Chemical high for MegaPointes
- Details
Smith and Lyall spec’d 50 units of Robe’s Robe’s MegaPointe, its newest multifunctional moving lights, from Blackburn lighting rental company Lite Alternative.
The essence of the show design was about connecting with the audience and helping move the energy coming offstage out and all around the space.
For this run of own-shows, all in arena venues, a large 20 metre-wide by 11 metre-high LED screen was placed in the upstage area, with the 50 MegaPointes – which were also part of their festival package – used as the main lightsources.
“We wanted beam lights,” explains Lyall, “the show is all about beams, and MegaPointes are the perfect lightsource to reach out and touch the audiences and help draw them into the show”.
12 MegaPointes each were positioned in lines along the upstage and downstage edges of the stage, with another 12 rigged on the downstage truss. Ten were placed behind the LED wall, rigged onto five moving pods together with some LED battens.
The pods flew up and down to add an ephemeral touch and another layer of optical depth and texturing to this very multi-faceted picture.
The MegaPointes were joined on the rig by strategically placed strobes, some LED washes, LED squares and battens, plus a 30W full colour laser, a 30W green laser and 22 x Kinect beam lasers (all lasers provided by ER Productions).
Lighting for the tour was operated by Thomas Deschandon, who came onboard earlier in the year after meeting production manager James Baseley through his work as lighting designer for French superstars Indochine.
Lighting programming involved an average of 200 lighting cues per song, and around 6000 in total in the current show, which Deschandon operated using a grandMA2 console.
(Jim Evans)
