Built in 1891, the Albert Hall, one of Launceston’s architectural treasures, has reopened following completion of the extensive Eastern Wing Redevelopment and Great Hall refurbishment, marking a new era for one of Tasmania’s most cherished heritage venues.
The Great Hall refurbishment has revitalised the venue’s historic interior and infrastructure, ensuring the Hall remains a functional, safe, and inspiring space for generations to come.
Improvements to the Hall include a new lighting system, supplied by Alive Technologies, to meet modern event standards. This included eight Prolights Astra Profile400, twelve Astra Wash19Pix, a Luminex LumiNode 12 ethernet/DMX processing device, ELC Scene Player AC612XUB and an AVStumpfl Monoblox 64 mobile projection screen.
The venue already has access to an MA Lighting grandMA3 light CRV console and MA3 2-port nodes.
“It’s got to be a fairly user-friendly building as it’s essentially a hall for hire,” commented Malcolm Butters, Head Technician, on the Albert Hall. “Also, we manage and run the Princess Theatre, which is closing for renovations for a couple of years, so we’re basically moving our whole operation to Albert Hall, aiming to turn it into a theatre space.”
The venue has a fairly high ceiling; however, Malcolm reports that the Prolights Astra Profile400 are certainly effective enough to deal with the distance. The Astra Profile400 is a multi-purpose indoor LED profile moving light with ultra-high lumen efficiency, punchy output, and stunning effects. Its feature set includes framing shutters and an animation wheel, but it still has a small form factor and light weight.
One of Malcolm’s main requirements when choosing the profile fixture was that it be very quiet.
“They’re definitely a quiet fixture!” he said. “It also needed to have framing shutters on it. As these fixtures are basically our front-of-house lighting system because we don’t have access to focus conventional lighting, it’s got to be an all-rounder. It has an animation wheel, a gobo wheel, great zoom and CMY mixing, too.”
As for the Prolights Astra Wash19Pix, Malcolm says they are also a good, punchy fixture for the space, as well as being compact and lightweight.
“They’re mainly over the stage, but we do have a dance floor in that venue as well, so they get moved out onto the dance floor as well, just to provide a bit of colour and movement,” he added. “They’ve also got the outer ring for a bit of eye candy, which delivers something different, so it’s nice. They have a good zoom range, which makes them very versatile. The colours between the two Prolights fixtures blend nicely, which was important to us.”
Malcolm admits that the AVStumpfl Monoblox 64 mobile projection screen is still in its box, though he knows it’ll be good if it’s from AVStumpfl!
