Adam reports, "James and Louis created a wide vista which used the full width of the arenas, we even put five lights each side of the stage in unallocated seating to stretch the design even wider. The band were passionate about having an intense show with lots of strobing and really big looks, James and Louis did a great job of keeping it classy and refined with so much going on."
James Scott explained, "The initial brief given to us by the band was that they wanted a big rock show, something that made a huge statement and filled as much of the arena space as possible. One word which kept being thrown around was panoramic - we designed a narrow, ultra-widescreen format LED wall, but were careful to make sure it could fit into the different size venues BMTH were playing."
The band's music is high-octane and demanding, there was barely a moment of calm or respite for the audience to compose themselves as the Sheffield based metal act rattled through their explosive set list to the delight of the Manchester crowd.
Adam continued, "Because there is so much going on, all the lighting cues have been pre-programmed and run off of timecode on a track by track basis. Most songs have at least a dozen cues in them, which would be virtually impossible to do manually. I trigger the timecode at the start of every song, but have a couple of key lights I operate manually to follow members of the band around.
"The band had a huge amount of input as to how the show looks, they knew exactly what they wanted to see, and what they didn't - as such, I'd often be tweaking certain elements of the show lighting between gigs."
Adam operated the show from a GrandMA 2console. "The MA2 is perfect because it's so intuitive, easy to operate and quick to programme. Having additional screens was really useful when programming to timecode. The show ran on 15 universes of DMX, controlling the video content and lasers as well as the lighting from the MA2."
The lighting rig consisted of: Claypaky Sharpy wash and Mythos moving lights; as well as Martin MAC Viper profile and performance intelligent lighting fixtures. James and Louis also included an array of Ayrton Magic dot LED lights and a large number of Martin Atomic 3000 LED strobes.
(Jim Evans)
