Visual, musical, physical, and — let’s face it — chemical stimuli, along with butt-moving bass-heavy grooves, have been the basic ingredients of the dance scene for decades. In recent years, DJs have begun to tinker with this intoxicating formula, and have sought to enhance and intensify the power of the club experience via elaborate lighting and video design.
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Ian McDaniel has had his hands full lately with heavy-duty visual support for Swedish DJ/producer Avicii. I caught up with him recently while the tour prepped in Las Vegas to learn more about his company, and I got an inside peek at what it takes to produce enough content to fill a 62-foot-wide stage during a two-hour DJ set.
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Control is something we all love to have, and, in the entertainment industry, it seems we can never have enough. I find that my colleagues in the sound department have issues with this, but that’s a different subject….Control over the rig is an issue that the lighting folks have had a handle on for a long time, but it seems like the more gear is added under the auspices of “media,” or LEDs, or LED panels, or the ubiquitous term “video,” the more it falls to the lighting guy/gal and their desk to actually make the stuff work.
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PLSN DESIGNER Watch – by Debi Moen –
Back in 1976, when Cosmo Wilson saw his first Aerosmith show, the shiny silver PAR Cans and the power of the music burned in his brain. It looked like rock. It screamed rock. He saw them every chance he got. So when Aerosmith summoned Wilson to present designs for their Global Warming 2012 tour, Wilson reeled through the years and went retro in his design.
This month finds me programming a rather cool show. It’s an Idol-type tour in which four contestants do their best to imitate Freddie Mercury while playing live with a Queen cover band. The “Queen Extravaganza” is an actual professional touring show conceptualized by founding Queen members. The show itself is quite different from any others I have done, as designer Rob Sinclair has a unique game plan and a simple set of rules that we must follow for the entire performance.
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FREDRIKSTAD, Norway – projectiondesign has supplied nine of its F32 DLP projectors to British artist Isaac Julien for his latest art installation ‘Ten Thousand Waves.’ On a worldwide tour, the exhibit landed most recently at the Norwegian Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. Says Julien, “When you are putting on a piece of work like this, you rely on a fantastic image. You need a certain color depth, color saturation and depth of field. Contrast ratio is also important. projectiondesign projectors give us all this and more.”
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MELBOURNE, Australia – Clearlight Shows in Melbourne has supplied St Leonard’s College in Brighton with an ETC Ion lighting control console for use in their main hall, where they produce three major musicals per year. Their aging console needed to retire, in favor of one that could control LEDs and moving lights.
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LONDON – Martin Professional’s new 1000 W MAC Viper Profile debuted on the first European stadium leg of Coldplay’s “Mylo Xyloto” world tour with lighting / production designer Paul Normandale. “The Vipers were used to light the LED screen fascias for which they needed to be bright and have a considerable zoom, which they did well,” Normandale said, adding that he plans to put more Viper Profiles on the rider when the tour returns to Europe in late August. Lighting vendor for the European legs is Lite Alternative while Upstaging is handling the North American leg.
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LOS ANGELES – About 90 Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures are on the road for Motley Crue’s North American Summer tour, co-heaadlining with KISS. “I first saw Sharpys at the Ultra Music Fest almost two years ago,” says lighting director Mike Cooper. “The lighting designer had a huge Clay Paky rig and a row of Sharpys on the stage, and I was blown away.” Since then Cooper has deployed Sharpys on the Godsmack/Staind tour and Motley Crue appearances in Europe.
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