Asteras add impact to Herbalife awards event
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Tom Sutherland from DX7 Design designed the lighting and Julio Himede from Yellow Studio was tasked with the scenic design, and Tom’s lighting design featured 1,145 Astera AX5 battery operated wireless LED PARs - one of the largest Astera installations worldwide. The luminaires were amassed by lighting vendor Felix Lighting..
Tom’s starting point for the lighting was Julio Himede’s production design which featured a 160ft-wide black gloss stage and four massive modernist style moving LED video arches.
Tom decided to surround and accentuate this epic look with an enormous four-sided grid of LED PARs covering the roof, back and two sides of the stage.
In addition to the CEO addresses, presentations, speeches and awards action, a series of Herbalife training sessions took place over the seven show days, and there were five “wow moments” comprising all-singing-all-dancing production numbers, three of which were directed by Emmy Award-winning choreographers Tabitha & Napoleon Dumo (AKA Nappytabs) which added flourishes of glamour and entertainment.
“I really needed to emulate the impressive and large-scale aesthetic of the production design,” explained Tom, “and ensure that the whole area could be flooded with quality lighting really pushing and stretching the boundaries.”
Nicole Barnes was the account handler at Felix Lighting, and she recommended the Astera AX5s to Tom, who confirmed the choice after a test.
Approximately half of the AX5s came from Felix’s rental stock and Nicole co-ordinated sourcing of the rest, which was a mammoth task, pulling in fixtures from all over the country, “I believe we exhausted all of the then-available inventory in the US rental market,” stated Nicole Barnes.
A massive grid was flown over the stage area and truss tower systems installed along the back wall and around the sides, the 1,150 AX5s – all run wired for this project – were diligently and meticulously aligned and equidistantly spaced. This painstaking job was the biggest challenge for the lighting department completed by the crew working in three 24-hour shifts over four days.
Tom’s FOH team included associate lighting designer Hunter Selby with lighting directors Brian Jenkins and Mike Berger. They all worked in close collaboration with art director Alana Billingsley in piecing the production together.
Tom concludes, “It was brilliant to be working with such a highly talented team with a great synergy. A huge thanks to gaffer Chris Lopez, best boy Chris Roseli, staging supervisor Nick Vincenti, and head rigger TK Woo from Kish Rigging and all the crew involved.”
