Chauvet captures mood of I’m With Her
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“I wanted something that would reflect the warm sound of these artists’ music, yet would also be vibrant, so the drapes seemed like a natural fit,” says Succoso, who became associated with I’m With Her as a result of designing for the Punch Brothers, who are managed by the same team.
Using the drapes as the backdrop for the group, Succoso accented them with realistic colours from four Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures. “I went with a pipe and drape design, rather than flat hanging the fabric, because I wanted to create enclosed space between the folds for the light to play in,” he says. “I also went with a silvery colour to better reflect the light. My Mavericks were evenly spaced behind the women in the trio to match the angle of the pipe and drape.
“The Mavericks were great as a profile light,” continues Succoso. “They gave me a lot of punch. I wasn’t running a huge amount of haze, so it was nice to have a fixture that showed the beam, even though I had just a small amount of atmosphere running. Mavericks also have a great prism, which allowed me to achieve pretty full coverage when crossing gobos onto the fabric backdrop. It was nice to be able to get this kind of coverage and this many looks out of only four fixtures, since we often had small stages on the tour.”
Also adding to the atmosphere on the tour were the six Chauvet DJ Shocker 2 fixtures in Succoso’s rig. He positioned six of these units in a semicircle behind the trio. This arrangement allowed him to create glowing ground level backlighting that seemed to circle the band in a warm white glow that added to the ethereal mood of their performance.
“I was really searching for something that was natural looking on the band, while still getting some really rich saturation from some other LEDs,” says Succoso. “The Shockers are my go-to units when I need a small, efficient, warm-looking blinder fixture.”
Looking back, Succoso feels like the show more than lived up to his expectations. “From concept/rendering to show, this design for me came out as I had envisioned. A lot of credit goes to the team here: Tim Reitnouer at FOH, and Ashley ‘PK’ Mogayzel. As a designer, sometimes you have to sacrifice what’s in your head for the reality of technology we live in, and I felt like I didn’t have to do that one bit with this design. That includes the way I used lights, and the way I used the Austrian Drapes.”
(Jim Evans)
