BLACKBURN, U.K. – HSL supplied lighting and crew to the U.K. and European tour by Australian drum and bass rockers Pendulum in support of their third album, Immersion. Mark Calvert of Immersive (formally known as Pixel Addicts), together with his colleagues John Munroe and Dave Green, designed the show as a fusion of video and lighting, working with mobile set elements containing Barco MiStrip LED screens.
The LED screens are fed video content and controlled by Immersive's Addict show control system. Additional lighting onstage is controlled separately via a lighting console operated by lighting designer Simon Barrington.
"When production manager Chris Griffiths asked us onboard, we were really excited," said HSL's Mike Oates, project manager. "We have also worked on projects with Simon and Immersive before," Oates added, calling the show "right at the cutting edge of visual design and show control."
The moving lights are all Robe, with a total of 20 ColorSpot 700E ATs attached to the MiStrip dollies on special side wings as integral to the set, and the others rigged on two overhead trusses and the floor.
The flown central MiStrip towers are built from 10 MiStrip sections/dollies when in their full height configuration, and the 10 MiStrip side wings – which curve on three axes – are ground supported. Two truss sections above the side dollies each have six Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs to complete the form of the structure. The concept is that the energy of the band is picked up through video and lighting and radiated out into the audience.
Six Robe ColorWash 700E ATs are positioned on the FOH truss, with four more on each side on the front edges of the stage for cross lighting. But overall, it is a heavily back-lit show, with the band preferring to be in darkness or moodily silhouetted as opposed to conventionally lit.
HSL is supplying 10 of their new Robe ROBIN 300 Beams, which are dotted around the floor, and described by Ben Miles, who programmed, and then started off the tour operating for Simon Barrington as, "amazing fixtures."
There's a considerable amount of Atomic strobes contained in the structure, all with color scrollers, plus Moles on the front truss for blasting into the audience and Omni photo floods on the top of each of the dollies.
The movement and beams of all the Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 700s are controlled from the lighting desks – two Chamsys MagicQs and a Wing chosen by Simon Barrington, while the dimmer shutters and CMY mixing functions are controlled by the Addict server.
The ROBIN 300 Beams, Moles, Omnis and Atomics are also all controlled from Barrington's console.
The Addict is located side stage and triggered by MIDI from lead singer Rob Swire, with the content frame-by-frame synched.
The ArtNet output from the Chamsys console is fed into a Luminex box onstage, which merges it with the input from the Addict, run by Rupert "Pesh" Dean.
HSL's crew chief is Eugene Benavidez, who is working alongside Simon "Piggy" Lynch and Rob Meyer, with Grant Du Plessis looking after the MiStrips, which are supplied by XL Video. All the video content was also created by Immersive.
For more information, please visit www.hslgroup.com.
