Congratulations to our CHAUVET Professional video team for hitting the top 10 most viewed videos on Live Design’s website. Way to go team!. The Rogue RH1 Prism Power video made waves in the industry and helped us launch a product that offered something different to the lighting world. Check it out one more time!
NEW YORK– Even by the standards of pop punk, a genre famous for blending outrageously divergent sounds, The Wonder Years stands out for its incredibly wide-ranging style. Deftly swinging from subtle melodies to heart-pounding choruses in the blink of a musical eye, this freewheeling band from the Philadelphia area takes fans on an emotionally charged journey with every performance. Lighting designer Victor Zeiser of Squeek Lights and lighting director David Summers visually capture the eclectic pop punk band’s spirit on its current Fall Tour with a multi-faceted light show featuring a collection of fixtures from CHAUVET Professional.
What makes Summers’ role in this endeavor especially impressive is that it represents his first effort as a lighting director. “The Wonder Years had decided that in addition to being their tour manager, Dave was also going to become their LD,” said Zeiser. “He showed me a bid from another lighting company that wanted to send out some decade-old gear, so it was quickly decided that Squeek Lights would work out a package for him as well as create a design and program a show for him to travel with on the tour.”
Drawing on Squeek Lights’ extensive inventory of LED fixtures, Zeiser put together a package that included Rogue R2 Washes, Nexus 4×1 bars, COLORdash Batten-Quad 6 fixtures and Vesuvio foggers. Most of the fixtures were positioned on six upstage towers to create a consistent look throughout the tour despite variations in stage sizes and to deliver sweeping mood changes.
The six towers range from 6’ -10’ in height. Each tower has an R2 Wash on top with a 4×1 Nexus bar hung vertically below it. At the base of the towers are clip lights just peeking over the amp line. COLORdash Batten-Quad-6 fixtures are used to provide side light. A group of four Vesuvio foggers is positioned vertically along the downstage line.
“We wanted to strike a balance of creating a high energy show that isn’t exhausting for the crowd to look at,” said Zeiser. “We have a lot of really bright looks with lots of movement, but we even out these looks with moments when only one or two lights are on.”
Explaining the small clip lights on his rig, Zeiser noted, “Dave had a really great idea for some work lights to provide a tungsten look, so we got him some small dimmer packs and purchased 10 clip lights from a Home Depot. There is a point in the show where we direct all the R2 Washes down at the band, zoom wide in a deep blue and push the clip lights bright — it is really beautiful!
“During the first concert in New York, during this part of the lightshow, a circle pit opened up and instead of the normal insanity, couples started slow dancing in our light,” continued Zeiser. “I’ve never seen anything like that happen before! On the flip side of things, during the biggest moment of the show, we have four Vesuvio vertical foggers lining the downstage edge, and when we let those rip it pushes things over the top.”
Keeping pace with a band that eagerly moves from the soaring to the soulful required a procession of fresh looks. Zeiser and Summers served up these looks by sprinkling the stage with different beam angles and pouring a rich array of colors across it and the audience. The pair also relied on atmospherics to create some magic. “A fun gag Dave came up with during programming with the Vesuvios was to turn off all the other lights and just use the lights in the foggers to uplight the band members for one song,” said Zeiser. “This creates a moment totally different from the rest of the show. Getting that variety is key on this tour.”
Zeiser described how the different fixtures in the rig contributed to the eve- changing looks he and Summers laid out on the stage. “With the exception of the Home Depot clip lights, the entire rig is Chauvet,” he said. “I love how tight the R2s’ zoom can create a punchy beam, but then it can also get wide enough where the six units can wash all the guys when we flip the lights around. The range of colors we get with the Rogues is great, and the ring effects provide a quick and dirty way of adding some texture to the look. I chose the Nexus fixtures because I love how they look pointed at the crowd, and it provides a nice layer of visual interest at a low intensity as well as being able to be used for audience abuse when we let them rip.”
There was also a practical benefit Zeiser considered when putting together the rig for The Wonder Years. “When I was told space in the trailer was a big concern, I decided the R2 washes were the fixture of choice,” he said. “All six of our R2 fixtures fit in a single case, and all six Nexus units fit in another small case. This makes it super easy for them to deal with on the road.”
That proverbial road is taking The Wonder Years Tour across the US in less than two months. The pace on this journey can be hectic, but it’s been made easier for Summers by some user-friendly fixtures and the opportunity to push his lighting ideas to the limit for a band that blows past musical boundaries.
