22nd Apr 2008 - L&Si Article by Ben M Rogers

Printed with permission from L&Si magazine.


London-based lighting designer Ben M Rogers gives us his view of the software advances and flexibility of Zero 88’s flagship professional lighting console . . .

I have been using the Frog 2 for the past two years, on tours and events in the UK and abroad. I have always championed the flexibility of this console to cover theatre, opera, rock and roll and corporate work and over the past six months my Frog 2 has done all of the above. It offers comprehensive and intuitive control of all attributes and it has possibly one of the largest and most accurately produced fixture libraries of any desk I have used.

The Frog 2 made its debut in Cyprus with an arena production of West Side Story. Featuring a company of over 50 performers from the West End, the production was staged in the Larnaca Amphitheatre as the opening show for the Larnaca International Festival. The lighting design comprised 120 dimmer channels with PAR cans, profiles, blinders and low voltage lighting, as well as JB Lighting VaryScan 7 and VaryColour 7s and Martin MAC 500s. The new open-air staging of the show called for a design with broad brushstrokes of colour and texture. The setting remained 1957 New York, so it would have been inappropriate to have live movement from the automated fixtures, but naturally I was keen to take advantage of the flexibility offered by the automated units, especially as the venue’s rigging positions were limited.

This was the first time I had used the JB fixtures, but the Frog 2 already had comprehensive personalities for them. The show was built as a main sequence on the playback stacks with the ever-useful UDFs (user-definable faders) acting as sub-masters to provide additional control of smoke machines, specials and repeated effects to overlay onto the main stack. The Frog 2’s ‘Move When Dark’ feature meant that I could programme ‘as a designer’ - creating each look and letting the desk work out the intermediate data to ensure a clean playback. With limited dark hours for programming, this saved valuable time in completing the show’s 250+ cues. The Frog coped with the hot and humid weather and delivered a show which was acclaimed as one of the most spectacular musical productions in the country for many years.

Following this I was asked to return to Cyprus to programme lighting for the Pafos International Festival’s presentation of Il Trovatore performed by the State Opera of Kazakhstan. Working with one of Russia’s most highly regarded lighting designers, Damir Ismagilov, I took control of the grand opera rig including a large quantity of 2.5kW and 5kW dimming with PAR cans, beam lights, profiles and effects, as well as a moving light rig of architectural colour changers and washlights from Proel and Cyberlights from High End Systems. The rig took up almost four full DMX universes with lighting rigged over six front-of-house towers and four 30ft stage boom positions, while Pafos Castle formed the background to the action.

Damir explained that he would normally light the production with a completely conventional rig, but was using the automated fixtures to reduce the theatre rig to suit the outdoor venue. It was therefore essential that the use of moving lights was not obvious to the audience and as such, all movement would have to be whilst dark. Again, the Frog 2 did this work for me, allowing me to spend time with the designer perfecting the states.

The lighting rig was supplied by Arto Malian of Lightworx; some of the Proel units were so new that we were discovering their DMX attributes as we got them out of the box. This wasn’t a problem, as the Frog 2’s PC-based personality creator allowed us to build personalities within minutes and get them up and running with intelligent control on the console. The show was a success, and the technical teams from both Russia and Cyprus were impressed at the speed and control offered by the console.

Next, I returned to the UK, where the Frog 2 received a software upgrade to the new version 4.2 Linux release (launched at PLASA07). I then used it on the second UK tour of the percussion spectacular, Noise Ensemble. The software upgrade was timely, as it brought the new fixture swap-out function to the console. The Noise Ensemble tour features MAC 250 Entour and Wash fixtures (supplied by 10 out of 10 Productions) replacing the older 500, 600, 300 and 250+ units used on the last tour. The new swap-out functionality allowed me to quickly change these over in the desk, whilst retaining the palettes and tagging in the cue stack. This saved hours of programming time that would have been required to recreate the 450+ cues from scratch.

After that, it was back to Cyprus for one of the island’s largest ever corporate events - the 25th anniversary of international ship management company, Marlow Navigation. The event was produced by P&S Productions and involved a dinner party outside the head office for over 1,200 guests as well as performances by Umoja, Lord of the Dance and Diastasis. This event came with a large number of logistical and design challenges. The brief included architectural illumination, stage lighting for the international acts and a disco light show for the DJ after the performance. In addition to this, the client demanded that the lighting installation be as discreet as possible, with minimal cabling and no lighting towers on the event floor or truss/ground support systems: not an easy demand to meet, but we managed by using a flexible system of automated fixtures and with some creative rigging onto the building itself and in the builder’s yard opposite!

Again working with LightWorx and P&S Productions, I specified a combination of Proel architectural fixtures and washes, JB Lighting VaryColor and Scan units and Cyberlights to afford the most flexible system. In addition to all the rigging requirements, the on-site time was also limited, so once the system design had been completed and drawn in WYSIWYG I then patched it, and using just an ethernet cable, linked a full four universes of ArtNet output from the Frog 2 directly into my laptop and began programming - in the office, in daylight!

As the final running order was subject to change, I needed to programme in such a way that I could get near-instant access to any effect, look or sequence at any point during the event. On the 10 playback faders I created a series of playback stacks to control independent sections of the rig with dimmer, movement and colours. In addition to this, I used the 20 UDKs (user-definable keys) to create extra colour, shapes, gobos and strobe effects with a mix of latching and flash LTP preferences to overlay onto the playbacks. The 10 UDFs were used for additional control of the conventional dimmers and smoke effects. Whilst the Frog 2 has 99 pages of playbacks and user-definable functions I was able to comfortably fit enough content to cover this six-hour event onto one page with instant access to all of the looks and effects required.

One other thing I should mention is that the new fixture display screen also became
a very useful asset in keeping track of fixtures not easily seen from the console and for the rock and roll operation in the DJ set.

Touring with the Frog 2 has been a very interesting experience. It’s a professional grade console that raises the bar on the industry’s perception of Zero 88, who are traditionally associated with the education, church and small to mid-scale install market. As such, there have been a few raised eyebrows when it first comes out of its case, but generally I find the conversations start with “Zero 88?” and end with “So, tell me more . . .”
Ben M Rogers

www.lsionline.co.uk/digital

www.benmrogers.com