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grandMA Goes to the Movies
Fans of the family comedy ‘Night at the Museum' are eagerly anticipating next spring's release of the sequel ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' which is now in production with a grandMA and grandMA light on hand. "For the past five years the grandMA has been our primary console," reports rigging gaffer Keith Woods citing movie credits for ‘The Chronicles of Riddick', ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still', ‘A Tale of Two Sisters' and ‘The Santa Claus II'. "We've used all models from the grandMA full-size to the grandMA light and even the grandMA ultra-light."
Tasked with making movie lighting systems work for director of photography John Schwartzman and Gaffer Drew Davidson, Woods is currently working on a set for ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' which replicates the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. Ben Stiller reprises his role as Larry the security guard in the sequel to the hit film which finds the Museum of Natural History closed for renovations and its exhibits in storage at the Smithsonian in Washington.
"grandMA is used to control the movie's conventional and moving lights and do some cueing," Woods explains. "Our rental house, Christie Lites, uses the grandMA, and once again we were in the position to need its fixture capabilities and touchscreens." Woods has tapped the grandMA "pretty exclusively" since ‘The Chronicles of Riddick' to control large conventional dimming systems. For that film a fixture patch for spacelights and KinoFlo Image 80s was designed, that enabled the grandMA to control them via the touchscreen.
"We have six circuits of dimming for the spacelights and eight circuits of data for KinoFlo Image 80s, which we can operate from the touchscreen rather than keying in by hand," he notes. "Thanks to the touchscreen and fixture-patch capabilities we can do everything much faster. We can make changes quickly and don't need channel numbers."
As the grandMA continues to compile feature-film credits it's clear that Woods is a fan of the system. "We like it. It's been pretty consistent," he says. "We first used the grandMA for additional universes, then we saw how easy to use it could be. So grandMAs are back in the movies again."
"I continue to be amazed at where grandMAs are being used. Movie lighting has really come a long way in regards to lighting control, and we are so proud to be involved. Of course, I will look at the movie in a very different way, and I cannot wait to see it," comments A.C.T Lighting president and CEO Bob Gordon, the exclusive distributor of MA Lighting in North America.
On ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' Todd Martin was the grandMA console operator with Jason McKinnon, Phil Klapwyk and Sean Oxenbury the programmers. Christie Lites from Vancouver delivered the lighting equipment.
In picture: a movie star at the controls.
4th September 2008
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