For several months Dave Jackson, Managing Director of Creative Productions, had been searching for the ideal spot fixture to replace aging Chinese stock the business started with.
“Obviously as business has grown and we’re doing bigger jobs, we needed a respected brand,” began Dave. “It also had to be small, lightweight and punchy. We looked at several brands but it wasn’t until the Ayrton Mistral-S was launched that we knew we had found the ideal fixture. It simply ticked all the boxes.”
The Mistral-S is the high output version of Ayrton’s popular Mistral-TC spot luminaire. At 18.6kg and a compact size, Mistral-S outputs a spectacular 17,000lm which aligns it with an 800W/1000W discharge fixtures. The Mistral-S is designed for scenic applications and is equipped with a new LED module, delivering powerful metallic white light and a colour temperature of 6500 K.
As soon as the sixteen Mistral-S arrived at Creative’s headquarters, Dave took them on the road with The Wombats and admits he fell in love with them.
“They’re on all of my riders now!” he laughed. “With The Wombats they were spread across three trusses and were all onstage. It’s a wash-heavy show but the Mistral-S fixtures were great for key-lighting and doing big breakup looks. We had a 12m x 6m LED screen onstage and the Mistral-S just cut through it with ease. They blasted through the video and blasted through the wash too.”
Dave further commented that with four Mistral-S to a case, they packed well into the truck.
Creative Productions also purchased recently an MA Lighting grandMA3 full size, with their console being delivered whilst Managing Director Dave Jackson was on the road with The Wombats.
“I had our grandMA2 out with The Wombats but immediately switched to the grandMA3 mid-tour,” he revealed. “There were no issues, the show was cloned and loaded perfectly. It was a little bit challenging in terms of finding buttons but I soon got used to the different layout.”
Dave commented that he particularly likes the way that MA have reimagined the key pads, encoders and faders.
“Even just hitting the key pads feels a lot nicer on the hands,” he added. “The displays are great, big with a matt finish.”
