Clay Paky and grandMA2 Light Up the Competition on La Banda La Banda, the new contest to find singers for the next Latino boy band, just wrapped its first season on Univision wowing audiences with the talent of young competitors from across Latin America. Clay Paky Mythos and Sharpy lighting fixtures, with multiple grandMA2 full-size and light consoles for lighting control, amped up the excitement of the live show. A.C.T Lighting, Inc. is the exclusive distributor of both brands in North America. La Banda was created by Simon Cowell and produced by Ricky Martin. Contestants hailed from South America, Central America, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean. The two-hour, seven-week elimination competition featured guest performances by top Latino entertainers. The five winning contestants will form the new band called CNCO, which landed recording contracts with Cowell's Syco Music and Sony Music Latin. "The show had many set changes between acts that usually had to be completed within a minute of video tape packages to introduce a performance that gaffer Don Winters would coordinate," says lighting director Craig Caserta. "It involved lots of choreography and a total of 136 performances." Lighting designer Tom Sutherland created a very layered look for the show that enabled him to have lots of options. "It's tough to keep things looking fresh when you have a seven-week series, so that was a great challenge to take on," he notes. The lighting rig and main console were supplied by PRG Orlando. Eight Clay Paky Mythos luminaires were mounted in overhead truss and another eight were positioned in a curved wall of light. Four truss towers each housed two Clay Paky Sharpy wash fixtures plus 10 to 24 Sharpys and one additional Mythos on the floor depending on the demands of the performances. "The Mythos were used as air effects, texture, fill, and key light, as well as musical accents," Sutherland explains. "The fixture is so versatile and can be used for so many things. When you have many musical numbers over a series you need a fixture that can offer you a world of wonders. The Mythos was this for me." Sharpys were used for air and beam effects; the Sharpy wash filled in the holes between video walls when in home base then provided air effects and backlight when the towers moved on stage. "The optics in the Clay Paky fixtures are second to none," Caserta declares. "Such a crisp bright beam and great gobo selection for both air effects and texture on set pieces! I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Mythos is one of the most versatile fixtures on the market. Its ability to perform multiple functions, such as aerial beams, texture, fill light, and key light, make it one of the workhorses of any rig. The zoom is amazing as well. Being able to go from a pin spot pencil beam to a big, fat wash is something only Mythos can achieve." He adds that the Clay Paky fixtures "were flawless, as always" for the duration of La Banda. "We never even had to change a lamp or swap out a fixture the entire season." Caserta deployed a full-size grandMA2 as his main lighting console for programming the automated fixtures and had a grandMA2 light for full tracking back up. Chris Delorenzo, the programmer dealing with audience and key lights, used grandMA2 lights as his main desk and full tracking back up; an additional grandMA2 light was backstage for adding or changing fixtures week to week. All of the consoles ran 3.0.0.5 software; 4 NPUs were also used. "One of the challenges of the show was time," says Caserta. "I would have eight hours to program 16 songs on Friday. Then Saturday would be camera blocking where we'd see how the cues played with the camera angles, and we'd adjust the cueing as needed. Sunday was the full dress rehearsal then the show went live on air. "The way I had my sequence laid out was simple but effective. Cues 1 to 10.9 were all item numbers in the run down and the performance cues were 501 and up. I'd use links and loops to jump in and out of musical performances. This helped because performance order changed quite often. When that happened, all I had to do was change the link going into the song and the loop coming out of the song." He also praises, "the customizable touch screens that allowed me to have everything I needed at my fingertips. The grandMA2 has been my console of choice since its debut, and it performed flawlessly. We never needed to go to the back up consoles. The entire rig was run with MA-Net and NPUs. By the end of the show there was a lot of data in the consoles that was all on one network. Using worlds we were able to separate the lights I would control from the lights Chris would control. This made it a lot easier for gaffer Don Winters since it was all one system: There was no need to separate the system on his end as we could easily do it from the console." 
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