The Australian Pink Floyd Show is among the best known and most successful tribute bands in the world. David Gilmour, Pink Floyd's guitarist, is a fan of the band and has seen the show three times. In November, he joined thousands of Pink Floyd fans at the Royal Albert Hall for a show described as "Truly embracing the Floyd legacy".
This year the band step up their live performance schedule and stature with new lighting and sound production. Lighting designer Dave Hill was brought in to work with long-standing LD Steve Ellerington, and to come up with a new visual picture for the bigger venues. The new lighting rig resembles the classic Pink Floyd shows, complete with circular projection screen. Entec supplied visual specialist Richard Hutton to co-ordinate the show's video and image projection elements which features artwork, graphics and video footage produced and collected by the band themselves. Entec's WYSIWYG suite played a major role in getting the show conceptualized, designed, visualized and programmed.
Dave Hill spent seven days in there, and then had one over-night 'real-time' programming session in Cardiff arena, the night before the show. After the load-out, it was straight to the US to start the tour there with exactly the same rig. "I Could not have done it without Entec's WYSIWYG facilities " states Hill, "Normally I would have a week or 10 days of production rehearsals with the full lighting system to produce a show like this."
Entec supplied 50 Vari*Lites as the show's primary moving lights and workhorses. Upstage is a 12 x 8m white cyc with trusses on three sides, goal-post style. Downstage of this is the 6m circle truss, complete with eight VL2000 Washes and eight VL2000 Spots around it and a projection screen stretched across the surface. A further eight of each VL fixture are positioned around the goal-post, and the rest are spread around the floor on custom plinths built by Entec.
Martin MAC 300s are used for truss toning, and other lighting fixtures include sixteen 2-lite Moles, spread across the front truss, around the goal post and on the floor - for a sense of scale and largeness. The front truss contains ETC Source Four profiles which are used for subtle followspotting. Hill decided on this route as it looks so much neater and more effective than FOH spots, and doesn't detract from the lightshow or important special effects like the projection.
The projector is a Christie Digital LX100 10,000 Lumen, which front projects onto the circle. Sources are stored on hard drive and MIDI triggered from one of the keyboards. Separate projections are also beamed onto the cyc area in between the goal-post, and an additional projection source is a Solar 575 projector with Solar System, stationed at FOH, providing graphical and kaleidoscopic effects on the circle.
Dave Hill stays with the tour for the first week in the US and Steve Ellerington then continues to operate the new show, using a Wholehog II. In a real coup for the band, the new FOH engineer is Colin Norfield, who mixed Pink Floyd's 'Division Bell' tour.
(Lee Baldock)
