Bernhard Endl meets Ninja warrior Austria challenge with ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M

Two‐million or so Austrians tune in every Monday to watch the country’s 2021 Ninja Warrior championships, but, for Bernhard Endl, it was a matter of routine keepping pace with its athletic participants when lighting the program on Austria’s Puls4 network.

Powering his 89‐universe 936‐ fixture lighting design was a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M console. Endl positioned his keylighting from five or six different points along the parkour course, depending how the obstacles were configured for the day.

His principal light source were floodlights mounted at the trussing of the obstacles, downside, frontside, backside. He also had profile fixtures on truss oriented in the same direction as the cameras, as well as two to four wash lights focused on each obstacle.

Most of his show was timecoded, but some cues were manually called up. At pivitol moments of victory or defeat, selected cues were triggered via MIDI Notes to be in sync with the sound effects. The easy‐to‐ understand and program Automation Events Window and the CueStack Macros of his MQ500M were very helpful when this happened, according to Endl.

Given that Endl was lighting fast action in a large area (106m x 52m) with constantly changing parameters, it was essential that he be able to have quick, easy access to large numbers fixtures.

“The ability to import a csv with fixtures and their positions so neatly with the MQ500M was nice,“ he said. “The plan view made it very simple.

A ChamSys user for three years, Endl was using the MQ500M for the first time at the Ninja Warrior event.

Previously, he had used a MQ80 in touring because of its power and compactness, but seven weeks with the MQ500M gave him a new perspective. “I’ve become a big fan of this console,” he said, noting that it’s “built for handling challenges quickly,” an attribute that made the MQ500M right at home with these Ninja competitors.

chamsysusa.com