“The GLP impressions were such a hit last year, that it was an easy decision to make sure that they were included again this year”, commented Lars. “Not only from the festival organizers point of view, did they want to maintain the path begun last year in keeping energy consumption down, but all the designers love them too, and a lot already use them in their shows”, he added

Four days of operation in a dust covered festival environment is a good testing ground for any lighting fixture. Mikkel Bach Nielsen was manning the front of house consoles for the fourth year running, “The units worked flawlessly during the whole festival, we never had to touch any of them.” confirmed Mikkel of their reliability level, then adding “I think the XL’s impressed all of the LD’s that came along. Most of them knew the Impression, but not the XL’s, and they are bright enough that even the daytime bands were using them.”

The festival was enjoyed by all and the organizers plan to keep their Green Footsteps program growing year on year, making larger footsteps as they go.

Pictures: Mikkel Nielsen

Ten of the powerful new LED fixtures have been provided as part of a comprehensive lighting refit by Southampton-based GLS Lighting, who have been servicing the Coronet’s lighting requirements for a number of years.

With the ownership of The Mermaid Conference and Events Centre, Blackfriars has built a strong reputation, and The Coronet’s head booker Mike Weller says, “Since we are now starting to get recognized as one of the major players in the 2K+ club/midsize venue market, we needed to step up our game production wise, and wanted our lighting spec to match the calibre of the nights we are promoting.”

He was already aware of the prestigious roster of bands who have been using the Impressions on tour as had his resident LD Paul De Villiers. However, both De Villiers and head of GLS, Ian Turner (himself a touring LD), recommended that the venue wait for the arrival of the new Impression Zoom fixture before jumping in.

The in-house lighting man was already familiar with the power of the original Impression, having seen the fixtures in use with the Simian Mobile Disco at HMV Forum back in October last year. There were 12 on the stage, mounted on scaff bars, and they just spanked everything,” he said.

The Coronet has hosted acts such as Groove Armada, The Rifles and Friendly Fires and with DJ’s such as Armand van Helden upcoming, the lighting needed to be versatile. “With a back truss, and first and second dancefloor trusses it is now easy to reconfigure the fixtures and create a proper club atmosphere when we need to.”

For conventional stage work six are floor-mounted (as required), with a further two on rear poles at the back of the stage and the final four overhead on the front stage truss.

Having decided that the existing heads were ready for decommission Ian Turner proposed a combination of conventional heads and ten GLP Impression Zooms — the latter replacing the old 575W wash lights. “There is really no comparison between the brightness of these wash lights and an RZ 120 Zoom,” he says. “In fact the Zoom performs more like a 700W wash light.”

Turner also notes the importance of the fixture’s rapid response from the Avolites Pearl Expert desk in a multi-function venue which hosts both club nights and live concerts. “The fast multi-colour strobing has opened up a new world for them,” he states.

Paul DeVilliers was particularly enthusiastic about the CTO balancing. “The colour mixing is unbelievable and they don’t look grainy and lo-res like the usual LED’s. The versatility it gives us is amazing — you can go quickly from a conventional beam to a fairly wide traditional wash — and how GLP do that I have no idea.”

For Ian Turner, the GLP Impression has also become his de facto LED moving head in his rental fleet.

“We made the decision after looking at all the competitors in some detail and checking on reliability issues. I saw the Impression Zoom at last year’s PLASA Show and it is an enormous differentiator. We do a lot of corporate work and the ability to zoom so wide enables us to light cycs, create washes and the next moment fire fast moving beams into the audience.”

GLS presently have other Impressions out with Mumford & Sons and there are plans to use them at a private party in Monaco featuring Flaming Lips. “Since the venue has little in the way of power feeds and loading capacity, a fixture weighing just 8kg and drawing virtually no power provides the obvious solution.”

Lite Alternative’s Paul Normandale has designed the six floor-mounted impression XL LED heads into an elaborate motion controlled set.

His company also fielded a further nine impression 120RZ Zooms from their inventory — adding to the fixtures they first incorporated into the set design for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs earlier in the year (all fixtures supplied by AC Entertainment Technologies). Like the XL’s these were mounted at the back of the stage, and blasted their light through four 8 x 8 sections of spinning aluminum louvre shutters, lifted on a Kinesys K2 motion control section.

