Severina played arena concerts in Split, Zagreb, Belgrade and Ljubljana (photo: Jani Ugrin)
Slovenia - Croatian singer-songwriter and actress Severina played four major arena concerts in the Balkans this fall - at Split and Zagreb in Croatia, Belgrade in Serbia and culminating at the Dvorana Stožice in Ljubljana, Slovenia - which were lit by Slovenian LD Crt Birsa who added over 150 Robe moving lights to the lighting design for the three concerts in Croatia and Slovenia.
Crt, whose work is well known internationally was to light these four special shows for the superstar. Talks originally started back in April 2019 when Severina invited him, set designer Greta Godnic and show director Nejc Levstik to submit ideas. They asked Den Barca of ThenVision to join the creative team and work on the video design and visuals.
“It was a complicated design and setup,” commented Crt, who was delighted when his initial lighting scheme proposal was accepted. “We had a good brief from the artist about what she wanted to achieve when onstage, which assisted all of us to create a clear and distinctive performance environment.”
The lighting rental vendor for the four shows was the IVAS Group from Zagreb, Croatia, a company that has invested steadily in Robe in recent years via Croatian distributor, Sali Trade.
The Robe count for these shows was 34 MegaPointes, 18 BMFL Spots, 18 Pointes, 24 Spiiders, 44 LEDWash 600s and 24 CycFX 8s.
Twenty-two of the MegaPointes were positioned on the main rig - ‘the Diamond’ - with 12 rigged on a ‘chandelier’ flown on variable speed chain hoists that was an integral part of the diamond and moved up and down during the show.
Twelve of the BMFL Spots were also on the Diamond rig, with the other six downstage on the floor. Ideally, Crt would have liked to use MegaPointes for all positions . . . but not enough units were available for all the shows.
Mega Pointes and BMFLs were his main hard-edged workhorses, chosen for their potency and reliability. “The venues are all big, so we needed something with a good punch,” Crt commented.
The 24 Spiiders also flown on the Diamond provided the main stage washes, working in conjunction with 35 of the LEDWash 600s which were the main key lighting for the musicians and performers. Crt needed A LOT of lights to cover the large stage and to help create the very intense colour looks he wanted.
A further three LEDWash 600s were used as back light for a classic VW Beetle which was pushed onstage for one section of the show, while the remaining six LEDWash 600s were rigged on two ‘between screen’ towers left and right of the main LED screen.
The 18 x Pointes were positioned behind the side LED screens on three trusses hung one above the other for maximum depth and used for blast-through effects.
Finally, 12 of the CycFX 8s were used to outline the chandelier with the other 12 distributed on the two between-LED-screen towers, and also above the side video screens.
In addition to all the Robes, he utilised two other types of LED wash, some beam movers and a set of 3x3 pixel ‘matrix’ moving heads which were in the centre of the Diamond. All of these were programmed and run by Crt using his own ChamSys MQ80 console and PC Wing for backup.
(Jim Evans)

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