Hi,I'm Ziggy Jacobs. I'm a lighting designer and a programmer at London Coliseum and
English National Opera, and I do both freelance programming and freelance design as well.
I'm Al Crawford. I'm a lighting designer. I work in a lot of different genres of the
performing arts. I own a company called Arc3 Design, and I'm also Lighting Director
of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
I'm Dan Murfin , and I'm in charge of programming here at the National Theater in
London on the South Bank, and I basically look after everything from programmers right
through to the equipment that we have here.
Hi, I'm Zakaria Al-Alami. I'm the Lighting Director for Arc3 Design, but also the Lighting
Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Hi, everyone. I'm Anne Valentino. I'm the Eos product line manager for ETC.
We're introducing our new flagship console in the Eos product line called Eos Titanium, or Ti
for short. It's a replacement to the current Eos desk, and fits in the line just above Gio.
The massive screens on the Ti are absolutely brilliant, and the same high-resolution screens
as the Gio has as well can get information you need quickly
without having to stare to read text.
Eos Ti will be accompanied by a new software version 2.0, which introduces two new features,
one is magic sheets. You can lay out a topographical view of your stage. You can lay a screen that
mimics the way your analog magic sheet might look, so when you're looking at a fixture
on a magic sheet, it tells you what that fixture's actually doing now.
And this being a new rig to me, having that magic sheet on the desk made it possible to
get a visual statement of where things are without having to deal with paperwork, being
able to walk in fresh and just open up to that screen. This is the rig. What am I dealing
with? How's it laid out?
The advantage of the magic sheet function is that everyone who's using the system
can have their own layouts if they so choose. There's offline software available for the
Eos family of products, so the work doesn't all have to be done in the space. You can
build your show file in advance, bring it into the theater, and tweak for the environment.
Another advantage of the magic sheet function is that because it is completely interactive,
it operates within the command line structure, so the words that a designer would give to
his programmer would be the same order that he would he is he is selecting things from
the magic sheet.
You want a system that it is clear, simple, easy to use, yet powerful, so that your thoughts
can reach the stage.
We've also done a complete rework to our RDM functionality. The real advantages of
RDM are in troubleshooting your rig so that at 7:30 or 7:00 or whenever your call is,
an RDM fixture can report back to the console if it's online, if it's not online. Depending
on the diagnostics that are available in the fixture, it can tell you certain things about
itself to help you troubleshoot it.
Just seeing the information in a clear format coming back to you in a clear way, it makes
knowing what's going on with your rig a constant part of your day, rather than something
that you only do when something goes wrong.
In the early days of development, we looked at a variety of different approaches to the
underlying DNA of the console. We came back to a number of decisions that made the desk
decidedly Obsession-like.
So I think the UI is very smart in that way. It allows you to get the information quickly, to get to
the sort of complex processes that you might want ultimately, but it's not in the way.
The advantage of a command line is that it allows you to enter information into the console
exactly as you speak.
Because it also follows from that history of the Obsession language and how things look
on screen, it's familiar to a lotta people already.
We try really hard to listen to the way people speak to one another when they're in production,
the words that they use to communicate, if a designer's trying to tweak a color, what
words does he use to tell the programmer what it is he's actually looking for.
As much as possible, we try to make that native to the console so that the programmer doesn't
have to try to do an interpretation of the designer's desires.
One of the things that I love about ETC products is that they remove that disconnect between
programmer and technology and designer and programmer, and it becomes one team trying
to achieve an artistic vision. Removing that level of translation allows everyone to concentrate
more on the total artistic outcome of the show.
Our multi-console functionality was designed in from the very beginning with the understanding
that the needs of the programmer, the assistant lighting designer, the lighting designer,
the production electrician, are all different, and they need tools that are specifically
tailored to what they're attempting to do, and that should be seamless. I think that
there's a misunderstanding or a concept in the industry that for something to be powerful
it has to be hard, and I disagree with that entirely.
The Eos console allows us to be able to communicate the information and not get in the way.
You can really just tell it what you want. It's a huge piece of information that's out of
the way. And the more information that we get out of the way between a designer's
mind and a designer's heart and what we end up ultimately seeing on the stage I think
is really smart.
It's a matter of simplicity for me.
I think Eos is fairly simple, and I think that's the beauty of it.
One of the advantages of the family I think is that the richness of it can be unfolded
over time. You can start with relatively simple things and then as you become more comfortable
with the products, you can delve deeper, but you don't have to know everything about
the product to be able to start using it.
The thing for me that's exciting about desk design is it's kind of like an archeological
dig. The real challenge of this and the fun of it is digging deep enough to understand
what problem they're really trying to solve. And if you dig far enough, you realize that
the problem actually exists three steps removed from that. To remove the mechanics of it and
allow them to be s creative as they can be is one of the most rewarding aspects of doing this.