DALLAS – For the Smashing Pumpkins 2013 “Shamrocks & Shenanigans” world tour, LD Lawrence Upton had to find a new dealer who could support his custom design needs, and find a new lighting instrument to fulfill crucial design elements. He found his solutions in authorized Vari-Lite dealer LMG Touring, 24 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash luminaires and two Showline SL BAR 640 LED luminaires.
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“The Smashing Pumpkins are a powerful and dynamic band with big colorful lighting and you have to keep the visuals fresh,” said Upton. “The VL3500 Wash luminaires are again my fixture of choice allowing the lighting to match the passion of the music. But I was also looking for a front light color wash. I knew Philips Entertainment produced quality products so we took a look at the new SL BAR 640 LED luminaires and they are working great.”
To keep this tour fresh, he designed custom pyramid-shaped video walls and needed a custom truss structure to support them. He also needed two additional custom triangle truss structures to house his VL3500 Wash luminaires. It all had to be transportable without needing a full breakdown.
Upton called upon Craig Mitchell from LMG Touring. “I was impressed with their service and quality control. When you have custom elements in any show you have to be prepared for challenges and work solutions and LMG did a great job. They impressed us all so much that I am now working on new lighting and video custom integration with them.”
“Working with Lawrence has been a great experience,” said Craig Mitchell, LMG Touring national sales manager. “He is an unconventional designer who likes the big ideas that may seem impossible at first, but he pushes them into reality with his conviction and determination. LMG Director of Lighting Steve ‘Boz’ Bodzioch designed the custom triangle pods, which needed to fit into trucks, sea containers and airplanes for some of the jumps between countries. It was exciting to see the rig in rehearsals look identical to the original renders.”
With LMG on board, the custom truss structures and pyramid video walls, comprised of 18.75MM LED tiles, came to life. LMG also provided Upton with 24 VL3500 Wash luminaires. Looking for his front light color wash, Upton turned to Philips Entertainment Product Manager Brad Schiller, who showed him the SL BAR 640 LED luminaire.
“Craig and his team at LMG did a great job,” added Upton. “Power and color are essential to our storytelling and the VL3500 Wash gives me both the color and the power we need. For our front lighting, Brad showed me the new SL BAR 640 luminaires and we soon figured out their potential was only limited to our imagination. While I love how you can create the various effects with the face of the light, for our purposes of front light color washing their color mixing is extremely beautiful providing any color you can think of and the color matching between pixels is seamless.”
The Showline SL BAR 640 is a 4-foot LED linear fixture with 13,360 lumens of output for general illumination or direct view purposes. Using a standard 60° beam angle, the SL BAR 640 can replace outdated R40 strips, border lights, foot lights, or cyc lights with color washing and animations.
Upton said, “The SL BAR 640 luminaires provide a color wash for the band downstage right and left. We don’t use front lights, spotlights or overhead lights. The SL BAR 640 fixture is essential to this design.”
“We have such a great relationship with Philips Vari-Lite,” said Mitchell. “The performance and reliability of their fixtures are excellent, which is crucial for world tours. The VL3500 Wash is such a powerful fixture and to see these custom triangle pods fly up loaded with them is impressive. Although this was our first tour using the new SL BAR 640 luminaires, we’ve already increased our inventory for upcoming tours.”
“LMG definitely delivered for us. And a big thank you to our Pumpkin family friend of many years, Brad Schiller, who helped us with great skill,” added Upton. “We have three LMG crew members led by Lighting Crew Chief Ray Zwarich and Video Crew Chief Nathan ‘Smokey’ Williams. Along with Production Manager Chris Gratton, Programmer Jon Griffin, Lighting Assistant Todd Erikson, and Video Brain’s Nicholas ‘Frenchie’ Lapoitie, everyone and everything is performing superbly. We are always striving to do something that keeps the tours fresh and we need powerful lamps with great color mixing. The VL3500 Wash and SL BAR 640 luminaires give me the power and color needed to give each song its own unique journey.”
To find out more about the VL3500 Wash luminaire, visit www.vari-lite.com. For more information on the SL BAR 640 LED visit www.philips.com/showline. For information on LMG Touring, visit www.lmgtouring.com
