South African professional lighting equipment supplier Movievision recently embarked on road shows in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg to launch products from its two new agencies, D.T.S. and ChamSys. In addition Movievision also had demo units of the latest LED products from Socanland.
Says Movievision sales director Kim Reed: “This year we took the decision to embark on our first ever road shows as an alternative to exhibiting at trade shows. The road show strategy allowed us to target specific end users in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and served as a great launch pad for our new products, such as the D.T.S. Delta 10 and the ChamSys MagicQ lighting console, among others. Software director of ChamSys Chris Kennedy and D.T.S.’ Thomas Taddei joined us on the road shows.’
Kicking off on 23 May, the road show held at Durban’s Docklands Hotel attracted more than 30 people. “This was a very big turnout for Durban,’ notes Reed. “Three days later we moved to Cape Town and held a road show in conjunction with the monthly Wrap Party at the Peninsular Hotel, which was incredibly well attended. On 27 May we moved to Southern Lighting’s Mai Studio, also in Cape Town.
“The Johannesburg road show took place on 31 May at Atlas Studios. All the road shows proved very successful and generated a huge amount of interest,’ comments Reed.
It was at last year’s Plasa Trade Show in London that Reed was able to secure the D.T.S. agency, quite a coup for Movievision as they had not supplied intelligent lighting before.
Reed notes that one of the main selling points of D.T.S. products is that they are all entirely manufactured in Italy and don’t utilise components from other parts of the world. “Consequently, D.T.S. is able to give a three-year warranty instead of the standard two-year warranty. D.T.S. LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) incorporate RGB (Red Green Blue) + White so that when projected produce a grey scale shadow. D.T.S. only uses Philips LED lamps – a 3watt LED powering to 1.5watt to ensure long life and a uniform colour that doesn’t fade as the LED gets older. D.T.S LEDs reportedly last for 100 000 hours.’
The D.T.S. Delta 10 Wash Zoom, the brightest LED colour changer in its category with 5 000 Lux at 5m (15°), proved particularly popular at the road show, as did the NICK 600 Wash , which features a motorised Zoom 13°- 40° with high efficiency optic.
According to Reed, Movievision was keen to secure the ChamSys agency as they have a very strong market share in Europe. “We hired Kobus Visser and immediately sent him to Europe for training, and specifically to provide the necessary back-up, support and guidance for D.T.S., ChamSys and all the other Movievision agencies.’
Says Visser: “At the road shows the ChamSys MagicQ MQ100 Pro 2010 generated a lot of interest as it provides an immensely powerful lighting control console in a compact size. It has full theatre cue stack control on 10 different playback faders, as well as fully configurable FX and on screen cue editing.’
Also popular at the road show was the Socanland LED camera light. Visser notes that the light weighs less than a kilogram and can easily be attached to cameras. “It goes to daylight or tungsten with a click of a button and dims down to zero. It is an incredibly bright light.’
