Pawel Pajak (AKA Spider) from Fish Eye was the tour's creative visual director - creating the lighting, video and set designs - in 2012 and 2013. This year, the organisers asked him to take on this same role again plus co-ordinate the budget and suppliers needed to realise the various stage concepts, so he became the project's creative producer. For the main moving lights, he specified over 100 Robe products.
The client wanted good looking visually stimulating shows with high production values that would look different and original. The brief also included having a strong representation of the main tour sponsor logos; some retro looking lights as well as the latest technologies and live IMAG footage on the LED screens.
To help light the stage, Pawel came to an agreement with Robe's Polish distributor Prolight as a production partner - a project also involving Robe CZ - to supply some of their latest luminaires. Robe and Prolight were keen to support Pawel and his creative endeavours as well as the emerging artists on the tour.
The Robe kit supplied comprised 33 miniPointes, 16 LEDBeam 1000s, 18 CycFX 8s together with 42 LEDWash 800s from leading polish rental company Transcolor, all of which helped Pawel build a stunning show for the tour. The miniPointes were hung in clusters of three above the stage and used for piercing beam effects and looks. The LEDBeam 1000s were split into two groups, one positioned upstage to provide back washes and strong back light, with the others on the front truss, working as front washes complete with the frost filter. The CycFX 8s were flown on a moving screen made up from nine sections of horizontally mounted Barco Mi-strips LED strings, while the LEDWash 800s were used as groups of side lights and also in three overhead batches to bathe the stage.
Pawel programmed and ran the Meskie Granie tour lighting on a grandMA2 console which was also running a d3 media server, a Barco Encore screen management system and camera inputs, and worked closely with two other programmer / operators - all from Fish Eye - Marcin Szczakiel and Tomasz Szwelicki.
(Jim Evans)
