CHARLOTTE, NC — For the current Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction tour, NIN|JA Summer Tour 2009, lighting designer Roy Bennett and co-designer Jason Bullock, who is also the lighting director/programmer, chose the ChamSys MagicQ console for control. “Both shows were originally written on a single desk,” said Bullock. “It was around 900 cue stacks before they were separated.” Bullock had used other consoles on previous NIN tours but this was his first experience with the ChamSys.
“I’d been looking for a new console that could combine the attributes of other desks. After some investigating, the ChamSys looked the most promising. I downloaded the offline version and got a general feel for syntax. The intuitive way the syntax is constructed made me confident that this was a risk I felt comfortable taking.”
PRG Distribution North America sold the two ChamSys MagicQ+300 consoles and wings to Upstaging, Inc., who provided the lighting for the tour.
“When I opened the road case at the shop and actually was able to map out all of the things that I had created in the MagicQ offline editor, I knew that I had made a good decision,” said Bullock. “Within an hour I had built new fixture profiles, patched the desk and begun to build palettes. For a system with 1,850 different heads, that was impressive.
“I still find new things I like about this desk everyday,” Bullock continued. “Just a few of my favorites include Live Timing when using the programmer; Live FX manipulation — I can’t state how great this feature is, you are able to tweak all functions of FX during show without entering into edit mode. Plus the familiar cue structure let’s you walk up to this desk and immediately begin to work in a style you are accustomed to.”
For Bullock the pixel mapper in the MagicQ is one of its key features. “This console is a generation ahead of all the others in dealing with the growing amount of media that lighting is now controlling. This includes media servers and large configurations of LED fixtures. I really like the fact that the desk can create an entire media server-type control interface for any fixture in the system, while still retaining the light as a light. The two don’t interfere.”
“Jason is very cue intensive; he puts a lot of information into the desks,” said Chuck Spector, tour support for Upstaging. “Also, his style often puts a lot of wear and tear on a desk because of the way he programs. He runs through so many cues that for a desk to keep up with the way he runs a show, it’s really put through its paces.
“The product is pretty damn solid so far,” Spector added, “and the support from PRG Distribution was great, particularly product specialist Esteban Caracciolo. It’s a pleasure to be doing business with people who understand the importance of supporting shows.”
For more information, please visit www.prgdistribution.com.
