"I initially joined Journey as their lighting designer in the summer of 2004," began Christopher. "When I put a lighting design together, I like to design in flow with the songs, which for Journey can be anything from up-tempo and powerful, to subtle and dramatic. As a designer, they give me a fantastic free range to create, but they also like to have a lot of variety in their lighting."
When Christopher and the production team set out to complete the design for the 2011 tour, he knew that video would be a key component. Not wanting to simply use large screens onstage; Christopher came up with a different idea.
"In the initial stage design the band wanted to use a video backdrop, but I didn't want to do full video walls for a number of reasons, such as budget restraints and the fact that we have seen large video walls on a number of other tours. So what I did was create 3' x 3' blocks of video that would work more as 'eye candy' or as light sources, rather than completely spell out a story or provide a source for I-Mag.
To complete the "staggered video cube concept", Christopher also added a series of 6' x 6' video displays upstage in place of the back line to complete the set continuing his theme of lighting opposing video. Needing to fill the spaces between the video blocks, he decided to use 44 VL3500 Wash and 28 VL3000 Spot luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite, supplied by Epic Production Technologies.
"In placing the key lighting elements of the design side-by-side to the key video elements, we knew that brightness would be a high priority. If the lighting can't compete with the intensity of the video the band will get washed out and the design will lose all its impact. Plus, we would also need a sharp edge so the audience can see the gobo breakups in the air and on stage as well.
"The fixtures would be used for different layers of back light and front light, plus aerial and stage specials. So when I put all of this together, I knew we had to go with Vari*Lite luminaires. Having toured with Vari*Lite in the past I also knew they could easily handle the rigors of the road, and that's why I chose VL3500 Wash and VL3000 Spot luminaires."
(Jim Evans)
