ETC and Vari-Lite Shine at King Kong the Musical

	King Kong at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne.

Global Creature's new multi-million dollar production of King Kong has taken Melbourne, Australia by storm -- including lighting, sound, stagecraft, singing, costumes, dancing, and an incredibly life-like six-meter gorilla.

Peter Mumford's lighting design for the show won him a Helpmann Award (the Australian equivalent of the Tony).

Pivotal to his design are 86 ETC Source Four LED Lustr+ profiles, 50 positioned out front at the Regent Theatre, with another eight on the side balcony trusses and the rest in the gantry. All of the equipment was supplied by Jands.

"I've been using ETC Source Four LED Lustr+ profiles quite a bit in London and I really do like them," commented Mumford. "Although they are generic in one sense, they also have internal color mixing so they have a remote aspect to them in terms of color changing."

"They are quite beautiful; you can do very subtle color changes with them over five or ten minutes which I often do in productions. Although I haven't done this in King Kong as the lighting is very much in your face." Mumford notes that the Source Four LED's are totally silent and is immensely pleased that he doesn't have to deal with scroller noise or malfunction anymore.

"Everyone on King Kong was impressed by the Source Four LED's particularly their very even 'field'," he said. "I tend to use them in King Kong as a generic back up with a bunch of them on the gantry and while they are obviously on a fixed focus, they provide a solid color base. The same front-of-house where they provide a solid color wash which I can change and work with to use as infill. I love that you can use the color picker on screen just like you would with Photoshop."

The show's production electrician Ken Roach enjoyed working with the Source Four LEDs, noting they half the dimmers and half the cables. "You can daisy-chain seven lights together and run them off one cable, so instead of having a dimmer for each of the seven lights you have one circuit breaker," he noted.

Eight ETC Selador Desire D60 Vivid Luminaires are located within the Empire State building solely for effect when Kong falls off the building.

The show also utilizes 69 Vari-Lite VL3500 with the first three bars on stage packed with them as Mumford favors a fairly steep front-of-house look. "The VL3500's were chosen due to their power, zoom, and color changing ability -- they do color change very nicely," Mumford remarked. "The two gobo wheels are great as you can do a certain kind of morphing and mixing which you can't do with other lights. They have a very good zoom on them which makes them rather versatile."

Programmer and associate lighting designer Victoria Brennan used an ETC EOS control console which is linked to the show control backbone for triggering some cues and positions. "The ETC console has been very good and done everything we have asked it to do which is quite a lot," added Mumford. "There are some quite complex sequences in King Kong which it has coped with very well."