Wood's show matches the dynamics of Marina Diamandis' stage performance, adding theatricality, drama and creative texturing to great stagecraft with a minimal but diligently thought out rig.
He was recommended for the designer's role in April this year and started touring with the band in June, kicking off with a festival run which now continues with 2 months of headliners around the UK and Europe.
He was given a creative blank canvas on the lighting, but Diamandis herself was heavily involved in commissioning the video content, some of which was edited by Wood, and she generally takes a keen interest in how the show looks and sounds, following through a genuine passion for putting on a good show.
He built the basic elements of the show from a collection of idiosyncratic looks. An example of this is during the song Robot, for which Diamandis wears UV make up and is lit in saturated UV blues from the different fixtures.
The lighting rig consists of a set of six Clay Paky Alpha Spot 300 HPE moving lights, which are mounted on different height cases and on the drum riser across the back of the stage.
In front of these are four scaff poles approximately 8ft high, onto which are mounted four PixelLine LED battens, covered with two different grades of diffusion filter. These are pixel mapped and also have video run through them.
There are four ETC Source Four profiles behind the key band members, used for silhouetting and cool back-lit breakup effects. Four half mirror balls are dotted around the stage. Two Martin MAC 300 wash fixtures sit at each upstage corner of the stage, used for low level cross lighting, making a dynamic contrast to the high level washes.
For the two London shows - at The Roundhouse in Camden and just down the road at The Forum in Kentish Town, Entec supplied a Novalight Nova Flower 2K fixture, which was placed upstage centre. This is used during "Rootless" for a fantastically powerful epic rear breakup effect. For the Forum show, Entec also provided 8 Vari*Lite 2500 spots as part of the overhead rig.
For video, Entec is supplying a 14 x 9ft upstage fast-fold screen. In the two songs with no footage, shadows of the musicians are cast onto the screen using the downstage MAC 300s.
The Christie 10K Roadrunner projector is rigged at FOH, and all the video content is stored on a Hippotizer V3 media server, triggered from Wood's desk.
(Jim Evans)
