Robe was right at the centre of the
buzz at the 2015 Mediatech Africa expo in Johannesburg last week, taking their
own stand space for the first time alongside that of distributor DWR, one of South
Africa’s
leading lighting sales companies.
With over 8000 visitor
pre-registrations – and a significant number of additional walk-ups over
the three days, together with an increase in internationals attending the show
– the biennial exhibition for entertainment technology moved up several notches.
A host of leading brands, companies and industry associated academies packed
the exhibition floor at the Coca Cola Dome in Northgate. This was supported
with a full programme of related technical and creative seminars and
presentations.
Robe’s CEO Josef Valchar commented, “We have enjoyed great success in
South Africa working closely with DWR, and this year, we felt it was time to
further endorse the show and underline the importance of the African market
generally with our own stand”.
Josef was joined by a full
complement of Robe’s International team including International Sales
Director Harry von den Stemmen, Marketing Manager Jiri Baros, Exhibition Co-Ordinator
Ales Gill, Technical Specialist Ondrej Hegar and LD and Lighting & Media
Designer Nathan Wan.
Nathan designed one of Robe’s now famous stand lightshows featuring
many of the latest products including BMFL Spots and BMFL Blades, LEDBeam
1000s, Pointes & miniPointes, CycFX 8s, CycBar 15 and Strobes.
Product demos were running
throughout the show with the latest DL4 range fixtures and the PARFect S1 (single
chip), optimised for theatre, concert and performance environments and
applications.
Robe’s architectural and LED sister
company, Anolis, had its own section of the stand allowing Director John
Saunders to meet new and potential clients and discuss upcoming projects.
The stand was extremely busy for all
three days of the show. The lightshow attracted big crowds each hour and the
event rocked with positive energy, great vibes and lots of very enthusiastic
visitors working – and aspiring to work – in all areas and sectors of
the entertainment and leisure industries!
“This exhibition is very much on the
up,”
commented Harry, “We made the right decision to have our own booth which
had a lot of impact and enabled us to interact with a constant stream of interested
high quality people. I was very impressed with the amount of visitors from
across the African continent and also much further afield”.
Adjacent to the DWR stand was a separate
‘black
box’
demonstration area for “One Man One Light”, where top SA theatre LD Michael
Broderick demonstrated the immense range of very subtle, beautiful and dramatic
effects that can be produced using just one single Robe BMFL Blade luminaire
with a ‘back-to-basics’ creative starting point.
He created the show assisted by performance
artist Belinda Henwood (the ‘man’) and choreographer David Gouldie. Originally
anticipating around an audience of 20 for each of the four shows a day … in reality over 40 guests rammed
into the tiny space each time! The concept was such a success that Michael,
Belinda, David … and their trusty BMFL Blade – have already been booked for a slot
at the Hilton Arts Festival near Durban in September.
Capping off a brilliant show for
Robe was winning a Gold Award for the stand.
Photos by Louise Stickland
