St Kilda’s historic Palais Theatre has welcomed a fleet of 16 x Martin ERA 400 Performance CLD fixtures into its inventory, thanks to Phaseshift Productions.
Designed to fulfil the demand for a bright, compact, tour-worthy moving head, the Martin ERA 400 Performance CLD combines a feature-loaded and rugged, yet cost-efficient profile for entertainment and rental applications.
“We wanted an LED unit with framing shutters for the theatre environment so that reduced our options by quite a bit,” explained Craig Boyes, Production Manager, Phaseshift Productions. “Budget was a major consideration coming out of Covid especially as this is a permanent rig sitting in the Palais not able to do other shows.
“We went with a Martin fixture as we know how reliable their fixtures are over the long term and for touring shows they are a trusted and familiar brand.”
Once the fixtures were up and running, Craig was amazed at the silent operation of the MAC ERA 400 and also the colour quality of the fixture.
“The colour rendering is great with impressive saturation and they also have a 10,000-lumen output so are very bright for their size,” he added. “We had them in the rig for a recent show that toured a floor package of MAC Vipers and Claypaky Sharpys and they held their own.
“The 1:3 zoom, electronic dimming and strobe, full CMY colour mixing and separate colour wheel, iris for beam adjustment, fixed and rotating gobo wheels offer versatility to the LDs coming through …. plus the gobos are great.”
The ERA 400 Performance CLD’s full curtain framing system offers a high degree of flexibility to achieve precise looks on stage. When fully focused, gobos can be nicely framed with a soft edge, and each of the four framing blades can cross the entire beam independently for a full blackout. The entire system can rotate 90 degrees, allowing designers to direct light exactly where they want it to go and achieve unique movement effects not otherwise possible.
“Having framing allows us to cut to the edge of the stage for the FOH spots as well as trimming off legs and providing all those tidy cuts and precise looks we would expect for a profile in a theatre environment,” agreed Craig.
Photos: Craig Boyes
