Written by Mike Graham, product manager for CHAUVET Professional

Get up early and drive to work. It’s almost like being at home, except I am driving on the other side of the road through some of the most dangerous roads on the North Island.  There is a safer way, but apparently the GPS I am using hates Americans enough to send me over the mountain instead of around it. All in all, the drive up the mountain was easy. Just a matter of staying in my lane and taking it easy. No problem until I started going down the mountain and all I could see was huge cliffs and water that seemed like a mile below. Needless to say, I was sweating bullets and could not wait to get down from there, but wanted to make sure it was by road, not by air.

Once I finally got to MDR, it was time to get to work and help finish up the dealer night preparations.

The lighting rig consisted of the following: (2) LEGEND 300E Spot, (2) Q-Spot 160-LED, (2) COLORband TRI, (7) COLORado 2 IP, (4) COLORado 1-Tri TOUR, (4) COLORado 1 Tour, (1) COLORado 1 VW, (8) LED PARr 64 TRI, (1) Cirrus and (1) Eclipse. (The last three are members of our club/DJ line of fixtures.) There were also one each of the COLORdash Accent family members, an assortment of ILUMINARC products, as well as the popular club/DJ wash lights 4PLAY and 4BAR. It was all controlled by ShowXpress and an Obey 70.

The night was hosted by MDR and Audio Progress Ltd. We had a guest from Massey University, Professor of Sustainable Energy, Ralph Sims, who discussed the effects of CO2 emissions as they relate to global warming concerns. He described what can be done to help prevent further release of CO2 and how we can lower our carbon footprint by using more efficient methods of transportation, energy production in our everyday lifestyle. He touched on the lighting industry and offered comparisons between traditional incandescent lighting and compact fluorescent lighting (CFL).

After his presentation, I was able to expand on his discussion by going into the energy savings of LED and also include the fact that LEDs are much more flexible and actually usable in the entertainment industry where CFL is not. I then touched on the fact that comparisons between LED and discharge lamps is difficult to do on paper and is something that has to be shown in person. The crowd was very receptive to this and I think Brodie is going to get swamped with demo requests.

We took a short break between the technology portion and the fixture overview and then reviewed the entire professional catalogue fixture by fixture. After the presentation, both Brodie and I were mentally exhausted.

Brodie then wanted to give me a ride around Palmerston North to show me the two outdoor installations he has worked on. There are more in the works, but for now there is the Clock Tower and Regent on Broadway Theater. The Clock Tower is lit with a combination of COLORado Batten 72 Tours and COLORado 6p units. The Regent Theater is uplit with COLORado 6p units only.