VCA Enhances Production Workflow with Green-GO Digital Intercom Systems

The University of Melbourne Southbank, located in the heart of Melbourne’s arts and cultural precinct, is home to the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. The campus sits amongst the heritage-listed former Victoria Police Horse Stables. The VCA has been around for over half a century as the premier learning institution for artists, actors, theatre makers, filmmakers, dancers, classical and contemporary musicians, musical theatre performers and production technicians to hone their craft before making their impact on the real world.

Back in 2022, the VCA purchased two identical Green-GO wireless systems to deploy on student-run productions. They selected Green-GO as an industry-standard system that they could scale and integrate with their existing wired comms systems.

The Green-GO system came in at the right price point and offer the features of systems that were double the price. VCA’s student-led productions were regularly renting systems and using limited available budgets that were better used to realise creative outcomes and design milestones. Having their own systems gave them control and ensured that maintenance was carried out to keep them in working order.

The ability to combine their two rigs into one large rig is very useful, along with the ability to easily change user profiles and have several other parameters recalled with the user profile, making the rig quick to deploy. End-user customisation of talk groups, program level and other parameters means the equipment coordinator doesn’t have to do this for the students; they can manage it themselves.

Creating pools and being able to mesh access points for greater coverage has recently become a feature that greatly enhanced the outcome of a recent multi-room production.           

Once Green-GO distributor Event Comms created the VCA’s configuration file based on their needs, now and into the future, it was quickly loaded into each system and checked. VCA has made incremental improvements as the system has been used more; however, the original configuration file is still in place. This has saved time in getting the systems out onto productions, rather than having to generate the configuration in-house. The systems now integrate seamlessly with their wired comms. The student stage managers, head electricians and mechanists keep their rehearsals and tech checks on time, as they can communicate with each other as they work around the venues.

VCA’s student technicians, along with professional casual technicians, comment on the ease of set-up and customisation of the beltpacks. Staff have spent time educating users on the equipment, including its limitations, and once people understand what it can and can’t do, it helps them get the most out of it and use its full suite of features.

“We’ve always had the highest level of support from Event Communications,” says VCA’s Conor Dunne. “When we’ve run into an issue we couldn’t resolve, a phone call or email to the team has been quickly actioned, keeping us going and limiting any downtime on productions.”