Three years ago, Ferny Grove State High School in Queensland started building a 350-seat auditorium. Once completed, Grantley Sutch, Auditorium Manager set about outfitting the venue within the usual limited budget and the lighting console from Jands was chosen and installed.
According to Grantley, they decided to spend money on the infrastructure first and so they did patching and rigging even though they had no lights or consoles. Grantley purchased through Barbizon Australia, an ETC Ion 1000 console, the smaller sibling to the Eos console. Like Eos, Ion is designed for multimedia lighting rigs, delivering control over conventional, moving lights and LEDs, while schools and community theatres are among the venues that benefit from Ion’s operational style. Intuitive and easy to use, the Ion from Jands, comes in 1000,1500 and 2000 channel/ output configurations.
One of the reasons for choosing the Ion 1000 is because they stage a wide variety of events from drama, to cabaret, to music concerts, often hiring in extra gear such as moving lights and LEDs. The console is powerful and the basic operations can be learned easily. It is also designed with the future in mind as the ETC software will grow and expand in what it can do.
For concerts the lighting is planned over a period of time to set up sub groups for various ensembles or events within the performance. As the concert draws nearer, it provides opportunity to go in and do the cues. Any programming queries to ETC are answered by on line within twenty-four hours.