The music of Abel Tesfaye, the musician known as The Weeknd, is very dark and cinematic. Bennett reflected this by creating a mutable set with lots of transparency, depth and changing personalities.
Ayrton fixtures featured heavily in its creation with a grid of 270 MagicPanel 602 fixtures forming a back wall that hid two rows of washlights, and which itself was concealed behind a transparent V-Thru screen. Tesfaye's band was elevated on a high band riser fronted by 140 MagicDot-R units, with the band members individually lit by Ayrton MADesign architectural fixtures. Above the stage hung a massive arrangement of 264 IntelliPix-R panels, rigged in five pods that broke apart to shape, texture and illuminate the stage.
The result was the formation of layers upon layers of imagery and light, set against a deep black background, in support of a compelling, dramatic performance.
Bennett placed the MagicPanel-602 units in a 30-wide x 9-high matrix far upstage and ran video content and abstract images through them to act as a backdrop to the band: "The wall made a big rectangular rig with the 6x6 configuration of each MagicPanel delivering a total of 9,270 LED emitters," says programmer, Jason Baeri. "It was a dream to pixel map, which we did using a Hippotizer media server to create really clear images and run the video content." Baeri, who Bennett refers to as his 'Master of Programming', is one of the most experienced users of Ayrton products. "We have been using these MagicPanel models for a number of years and they continue to be rock solid," he confirms.
"It was quite the logistical exercise to achieve the 'critical mass' of IntelliPix-R units to meet Roy's vision," says Morpheus' managing partner, Paul Weller. "We are deeply indebted to Ayrton's other distributors and dealers who helped Morpheus pull out the stops to enable this incredible rig to be realized."
Bennett used the overhead structures to change the shape of the stage and create a different configuration for every song, compressing the show to a small intimate space one moment and expanding it outwards at others in a range of dynamic stage effects, with the units being used both as light sources and to display graphical images. His use of the semi-transparent IntelliPix-R was subtle and immensely varied, with lighting fixtures across the whole rig deliberately kept barely visible until the moment they were brought into action.
"Able is not a pop star," Bennett explains. "His music is darker, like Michael Jackson meets Nine Inch Nails. He likes to be lit with a high degree of contrast and little front light, so there were no front spots and only two side spots in my design. Instead, I used the IntelliPix to create little 'rooms' of light around him from above: the units are so punchy and bright that, even from a height of 30/40ft, we were able to key him out in any colour, using only 30/40 emitters, and really isolate him from his surroundings."
With a total of 16,480 points of light emanating from the Ayrton fixtures, which made up almost 90% of the lighting rig, Bennett and Baeri had a lot of potential to play with: "We don't do a lot of simple!" says Baeri. "We used 140 DMX universes and maxed out the Grand MA2 console so ran the show off two desks - one controlling the video content and MagicPanel 602 fixtures, and the other controlling the IntelliPix-R units and the rest of the lighting rig. Upstaging did
