latest news headlines
Guns and grandMA
In 2002 they broke up their ‘Chinese Democracy’ tour but recently Guns N’ Roses were back on stage again. Their mini-tour was based on the aborted one, which was designed by Roy Bennett. Now, Gary Westcott has taken over from Bennett and has used two grandMA full-size consoles and four NSPs to put the Gunners in the light.
“The basic idea was to take the original tour from 2002 and update the show using elements from Roy’s original design,” Westcott explained. But there was one snag in the plan. In 2002 the lighting rig was programmed via an Icon console but this wasn’t suitable so Westcott solved the problem by taking the original Icon program and converting it with the visual system from Prelite to a grandMA console.
The truss configuration and the stage layout were changed so the rig fitted onto a three-truss system, with tormentors and cyclorama. To give the show a Chinese theme the lighting designer placed a number of Hexa-Pods on either side of the band and a red cyc behind them reminiscent of a pagoda. Eight Vari-Lite VL2416 washes accompanied Martin moving lights and strobes; Wybron colour scrollers and Color Kinetics ColorBlast LEDs were also used.
After playing four gigs in New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom the tour transferred to Europe for several shows and festivals. To work out the problem whereby festivals only feature a minimum floor lighting package, Westcott used the locally supplied systems with a modification. “Festival vendors have been very effective in recreating our system and supplying a full complement of fixtures which we then clone into the grandMA and run our show program,” he explained.
22nd August 2006
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
