Lighting designer Tony Fransen specified a Jands Vista T2 lighting console for the recent Jeremy Camp Restored US fall tour.
Jeremy Camp is one of the best-selling Christian rock artists in the US, achieving Gold sales for his first two albums and on track to repeat this with his third release. The 40-date tour to promote the new record visited 40 cities across the nation between September 1 and November 20, with more dates planned for early 2006.
Tour LD Tony Fransen had been using his existing lighting desk for six years and felt that it was becoming outdated as the increasing complexity of entertainment lighting rigs called for ever more powerful and sophisticated control solutions.
Ready to upgrade, Fransen was looking to trial a new programming platform on the tour and was in the process of reviewing more powerful, advanced feature consoles when he got the chance to see a demo of the Jands Vista. He commented: “I was blown away by the Vista’s timeline editor and the very open, in front of you interface. There seemed to be so many great features and so many great possibilities.”
The demo was provided by Jands US distributor, AC Lighting to the tour’s production lighting company, Integrity Lighting Inc. CEO Steve Nance purchased the desk for the tour.
The full lighting rig consisted of 15 High End Sytems x.Spots, 16 Studio Beam PCs, nine Color Commands, four Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, one LX-1 laser, ten AC Lighting Chroma-Q™ Color Blocks, two 8-Lights with color changers, eight 4 Lights, six ETC Source Fours, and 48 channels of dimming. Fransen also utilized a High End Sytesms Catalyst Media Server to control playback of visual effects displayed by the rig.
Fransen used over 1800 channels of DMX to run the show, the majority of which was programmed using WYSIWYG lighting visualization software. He commented: “The Vista did a great job of handling everything from the moving lights to the media server. Without the Vista's timeline feature, it wouldn’t have been possible in the available programming time for us to accomplish many of the complex fades and more detailed cues. The desk had so many time-saving features. Just the way that you build cues, you can build so much so fast and still have very fine control of small details. It’s incredible!”
Having tried out the Vista’s generic fixture model for one night to swap out the tour fixtures with those of a house rig, he is looking forward to taking the desk on festivals next summer, where the rigs will be different every day. In the meantime, he’s planning to use the Vista on two corporate shows in January and on Jeremy Camp’s upcoming Acoustic tour when it begins in March.
Commenting on the service he received, Tony said: “Service was a huge key to me using the Vista. The AC Lighting guys were amazing - it was the best support I have ever experienced. I know that if I have problems or need advice on this console in future, I am just a phone call away from help. That really makes me feel confident in taking out new technology. What a great experience. The Vista is without doubt my console of choice.”
AC Lighting is the exclusive North American and European distributor for the Jands Vista.