He sourced the fixtures from Bandit Lites (who hold a rental stock of 60 Impressions), and their chief executive Lester Cobrin comments: "The units are in high demand from many lighting designers - thus we made the decision to invest heavily - a decision which has proved very successful."
Having been introduced to the power of the LED spots by other third party vendors back in the United States, Peters was sufficiently impressed to try them out for the first time with the band Rise Against, when he was covering for a colleague.
"They were asking whether it was a green design and I thought they were talking about the colour of their set until I realised they were concerned with eco-issues," he says.
On both counts the Impressions ticked the boxes. "Considering how bright and responsive they were they just seemed so lightweight."
With Paramore he has used 14 Impressions individually mounted on pipes at different heights, to create the illusion that they are floating within the set. "There's no clamping - each fixture threads directly into the top of the pipe," he states. The remaining 14 heads are mounted on the overhead truss (including four T-bars).
Collectively, they are used to warm up the set. "You can produce a parcan white from the Impressions - a nice tungsten without getting that rainbow lighting effect."Peters has been using the fixtures with standard 10° beam angles - but when he realised his conventional automated lights were being washed out by the strength of the Impressions' 90 high-powered RGB lights, he quickly realised he would need to upgrade.
With the set under Roadhog control, he says: "The speed of the colour and position is a big plus for me as I am using them as my main wash lights - and for an arena size show this is actually quite small. So it gives me the flexibility to use them for big stops and instant colour bumps that would normally require more lights and the need to set up a cue to make it appear instant. So it's ideal for the LD on a budget."
(Jim Evans)
