“Chris created a new feature Function Type to manage different functions on a fixture handling multi elements madness. Groups can be recorded with a Function Type. This enables us to quickly create Group FX to apply to a specific Function Type.”
Words: Stew Hume
Photos: Timothy De Mets
