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Lionel up in Lights thanks to PRG Europe
Lionel Richie’s show designer, Chris Medvitz of Lightswitch, has been talking about the lighting and show design for the star’s current tour, which has just passed through the UK. Speaking from the rehearsal stage in Bray, near Windsor, before the tour set off, he described the show’s clean, modern look: “We tried to take the look from videos and album artwork to make the transition to live. We were keen to keep the focus on the performers, rather than have special effects and gimmicks.”
Medvitz went through some of the PRG Europe-supplied kit for the show: “We’re using a great deal of LED fixtures as well as Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12, PixelLine battens, MAC 2ks, Vari*Lite luminaires and a handful of Syncrolite searchlights. A lot of the three or four thousand LEDs are built into the scenery, primarily so that we can do a lot of cool close up lighting with Lionel and the band. They allow us to have a lot of colour changing effects on them while performing, and we can put them in spaces where we wouldn’t have room for a luminaire. They’re small and low profile, so they can be fitted to steps and platforms which are low to the stage.”
PRG Europe has also supplied two Mbox Extreme media servers to supply custom media content on two giant video screens, provided by XL Video. “We work with Lionel to develop the look,” he continues, “but he’s pretty hands off when it comes to giving us direction. On the screens, we’re using a range of images which we took over the past six months as well as footage from music videos and some footage specific to the show. The director has been doing a lot of photography of the band and crew, and we’ll be using the two Mboxes to show that.
“We wanted this tour to look contemporary and up to date, hence the latest lighting and media technology. The show is very strong musically and Lionel and the band are interesting enough without special effects like pyrotechnics or popping out of a trap door.”
That is not to say Medvitz is not innovating. One of the lighting controls he has brought in is by Kinesys, whose motors supplied by PRG Europe hold nine lighting pods, allowing them to fly to different heights. That way the lighting rig can be reconfigured to vary the look.
PRG Europe has also supplied a High End Systems IPC running Wholehog II software. Project manager for the tour is Carol Croft.
17th May 2007
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