JOHANNESBURG — Gearhouse South Africa supplied lighting and video production plus crew for R Kelly’s first visit to South Africa. After five days of production rehearsals at Sun City Superbowl, there was one show there and another at Cape Town’s Grand West Casino. Michael Lewis managed the project for Gearhouse, and their teams worked very closely with R Kelly’s lighting designer Nook Schoenfeld. Schoenfeld sent his plot to Gearhouse Lighting where it was coordinated by Nasim Bismilla and Pete Currier in the office and George Majola on site.
It consisted of four trusses, three flown over-stage in a triangulated arrow shape, with a straight truss at the front, and a white cyc at the back.
For moving lights, Schoenfeld used 30 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, 16 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs and 6 Martin Professional MAC 2K Profiles all rigged on the overstage trusses. These were used to provide all the standard basic show elements — washing the stage and band areas, as highlighting specials, for beam-work, etc.
The cyc was up-lit from the floor by 6 MAC 2K Washes, which provided a variety of color and some texturing. The trusses were all toned with a total of 20 i-Pix satellite LED “bricks.”
There were also 10 Atomic strobes on the over-stage trusses, together with 6 individual PARs for specials, plus four 19 degree ETC Source Fours positioned on the front truss for keylighting. In the center of the front truss, a 1-meter diameter mirror ball was hung to provide some additional bling. Gearhouse also supplied two FOH followspots and the Maxxys console on which Schoenfeld ran the show.
Gearhouse AV and Event Cam (also a GHSA company) supplied all the Sun City show’s AV requirements, co-ordinated and engineered by Craig McGinn.
The I-Mag PPU consisted of 3 Sony BVP 950 cameras — one at FOH with long lens, and the other two stage right in the pit and stage left on the balcony, along with two “pencil” cameras which were locked off on the drum and keyboard positions onstage.
The I-Mag mix was directed by Event Cam’s Lynton Allsopp and beamed onto two 24-by-18-foot side screens fed by two Christie 8K projectors.
The shows were produced/promoted in SA by Roddy Quinn and Real Concerts.
For more information, please visit www.gearhouse.co.za.
