LONDON — HSL supplied lighting and video equipment plus crew, and designed a custom DJ booth for two recent sold-out performances by The Swedish House Mafia at Brixton Academy. The shows were presented and produced by Cream and Loudsound Events and HSL was working for technical co-ordinators, BPM, who also supplied pyro and lasers. SHM Management’s Amy Thomson’s brief to BPM was to have the ‘biggest and best’ show possible. BPM worked closely with HSL to design a full show based on a four section lighting rig, using strobe pods, moving heads, specialist LED products and three large video wall sections — all part of the current trend for dance events to up the ante in terms of production values and show presentation.
HSL’s Mike Docksey project-managed, working with BPM’s Adam Murray. Dave Lee was asked to produce an exciting and fresh visual design concept which incorporated both lighting and video elements that could be run, improvisational style, with lasers and pyro to create a synergetic visual extravaganza.
Swedish House Mafia’s management, X-Ray Touring, had a few initial ideas. They wanted good video screens and liked the idea of having video/LED tubes cladding the DJ booth that could be mapped and matched to video material being shown on the large screens. They also wanted everything to be integrated via a media server – for which HSL proposed a Hippotizer. They also wanted “lots” of strobes, so 40 Atomics were chosen.
Docksey and Lee took these ideas and rolled them into a design concept that X-Ray liked and gave the go ahead.
The DJ booth was a custom construction made from Litec QX30 trussing, based on 2 x 5 meter diameter half circles top and bottom. HSL used 40 CK Accent video tubes for the front fascia. On the back corners of the booth were PAR 46 fuzz lights.
HSL contacted XL Video to supply the three onstage screens, above and on both sides of the DJ booth. These were made with XL’s PixLED 40 LED, and they measured 3.2 meters wide by 2.6 meters high.
Five trusses were rigged by the HSL crew in the Academy, and a 16 meter by 12 meter box was flown above the audience, onto which was rigged an eclectic collection of mirror balls, mirrored mannequins and other scenic pieces.
In addition to this, there was a front truss, downstage and mid stage curved trusses made from two halves of a 10 meter diameter circle and an upstage truss.
The back truss supported 70 panels of ColorWeb 250 to dress the upstage area, and also flew the left and right video screens. The mid truss was used to fly the center screen.
Lighting fixtures were scattered across all the trusses — 15 Robe ColorWash 575E ATs, 15 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, 24 Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs and 40 ChromaQ ColorBlock DB4 Mk Iis. They zigzagged across the front cord of each truss.
The 40 Atomic strobes were built into a total of 14 custom pods with either two or four Atomics per pod. The pods, flanked with two Pixel Line 1044s on each, were rigged below the trusses at varying heights to create a light-wall effect.
Two Hog 3s were used for control — one running all the lighting (operated by Lee) and one triggering the two Hippotizers sitting backstage, which were running video to all the LED and digital lightsources plus the screens.
Dave Lee produced a series of custom video clips for the show, and X-Ray Touring added VJ Carlo Ruijgers from Eyesupply in Holland to the visual mix, who has worked with SHM before. His mixer was linked into the HSL system via the Hog, allowing his visuals to be routed to the screens. This also enabled video Hog operator Ben Mansfield to output Dave Lee’s Hippo stored content when Carlo’s videos were not playing. Lee’s content was also pixel mapped to the ColorBlocks, ColorWeb, PixelLines and Accent tubes, giving an all-encompassing rhythmic harmony between all the digital lighting and display sources.
“As always, working with BPM, X-Ray Touring, Loudsound and Cream was a real pleasure,” Docksey said. “The shared focus on technical investment and their attitude towards continually raising the level of production on live dance music events meant that we could live up to the expectations of an ever more demanding audience. Everybody worked together to seamlessly gel all elements in order to produce a fantastic visual spectacular.”
Two 12-watt color lasers were shipped in from Holland especially for the event. Other special effects provided by BPM SFX: one 8-head vertical colorwash ice cannon system, a 4-head flame system, four megashooters (inc 40kg colored/love heart/butterfly confetti), a 20-streamer cannon system, LSG low foggers and a number of pyrotechnic hits consisting of 8-meter colored mines, comets and gerbs, confetti and pyrotechnic airbursts for the main auditorium and a back truss waterfall for the finale.
For more information, please visit www.hslgroup.com.
