The lighting rig comprised six Chauvet Professional Legend 230SR Beams, four Q-Spot 460-LED, three Q-Wash 560-LED, 10 Chauvet DJ COLORband PiX battens, 16 PixPar 24 and two COLORdash Batten-Quad 6, with six Robe 600s and six Mac 250s. Deployed for a colourful haze injection were four Chauvet DJ Geyser RGB effect foggers.
Production manager, Tom Beattie, said, "We knew we could make the venue look fantastic with the Chauvet fixtures we had and we'd just bought some new units so it was an opportunity to use those to their full potential."
The Christmas Ball was hosted by Craig Charles who brought his BBC Radio 6 Funk and Soul Show on the road showcasing Blackpool's own Monster Squad, Smoove and Terrell and The Brand New Heavies, before taking to the decks himself as headline DJ to complete the night's festivities.
Arranpaul's lighting designer, Oliver Wilkinson, was most impressed with the Chauvet Professional Legend 230SR beams. He explains, "We created the eye candy using the onboard pixel-mapping capabilities of the Pearl. From fairly basic shapes we created some amazing designs and there was no blending or bleeding of colours when the designs were overlaid. They were definite and exactly as they should be: white over blue or yellow over red, for example. The effect was really impressive."
The Chauvet Professional Q-Spot 460-LED fixtures also made their mark. Wilkinson continues, "They were positioned at the back but they really cut through and you could see them clearly on the floor, on the stage, with gobos etc. They really held up against the Robe 600s."
He adds, "All the Chauvet products really held their own and maintained their presence. This was perhaps most noticeable when we really brought the 230 Beams into play to provided that real wow factor for the DJ set finale. The other Chauvet lights weren't overwhelmed at all, they were still there and maintained their intensity of colour throughout."
(Jim Evans)
