He just finished the latest leg of a Pretty Lights US tour where 36 x Spikies and 14 x BMFL Spots graced his lighting rig and helped create a stylish and invigorating show for rising star DJ and music producer Pretty Lights with whom he has worked for the last seven years.
The Episodic Festival Tour comprised five two-day experiences staged over different weekends at interesting and cool locations around the US - including Telluride in the Rocky Mountains, and Red Rocks Amphitheatre, both in Colorado, as well as Chicago, Nashville and New Hampshire.
The rig didn't change but the idea was to embrace the different surroundings each time and Greg's task was to give each one a special and significant ambience.
This involved a lot of improvisation and thinking on his feet which is where the BMFL Spots and Spikies came in.
The Spikies were arranged in clusters of four - ACL style - 24 on six ground-supported towers upstage, with three more four-way clusters on the video trusses, all effectively creating a giant box around the band!
"I love the Spikie - it's so incredibly versatile," emphasized Greg. A key approach to lighting the show was that every instrument should multi-task. Spikies fitted the bill perfectly being able to do beams, washes, aerial flower effects, illuminate the cyc and other things.
The BMFLs - also multi-functional - were positioned on the over stage trusses which were four small fingers, a middle and upstage truss and a header truss - with some BMFLs on the floor.
The design split most of the different types of lights up in their positioning to give a cleaner and more effective look.
Greg also designs and operates video - running via three separate media servers - for the shows plus lasers, so he's multi-tasking as well and is constantly on his toes!
Upstage a 30 x 10ft video wall introduced a cinematic element, and all the flown trusses - four for lighting and two for media - were clad with video headers. This was made up from Roe Hybrid 15, a 15mm pitch product with a layer of integrated 150W LED light-sources that can also be fed with video, so lightscapes as well and 'conventional' video playback can be created utilizing the same video material.
(Jim Evans)
