The MEET/BTT trade conference takes place every two years and is hosted by OETHG and DTHG, the professional theatre and TV associations for Germany and Austria. This year the event was in Bregenz, Austria on the 28-30th May. The MEET/BTT show is an important meeting place for professional users, distributors and manufacturers and runs an extensive schedule of conferences and seminars.Together with RTC, Zero 88’s distributor for Austria, Zero 88 showed the Frog 2, Leap Frog 48/96 and Jester series as well as the new Master Touch Screen for the Chilli dimmers. Zero 88’s powerful 3D visualisation software Light Converse, which played a big role within the lighting design contest, had a lot of very positive feedback during the show.
A big highlight of this years MEET/BTT show was the above mentioned lighting design contest. This was the first time a lighting design competition had been arranged at the show and was accomplished in co-operation with the OETHG, DTHG and RTC.
Applications for the competition were reviewed in advance of the show and were short listed to four competitors by the judging panel. These four designers had just two hours to create a lighting show programmed under the same conditions on Frog 2 console equipped with Light Converse visualisation software.
The shows were presented live to a jury in the evening before the MEET party night. The jury, consisting of Astrid Halmetschlager (Head teacher at the college for VA-Technik Vieanna), Andreas Prochaska (Project Manager at Klangfarbe Vienna), Thomas Nell (Sales Manager Spotlight Italy) and Jens Ottenhus (Product Manager from Focon Showtechnic Germany), had a hard job deciding the winner.
Franck Tiesing from Zero 88 commented, “The quality of the participants and their shows were really amazing considering they only had 2 hours to program everything. All participants converted very good ideas into fantastic lighting shows. I was very impressed at the creativity of individual designs and how each design was completely different.”
The 1st prize, a Frog 2 console, went to Martin Kames from the Planet Music Vienna for his lighting design and live playback performance for the Rammstein song 'Ich will'. Martin Rieder from PanSound Austria secured 2nd place, which was rewarded with a Jester ML. 3rd prize went to Roman Schoissengeier from Wiener Event Technik with a LightFactory software package and a consolation prize (DMX cable test) was given to Jerome Longhi from Switzerland. Jerome had never worked live on a Frog 2 prior to the competition; his only experience coming from the Frog offline editor. The fact that he created such a good show with such limited experience clearly illustrates intuitive structure of the Leap Frog 48/96 and
Frog 2 series.
The prizes were sponsored by Zero 88 and RTC Fuerstler Sound & Light KEG Austria.