Maxedia, MACs Team Up on Echo 2007

On March 25th five Martin Maxedia Digital Media Composers were used to control the extraordinary visual design element of the sixteenth annual Echo Awards at Palais am Funkturm in Berlin.

A celebration of top stars from the national and international pop scene, essentially Germany’s version of the Grammy’s or Brit’s, lighting design duties were handled for the 11th consecutive year by lighting veteran Jerry Appelt. This year Jerry took responsibility for the overall visual concept, handling both the lighting and media content.

“This type of show requires a lot of communication between the bands, management, LDs, etc. concerning the content they want to see,” he stated. “Last year was difficult because we tried to play back media content from the mobile truck which was hard because of timing and sequences. From my point of view lighting is not separate from the media content so I decided to take the video responsibility and increased the crew with a media operator, Michael Giegerich, who operated the Martin Maxedia and did a great job.”

Maxedia systems
Five Maxedia systems (plus one back up) fed content to a variety of on stage areas: a large back wall of LED strips opened to reveal a performance stage backed by a large projection screen, which also ran Maxedia content; a large LED wall in which Jerry used pixelmapping to harmonize the visuals with the light show; more LED located around the stage; a flying LED screen; and a triangle set piece with more LED strips. “It was a very safe set up and everything worked very fine,” Jerry comments. “The HD version and the new PRO version of Maxedia - it’s a really reliable machine. It was a really good experience.”

Graphical content for Maxedia came from a variety of sources. Company Wilson Digital Effects created the show’s basic looks including the between band segments with moderator, awards presentation, etc. Performance content was a mixture of band material along with content that Jerry and bright! preproductions GmbH (a media server specialist company) developed, as well as special content from Wilson.

Maxedia ease
Maxedia programming was completed by Thomas Giegerich, Manager of bright! preproductions. Thomas built cues using the mix of graphics with his brother, Michael, at the controls. “We always specify Maxedia because of its ease of use,” Thomas says. “It’s so much faster than the other servers because you don’t have to have layers – you can go cue by cue. Programming is so much easier.”

Huge MAC rig
The prodigious amount of digital effects worked in tandem with a huge Martin rig: 52 MAC 2000 Profiles, 80 MAC 2000 Washes, 32 MAC 700 Profiles, 80 MAC 700 Washes, 7 MAC 2000 Performances, 26 MAC TW1s, 40 MAC 250 Washes, and 29 Atomic 3000 strobes with Atomic Colors scrollers. The complete lighting and video package was supplied by Hamburg-based PROCON Event Engineering with Jan Schroeder from PROCON serving as a media server technician.

Jerry enjoyed using Martin’s new MAC TW1 tungsten wash fixture and had the opportunity to use a custom component which he hopes to see incorporated into the fixture’s package in the near future. “We used MAC TW1s as front lighting and had custom long throw lenses made for some of them. The lenses made it very useful for the longer distances - I hope that Martin will consider doing a series of them.”

The MAC 2000s were used mainly in the stage area with MAC 700 Profiles incorporated as audience and effect lighting. MAC 700 Washes were placed in a low position around the audience and on truss which Jerry says he likes because of their reliability. “The rig held up perfectly – there was very little maintenance and service time and it worked very well.”

Crew:
Produzent: Werner Kimmig
Director: Volker Weikert
Executive Producer: Gerd Gebhardt
Producer: Thomas Wissmann
Scenery: Jürgen Schmid André
Lighting and Media Design: Jerry Appelt
Lighting Director: Matthias Hagel
White Light Operator: Tanja Nowak
Show Light Operator: Sascha Matthes
Audience Operator: Henning Schletter
Media Programmer: Thomas Giegerich
Media Server Operator: Michael Giegerich
Media Content Production: Joachim Götz
Production Manager: Petra Ullrich
Technical Manager: Jan Thommen