The UB40 tour's show design was a collaboration between Bryan Leitch and Jamie Thompson from creative practice MIRRAD. Jamie was also out on the road operating the lighting alongside Francis Clegg from MIRRAD who co-ordinated and ran the video elements live.
Large format projection is an area that Colour Sound has been considering for some time. The company has already invested steadily over the last five years in LED screen and has its own proprietary BT brand.
MD Haydn Cruickshank (H) commented, "Projection was a logical next step to complement the growing amounts of different LED surfaces we can offer. It was great to land UB40, and with this and another major project both needing high-impact projection, the time was right,"
On UB40, the projection screen was the upstage cyc and active throughout the performance showing a mixture of content commissioned by MIRRAD and produced by Dan Robertson especially for the tour. It was a mix of ambient effects, some texturing treatments to match the lighting plus more literal footage and clips.
The two projectors were rigged on the front truss and run as a double-stacked pair with wide angles lenses and the image overlaid for enhanced brightness. It was a good match with the 40ft. wide x 5ft. high strip of HD BT6 LED screen cladding the riser fronts of the double level stage set.
Above the stage were three lighting trusses - with the cyc hung off a 'rags' truss at the back. The backbone of the lighting rig comprised 36 x Robe BMFL Spot moving lights spread out across the trusses, with some on soft-ladders at the sides as well as on the floor.
The wash lights were all Robe LEDWash 600s apart from the front truss, where LEDWash 1200s were used, and some Chauvet Rogue R2 Spots on the floor kicked in for side lighting.
A few specials included six Clay Paky A.leda K20 B-EYE K20s positioned along the top of the riser and utilized for some nice pixel-controlled effects that looked particularly good combined with the individual ring zones of the LEDWashes. A splattering of 4-cell blinders and some ETC Source Fours for keys rounded off the lighting count.
"UB40 is not about the lightshow and production, although how it looks is very important to them - but people come to see the band, so everything we do on their visuals is about enhancing that aspect of the audience experience" says Jamie.
Jamie ran lighting from an Avolites Sapphire Touch console and Francis used another one to trigger the AI media server - both the consoles and the server were supplied to the tour by MIRRAD.
(Jim Evans)
