grandMA3 at Singapore's National Day Parade

Singapore – Lighting designer Gabriel Chan chose the power and reliability of the advanced grandMA3 control system to ensure Singapore’s spectacular 2025 National Day Parade provided an exceptional experience.

This year’s televised, flagship event of Singapore’s annual celebration was staged on 9 August at The Padang, the historic playing field in downtown Singapore. With military marches and flypasts, civilian displays, and a rich programme of music, dance, multimedia shows and fireworks, the Parade is always a stand-out occasion in the city-state’s calendar.

Lighting Design

For Gabriel Chan, a graduate of the prestigious Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), this is the seventh time lighting Singapore’s National Day Parade. Having started out using grandMA at HKAPA, he predominantly used grandMA2 before beginning the transition to grandMA3 in 2021. 

He praises the help and training he received throughout the process, both from MA Lighting and their regional distributor, Total Solution Marketing. “Their support has been stellar, and that has undoubtedly softened the bumps along the way!” he says.

Setup & Rig

The grandMA3 control system, supplied by Showtec Group Pte. Ltd, is perfectly suited for shows of this complexity and scale. “The lighting design uses 1,241 fixtures, with a parameter count of 60,223,” says Chan. “grandMA3 is a proven solution, capable of handling large amounts of signal processing instantaneously and reliably, making it the natural choice of control system.”

With so much going on, it was vital that the team operating the show could rely on a fast and robust control network. Says Chan, “On this scale, there’s a lot of information to communicate, and this transfer from page to stage requires both speed and accuracy. grandMA3, with its support for MVR with Vectorworks, has set the standard for this information transfer. It allows us to automate the process with absolute confidence.”

Design Workflow 

For this project, Chan and his team – including co-lighting designer Javier Tan and lighting programmer Foon Guey Her – began preparations back in May 2024 and produced initial designs by November. The build of the lighting rig began in May 2025, with rehearsals in June and July. Both Chan and Tan undertook console programming and show operation, while the programmer assisted with system commissioning and day-to-day maintenance of the network.

“My design process begins with Vectorworks,” explains Chan. “The entire space is modelled in 3D, allowing us to study lighting angles and coordinate our rig with the other technical elements of the production.” 

Once settled, all the relevant information – including fixture addressing and XYZ coordinates, and 3D models of the performance space – are exported via MVR files into the grandMA3 console. “With MVR, information transfer is seamless and accurate,” says Chan. 

The team runs a three-console multi-user session during programming and operation, on two grandMA3 full-size consoles (Main and Backup), plus a grandMA3 onPC used to separately monitor output with a Macula Remote Control system. 

Unique User Profiles and Data Pools allow customised layout, presets and views for each user within the multi-user environment. “One Data Pool is designated for show content, so all show-related information eventually gets populated into that Data Pool,” says Chan.

Challenges & Solutions

One of the show’s highlights is a 15m wide automated mobile stage with two tiers of stage lifts. As the manpower required to operate it was often unavailable during programming, Chan’s team used grandMA3’s MArkers feature to simulate the movement of the stage virtually. Using Capture for previz, they were able to pre-programme fixtures concealed within the automated element. 

“We also have a significant number of Multi-Instance fixtures, and the management of these instances/pixels is becoming more complex,” says Chan. “grandMA3, with its selection grid, provides us with an elegant solution to control both the main parent fixture, as well the child instances, with its hierarchal management of the fixtures.”

He continues, “I use Reaper to set markers for lighting cues in relation to music points. Using the plugins from MATools, I’ve been able to transfer cue markers for timecode events directly onto grandMA3.”

As well as MVR, MA Tools and MArkers, Chan highlights a number of other features in grandMA3 which the team find invaluable to their design workflow. These include the Selection Grid for application of phasers in both X and Y axes, Recipe Presets for phasers and ‘Store Offset’ for calibrating fixture focus.

Conclusion

Chan finds grandMA3 a significant advantage. He says, “After developing a new workflow and template show file for grandMA3, my Phaser creation process is actually more streamlined than creating grandMA2 effects. This means I spend less time programming, and more time painting looks. In that same vein, time saved on managing information transfer means more time for creativity.”

More time for creativity is welcome, but reliability is essential. Chan concludes, “To be able to run a show with a backup that kicks in instantaneously has been critical for our show operation. This can only be possible with a stable multi-user environment that the grandMA3 network offers.”