Legend 230SR Beams and PVP MVP 12 video panels helped lighting designer Ben Danielowski make the 42West performance of Beatles’ tribute band Prefab 4 extra awesome in this excellent low-ceiling New York City club!  Check it out!

NEW YORK – Liverpool’s Cavern Club, the iconic venue that gave the Beatles their first taste of fame, began life as a cellar warehouse and later served as an air raid shelter during World War II.  So, it’s only fitting that the world’s first interactive Beatles Tribute Show, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Y3), made its New York appearance at 42West, a venue that served as a mid-town Manhattan parking garage, before being transformed into one of the city’s hippest nightspots.

All of this may make for nice symmetry and a cool experience for audiences, but the low ceilings of the former parking structure created a special challenge when it came to lighting the group’s performance. Lighting Designer Ben Danielowski met this challenge in impressive fashion by utilizing the zoomable prism on Legend 230SR Beam from CHAUVET Professional.

“The club is a fantastic venue that’s very popular in New York,” said the LD. “However, as a former parking structure it does present some challenges when you’re trying to light a rock show. With 12′-14′ ceilings, and large support beams blocking most of my first choices of angles, it was difficult to get many of the great clean shots I was able to achieve during previous productions of this show when we’ve been touring.”

Danielowski relied on the Legend 230SR Beam with its zoomable 8-facet rotating prism to help him achieve the desired beam coverage on the stage despite the low ceiling and relative scarcity of good angles. Zooming the prism out, he was able to get wide coverage in the low ceiling structure, while at the same achieving the distance needed to hit the stage with light.

“I was very impressed with the Legends,” said Danielowski. “They were very fast and very bright, aside from having a nice beam angle and the zooming prism.  They were a great alternative to the more expensive moving fixtures, and since budget is never not an issue that’s always very important.”

Danielowski planned on using CHAUVET Professional’s ÉPIX Bar 2.0 and ÉPIX Strip 2.0 at Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’s New York appearance, but since 42West already had a massive 36′ long by 8′ tall video wall made of CHAUVET Professional MVP 12 LED Video Wall Panels, he had to put that plan on hold. “I can’t wait to use the ÉPIX products on tour, but since the MVP wall is already installed at this club, we changed our plans. We created a video interface with “Max6” that allowed us to push images, video, or DMX values to the MVP screen via an iPad remote.  It was an amazing show. I had a great programming team of Zack Janesky and Jamie Roderick.”

The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah band, “PreFab4” also came in for praise from Danielowski. “The band members Mat Leland, Anthony Rella, Eli Zoller and Rich Berta are very talented,” said the LD. “Each of the guys sing and they all jump on different instruments throughout the show, so it’s very dynamic with a lot of on-stage energy. This is really the first interactive Beatles tribute show, with all the songs played by request, so audience engagement is key.

“Our lighting was a big part of the show’s look and feel,” continued Danielowski. “The audience loved the design.  They felt immersed in the show, since many of the lighting looks that were on stage were mimicked in the audience. That made us feel very good about our work.”