LightLab debuts Smarty Hybrid on Nekfeu tour
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Nekfeu toured across France this past summer, playing a dozen concerts including festivals such as Lollapalooza, Solidays, and Marsatac. LightLab, who also worked with Nekfeu and his S-Crew on last year’s Zenith tour, developed what LeBrun calls a “very simple yet radical” design for the 2018 summer tour.
“I wanted to create a panoramic light design, horizontal and low,” he explains, “so I designed walls of light with the idea of only using it on the stage. The idea was to forget about light coming from the top, and also have a very quick, reliable set up. So we had to find a lighting fixture powerful enough, not too big and heavy, with enough features to cover an up tempo one-hour show.”
LeBrun’s initial idea was to use a multi-chip LED moving head wash but most of Dushow’s inventory was out and there were not enough fixtures available in the quantity he needed. “Dushow then proposed and presented to me the Smarty Hybrid,” he says. “We immediately thought it was the right fixture for the project. It allowed many more possibilities than a wash, they were powerful, small, light, and had never been used before! So it was really interesting.”
The Smarty Hybrid’s full-featured design includes plenty of color and graphics options and its MSD Platinum FLEX 200 lamp (6,000 hours) produces up to 14,000 lumens. LightLab consequently used 120 of the compact fixtures in the design. The fixtures were placed in six frames (2.8m x 2.65m), 20 Smartys per frame, with three frames arranged in a diagonal on each side of the stage, visually complementing each side of the DJ booth. Each frame was mounted on rollers for easy on- and off-stage positioning and transport.
The rest of the lighting rig was somewhat sparse, owing to the versatility of the wall of light design. Ten Elation Proteus Hybrid moving heads were floor positioned and used for back lighting along with five LED strobes. Other spots were used for front lighting and back light with additional spots incorporated from each host festival lighting kit.
Lighting operator for the Nekfeu summer tour, Fabrice Pinsard, was the first to work with the fixture on a tour and called it a real pleasure. “The result was perfect and it is really an excellent machine,” he comments.
(Jim Evans)
