UK - “I enjoy being the wild card. I enjoy being the outsider and being different," rapper Sainté declared in a recent interview.
He kicked off his Still Local tour at the All Points East festival supported by a powerful, fast-moving Elliot Baines lighting design that effortlessly balanced grit and grace.
Representing a city-street basketball court with custom-made controllable ‘streetlamps’, a brick-and-fence facia, and a graffiti wall backdrop, the distinctive set evoked powerful images of an urban landscape. Baines, owner of Spiralstage Lighting, intensified this mood with a bold lighting design that featured ample amounts of atmospherics.
Helping Baines achieve these evocative looks were 24 Color Strike M motorised strobe-blinders and an equal number of Maverick Storm 4 Profiles. Part of the house rig, the Chauvet Professional fixtures were supplied by Colour Sound Experiment. (The touring rig and set is from Liteup.)
"We planned to take the All Points East design on tour after the festival, so we knew we had to make it flexible enough to work well in a wide variety of stages," said Baines. "Some of those stages can be quite large. We wanted to try fill the stages with the set as much as possible, whilst thinking of this logistically. Colour Sound Experiment and All Points East were very welcoming for this show, whilst Liteup did a great job as did Bob Kingdom, operator on this tour."
The Color Strike M fixtures played a variety of roles in Baines' pulsating design. Half the units were flown along the highest downstage row of truss and were used to colorise the entire area, in addition to animating the crowd with audience lighting. The remaining fixtures were flown on mid-stage truss and contributed to the richly textured, often monochromatic washes that transformed the moods of the stage. By casting the stage in deep colours, Baines made the white backdrop graffiti stand out all the more starkly, underscoring the gritty mood of the show.
Also endowing the stage with greater depth and texture were the house rig's Maverick Storm 4 Profiles. "They were great to add more colour to the set," said Baines. "The units on the floor were used to strike through the set's fencing to create shadows and silhouettes. This was especially so when we had chopped gobos shine through. This also looked great above, adding light to the lampposts, even though the lampposts were functional and had a LED light in them already, it added different layers, giving the show a theatrical element."
