When Element Live Productions was recently engaged to supply lighting for an Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane tour, they decided to add a fresh point of interest onstage in the form of eight ShowPRO Alligators. This innovative lighting fixture boasts a double-sided design, offering unparalleled flexibility and adaptability for various applications. It can serve as a beam, wash, and strobe moving bar, allowing you to achieve captivating lighting effects with ease.
“The Alligator is a really good fixture for this kind of dance music, techno, art style, all that kind of thing,” commented Chris Manton, General Manager at Element Live Productions. “It’s a super bright strobe, but a funky, interesting fixture as well. It’s been a super versatile fixture and pairs brilliantly with our ShowPRO Diamondbacks.”
Primarily, the Alligators were mounted on truss podiums, but could be flown if a truss stage was built. Chris discovered that you could achieve a myriad of different effects simply by how you install them.
“They are so versatile in that respect,” he said. “You can run them one way, then another, and they feel almost like a different fixture. I like that you can lean into them more as the evening goes on. You can start off using them fairly plain and not too energetic, maybe as a flashing beam light, and you can develop them as a fixture over the course of the event. Ultimately, you can bring out the reverse side, bring out the strobe, and then go for it at the end of the night with a kind of massive pan-and-tilt, everything-goes-on kind of effect.”
Chris adds that the Alligators feel robust and will stand up to life on the road, which is a key factor for his company. They have travelled close to 5,000 kilometres already, so that in itself is a testament to their robustness on the road.
With the addition of the ShowPRO Alligators, DiamondBacks and DreamPix to their inventory, Chris notes that they were rapidly running out of parameters and universes with their existing MA3 onPC Command Wing XT.
“It was kind of a chicken and egg scenario,” he explained. “We knew if we purchased these fixtures, we’d probably have to go and buy a bigger MA console, as adding nodes to our existing MA3 onPC Command Wing XT wasn’t an option. At the same time, we were doing bigger shows and more events where lighting and touring ops were demanding a fully featured rider-friendly console, so it was definitely time to expand our lighting control inventory.”
Consequently, Chris opted for a grandMA3 Light console, saying it was both powerful and intuitive, and it has been their go-to console since purchase.
“I think the MA3 Light gets used probably more than it needs to be!” he added. “It’s rarely in the warehouse as it’s almost always out on work, so it’s been a good purchase.”
Given that Element also continues to support other lighting control solutions alongside grandMA, two Luminex LumiNode 4 Ethernet-DMX Converters were purchased to ensure maximum flexibility. Designed with an all-metal, robust enclosure for rack mounting or truss mounting, they are an ideal solution for life on the road.
“As we are doing more and more work that requires multi-protocol support, and with a plan to also purchase GigaCore switches in the near future, we’ll be able to further expand our touring grade and multi-protocol support across both sound and lighting equipment, adding support for both AVB Milan and Dante,” commented Chris.
Over the last 12 months, working on larger sites has also required Element Live Productions to invest in fibre and large-scale IT solutions, so building a control and switching inventory that can handle more specialised AV control and switching alongside centralised monitoring is a high priority as they plan for the next festival season.
