stage design

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SCB – Gala “Anniversary” 2009

14.12.2009 in Touring! | No comments

Sporting Club Belvaux is a local artistic gymnastics club and these guys organize a large show on a regular basis. Stage design has been provided for the 6th or 7th time by myself and 2 colleges. Due to time restrictions and several budget cuts, we had to come up with a design that could be setup in less than 5 hours by 4 technicians (and local helpers). The scale of the scene is always about 30 *20 meters and to spice things up, there is no way to fly anything in the venue. Lucky me. :-)

The final setup consisted of:

  • 15 Martin Mac 250 Wash
  • 8 Martin Mac 250 Entour
  • 2 Martin Atomic 3000

on the 30m backtruss and 2 8m sidetrusses

Front lights were:

  • 15 ABD F201
  • 10 Martin Mac 700

and about 10 ADB C103 as houselights.

All of this controlled by a Flying Pig Wholehog iPC Console. The Video World consisted of 2 Barco R12+ Beamers projecting on a slate grey backdrop. This mean a loss in brightness, but gave us the opportunity to change between gobo patterns from the Mac 700, video animation or laser effects (oh yeah we had lasers to) without having a this “blank screen frame – look”. Video was controlled by 3 Dataton Watchout Servers (1 Production / 2 Presentation). To feed the servers with live footage in several images the Servers were equipped with grabber cards that got their sigal from a JVC GY-DV5000E Camera (oldschool, I know). Most content was pre-produced and preprogrammed in out labs and copied to the rental servers on site.

To make the beams visible, 5 Martin (or Jem?) Magnum 1800 ere on site as well as a Roadie Extreme. Unfortunately the Roadie caused severe problems on the second show day so we had to switch it off. :-( Sad but true.

And as usual I have no idea what was going on in the sound department. :-)

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10 Years – Cheers!

26.10.2009 in Touring! | No comments

Stage design for a local band celebrating their 10th anniversary. For this occasion the 10 musicians (11 during that time) invited all former members of the band to join them for one very special evening. An because that still wasn’t enough pain for the sound guys, several brass musicians and a percussionist were invited to participate. In the end we had 2 Keyboarders, a brass section of 7 people, 1 drummer, 2 guitarists, 1 percussionist 1 or 2 bass players (can’t even remember) an not less than 6 Singers on stage. (I was ill and could not participate, I got sick in the evening so the remaining guys had a few cm to move ;-) )

As you can see the stage had to accommodate many musicians and instruments and this would be the reason why the first idea was rejected. The idea of a large X-shaped (X being a roman 10) came up, open to the audience on 3 sides, giving a feeling of having a party in the crowd. Unfortunately the musicians were afraid that not everybody would fit onto the stage, and communication with the audience would become to difficult. After knowing the figures of people onstage, I guess they were right.

The bad came up with the idea to use the venues (weird) shape and build a large L shaped stage, which would give a large opening towards the audience, without losing to much space. This made it rather complicated to find a way to light the show without burning most of the budget. (As the budget was needed for the Sound department and their awful expensive desks :-) )

The final design consisted of a 6 x 13m rig, as support for about 10 ADB F201 Fresnels, 4 Martin Mac 250 Wash and 1 Aircraft Set. Furthermore it was the mother grid for 4 trusses, each 7 meters long with 2 Martin Mac 250 Entour, 2 Molefay Blinders and 4 Eurolite Led Par36. 2 Mac 250 Wash were positioned on each side of the stage go lighten the singers. Moreover 2 Martin Atomic 3000 were installed on the sides for special effects. 2 more aircraft Sets were mounted on the floor, and a 9m x 9m L-shaped truss, mostly used to hang the backdrop; 4 more Molefay blinders were installed on the front truss.

PS: I’m really sorry for the crappy pictures but I didn’t have the time to take good ones. And iPhone3G users should know how bad smartphone pictures can be ;-)

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