grandMA3 is a top performer for Viña del Mar Festival

Chile – The largest and oldest music festival in Latin America, Chile’s Viña del Mar International Song Festival took place over six days in February this year – with help from MA Lighting’s advanced grandMA3 lighting control platform.

Founded in 1960, this major annual event is now staged at the city’s 15,000-capacity Quinta Vergara Amphitheater, and broadcast via television and streamed to a global audience estimated at 250 million.

For top Mexican LD Pablo Gutiérrez, lighting this year’s event was the latest high point of his 20-year show lighting career. In that time he has worked with many of the biggest stars in Latin music of all genres, and lit shows for theatre, musicals, fashion, exhibitions and more.

In 2013, alongside production manager Soho Ávila, Gutiérrez co-founded LEC Live Entertainment Crew – a company specializing in bringing productions to life from concept to execution, including stage design, previsualization, and crew coordination. This year, Gutiérrez and LEC had the “incredible experience” of designing the lighting for this renowned festival. 

grandMA3: ‘a natural decision’

Gutiérrez has long been familiar with MA control tools. In his early years, with few models available in Mexico, he encountered the first-generation grandMA mostly in the United States. The grandMA2 (launched in 2008), was more widely available and soon became his console of choice. Since 2020, he and his team have been “exploring the new and powerful features” of grandMA3. It’s been a gradual transition, leading to its use for the first time on the Viña del Mar Festival.

He admits the move has had its challenges. “On one hand,” he says, “grandMA2 is the best lighting platform ever: we know it inside-out and can program with ease. Leaving it behind hasn’t been easy. On the other hand, there’s excitement about the future with grandMA3, learning its new features, and exploring all the possibilities it offers for designing and programming shows.” 

The decision to use grandMA3 for the festival came from LEC’s conversations with the Festival’s Technical Director, Jaime Laval. Gutiérrez recalls, “We discussed how the festival, throughout its history, has always been at the forefront of innovation, consistently incorporating the latest and best technologies across all areas – broadcasting, video, sound, staging, and more. 

“When it came to lighting, grandMA3 stood out as the most advanced control software available. Given the festival’s commitment to cutting-edge technology, switching to grandMA3 was a natural decision.”

Time-Saving Tools

Stand-out features of grandMA3 have helped no end. “The new Phaser system offers limitless possibilities for creating very personalized, dynamic, and fluid effects,” he says. “The Selection Grid really helps to speed up the creation of complex and precise effects every time.” 

He continues, “The user interface and workflow of the console are exceptional – highly intuitive and incredibly customizable. The touchscreen system runs smoothly, and I especially love how you can modify the Encoder Bars and create multiple presets for them. 

“Personally, I use a lot of special Color Presets like gradients, so the ‘Magic’ function is one of my favorites. The dynamic preset functions allow for faster programming, and the expanded MATricks options provide even more advanced control.”

Gutiérrez also praises the major improvements to the Timecode Editor, “with features including sound integration and the PreRoll/AfterRoll options, which are extremely useful.” 

He adds, “Another favorite feature of mine is the ability to import and export presets by fixture. These are just some of the key features we use most during programming, but grandMA3 offers a wealth of new tools that greatly enhance efficiency and creativity.”

The Beauty of Teamwork

Of course, seamless teamwork is essential to LEC’s busy operation, and Gutiérrez finds the grandMA3 platform the perfect fit for his team’s complex duties. On site at Viña del Mar were Production Manager Soho Ávila, TV Lighting Director Juan Carlos Zamudio, Lighting Integrator & FOH Manager Nesmar Estiven Cepeda Medina, Lighting Programmer Luciano Marcos, and Gutiérrez himself as Lighting Director. All had tailored access to the grandMA3 network.

While Gutiérrez led the project and designed the lighting for the entire event, Ávila’s role included managing and distributing all essential materials – lighting plots, show files and MVRs – as well as coordinating schedules and timetables. 

Zamudio, responsible for the live broadcast elements of the show, used a grandMA3 full-size console for precise control over contest and guest performances while ensuring seamless integration with the overall lighting design.

Medina, looking after integration and network management, oversaw a complex setup of six grandMA3 consoles at FOH. His duties included managing the entire MA-Net3 session workflow, configuring connectivity, distributing universes across nine grandMA3 processing units and optimizing fiber and network switch usage. 

Marcos, meanwhile, created the showfiles for guest designers, and supervised the Depence visualization file to ensure that previs work matched the real-world execution. He also supported guest lighting designers in the previsualization room, ensuring a smooth transition to the live stage. 

All of this was backed up by LEC’s HQ team working in parallel with the production in Mexico. These included Nadia Luna, Javier Nava and Miguel Mendoza, responsible for updating Vectorworks and Depence files, creating lighting plots, and refining MVR files to ensure all technical documentation remained up to date. 

The whole network was running grandMA3 software version 2.1.1.5, and the lighting vendor for the festival was Iluminación Chile.

‘Invaluable’ Support

“One of the most admirable qualities of MA Lighting,” says Gutiérrez, “not just as a lighting control and programming software, but as a company, is its unmatched support. Compared to any other software, not only in the lighting industry, MA’s commitment to assisting its users is truly exceptional.”

He praises the “incredible support” from Wholestage, MA Lighting’s distributor in Mexico, and from Chilean distributor MMT. “Their assistance has been invaluable whenever we’ve needed help,” he says. 

“MA is always in touch with the Latin market and in constant communication. For this edition of Viña del Mar, their support – both remotely from Germany, and on-site at the festival – was simply indispensable. We are incredibly grateful for their dedication and assistance.”.

Photos:

© Festival Viña Del Mar

© Maniobra Films