Two Friends play Coachella with grandMA3
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Kyle, who works with many high-profile international clients, adapted the lighting design and showfile he had created for Two Friends’ recent tour to work with the Sahara Tent production lighting rig, collaborating closely with Michael Sheck who was the LD and helped program the show.
Their show was based around the same spaceship DJ booth designed by Kyle and built by Dark Moon Design for the tour, complete with over 3,000 LED pixels across 24 DMX universes all running through their grandMA3, plus some onboard practical lights.
All of this was integrated with Coachella’s house rig which was coincidentally and conveniently based on five concentric circular trusses in the roof, comprising a perfect overhead match for the 360-degree spaceship! The approximately 300 moving lights on the house rig were supplied by Aspect Lighting, and the house design also featured multiple LED surfaces that were fully utilised by VJ Richie Sanchez.
“Coachella was interesting in so many ways, a major one being how we were able to reshape and reprogram the show so quickly and efficiently due to the flexibility of the grandMA3 software,” explained Kyle.
He and his Denver based design studio had used time during Covid to really start drilling down into the grandMA3 architecture, and over the last couple of years had utilised it for selected projects including major one off live streamed shows and events. These were followed by their first major tour on grandMA3 for Odesza in 2022 which was a great success.
“Going forward the future is definitely grandMA3,” Kyle stated, “so many tasks that used to take a lot more time to achieve are now so much easier.”
Kyle notes that there has been lots of advancement in grandMA3 over the last year, with Recipes and Groups as key components, all connected to another essential tool, Selection Grid. He also maximised the power of grandMA3’s Phasers and Selection Grid functions, commenting, “Overall it was a fantastic exercise and worked really well.”
He added that the support from MA Lighting’s USA distributor ACT Entertainment during the ‘switch’ had been “outstanding”.
