The Courteeners get creative with Ambersphere
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Dan Hill was in control on a grandMA2 Light operating a lighting rig that was heavy on Ayrton and Claypaky fixtures as specified from Dan Hill and Chris ‘Squib’ Swain’s design house, Cassius Creative. “The tour and the new show design started life back at the end of 2016,” says Hill. “Up to that point, the band’s look had been with more traditional tungsten fixtures so this was a real remodelling of the entire production. We wanted a more modern feel to this campaign and turned to Ayrton and Claypaky, both from the Ambersphere family of brands for the ideal solution.
“At Old Trafford, the rig featured eight linear trusses, each lined with over 20 Ayrton MagicBlade-Rs, so in total we had nearly 170. This created the more contemporary look we were after and with the beamy, multi-cell MagicBlades, multiple versatile visual effects could be created. We also incorporated a panoramic strip of video: 3.6m high by 14m across the stage that was used for live camera work in various layouts and styles – and in the layout below and above the video screen we had enough MagicBlade sources to give us a variety of pixel map and dimmer effect options.
“In this scaled-up version of the original arena design we increased the number of Claypaky Scenius Spots as well to nearly 40. They were chosen for their punchy animation abilities. Big gobo effects and dynamic animation meant we could create movement without movement which really worked effectively with such a solid geometric stage structure.”
Cassius Creative completed a trio of Ambersphere sourced brands by using an MA grandMA2 Light from their own company while the rig lights were supplied by Neg Earth.
(Jim Evans)
