Elite Multimedia on the Luke Bryan tour
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In planning for the 2018 What Makes You Country Tour, lead designer Justin Kitchenman wanted to create a more free-flowing visual experience, so he called the Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions who supplied the lighting, LED video and IMAG video technology behind the design.
“During our tour design discussions, we are always aware of what we have done in the past and we really try to give each tour a different visual representation,” began Kitchenman. “Over the past few years, one of our biggest production elements has been moving LED video in one configuration or another, so this year we decided to look at different kinds of automation. In the end, we decided on small, lightweight automated lighting pods that can travel up and down during the show to create a lot of different configurations and effects.
“In the lighting package we use a lot of the Elation 360i luminaires because it’s a low-profile, light weight, high-output lighting tool that we can place 180 in the rig and they look great in large quantities.
“With the Claypaky Scenius Unico fixtures, we had used 24 of them last year to replace our spot fixtures, but once we started seeing their output and their optics on tour, we realized this was a true hybrid fixture that we could hang our hat on. We determined that instead of having groups of wash lights and groups of beam lights, we would just populate the rig with a single hybrid fixture. By using this lighting rig, we can pretty much give every song its own look, and it gives our tool box a new level of creativity.”
Now out on the road with a complete lighting, LED video and IMAG video production design, which includes a full seven-camera package as well, from Elite Multimedia, the highly-anticipated 2018 tour is an undeniable success. Led by the onstage presence of one of country music’s most charismatic performers who has more certified digital singles than any other country artist, the team behind the scenes is eager to showcase the completely revamped production design.
“We always try to grow the show as much as we can,” concluded Kitchenman. “As a performer Luke will always pull off a great show, but what we try to do is present it visually in a new way using different production elements.”
(Jim Evans)
