Lighting design for Space and Time Continuum is a collaborative effort between Jake Whittingham and Dave Hill with Whittingham on tour with the production as lighting director and board op. In addition to 35 Elation Platinum Beam 5R units that the band had in the rig for the 2015 outings, a new Elation kit of 17 Platinum FLX hybrid moving heads, eight Platinum Beam 5R Extreme beam lights, 26 ZW19 LED beam/wash effects and eight ACL 360 Bar effect lights have joined the line-up.
"The biggest determining factor when considering new fixtures for this tour was versatility and bang for the buck," states Whittingham, who started with Brit Floyd in May of 2015. "While it's nice to have a fixture that performs a really impressive one-off effect, we were more interested in a fixture that can be used frequently throughout the show for big impressive looks without becoming repetitive. We decided to go with the hybrid FLX to provide us with as many creative options as possible."
While the Platinum Beam 5Rs give big aerial looks, the FLX fixtures, positioned on a midstage truss and upstage as well as side stage, have given Whittingham a greater number of possibilities. "As much of the rig is 5Rs, it was important that we were able to diversify the color palette of the show with a decent CMY mixing fixture," he comments.
"With a 5R heavy rig, creating dimension from a variety of viewing angles can be challenging, especially when being mindful not to become too repetitive. The FLX's incredibly bright lamp punches terrific gobo breakups through the air to the back of the room, even when competing with a large white projection screen, allowing us to create more vivid and immersive audience looks. The beam mode has allowed me to dramatically beef up some of the big 5R sweeping looks and have even replaced our lasers on a few cues as a crowd scanning alternative."
Adding a variety of looks and working from each side of the stage are ACL 360 Bars, a continuously rotating colour-changing LED batten in Elation's ACL Series of high-output narrow-beam LED effect lights.
For Whittington, a revelation of the new Elation lighting package was the ZW19, an LED moving head beam/wash effect luminaire with RGBW colour mixing and motorized zoom that he has working from both upstage and downstage. "The ZW19s have been one of the biggest surprises for me as I have found the colour rendering to be far better than a more expensive counterpart," he said. "The movement is quite smooth and the zoom range has allowed me to use the fixture as a straight swap for an LED beam fixture we were using, allowing us to create additional wash looks across the stage and through low smoke."
Brit Floyd shows are produced and promoted by UK-based CMP Live, which owns and is supplying the Elation lighting gear for the current tour. U.S. tour support in the form of lighting gear supply and personnel is from Performance Lighting of Chicago.
(Jim Evans)
