Hasselhoff tours Germany and Austria with Elation
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Audio, video and lighting for the tour, which ran 11 April to 4 May, was by Austrian-based rental and production company MartinKames.com with lighting design by company owner Martin Kames, who developed a special rapport with the television and music star.
Kames landed the job after sending Hasselhoff a 20-minute video in which he presented his company and his design ideas. “It took me half a year to finally reach him directly but after he saw the video he immediately called me and told me I’m on board so my perseverance paid off,” he explains. “It was a very unique experience to work with a movie star. He had a totally different approach and way of seeing things.”
Hasselhoff was very involved in the planning, according to Kames, and had some ambitious ideas for the tour. “He had constantly new ideas and it was my job to put them together into something realistic and unique,” he says. One of those ideas was a set of on-stage steps that the designer lined with rows of Chorus Line 8 LED pixel bars.
“The staircase was the main and most essential part of the stage design and the Chorus Line 8s were essential for unique light beneath all of the steps,” Kames states. “We made custom-built mounting frames underneath each riser so they could still rotate, which gave us the chance to use a variety of great looking effects.
The Chorus Line 8 pixel bar houses eight 40W RGBW LEDs, includes motorized zoom optics and lets designers position the unit dynamically during a show via a 220° tilt motor function.
Kames’ design supported a wealth of video, which was central to the show. Three LED screens – 50sqm of 4mm LED wall total – showed archival footage from Hasselhoff’s life and celebrity career, as well as the live shots.
Kames placed vertical columns of white-light Lumina Matrix LED 4 x 4 matrix panels each side of the stage and between the LED screens. “It is always important to me to find a good mix between lighting and video,” he concludes.
(Jim Evans)
