The legendary 'Queen of Rock' Suzi Quatro has just finished traveling across Australia on her "Back to the Drive" tour. Providing visual effects as a stunning lighting backdrop were Martin Professional LC Series Panels.

Lighting was designed by Bryce Mace with lighting supply by Entertainment Installations through Martin's Australian representative, Show Technology.

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Entertainment Installations' managing director Neale Mace has always strived to keep up with the latest technologies and this was the reason behind his purchase of the Martin LC Panels.

"The lines are getting blurred between lighting and vision and I guess you'd call this effects rather than lighting or vision," he remarked. "It's not really a giant LED video screen and it's not really an LED color changer. It's such a now look that seems to be in favor overseas and it was only a matter of time before it filtered through into shows here. Once I saw Chameleon had bought a large amount I thought I'd have a look for the size of show that we do."

Blown Away

Show Technology's Professional Segment Manager Andrew Winslade demonstrated four of the LC Panels in Entertainment Installations' warehouse and both Neale and Bryce were blown away by them!

"Even in our warehouse, where you can't get a huge amount of distance away from them, we were very impressed," said Neale enthusiastically. "They're incredibly bright and look bigger in action than they really are. The ability to daisy-chain the power and the DVI cables through them is attractive as I believe it's not usually that simple with other LED products on the market. Obviously the light weight of the unit was also very attractive. Other similar concept products that we looked at were heavier, much more complex and less robust - much harder to deal with. We wanted to be able to have lighting crew rig this as we're not a vision company."

News travels fast in this industry and Neale is already taking calls from other production companies interested in sub-hiring the LC Panels, another bonus to their purchase.

ArKaos Media Server

Neale also purchased an ArKaos media server in a custom-designed package from Show Technology.

"After extensive testing, we developed a media server (Showserver) package that was best suited to the requirements of our industry while still being cost effective," explained Andrew Winslade. "It utilizes the latest graphics cards with multiple DVI outputs, high speed hard drives, option of either Dual core or Quad core technology and lots of Low Latency RAM.

"We have tested the server using multiple layers of HD media over long periods of time complete with effects and backgrounds, so we know it's truly capable of delivering a sensational performance for the users of our media servers."

The server is built into a commercial grade case and then loaded into an anti-shock road case for maximum protection. It is complete with DMX 512 (5 pin connector) input or input via Ethernet for running Artnet and a slide out keyboard and mouse drawer for ease of access.

With the tight delivery time given, the media server arrived the day before however despite this Bryce had no problems producing some interesting and effective looks for the show.

Giant Molefays

One look that Neale particularly liked was when the LC Panels were used as giant Molefays. "Bryce used this effect during ‘Devil Gate Drive'," explained Neale. "Suzi would sing ‘come alive - yeah' and on the ‘yeah' all the LC Panels went 100% white. It was a great look, almost too bright to look at! We also did some text work on the LC Panels, particularly the name Suzi. The ArKaos comes with quite a lot of material and it doesn't take much to make the LC Panels look good with it."

Bryce designed the show in two parts; the first part with no smoke and hardly any light movement and the second part where the LC Panels came to life and reportedly amazed the audience. "Everyone would go ‘oh crap, I didn't know they were there!' and look stunned," laughed Bryce. "The LC Panels meant we didn't have to tour so many moving lights which is good. I used our Vista console to run the ArKaos and I had no problems what so ever."

Also in the rig were 8 Martin MAC 700 Profiles, 8 MAC 250 Washes, four Studio Due CS-4 on floor stands, 24 x Par 64, two Molefay duet and a couple of Look Solutions Unique Hazers.