Colour Sound invests for 2CELLOS tour
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West London-based Colour Sound is providing lighting, video, rigging and crew, working closely with lighting designer Crt Birsa and production manager Chris Griffiths.
The UK performance was a roof-raising extravaganza staged at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the band accompanied by The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. They played out some of 2CELLOS hugely dynamic repertoire which went from the decorum and refinement of assorted film scores to the raucous rock-out mayhem of AC/DC and the Rolling Stones covers.
Crt, a big Robe fan, was delighted when Colour Sound was able to offer its new Robe MegaPointes! The fixture was launched in September and this is one of its first European tours.
It is the first time he’s worked with Colour Sound and comments that it’s been a “totally positive” experience. “The guys are extremely nice, highly knowledgeable and absolutely dedicated to doing a great job in getting the show onstage every day.”
Colour Sound’s crew of Simon Robertson, Frank Williams and David Cattermole are being chiefed by Kester McClure.
The lighting is all toured in the pre-rigged trussing for convenience and to speed up the get-ins / outs. The main touring rig features three 14m long overheads trusses - front mid and back, with one more added for the Albert Hall.
The moving lights - 26 x MegaPointes, 20 x Spiider LED wash beams and five BMFL Spots for key lights – are distributed across all trusses with eight of the MegaPointes on the floor. They do most of the work, creating subtle and beautifully composed looks for the first section of the show, augmented with 2-lite and 4-lite blinders for audience illumination, together with strobes on the mid and upstage trusses which kick in later in the set.
Some of the lights were rigged on drop-bars to achieve more separation between the sources.
They played the RAH show with the organ revealed, an approach that worked highly effectively in conjunction with their 10m wide x 3m deep LED screen. Built from Colour Sound’s BT7 product, this was rigged on a Litec QL52 truss and flown just below the bottom of the organ pipes, filling the space as if it had been specially tailored.
The extra truss at the RAH was rigged with another six MegaPointes bringing the total for that gig to 32.
Crt programmed and ran lighting on his own ChamSys MQ80 console with a Wing, and Colour Sound providing a complete replica system for backup.
The band’s video director Zaor Kolar puts together the playback visuals in conjunction with 2CELLOS creative director Miro Vidović.
Colour Sound supplied two Panasonic AW-HE60 robo cameras, - one for each of the two stars – Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser – which were operated by Kester and combined with an input from the band’s own GoPro focussed on drummer Dušan Kranjc who plays with them regularly.
Crew chief Kester has been impressed with all the new kit they have had on the tour, “It’s always good to work with new technology, and the MegaPointes are really bright, small and impressive and utilising the pre-rigged truss greatly helped the speed and efficiency of the get ins and outs.”
EXE-Rise 1000kg 8:1 double-braked chain hoists were used for all the rigging, and the touring lighting and visuals package was completed with two Robert Juliat Merlin followspots and three hazers.
(Jim Evans)
