Shinedown wanted ‘more saturated colours and darker looks’ (photo: Todd Kaplan)
USA - When planning for their current tour in support of their sixth studio album, Attention Attention, hard rock band Shinedown asked their lighting designer Carter Fulghum for more saturated colours and darker looks.
Fulghum created a deeply evocative lightshow with low backlight and sidelight. To balance the penetrating mood created by these fixtures, he added intensity with the help of 38 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites.
Flying the 330W moving beam/spot fixtures on four 8ft x 9ft diamond-shaped pods, Fulghum is using them for downlighting, specials and powerful colour accents that dramatize key moments in the concert. “We have eight Rogues arranged in two rows of four in the centre of each pod,” he says. “Using them to cover the stage, we create a powerful impression. Their gobos and prisms are adding an extra sense of texture, which is important to setting the kind of dramatic mood we’re after. Of course, we can change that mood quickly, especially when we go from a beam to wash. The brightness was also important to us, given the level of impact that we want our lighting to have on the audience.”
In addition to the 38 Rogue fixtures being flown on the overhead pods, Fulghum positions six of the units around the drum kit. Using these fixtures for sweeps and aerial lighting, he provides visual amplification for the drum solos that punctuate the band’s performance.
Although the overall look of Fulghum’s lightshow remains consistently intense throughout the tour, he does make changes to his rig and his lighting plan, depending on the venue. In addition to adjusting his number of fixtures for smaller venues, he will punt at festivals, while going with a pre-programmed show at other venues.
With the rig day in and day out is Fulghum’s dedicated crew: Chas Albea (crew chief Shared Rig), Aaron Swetland (crew chief Shinedown) Ryan Waldron, Taylor Sherman and Clayton Peavey. Along with his off-site supporters, Matt King, Jake Tickle and Mark Steinwachs, his crew has helped things go very smoothly on the tour.
(Jim Evans)

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