LONDON – HSL supplied lighting equipment and crew to the recent U.K. tour for the band White Lies, which relied upon a primarily white and near-white looks created by LD Chris Megginson. HSL was brought in to work with White Lies by Darren Snape of Vertical Management two years ago. The most recent outing was the band's largest production tour to date, and included two sold out nights at London's Brixton Academy.
"It's extremely rewarding seeing a talented band grow, and Chris's designs, which are always exciting and innovative, evolve," said HSL project manager Mike Oates.
Megginson responded to the band's preferences for a wall of PAR cans to define the stage space with an upstage grid comprised of lamps in a configuration with eight high by 16 wide, which used a total of 128 500W Ray-Lites.
The Wall PARs were hung on standard 6-lamp bars with four cans per bar to give a 600mm separation between all of them on both horizontal and vertical planes. The bars were hung below one another on steel ropes, and HSL devised a rapid rigging system where the first row was attached to the truss and levelled with a turnbuckle. The truss was then flown out and the next row of lamp bars added – and so on – until the Wall construction was complete.
The lamps were angled downwards at 45 degrees to create what Megginson envisioned as an off-beat "operatic" look, rather than a standard heavy metal "wall of death" effect where they all point directly forward into the audience. The Wall was concealed behind a gun-metal lame Austrian drape for the first six numbers of the set, and revealed during a white-out effect later in the show.
There were also three overhead trusses – front, mid and rear. The back truss featured four Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs, picked for their brightness, along with four Atomic strobes with color-changers, rigged in pairs, plus two bars of ACLs. The mid truss had a repeat of the rear fixture configuration.
The front truss was rigged with four i-Pix BB4s used for a general stage wash, four ETC Source Four profiles for some key lighting to cover the downstage "posing" positions and five-by-four-way square Molefeys for audience blinding, with the center one rigged higher to make a subtle arch shape.
Across the back on the stage floor were six Vari*Lite 3500 Washes to illuminate the cyc, which also pointed forward for beam effects. Most of the key lighting was achieved with eight PAR 30 footlights around the front of the stage.
For additional back light of a totally contrasting quality, four red heads on eight-foot-high stands were positioned at 45 degree angles from each band member, barn-doored to prevent audience spill. These hailed back to the first show Megginson ever lit for White Lies at the Hoxton Bar & Grill, where he used three red heads. On this tour, their softer lighting contrasted with all the hard-edged fixtures on the rig.
For low back light, the rig included four i-Pix BB4s – one per band member – located at the foot of each red head stand. Also on the floor were another four strobes and four CO2 jets.
As extras for the London and Manchester shows, HSL provided eight A&O 6K Falcon Beam searchlights. These were rigged four on the floor in a row at the back and four on an additional truss flown between the mid and back touring trusses. They were used only in the final song – "Death" – when the truss flew in to a low trim of between 10 and 15 feet, firing over the heads of the band for the finale.
Megginson started the tour using just different color whites, but by the end had added in some lavenders and steel blues to add a dash of white-graded coloration.
He ran it all on a Hog iPC console.
HSL's crew included Andy "Paris" Hilton and "Theatre" Tom Wright, joined by Ian Stevens to tech the Falcon Beams for the Brixton and Manchester Apollo shows.
Says Megginson, "HSL have once again been brilliant – the kit was in great condition, the service and support from Mike as a project manager was fantastic and the crew were just fabulous."
For more information, please visit www.hslgroup.com
