"First of all we begin by working around various set design ideas. Then everyone says which one they prefer. This year, the choice was unanimous: a large covered stage, modelled on the keel of a ship. This is when you start processing the ideas yourself, while the activity of discussing and sharing the project goes on as it develops over six months. It takes a long time, but that is what it needs for a set of this size.
"You have to realize you are in a stadium, with an audience of 60 or 70,000 people every night. You have to have an adequate lighting rig with lots of light output.
"We are talking about a power consumption of the order of 600-700 kW, with almost 300 kW of white lights, 400 moving heads and between 300 and 400 other units, including strobes, incandescent lamps and special lights. There are also Acme LED-MTX36 matrix panels built into the set and the platforms where the musicians stand, which I use as lights too.
"I usually start by deploying powerful spotlights, to illuminate the stage and audience, and special lights which the producers allow me to experiment with every year.
ER Production supplied us with three different laser products, which made their world début at the concerts (the RGB Laser Blade, the ER GLP Burst and the ER GLP White Scanning).
"Then I deploy and complete the lighting design with all the other moving lights. This year, more than a quarter of the moving heads were made by Clay Paky: 54 Sharpy spotlights, 50 Sharpy Wash 330s and 24 Alpha Beam 1500s. The Sharpy has set a new standard for light output, weight, ease of use and reliability. I used Sharpy units a lot and placed them along the whole 81-yard front of the stage roofing to form a frame."
Vasco's summer tour started from the San Nicola stadium in Bari on 7 June after 17 days of rigging, testing and adjusting the lighting and sound systems.
(Jim Evans)
