USA - On 30 December 1959, travellers heading up Las Vegas Boulevard to visit one of the burgeoning city’s new resorts like The Stardust, The Dunes, or The Sands were greeted by a towering 25ft pole sign that read ‘Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas’.
Although those once glitzy establishments are long gone, replaced by new generations of resort casinos on The Strip, the sign – with its distinctive stretched horizontal shape and cross piece at the top – is still standing.
The scenic designers at StationSix thought it would make an ideal backdrop for another ‘Las Vegas institution’, The Killers, when the multi-platinum band did their three-week residency at The Colosseum At Caesars Palace, which ended on 1 September.
Steven Douglas, the band’s long-time lighting designer, saw things the same way. He collaborated with the scenic designers to make the sign come to life in all its glittering glory, which had a colourful and dynamic collection of lights, including 2,835 individually controlled bulbs, LED tape and fake neon. A key addition to helping him achieve this vision were 32 Chauvet Professional Colorado PXL Curve 12 pixel-mappable motorised tilting battens supplied by Christie Lites.
“We hung the PXL Curves so they augmented the outline of the scenic element, with all of its curves,” said Douglas. “We hid the battens, so that the source of the light wasn’t visible to most of the audience. But even though the fixtures weren’t visible, the beams they projected were very impactful with a lot of movement.”
Drawing on the wide, individually controlled zoom range of the Colorado PXL Curve’s 12 moving heads, Douglas was able to produce a wide range of looks around the scenic piece that integrated it smoothly into the overall set.
“I paid a visit to Chauvet in Florida to see the fixture earlier this year and it was shown to me by Jean Lariviere. After that, I knew I wanted this fixture because I needed to create a large soft sheet of light – then, at another moment, be able to come up with nice thin beams,” said Douglas. “The individual movement offered by this fixture was a big selling point.”
“Our Christie account rep Martin Kelley deserves a lot of credit in helping with finding the fixtures after I made the selection,” continued Douglas. “Project manager Russell Benoit, FOH tech Chris Pedersen, and crew chief Pete Siller were also big helps in this project, as well as our whole lighting crew who had to get creative to make it all hang properly and neatly around the set.”
In addition to the captivating sign scenic element, a Las Vegas aura was added to the production through images displayed on the venue’s 120ft wide video wall. A large riser that was designed to look like an old-school Vegas showroom bandstand also evoked classic images of the city.
The Killers’ two-hour show opened with the band playing every song from their first LP, Hot Fuss, one of the most successful debut albums of all time. For the second half of the show, they performed their other hits, as well as fan favourites, all while engaging the audience with tales about how the band started in Las Vegas and the special place the city holds in their hearts.
“All of the songs in the show are quite dynamic, so they easily lent themselves to very different looks,” said Douglas. “Naturally, we tried to stay close to the Vegas aesthetic projected by the set piece and video content in terms of our lighting looks.”
