grandMA
goes to work on DVD shoot for Amy Grant’s new album
Lighting
Product Stories Published: 12 January
2007
grandMA played a key role in the lighting of the DVD shoot for
Amy Grant marking the release of her new CD. The production
was shot over two nights in full concert mode at Bass Hall in
Fort Worth, Texas.
The goal of lighting the DVD was to provide an
upbeat, theatrical, yet calm atmosphere to the living room set
where Grant performed. “It had a very ‘MTV Unplugged’
feel,” says lighting programmer Demfis Fyssicopulos of
New York City and Florida. “Lighting designer Sparky Anderson
had to light for the concert audience as well as for the film
cameras. In addition Anderson accentuated the breath-taking
architecture of The Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, TX,
where the shoot took place.”
Gemini Productions supplied the lighting complement
which had grandMA controlling 20x Vari*Lite VL2500 spots, 10x
Vari*Lite VL3000 spots, 5x Vari*Lite VL3000 washes, 16x HES
Studio Commands and some 200 conventional fixtures.
Fyssicopulos, who has provided automated lighting
design and programming services to the likes of Elton John,
Green Day, Disney, Hurricane Katrina Relief Concert and HBO
amongst others, has extensive experience with grandMA. He found
it invaluable on the DVD shoot where things often changed by
the minute. “As usual, grandMA gave me the flexibility
to do things at the last minute,” he says. “When
Amy added new songs and arrangements I could layer on the fly
on top of the established look.”
“The grandMA is built to allow the designer
and programmer to take a tighly cued show and play it back with
the “on-the-fly” flexibility and hands on style
that Rock & Roll designers love. “This certainly worked
for Sparky and Demfis,” commented Bob Gordon, President
and CEO of A.C.T. Lighting. A.C.T. Lighting is the exclusive
North American distributor of grandMA.
Fyssicopulos also found grandMA to be “incredibly
reliable and very stable. When I’m working on grandMA
I am working with a console that is not in its infancy. The
console is mature, solid and as proven as it can be. Moreover,
with every software release it keeps on offering more and more
useful features.”