Martin LC Series Takes Visitors “On an Exciting Journey” at Royal Easter Show

The Sydney Royal Easter Show is an annual show held in Sydney, Australia that comprises an agricultural show, an amusement park and a fair. It includes Australia’s largest public fashion show, featuring the best of Australian fashion, held in the fashion pavilion, The Shape Parades.

John Aitken, General Manager Events & Marketing for the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW (RAS), says this year’s Shape Fashion Parades went one step better with the inclusion of the latest LED technology from Martin Professional.

“Parade Director Lindsay Bennett has teamed up with lighting specialist Francesco Calvi, who together has created a unique environment to showcase the depth of fashion on show,” said John Aitken. “The video backdrop is 15 x 6 meters and allows full stage imagery and animation to be created. That, teamed with the latest cutting edge fashion, takes you on an exciting journey.”

LC Series
The Shape Parade heralded the Australian-debut of the Martin LC Series; a semi-transparent, modular system of LED panels. Light weight yet tough, the modules come in a 2 x 1 meter or 1 x 1 meter size. On this particular project 45 of the 2 x 1 meter panels were used. The Series mounts using the industry standard Eurotruss system and each unit contains a switch mode power supply that covers all worldwide voltages.

“The panels are very lightweight and an absolute [joy] to rig!” exclaimed Francesco. “Basically they’re much the same as a video wall; in the past you either had to use an expensive video wall, which we could never have afforded on this job, or you had to use an LED curtain system. There was nothing in between before the LC Series.

“The fact that the LC Series is modular is great because it allows me more scope. For example, on this show it was simple to push out some panels to make entrance and exit doorways for the models at the base of the LED backdrop.”

Television application – and content is key
Francesco is famous for his fabulous TV lighting on shows such as Idol, Big Brother and numerous others. He’ll find using the LC Series on video and TV applications a breeze as it incorporates Genlock which prevents light-flicker to the camera’s “eye.” He is also looking forward to exploring the semi-transparent characteristic of the panels that allows them to move through a range of intensity, from a solid wall of images and color, to near invisibility.

However, Francesco is keen to point out that decent content material is a priority. “I find that everyone uses the same stock content so many productions tend to look the same to me,” he commented. “You need to spend time and money building a library of content.”

Bloody bright!
With a vast array of images at his finger tips and the Martin LC Series now available in Australia, the sky’s the limit for Francesco who has been blown away by the panels. “They’re so bloody bright!” he stated. “The resolution is bloody good too, amazing in fact! The other cool thing is that you don’t have to spend hours pixel-mapping, it’s just a DVI feed to it. It’s just a really good piece of design, everything is right about it.”

Francesco was adamant that praise should be given to Vince Haddad, Technical Director at Show Technology, who worked very hard to ensure the success of the project. Show Technology, Martin’s Australian representative, supplied the Martin lighting gear for the project. Also in the rig were 14 Martin MAC 700s along with other LEDs, automateds, Kupo multi pars and a media server.

This year, with Parade Director Lindsay Bennett at the helm, The Shape Parades were seen by over 50,000 people and featured autumn/winter collections of the country’s established and emerging designers. The Royal Easter Show currently attracts 1 million people per year. It is run by the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales and was first held in 1823.