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Bandit Lites for Richard Ashcroft at Old Trafford
Richard Ashcroft ended his latest tour in grand style rocking out in front of a hugely enthusiastic ‘home’ crowd of 26,000 at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester.
Bandit Lites supplied tour production lighting and crew for LD Jonny Gaskell throughout May, and also took care of all things lighting for this event, project managed by Bandit’s Lester Cobrin.
Gaskell’s work with Ashcroft dates back to the days of the phenomenally successful Verve. For the Old Trafford show, working with Tim Flemming, he also conceptualised, designed and produced a series of custom video visuals, which were beamed onto an LED backdrop onstage and integrated into the lightshow for Ashcroft’s dynamic, pacey set.
The rig was based around three overhead lighting trusses and six vertical truss towers on the floor. The system consisted of 28 Martin MAC 2k profiles, 34 High End Studio Beam wash fixtures, 60 2-lite Molefeys, 16 Atomic strobes and Source Four profiles for key-lighting. In addition Gaskell specified a 48inch diameter large faceted mirror ball and a single 2k Lycian followspot. Gaskell operated the stage lighting using a WholeHog II and a wing. The playback video was run separately via a laptop.
The light show featured plenty of mega anthemic, in-the-face ‘rock-out’ looks, with bright single colour looks at one end of the scale, taking it down to clean cut, strong single lightsource looks for the acoustic numbers. This all went down a storm with both audience and band.
“Bandit did a fantastic job as always,” commented Gaskell after the show. “They looked after me so well on the tour which continued with this show, which was effectively a large and challenging one off after the end of the tour. Lester sorted an excellent deal enabling me to get everything I wanted … and as usual, the crew and all other Bandit people involved worked tirelessly to make it happen.”
Bandit’s crew were Steve ‘Stona’ Rusling, Steve Kerwick and Rob Starksfield. The get in commenced on Friday for a Saturday show and the programming was done over Friday night.
The main lighting ‘special’ effect was over 400ft of festoon lighting. The rigging of the festoon was quite tricky as it had to be double-hung and secured around each of the four vertical truss towers bordering three video screens, as well as the two free-standing vertical truss towers onstage. The festoon also ran up and down the full height of the supporting stage roof towers and around two further offstage towers beyond the PA and video wings.
This gave the stage an elegant element of architectural form which required dexterity and patience during a very time pressurised get in and set up period. It also proved – visually – worth every effort.
The show was also an eight-camera DVD shoot with gear supplied by XL Video. Sound was supplied by Britannia row and the entire was production managed by Andy Proudfoot.
21st June 2006
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