XCPH calls on Chauvet for du Tour Vibration
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Each year, their designs have been greeted with enthusiasm by the event organizers, performing artists, and the fans who turn out by the tens of thousands in France’s Central Region for the free concerts. This year, in a bold departure from precedent, Maxime Perrey scaled back the role of LED video walls that had dominated his previous designs in favour of a more lighting-oriented rig that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures.
“The tour has continuously grown,” said Perrey. “This was the first year that I had carte blanche to create a plan. I wanted something different from the four previous editions. Before, video was much more present, with larger, more imposing, surfaces. So, previously when encoding, I first chose the media to put in the screens, and then composed a light panel to accompany them.”
This year things were very different. Instead of having large columns of screens, Perrey and his staff arranged the screens in horizontal lines, creating a smaller video impression. “In reality, we have the same number of video panels, but to the eye it looks smaller,” he said. “Our lighting projectors are better distributed in space, and they play a much more prominent role in the design. So, this year, when encoding, I first established light tables and then added video dressing.”
Perrey’s decision to change up the design process reaped stunning visual rewards. The rapid pan and tilt movements, rich colours and bright backlighting from the rig’s Maverick and Rogue fixtures accented the performance of stars like the chart-topping Mika, the legendary Yannick Noah, Black M, The Avener and more.
“On the five dates, a little more than 40 artists paraded on the Vibration stage in a showcase format, 15 to 20 minutes each,” said Perrey. “The musical styles are very varied to satisfy a wide audience. So, the flexibility this rig gave us to create versatile looks was very important.”
A collection of 10 Maverick Storm 1 Wash and eight MK3 Wash fixtures, along with eight Rogue RH1 Hybrids and a Node Net-X anchored the tour rig. Four of the Maverick Storm 1 Wash fixtures were positioned downstage and were used for audience lighting and aerial effects.
Perrey also positioned four Maverick MK3 Wash and six Maverick Storm 1 Wash fixtures on three counter-stair decks that uniformly covered the entire height of the stage. “The MK3 Wash allowed me to cover the entire stage space,” he said. “The Maverick Storm 1 gave me a homogeneous colorimetric level. On the ground in the distance we had four MK3 washes, which were used for a diving game associated with the four on the counter deck. We also had eight Rogues RH1 hybrids on the deck, which allowed me to complete the beam aspect of mode B, or make softer pictures with the gobos in spot mode.”
(Jim Evans)
