‘Time management was very challenging,’ said Ho. ‘The time was tight for doing lighting programming for the morning sessions and the evening sessions. Due to the time pressure, my assistant lighting programmer Foon and I worked almost around the clock. I stayed overnight to do programming for the next day’s evening sessions and left in the morning. Foon would then come in to handle the early sessions. We ran through all the sessions together and created quite a number of different looks for each activity.’

The rig comprised 333 fixtures and 24 universes. Ho noted that the MagicQ MQ500 Stadium greatly helped him manage the mammoth setup. ‘When you are working under pressure with little rest, you value things like the large dual screens of the MQ500. They allowed me to lay out the windows more efficiently. The ChamSys consoles and Gary Low, our supplier from E&E, were a tremendous help in making this a success.’

During the event’s musical performances, Ho found the console’s fader and executor playbacks especially useful. ‘I really liked the new executor 3×4 layout buttons,’ he said. ‘They were good to use as flashes, and at the same time I could use them as executor buttons for beams.’

The MagicQ MQ500’s built-in 3D MagicVis visualiser was used for pre-programing and building cues and palettes, while the cloning and morphing features helped Ho to set up pages quickly. ‘There were many features about the console that made me more efficient. For example, I found it helpful to be able to assign any colour to the LEDs on the playback. The interface was very smooth.’

Another of the console’s features that Ho relied on was cue stack playback, which he put to use during the parts of the event aimed at children. ‘The MQ500 is very fast for flashing because of the good position of controls above the fader,’ he said.

Original Article from Workship AVL