Can you introduce yourself?
I’ve been involved in lighting for 8 years – since I was 13. I started by just playing with lights in my school’s theatre, and slowly lighting became more than a hobby.
I’m currently at Falmouth University studying film (specialising in lighting / cinematography), about to go into my final year. I have worked a fair amount of festivals over the past few years, but this was the first time as an LD at a larger one. I was working with a really great Cornish lighting company called Mass Affect.
Can you tell us about what festival you worked on, and your role there?
The festival I just worked on was Morvala Festival, a new Cornish festival of arts, music, and poetry.
I did the lighting on all 3 stages across the festival, and used my grandMA3 onPC Command Wing on the Main Stage and Poets corner. The power of recipes and programming with nearly entirely relative data made it super easy for me to re-patch and go on the different stages.
Some of the performances I lit were Ash, Toploader, and Big Lava on the main stage, and Dawn French, Hugo Hammlet, Kernow King, and LYR at Poet’s Corner.
What desk and software version did you use?
I was running the grandMA3 onPC Command Wing with my windows laptop. I took the risk and ran 2.4.2.2. After rigorous testing at home not once did it crash or bug out, so I deemed it festival ready.
How did you find running a command wing in a festival environment?
The motorised faders on a wing was the tipping point for me buying an MA3 in December over other brands, and the high amount of executable buttons made it possible to busk the main stage with ease.
I definitely would utilise more faders and buttons on larger console if I had access to one, but the wing provided me with the correct tools to still make a good-looking show.
What did you like the most about lighting these particular performances?
I enjoyed the variety of performances across the weekend. My personal favourite was lighting for Toploader, a band I had listened to since I was very young.
The transformation from doing daytime to dusk and then nighttime performance is always fun and interesting when busking as I move from using my flashy eye candy during bright sunlight, to being able to use gobos and deeper colours when it’s dark at night.
What are your top 3 grandMA3 features and why?
- The new phaser recipes – the ability to quickly edit an effect within the cue on the go is really time saving.
- Adding onto my previous point, shapes made it really fast to make interesting effects
- Changing the colour of my encoders per cue meant I didn’t have to look at my screen when busking, and knew what colour / effect was running.
How did recipes help you on this project?
The entire showfile was made 100% with recipes, and with edit mode in the Phaser editor it was basically just as quick as “normal” programming, but with massive flexibility when making changes.
Recipes gave me the flexibility to quickly move between stages, update a couple presets and a show is ready, with everything in the same place on the faders so my muscle memory isn’t ever disrupted.
