The technical director of The Heights Baptist Church outside Dallas, Dennis flew six of the 330W Rogues in front of stage positions when Daigle appeared at his well-known house of worship. "There are a lot of nice performance features in the RH1, and we drew on just about every single one of them to create a lightshow that supported Lauren's music," he said. "Our goal was to complement the show's energy without distracting from Lauren's powerful vocal performance. We wanted the lighting to reflect the intense spirituality of passion of her songs. The lighting was not the star of the show, but part of the excellent 'backup' to the artist."
Dennis drew on the layered prism capabilities and extensive gobo options of the Rogue RH1 to match the mood off Daigle's music. "We used a lot of gobos for this show," he said. "The gobos not only looked good, they added depth to the stage and created an engaging setting. The gobos were projected from the front stage area and were bright and crisp enough to show up well even against light from other fixtures in the upstage area."
The Rogues were flown on recessed house pipe that ran over the width of the downstage area and on overhead truss approximately 30 feet from the stage. "We had four of the RH1s over downstage and two on the truss over the audience," said Dennis. "Of the four flown over downstage, the two units on either end were positioned to give us the option of throwing various gobos and colors on rear wall of stage. The two units on the inside of that row were used to throw complementary gobos and colors on the riser wall immediately in front of the choir loft, which wasn't occupied during the concert. We used the two Rogues that were flown over the audience for complementing looks and to create breakup patterns."
In addition to the Rogue RH1 Hybrids, Dennis used eight COLORado 3p IP RGB LED wash banks to colorize wall areas of the stage during the concert. He positioned three of the COLORado fixtures on each side of the stage for uplighting the walls with deep greens, blues and reds. The two other wash banks in his rig were positioned above the stage to wash the drum position. He controlled his rig with an ETC Ion with two 2x20 fader wings.
Like the music of Daigle herself, pulling the lightshow together was marked by high energy and passion. "This was an exciting project," said Dennis. "Since Lauren's concert was in conjunction with a newly released album, we weren't familiar with the specific songs, and time schedules being what they are things moved fast. Steve Perkins, our lighting director for this concert, had less than two hours to program the show. This included the opening act, Jared Anderson. So most of the show was programmed based on simple verbal descriptions relating to the tempo of the songs that would be performed."
These challenges notwithstanding, Dennis was happy with the final results. "Our team pulled together, and the fixtures did everything we asked of them," he said. "Lauren covers a wide range of styles and emotions in her music, and thanks to the gobo choices and colour rendering capabilities of our rig, we were able support all of these feelings with attractive and appropriate lighting."
