UK - Girls Aloud are back on the road for the first time in 11 years, with their Girls Aloud Show tour, creatively directed by Beth Honan and lit by Peter Barnes.
Lighting, video, automation and rigging equipment – including some new innovations – and crew are all supplied by PRG UK to Production North, whose Iain Whitehead is overseeing all related technical production elements for the first leg of the tour that plays UK and Irish arenas including five sold out nights at London’s O2.
PRG UK’s account manager Yvonne Donnelly is co-ordinating everything. Yvonne stated, “It’s been an absolute pleasure collaborating with Iain and the creative team again on this groundbreaking tour for PRG, showcasing our newly developed RollCat tracking system alongside some of our tried and tested proprietary Icon range and with Ground Control running our newly developed VL3600 follow spots.
Lighting designer Peter Barnes first worked with Girls Aloud in 2005, also lit the last Ten: The Hits tour in 2013 and has worked with Beth on a variety of other projects over several years.
Beth wanted a clean, modern space with an epic widescreen presence and a nod to fashion show aesthetics in the form of a thrust and a B-stage to get the Girls physically out amongst their fans.
Beth envisioned the two large video screens with a bold strip of light striking through the runway area, the latter translating into two spine trusses flown above the thrust.
Peter used the two 10.8m-wide by 7.2m-high onstage screens and the 30m-long thrust as the starting points for the production lighting design.
The 25mof RollCat tracking truss – a PRG proprietary product manufactured by Moveket – rigged centrally, running the length of the thrust, and utilised for a hi-impact motorbike flying stunt at the start of the show’s second section meant that nothing apart from the two exiting spine trusses could be added here.
Upstage centre, in the gap between the two onstage screens, are four trussing towers that continue the line of lighting positions. At the offstage edges of these two onstage screens are two more trussing towers.
The towers are also newly purchased by PRG, coming in 1 and 2 metre sections, and pack down into dollies for travel, which is expedient on truck space in Lighting’s three fully packed artics.
Above and upstage of the main screens each side Peter persuaded Beth that a double array of standard trussing runs should be added to assist in lighting the 60ft wide stage.
Both front and back rails on these trusses are used for over and under-slung lighting fixtures.
All these trusses are rigged with PRG’s proprietary Icon Edge multi-functional moving light fixtures, which are the workhorses of this design.
Mirroring the thrust ‘spine’ trusses in far offstage stage positions are two (left and right) trusses, also rigged with Icon Edges together with some Robe Spiider LED wash fixtures to assist in key lighting along the runway positions and for blasting out into the audience for the interactive moments.
A short advance truss in front of the end of the runway is rigged with five Vari*Lite 3600s all running on four (+ 1 spare) PRG Ground Control remote follow spot systems.
The floor is left relatively clear of lights apart from a row of Vari*Lite 3600s and an array of Solaris strobe / floods right along the back.
The Icon Edges are the backbone of all the big production looks and are used judiciously and smartly, enabling Peter and programmer Jake Humphries to construct a diverse range of scenes and effects that keep the pace pumping throughout the 90-minute set.
The fixture choice also included 20 x Robe Spiiders for the side trusses, 22 x GLP X4 LED battens on the back trusses and 16 x Vari*Lite 3600s including the five follow spots.
Seventy 3-metre ACME Pixel Line LED battens are used highly effectively to create pixel-mappable vertical lines of light shooting up the back towers and along the length of the runway trusses, with a double row framing the top of the main screens and a single row running down their outer edges.
These are programmed to bring another layer of fluid and dramatic kinetic movement to the action, while 18 x ROXX 4-lite blinders grace the side trusses for additional audience and runway highlighting.
Chris is enjoying the calm and friendly tour vibes and working with “a brilliant team” including PRG crew chief Alex Peters, Colm Robinson who is looking after dimmers and lighting techs Dominic White and Stuart Wright.
PRG’s Mark Wade dealt with the tour’s original automation requirements and specified the system which is based around Moveket i-Motion winches – the VMS-S 125-3-30 – which is rated for up to 125kg, fits into standard 52cm trussing and is SIL3 certified for people flying.
The video department is headed up by Stevie Marr and includes the only female member of the tech team, Izzie Everatt. The screens are all made up from new INFiLED products, part of another recent larger purchase of LED screen assets by PRG.