After a three-year break, the New York-based Scissor Sisters were clearly seeking something more sophisticated than a disco lighting set — but GLP’s LED washlights still had to keep company with a pair of 13W lasers, confetti machines and conventional automated spots and washes in this riotous spectacular.

Tasked with animating Paul Normandale’s creative set — incorporating raunchy Mapplethorpe photos within the backdrop screens — was experienced lighting director Glen Johnson, who has worked with many of the world’s leading touring acts (and automated lighting fixtures). ********** He immediately noticed not only the brightness of the GLP XL — with 240 Luxeon LEDs it is almost three times as bright as the smaller impression — but the speed of response and a smoothness of flicker-free dimming quite unlike the ‘stepped’ effect of other LED lights he had used.

The cold and warm white capabilities (variable between 3200K and 7200K) was another feature he was able to exploit via the colour temperature channel in the fixture control facilities as well as white and CTO on the colour wheel.

“We find we can get most of what we need from the colour temperature channel,” he said.

Paul Normandale observed that the impression XL can function as a powerful beam light although his ambitious design had called for a conventional washlight.

Performance wise, he was in no doubt. “There is not a great deal of space behind the louvres, but depth wise these are tiny.” Although the combination of XL’s and 120RZ’s dominate the back lighting they are keeping company with conventional automated overheads, some keylights and four double i-Pix BB4 washlights (fitted with barn doors) — not to mention the lasers, which were supplied by SFX of Chicago and operated by David Kennedy.

This is Paul Normandale’s first time out with the Scissor Sisters though he has designed for Coldplay, stable mates in the Dave Holmes management roster, which created the introduction.

“This time they wanted to get away from ‘disco’ and wanted a darker look … something more structured. It’s quite a flamboyant show but the premise is like a ‘peek-a-boo’ set.”

At Brixton Academy’s warm-up dates the six floor-mounted XL’s acted as cyc lights (with the louvres down) and then backlit the five piece band fronted by Ana Matronik and Jake Shears once the Kinesys system had raised the louvred sections, mounted on a sub truss, and ‘parked’ at variable heights (over a full travel distance of 27ft).

Glen Johnson is not the first to remark that the impressions remind him a lot of the old fast mirror scanning effects, and that the power generated enables it to produce an excellent strobing effect. “It’s an extremely fast head, really small and light so you can do things that would not be possible with conventional moving heads. They are extremely responsive — and the dimmer is pretty damn good.”

He is also impressed with the colours which he tends to use individually, for example working on a CTO look for one song, moving to CTB quarter strength on another … and then finally to a red range.

Lite Alternative have enjoyed a growing relationship with GLP’s impression family since Mark Ravenhill, GLP’s director, Global Key Players, first introduced them to the company when Paul Normandale was designing a show for Antony & The Johnsons. “Everyone was looking for an LED product that was quick and stable — and as soon as Mark arrived it gave GLP a huge presence,” said the designer. “Now these impressions are being used everywhere.”

While this rig remaind with the band until July 22, away from Europe production will pick up impressions locally before upscaling to arena shows from October 20 — when further impression XL and 120 RZ Zooms will be added to the set.

Summarised Mark Ravenhill, “Lite Alternative have always been a very progressive company, and having a rental house in the north of England with such a wide range of our inventory is very gratifying.”

All the lighting production (including 20 x GLP impression 120RZ RGB LED Zooms) were supplied by Bandit Lites — and it was left to experienced LD Graham Feast to animate the set.

Having originally intended to use the impression heads to function on elliptical arms — similar to his design for the Alicia Keys 2010 Freedom Tour — a late concept change saw the lighting designer redeploy the GLP heads as floor effects. He immediately praised the versatility of the Zooms in enabling the switch to be made fairly seamlessly, with minimal impact to the overall look of the show.

“Although I had intended using them as a beam effect, fortunately because of their size and flexibility, I was able to change them from a backlight position to a side shin lighting position,” he said.

