As Melbourne’s FOH Productions continued their growth, they knew they needed to add an MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size to satisfy demand and keep their expanding inventory under control!
“There was so much demand last year for an MA3 full-size,” commented Michael Eather, Production Manager/Head of Lighting at FOHP. “I was constantly having to hire in full-size consoles so we decided it was the next logical choice for us. We saw it become more and more requested on riders. People actually asking for MA3 hardware. I know some people are only still using it in mode 2 but they want the nice new hardware, which is understandable.”
Michael asked colleagues who had MA3 hardware in their stock and the unanimous reply was that it was never in the warehouse, constantly on shows or sub-hired to other production companies.
“We decided to pull the trigger and we’ll look at getting a couple of MA3 lights hopefully in the next 12 months and definitely another full-size,” added Michael. “It’s the most popular console in the world and is in such demand, the first text line on most people’s riders is ‘Control MA3’. So it’s kind of a no-brainer.”
Michael says that as his lighting guys familiarize themselves with the MA3 software, the feedback has been that the latest version has opened some of the features.
“The new feature set on the latest version is really good,” he relayed. “I’ve had feedback from a bunch of techs and LDs that work closely with us saying that they are going to make the transition from MA2 to MA3 software this year. They’re now at a point where they believe the software has got all the features that they want.”
Photographed is FOHP’s new MA3 at Melbourne venue PICA for which FOHP is the in-house production team. The event was the DG XXL 3 dance party with FOHP’s Dan Hawes designing and operating the show.
“It’s funny talking about purchasing an MA3 console because you never really think about why you did it, it’s always just been pretty obvious that the next logical step,” concluded Michael. “It wasn’t a hard decision.”
