The Darkness and BSC play UK arenas with Robe
- Details
Lighting designers Mark Scrimshaw (Black Stone Cherry) and David Garcia (The Darkness) pooled their specs, ideas and imaginations to create an overhead lighting rig that would work for both LDs and their respective artists, based on what Zig Zag largely had available from stock.
Throughout this process, Zig Zag's Neil Hunt incorporated their ideas into a single WYSIWYG plot until the final design evolved – ensuring everyone was “on the same page” when it came to the tight build schedules.
To give both LDs sufficient daily programming time, the whole flown system had to be clear of the stage by 10am each morning. To this, both bands added their own floor lighting packages.
The shared overhead rig was populated with Robe BMFL Spots, Blades and WashBeams, Robe Spiiders and MegaPointes.
These were flown on three main trusses measuring 15, 16.5 and 18m wide to add depth and perspective to the stage space, plus two auxiliary pre-rigged trusses hung in front of the two upstage trusses to accommodate the BMFL Spots.
The numbers added up to 15 x BMFL Spots, 34 x MegaPointes and 32 x Spiiders, all chosen, together with 22 strobe zoom bars, to provide ‘base lighting’ needed to cover the stage.
The front truss featured eight BMFL Blades plus six BMFL WashBeams which were paired up on the three RoboSpot BaseStations positioned side stage. A central BMFL Spot enabled The Darkness to project their logo onto their backdrop.
The upstage ‘backdrop truss’ was a pre-rigged product, complete with moving LED battens on the downstage cord for illuminating the cloths and to help facilitate the changeovers, with The Darkness lame backdrop tied onto the bottom of the upstage chord. Black Stone Cherry’s backdrop was tied behind it on the top upstage cord.
BSC’s backline was set up on rolling risers upstage of the backdrop, so as The Darkness exited stage left at the end of their set, BSC’s gear was manually rolled forward and positioned in one smooth move.
The six front truss BMFL WashBeams running in three pairs worked out perfectly for highlighting the three downstage musicians of both bands, and everyone – artists and LDs – appreciated the steep angles and nice clean slices of light that looked so elegant and avoided anyone being inadvertently blinded.
For BSC, the follow spots were run in open white for max visibility, with dimming controlled via the grandMA3 console. Mark really enjoyed working with RoboSpots which he’d also used last year on a tour with Volbeat (LD Niller Bjerrgaard).
Across four of the seven in-air trusses, 33 x 4-lite ‘classic’ moles, plus another six on the floor for BSC and blasting into the audience completed the rig.
While many of the Robes were offered due to Zig Zag’s large inventory which has invested steadily in the brand over the years, Mark confirms that they were all fixtures “I would use anyway”.
He added that the Zig Zag crew of Paddy Sollitt, Tom Rawlinson, Richard (Beard) Hutton, Isaac Phillips and Kyle Black and rigger Damian Courage were “fantastic and a real pleasure to work with”.
