LED Shines in New Zealand.

With increasing demand for video content to be incorporated in theatre productions, and the difficulties that projection of video presents, the use of LED screen surfaces is becoming more prevalent.

The Light Site, based in Christchurch, NZ, has a 12m x 6m LED screen surface in its rental stock which is being kept busy with Theatre and event work across NZ. The LED surface is made up of 3m x 2.4m panels, which have the LEDs imbedded in a foldable fabric. The full cloth can be suspended from a theatre flying system, and weighs around 320KG. Video or still imagery is sent to the cloth in much the same way you would to a data projector, using either a laptop or media server.

For the New Zealand consortium tour production of Hairspray, Light Site supplied the LED surface, complete with a Hypnotizer media server. This media server allows for the LED imagery changes (cues) to be synced with the shows’ music. The lighting and sound cues were also able to be cued in this manner, giving fully integrated cueing.

The recent production of Beauty and the Beast, by NASDA, at the Ashburton Trust Event Centre, called for the use of the LED surface to replace some of the back drop scenery from an existing set which was too large for the venue. The LED surface was flown on the house counterweight system at the rear of the stage, allowing it to be flown out of the way when scenery needed to be moved past it.