In addition to providing a side light for the show’s dancers, they also functioned as a fill light for the various props and set pieces which move on and off stage during the show. With ten 120RZ’s positioned downstage and ten either side of centre, Graham Feast used the heads creatively to key off the stage movement.

The lighting operator has worked extensively with Halpin over the years, and when approached in February to manage the lighting on this tour, he jumped at the opportunity (having just finished an 11 month stint with Depeche Mode).

Although it is Graham Feast’s first outing with the 120RZ’s he was acutely aware of their growing presence on the touring market.

“They are excellent as key lights for the show and fit well as a floor light, andas they are compact they have little impact on the physical environment.

“They are as good an LED fixture as I have seen and I really like using them — particularly the zoom facility. They more than hold their own [against conventional moving lights on the rig] and are great for providing saturated colours.”

He said that working initially with Baz Halpin and later with Nick Whitehouse, once he had taken on the design mantle, proved an attractive proposition. “It’s always good to work with different people,” he said.

Explaining the design rationale, he added, “For the Westlife tour, William was keen to create a feeling of height akin to city skyscrapers. The impressions were the obvious choice and I constructed a series of 10ft and 20ft custom ladders to peer over the top of the video screens.”

Another man already familiar with the impressions after using them with JLS was touring LD, Dave Lee. He said the ability to scatter beams at such high-speed, using the fixtures’ 660° pan and 300° tilt movement, evoked fond memories of his entry to the business after the birth of the Rave scene 20 years ago — before fast scanning mirror devices had been replaced by moving yokes.
“At that point you lost the speed of being able to throw beams everywhere. But now it’s turned full circle — the GLP impression is seriously fast and like a moving mirror with a color wheel.”

The eight 10ft sections (split five and three) are positioned above the video screen with each five impressions suspended from each ladder beam to create a tower of light. In addition there are four 20ft sections — two downstage left and two downstage right, each supporting ten more impressions.
“Set above the Vari-Lites these just create so much height,” says Lee. And with its rich color palette he says he is able to complement the screen footage (much of which is devoted to the skyscraper buildings) perfectly.
Appraising the performance of the fixtures, he says the quality of the white beam is particularly notable. “On some LED fixtures the whites are so dirty — almost lavender — but with GLP’s white balance adjustment they can match conventional HMI lights.” And impressions have the advantage of being lightweight, reliable and can be rigged anywhere, he says.

After announcing their introduction into the Westlife set with a violent stab of color as the band enter their uptempo medley, the strident primary colors then make way for softer pastels during the ballads.
“Using the standard (10°) lens we have been able to create a lovely beam. The colors are marvelous — immensely accurate and I can get the precise colors I want,” states Lee. “They provide the bulk of the looks — zooming all over the place with snappy color changes; you simply can’t get that snappiness with CMY mixing.”

The production is a far cry from the boy band’s earlier touring sets, which featured staircases, risers, ramps etc. and Baz Halpin is certainly delighted with the results. “The impressions have performed perfectly and one of their most amazing qualities is that you can place them beside a VL3000 or a Mac 2K wash and they stand up in terms of beam and intensity.”
With Bandit Lites providing the tour with equipment, production has remained constant throughout — although its ‘scalability’ may be put to the test when Westlife play the 80,000-capacity Croke Park in their native Ireland, when the rig size is expected to double.

Pictures: Baz Halpin

Carrying much the same production as on the American leg (the prime difference being the scaling down of the nine video screens to five), the show has been programmed by Bryan Barancik (of Luxious Design) who has been with the tour from the beginning, and has been tasked with bringing the best out of Halpin’s creative concept.

The set designer was first shown the compact LED washlight by GLP’s Director of Key Global Players, Mark Ravenhiil, when he was searching for small fixtures to be placed on top of the curved set pieces. “I needed something light and bright — and the impressions fitted the bill.”
Bryan Barancik was already a convert, having seen them for the first time on the Billy Joel/Elton John tour last year. “But I had not used them personally until the touring production, Star Wars In Concert, [where he was Associate Lighting Designer]; they are truly a work horse,” he says.

