Robe moving lights - including 24 Robin 600 LEDWashes - were the key fixtures of the design, supplied by Johannesburg based Techrig, who provided lighting equipment and crew to the entire Clover event for the first time.
Set designer Michael Gill produced a large and innovative scenic design for the gala dinner. Grobler initially gave Hutch - as he's widely known - a basic show brief, which included several high profile live performances, plus an idea of the look they wanted to achieve, to which Hutchinson soon added a myriad of ideas of his own and produced the lighting plot, all based around Robes.
The main challenges of working in the room were getting sufficient height and lighting positions in the right places above the stage, whilst also avoiding a series of large and prosaic chandeliers which can't be moved. The lateral solution was to install a series of short trusses hung in an up/downstage orientation ensconced as much as possible into the ceiling coves, which maximized the available height and avoided the chandeliers!
The Robin LEDWash 600s were hung on these trusses, together with 16 x Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs, with a few other moving lights, plus a selection of profiles, PARs and some LED fixtures hung on FOH trusses. All lighting was programmed and operated on a grandMA lighting console run by Hutch.
(Jim Evans)
