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I-Pix BB4s on Sugababes
i-Pix’ newly launched BB4 Wash Lights are being used to great effect in Vince Foster's stunning visual design for the Sugababes current UK tour. The 10 BB4 units were part of a consignment of 24 purchased by leading UK rental company Neg Earth who are supplying lighting equipment and crew to the tour.
Lighting is being looked after and operated on the road by lighting director Darragh McAuliffe who programmed the show with Foster over 2 intense days of production rehearsals at Black Island Studios in London, working with show designer Harvey B Brown.
The tour plays a wide variety of theatre and town hall type venues, and one of the primary requirements was for the rig to be as flexible as possible.
It was Foster’s first time using BB4s, but he's been a big fan of the i-Pix Satellite and has used these on designs in the past, and his work frequently features strong LED elements.
The new BB4 is an exceptionally hire-friendly fixture designed for life on the road. It provides LDs with multiple rigging permutations, increasing the range of possible looks beyond that of existing fixtures.
The Sugababes’ BB4s are rigged 5 per side, approximately 5ft off the deck on special 'soft ladders', a neat and highly adaptable idea that Foster and McAuliffe devised for hanging lighting fixtures from the back truss. They run in a line either side of the central upstage video screen.
The show starts with the 3 Sugababes being revealed by an illusion gag, revealing them popping up from a inside centre-stage riser, and much of the show lighting evolves around this riser which is used throughout the performance as an integral set piece.
McAuliffe says: "The BBs are really a nice light-source, and genuinely resemble a DWE bulb. Being LEDs, they produce beautifully rich saturated colours, which is great as it's a bright, bold poppy show. However they’re also capable of making the subtler and more technical colours which are less common for LEDs. We're using them in a completely different way to the usual twinkly star type effects and it's really good that the fixture has this much latitude and scope."
The lighting rig also contains Martin MAC 700 and High End PC Beam moving lights plus a variety of other sources like Sky Pans, Little Big Lights, Kino Flo tubes and Atomic strobes arranged across 3 trusses with an upstage centre Barco O-Lite video screen.
McAuliffe is controlling everything off a Hog iPC running in Hog 3 mode with a Catalyst digital media server used to feed video content to the screen. He adds: "The i-Pix team were incredibly helpful in sorting out personalities for the fixtures."
7th April 2008
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