Aitken College, an independent Prep to Year 12 College in the northwest of Melbourne, boasts its own theatre, a 500-seat raked auditorium used for school music, drama, and musical theatre as well as being the school chapel.
As the theatre is now sixteen years old, it was time to invest in some new moving lights to replace ageing models and accompany the theatre’s ShowPRO Pluto 4000 fixtures.
“We’ve always worked with Show Technology over the years and so they were the first place we turned to for what would be the correct fit for us,” remarked Daniel Pedersen, Technical Operations Manager at the College. “The Ayrton products just seemed to tick all the boxes so we opted for six Ayrton Mistrals, six Ayrton Diablo and two Ayrton Eurus.”
Daniel adds that on most days, the theatre is manned by one technician so he was looking for products that are robust and good value for money.
“They also needed to be simple to use because often we’re asked to pull a look or lighting state together for a certain classroom activity or something else very quickly,” he said. “We didn’t want to invest in a cheaper, no-name brand because after a little while they start to play up and spare parts become difficult. Or you get another one then and the colour temperatures are different so it stands out in the rig. It’s nice to have all of our new lights from the same family and, of course, the the colours tend to line up better.”
Ash and Brandon from Show Technology’s Melbourne office visited Daniel with some Ayrton products as well as some other products. Daniel pulled up the ShowPRO Pluto 4000 fixtures to have a look at the colour relationship between them.
“The Ayrton fixtures and the ShowPRO fixture were very close,” he reported. “We decided they were a good fit and the rig looks very cohesive.”
When it came to the Ayrton Mistral, Daniel says that the fact that they go from a beam to a wash light made them very flexible for what was required in the space. He adds that they’re punchy and crisp and they move fast. Like all Ayrton products, they are easy to set up and are very powerful.
“The Mistral’s colour mixing is impressive and you can get some great deep colours without taking away much brightness,” Daniel remarked. “The Ayrton Eurus are incredible and do everything I would love them to do but they cost more so as we do a lot of drama, we needed a traditional profile to light set pieces and so on. That’s where the Diablo came into it. That way, I can have half my rig with full shutters because a lot of our work is theatrical and then have the more impressive two gobo wheels in the Mistral as the next layer. Realistically I probably could have brought a whole fleet of just Diablo because of shutters but I was trying to have good flexibility within our rig to be able to do things quickly and accurately because the kind of events that come through here happen fast.
Daniel added that the Ayrton Eurus are bright, have a good gobo selection, wide zoom ratio and the optics are incredible.
Control at the College is a grandMA2 onPC that Daniels says just does what it should and that he is looking to upgrade to MA3.
