The eight VL3000 Spot fixtures are placed on the mid-truss, evenly spaced and alternating with the VL5 units. Because the automated rig is a scaled-down version of the rig he will use for the forthcoming North American tour, Nicol was somewhat limited in his design. But he plans to use this first run of dates to get a better idea of his design for the rest of the world tour. One thing that will carry over onto future legs is the VL3000 Spot luminaire, says Nicol: "They can stop making moving lights now; there's nothing left to do," Nicol says.
Q1 Production Technologies in Vancouver provided the Series 3000 fixtures and VL5 units for the opening leg of the tour, while Nicol plans to rent the VL1000 luminaires locally. Q1 will provide all of the Vari*Lite fixtures for the North American and European legs of the tour - for which Nicol expects to double and possibly triple the number of VL3000 Spot fixtures.
One of the biggest difference for Nicol in creating the lighting design for the different legs is working around the video. The design for the North American tour calls for video screens that are basically vertical blinds that will be open for select numbers, but completely disappear for the rest. In Australia, a traditional video screen will used, which will be permanently displayed. "For the first leg, we have to put content on the screen for every song just because the screen's there and if you don't fill it, it looks bad," Nicol explained. "When we come back to North America, we will probably lean on one medium or the other more heavily for given songs."
Although the tour is the first on which Nicol has used the VL 3000 Spot luminaires, he's not completely new to the product. "I've been doing some demos at Q1 with the Series 3000 fixtures," he explained. "Tracey Ploss at Q1 knew that I'd been trained on Vari*Lite fixtures and wanted to give me as much time possible with the new products."
(Lee Baldock)
