Cold Chisel, the Iconic Australian band toured Australia and New Zealand at the end of 2011, for the first time using video as part of their show. This “Light The Nitro” tour was also their biggest Australian Tour to date. The 10 weeks tour has been so popular that the first shows sell out and extra dates were added because of the demand.
Leading Australian Lighting designer Francesco Calvi used ArKaos MediaMaster to achieve his great creative visual show. Calvi comments: “ArKaos MediaMaster was the perfect tool for me on this tour. It proved to be the right choice, particular in the pre-production stage. Being able to quickly change and manipulate media while the band discussed their thoughts greatly the aided the whole creative process. It also gave added confidence to the production.”
Each show was similar in most aspects but venues varied from Circus Tents, Outdoor Stadiums to Large Arenas.Thus, screens sizes and lighting changed to suit each venue. MediaMaster made this process easy. “One part of the show involved me going out to the audience and taking photos for the show that became a photo montage for one of the songs” explains Calvi. “I had made a template up and loaded the photos in each night with audience already in their seats (approx. 60 photos). I had to be confident that it would work each night, as there was no time to preview on the main screen. This was a very popular part of the show.”
Francesco used two servers running ArKaos MediaMaster Pro, the main machine was located at the back of the stage for the video director. Calvi ran a second machine at FOH that replicated the main machine. This gave him the HUD at FOH, which was also used as a backup machine. Both machines ran exactly the same media library. Media varied from stills, layered images and full movies. The main machine was a custom PC (i7) running Windows7, with the backup machine been a Quad Core Mac. Both machines were fitted with Solid State Drives.
Calvi was really happy with the performance of ArKaos MediaMaster Pro. "Ten weeks around Australia and MediaMaster worked very hard and didn’t miss a beat for the whole tour", he says. “Big Thanks to Marco and the whole ArKaos team for all their support and great products”.
ArKaos Product Information in Australia
ArKaos Show & Lighting products are distributed in Australia by Ula Group, you may contact them for product information and orders.