“What is interesting is that in the case of both Star Wars and Alicia Keys the impressions were used as important scenic lighting elements ... that is, they were integrated into the scenery because of their size, weight (just 7.5kg), and performance.”

In fact the show delivers a complexity of visual effects. The impressions sit on top of 24 curved aluminium poles set on the top riser and protruding from the band risers. The set also incorporates the different LED screens, each on its own automation line and flown by cable winches on individual lighting headers, under three lighting trusses.

The impressions, which deliver their punch from 90 high-powered RGB LED’s, serve three distinct functions, states Baz Halpin. “They are used as side lighting
for the band, as well as for the dancers downstage and on the upstage riser. They also light the curved pipes upon which they were placed as well as providing a great beamy backlight.”

In view of the brightness of the screens the impressions are expected to punch above their weight. “For the majority of the show, we have had to run the screens at 30% to keep them aligned with the rest of the stage,” says Bryan Barancik. “Fortunately the impressions are bright enough to play along nicely with 1200W wash and spot fixtures as well as the screens.”
And of course, in addition to their beam strength the impressions provide a strong visual element since the curved pipe design — with the impressions mounted on top — allows for an abundance of looks, with differing angles and shapes providing strong aesthetic variations.

According to Bryan Barancik, the beginning of the show creates a curtain-raising effect, repositioning the screens very slowly and deliberately. “But, one of the best uses of the screens and lighting dynamic is in the encore, Empire State. All the screens move from/to different random positions, while the lighting travelling on the headers is grouped in slow movement and slow colour fades. There is an enormous amount of depth created by this.”
All the impressions used on the tour were from the inventory of PRG, who provided the lighting production support.

Initially the tour was planned to have taken place in smaller venues but, such was the success of the new CD that it quickly transpired that demand was much greater than expected. Many of the concerts moved to arenas with much larger capacities (ranging between 2,000-9,000) — and this leg will culminate in a performance at the vast, 20,000-capacity Lanxess Arena in Köln.
The variation in venue size had little effect on Gunnar Loose’s lighting design as he had created it with sufficient versatility and scalability to be easily implemented in tour venues, whatever the size.
Loose has been working for several years with Fettes Brot, constantly coming up with new designs for each tour.

As with previous concerts, the renowned LD again specified impression moving LED fixtures from GLP. This time he had steel ladders specially manufactured to take three impressions on each. "I have five frames in the back truss and four frames on the stage,” he explained. “The impressions provide me with the perfect lighting to implement my ideas.”
Loose complemented this with video technology from the same source. GLP supplied 16 G-LEC Phantom 30 frames to provide a vibrant LED video display. These were divided into four screens, mounted on the back truss.
Fettes Brot producer André Luth and designer Stefan Kassel created the video content, which consists mainly of self-produced images fitting seamlessly into the context of the recent album and the tour.

Gunnar Loose is particularly enthusiastic about the Phantom 30. "The colour and brightness of this system provide an absolute highlight. We run the frames at a maximum of 50 percent and yet they have brightness that some systems do not even reach at 100 percent!"

“When I first saw them at the Isle of Wight I immediately noticed how bright they were — almost as bright as a 1200 Watt Spot,” he reports. “In fact I run them alongside the 1200 Watt moving heads on the rig.”

Aside from their low draw, the fixtures, each housing 90 RGB luxeon lamps, offer him extreme weight advantages — particularly useful given some of the smaller theatres the band have been playing. This has enabled him to replace the previous design with finger trusses and also run towers, with climbing truss cranes (providing a ‘roof’ over the band) where loading points permit.

Andy is using the Impressions essentially as washlights, run off a Road Hog Full Boar lighting desk, to provide a rich colour backdrop to this high octane show  — with all lighting for the tour provided by PRG. “The movement and response are both excellent. We have been making full use of the pan and tilt  [660° x 330°] and the smoothness of the dimming, right down to the bottom, has been particularly impressive.” The LD confirms that the GLP heads have performed flawlessly throughout the tour, with the floor FX providing an extra dimension.

In fact it was as floor lighting that the Impressions were first deployed after the experienced lighting man took over responsibilities for the band nearly a year ago.