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grandMA Goes to Sea with Carnival Cruise Lines
Carnival Cruise Lines ships offer their passengers a lot of variety. Now grandMA’s play a key role in the line's entertainment show control. "The grandMA system is an important component for technical operations in the main showroom on our ships," says Preston Bircher, entertainment technical projects manager for Carnival. "Most ships have between two and seven production shows and although they're completely different, they utilise the same basic rig and light plot. The difference is in the programming with all the moving lights and colour changers. The flexibility of the grandMA system is fantastic," he continues.
Demfis Fyssicopulos of dfdesign served as grandMA lighting programmer for Carnival's 2,052-passenger Sensation, with the next installation scheduled for the line's 2,052-passenger Fascination. "These vessels are simply spectacular,” states Fyssicopulos. “The main showroom seats about 1,000 people and is two- to three-decks high. The theatre has all the accustomed lighting positions: ladders, pipes, front-of-house truss, balcony, etc. The larger ships also have a full fly space. Fyssicopulos was charged with programming two shows for Sensation, an '80s-style show, ‘Far From Over’ and, the fleet's latest show, ‘Curves’, which he characterizes as "very Vegas". "A variety of LED fixtures were used to light the key set elements. All of the data distribution was done via PathPort, coming directly from the console. The entire show runs slaved to SMPTE-timecode. Lights, lasers, video, and even pyro are slaved to timecode. The grandMA was simply the best tool for the job."
In the Sensation's main showroom, grandMA controls among other fixtures some 50 moving lights like the Vari*Lite VL 2500 Spot, 84 Wybron Colorams and 70 ETC Source Four 575W ellipsoidals. A grandMA Replay Unit provides day-to-day show playback.
"Preston and other members of the Carnival team are true professionals. Seeing them work with Demfis, and seeing how deep into the feature-set they reach, gives me a great deal of satisfaction," commented Bob Gordon, president and CEO of A.C.T Lighting. A.C.T. Lighting is grandMA's exclusive distributor in North America.
photo: Carnival Cruise Lines
7th September 2006
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