LDI 2015 booth #539 (AKA CHAUVET Professional) was a hotbed of activity from the time we got there till the time we left. Our entire crew put in a ton of effort in getting our booth up and looking sharp. We would like to thank everyone who helped us out on this show or provided gear and support. Kinetic Lighting provided us with a fantastic design and programming team, Rachel Miller and Geoffrey Galper. Atomic Design and Showcat provided us with the scenic elements, and Farrington Productions provided us with the amazing costume and mannequin that we used in the Ovation area of the booth. Thank you all, we could not have done it without you! Check out some of our favorite images from the booth.
October is one of our favorite months. Fall baseball (go Cubs!), football is back in full swing, the leaves are changing amazing colors, there is a crispness in the air, and it is apple cider season. Oh, and its LDI time!
That’s right, LDI is just around the corner. Las Vegas is about to get a dose of entertainment lighting professionals that it has not seen since, well… last year. The Las Vegas Convention Center is about to get transformed into a maze of lights, haze, and madness that would make Jimi Hendrix envious. We here at CHAUVET Professional have been getting ready for LDI for quite a while now. Not only have we designed a very cool booth for the show, but we are also launching some extremely hot new products. For those of you who are coming to the show, please make sure to not only come in the booth and check out our products, but also say hi! We are always happy to see our friends at the shows and get some in person face time.
For those of you who will not be coming, we are sorry that we will not see you, but make sure to to check out the videos and pics from the show that we will be posting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram during the show, then on the blog after the show is over.
So, for a sneak peak at what’s new at CHAUVET Professional, Check out these videos –
(London, UK) The OnBlackheath festival in South East London has quickly established itself as one of England’s most popular late summer music events. Set on the picturesque Blackheath Common, the two-day gathering features an eclectic mix of live music and pop-up food stalls, an alluring combination that earned it five nominations for Britain’s Festival Awards in 2014, its very first year of existence. This year the festival turned up the juice even more with a new “Make Noise” DJ stage that featured EDM stars like Erol Alkan and Grammy-winner Tom Findlay (Groove Armada), along with a dazzling array of 28 pixel-mapped Nexus 4×4 LED panels from CHAUVET Professional.
When festival supplier London Speaker Hire approached John Rogers to design a lighting concept for the Make Noise stage, Rogers decided that the direction of the design should take on an obvious club persona. “With the stage being devoted solely to dance music, I wanted the lighting to reflect that and make it immediately apparent to you as you approached the tent,” commented Rogers.
Rogers conveyed his dance club messages on stage by arranging his ensemble of Nexus 4×4 panels in a floor-rigged design, then making them come alive with a variety of pixel-mapped driven looks. These intense pixel-mapped patterns, along with the “colored fog” from six CHAUVET DJ Geyser RGB foggers in Rogers’ rig, transformed the stage, giving it an undeniably club-like feeling.
“In terms of looks I wanted a high-impact fixture that suited pixel mapping, and, seeing as I had used the Nexus 4×4’s previously, it was an easy decision,” continued Rogers. “It’s not the first time I’ve programmed and operated with them. They’re really bright and they mix color very well, especially considering they’re RGB fixtures. The 4x4s are so punchy, at times I had to pull intensity out of them to stop them washing the movers and front lights out.”
Rogers controlled the entire show via an Avolites Quartz console running Titan 9.1 software, which enabled him to make the most out of the fixture’s pixel-mapping features. “The 4x4s are really generous in allowing 3-pin, 5-pin and ArtNet connections, so I knew whatever I decided to do in terms of data runs they’d be versatile and not dictate how I’d have to run my lines,” he said.
As the festival has quite an early curfew, half of the acts were on in daylight. The six Geysers, which Rogers integrated into the set, were by all accounts his secret weapons to creating the desired club atmosphere. “I really relied upon the Geysers to create that murky evening club feel in broad daylight,” he said. “It’s always a bit of a fight against the daylight at a festival, but the Geysers added a stand-out effect that pulled in crowds of all ages to dance throughout the day. The added bonus of the dense haze filling the tent meant that the lights were always part of the show.”
As OnBlackheath is a family-friendly festival, in the daytime kids could be seen dancing with their parents in front of the Make Noise Stage. At night, however, the stage took on a different persona. Continued Rogers: “Once the sun went down the whole mood of the tent kicked up a gear with the Nexus and Geysers delivering the ‘club’ atmosphere that I wanted to achieve.”
Rogers concluded: “Erol Alkan closed the stage on Sunday, and was nice enough to say that the lighting was fantastic after his set! I really had fun designing this lighting concept and I think the Chauvet fixtures were a huge part of making the Make Noise stage stand out across the site.”
