LAS VEGAS – The 90th anniversary Miss America Pageant was telecast live on ABC from the Planet Hollywood casino-resort. LD Allen Branton, who returned for the fourth time, worked with fellow lighting directors Kevin Lawson & Felix Peralta, who marked their third year & fourth year on the show respectively, using 16 Martin MAC III Profile moving heads and a pair of MA Lighting's grandMA2 Light consoles for control. "Because of the way the pageant is structured, we had a little extra time with several days of the preliminary pageant," said Lawson. "Felix and I worked on the show for eight days splitting the lighting rig as programmers and using the grandMA2 light in multi-user-mode: Felix lit the set and I lit the people on stage and the audience."
Atomic Lighting provided the grandMA2 light and the lighting rig, which included Vari*Lite VL3500 spots and VL500 fixtures along with the Martin MAC III profiles. "It was primarily about lighting the contestants and the set," Lawson said. "There were standard front and back light positions, and Allen lit the set from the floor quite a bit."
Chosen for their lumens output, gobo selection and big aperture for a hard-edged fixture, the 1500-watt MAC IIIs provided full coverage from up-, mid-, and downstage positions, says Felix Peralta, who served as lighting director on the show.
"We were really impressed by their compact size and their output, and they looked fantastic on camera," Peralta said. "They were consistent in color, output, and overall performance – we were extremely pleased."
The MAC III Profiles featured in the opening performance number involving all of the pageant contestants, as well as the swimsuit and evening wear segments.
Peralta also noted that grandMA2's "latest software version made it the perfect time to dive in" during the pageant's "three days of preliminaries and load in to get used to the console.
"Compared to the grandMA, processing is so much faster, and the multi-user environment is so much more efficient – a must for Kevin and I, who probably do more multi-user-mode shows than most programmers," Peralta added. "Loading the show from one console to another is almost instantaneous."
Lawson agreed. "The grandMA2 was like getting a much better laptop or a much faster car: It felt faster and more powerful. The feature set is great, and the hardware is snappier. It did everything we needed it to do, and it felt faster at everything. The grandMA was always great, and the grandMA2 was all that and more responsive."
Peralta likes the ability to "customize the look of the desk so it can cater to your personal style. With the effects engine you can reference presets as opposed to forms and tables. It's good for color chases and position movements; it's easy to go from point A to point B. You're able to score timing parameters in preset pools now, too, so it's great for running media servers such as the Catalyst & Hippos – you can have a preset that has everything snapping in with the right time and right delay."
Lawson also praised the "cool" effects engine, which he used to build the show, and the "great special dialogue boxes." In addition, the grandMA2 light was "extremely stable," he said. "We experienced no problems.
"The show went really well, the producer was happy, and the ratings were great, even against the NFL playoffs," Lawson concluded.
For more information, please visit www.martin.com and www.actlighting.com.
