MegaPointes on tour with FKJ
- Details
Lighting and production designer Stu Dingley was delighted when approached by FKJ’s management and asked if he would create a design for the artist known for his elegant loungy music and funky visuals.
He chatted to FKJ at the start of the design process. The artist was open to ideas, however as a keen videographer with terabytes of content available, he really wanted to get selected elements of this right at the essence of the live show… to tie everything together visually.
With that in mind, Stu immediately thought of MegaPointes which he wanted to use for some very specific effects - shadows and silhouettes - to balance artfully in juxtaposition with the video images. He needed brightness, accurate shuttering and a beautiful quality of light.
They decided against an upstage video screen - it was a bit too standard - instead choosing some transparent silk drapes downstage for the main projections.
The idea was to contrast and play with shadows and silhouettes in the context of the front projected video images and fill in some of the gaps with lighting accents and looks. As FKJ plays multiple instruments, the silhouette / shadow idea was also a fun and playful vehicle by which they could highlight the different instruments.
Stu sourced a selection of fabrics from ShowTex which were sent to LA where they built scale models and looked at how the projected images appeared. These were recorded and sent to Vincent (FKJ) - who was in Asia at the time - for approval, and from this they chose the best fabric for the application.
The two 32K projectors were located at FOH and four Marshall Compact mini cameras were dotted around the stage. These and the playback footage were all fed via a Hippo Boreal media server.
A custom clear acrylic upright piano housed six ROE MC17 panels in place of the strings which displayed content synced to timecode with effects linked to the music. A MegaPointe was positioned immediately behind the piano.
The MegaPointes were arranged in an upstage row spanning around 30 ft. In addition to the silhouettes, they were also used zoomed out wide into the crowd.
Looking after the MegaPointes and other lights on the road for this recent tour was lighting director Will Smith who used a grandMA2 light to run the lighting and media servers. Stu comments “Will was an integral part of the team. He has an in-depth knowledge of all the kit and has done a fantastic job keeping the show running on the road.”
The lighting and video vendor was PRG. Sound was supplied by Clair and Britro, with FOH sound mixed by Antoine Guest.
The video content was created by Vincent Fenton and Sugo Design, led by Lorenzo Depa, and the Ableton playback engineer was Tom Cooksey.
Keeling everything on check on the road was tour and production manager Liam Clifford and artist manager Kate Cudbertson.
(Jim Evans)
