The Victoria University of Wellington offers courses in theatre production and as such, are keen to have the latest and best in production technology for their students.
Recently they were in the market for some more moving heads to add to their lighting inventory and Sam Tippet, Theatre Technician, explains why:
“We currently have two large moving head beam fixtures which are great but super large and heavy and basically stay rigged in the same position for these reasons,” she explained. “We run production classes with the university students in which they work towards putting on a fully-fledged production (sometimes more than one per trimester) so having versatile yet effective fixtures is important for us.”
With this in mind, they were led to the Ayrton Mistral-S, a highly compact, lightweight but powerful 300 W spot luminaire.
“The Mistrals are lightweight and easy enough to be handled by one person while still fulfilling an amazing quality light output,” commented Sam. “It seemed a win-win for us. We have done a fair few test runs since they arrived and they’re great. We can pair them with our larger fixtures in the roof or even keep them on the ground or mezzanine level for an impressive display in our medium-sized black box venue that is always looking different with every show.”
The Ayrton Mistral offers a 13-lens proprietary optical system and an 8:1 zoom ratio with a zoom range of 6.7° to 53°. The optics, equipped with a 119mm frontal lens, can achieve an extremely uniform flat beam that can render images perfectly in all conditions and at any beam angle.
Sam added that she is looking forward to students using their three Mistrals in their work to be able to explore more possibilities in their lighting design and programming capabilities.
“Also as a side note, they are extremely slick and the Ayrton quality stands true,” she added. “We’re very happy with them and the service from Nick Reeves at Show Technology to pick the best fixture for us.”