ANAHEIM, CA – Making the transition from the portable to the permanent is nothing new at Saddleback church. One of the most widely known and highly respected houses of worship in the world, Saddleback started out as a portable church, holding its first service on Easter Sunday, 1980 in the apartment of its founders Rick and Kay Warren. Saddleback, which now has 10 campuses in California and four overseas, did not even acquire its first permanent home until 1993, when it opened the doors of its Lake Forest, CA church.
This June, history repeated itself for Saddleback, when it made the transition from portable church to permanent campus in Anaheim by opening a 40,000-square-foot facility with ten classrooms and a 1,000-person worship area across from Angels Stadium. When it came to lighting the new campus, which is located in a retrofitted building, Saddleback technical director Greg Baker called on CCI Solutions to provide something that wasn’t even available back in 1993 – an energy-efficient LED system. CCI met this request with the help of a collection of fixtures from CHAUVET Professional.
2015-09-13 Saddleback Anaheim
“We’ve been working with Saddleback for 20 years,” said Duke DeJong, Director of Sales and Marketing at CCI Solutions. “As the church has grown, it’s always remained committed to staying on top of technology to help in its mission. When the church was ready to transition Saddleback Anaheim from a portable to a permanent campus, Greg gave us two goals: to provide an LED system that would be energy efficient and low maintenance, while creating an engaging environment that would look good but wouldn’t break the bank.”
The CCI team accomplished these goals with an LED rig in the main worship area that included four Rogue R1 Wash moving fixtures, four Rogue R1 Spot fixtures, four Rogue R2 Spot fixtures and six (6) Ovation E-190WW ellipsoidal fixtures with 26° HR lens tubes. “This is a large rectangular room, so the lighting needs are fairly straightforward,” said Mark Pearson, who led the CCI design team on this project. “We wanted fixtures with the output that could give us the coverage we needed in a large area and would also deliver good color quality.”
Given that Saddleback is a multi-campus church, the light rig also had to produce high quality light, according to Pearson. “Typically, worship happens here locally at the campus level and then the message is delivered via video from the main campus,” he said. “The lighting during live worship at the Anaheim campus has to be just as good as what people see on video during the message from the main Lake Forest campus; otherwise there is a disconnect and it feels like it’s a lesser venue.”
The Rogue R1 Washes in the CCI rig are flown over the stage and are used for general top/back lighting. Powered by seven RGBW 15W Quad-Color LEDs, the washes deliver vivid colors and impactful visual effects to accent services at key points. Flown over the stage and on the floor as uplighting are the Rogue Spot fixtures used for effect lighting during services and musical performances.
Pearson positioned the six Ovation ellipsoidals on a lighting pipe located mid house. From this position, the fixtures provide front lighting for the worship teams and general speaking.
Like that Lake Forest campus, the new Anaheim facility has been eagerly embraced by worshippers in the community However, in contrast to the lighting available in the 1990s when Rick Warren (who is the author of the Purpose Driven Life), moved his congregation into its first permanent home, LED fixtures at Anaheim today are cool, energy efficient and low maintenance. Like Saddleback itself, lighting technology has grown over the years.
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For more information on CCI Solutions visit: www.ccisolutions.com
London, England – (For Immediate Release) — London’s world-renowned nightlife has kept the city’s pulse ticking well into the wee hours for decades. From the 1930s, when renowned bartender Harry Craddock published the Savoy Cocktail Book (a drinks manual still in print today), onto the vibrant Soho of the swinging sixties, to Britpop era Camden, and up to Shoreditch cool, the UK capital has been home to many of the world’s most talked about clubs and bars. It’s quite natural, then, that the London Club and Bar Awards, an event celebrating the city’s nightlife industry, be full of glitz, glamour and a dazzling lighting design, created this year with an array of fixtures from CHAUVET Professional.
Now in its twenty-second year, the awards recognise the biggest achievements by members of the club and nightlife industry within the past twelve months, awarding gongs in 13 categories, including Best Club, Best Bar and Best Party. Having supplied the event for several years previously, London-based Halo was once again tasked with supplying this year’s event, which took place at the swanky Intercontinental Hotel in London’s glistening Park Lane district. Halo called upon their extensive roster of CHAUVET fixtures to create a show worthy of its legacy.
In order to create that classic showbiz look for the event (which has seen in previous years presenters as distinguished as Boy George and guests such as Richard Branson), Halo owner and LD for the awards Yann Guenancia embraced an assortment of CHAUVET Professional fixtures, including 10 Legend 330SR Spots, eight Legend 412 moving washes, nine Rogue R2 Beams, four Rogue R1 Beams, two Ovation F-165WW LED Fresnel fixtures, two Ovation E-190WW LED ellipsoidal fixtures, 40 PVP S5 LED panels and 16 CHAUVET DJ SlimPAR Hex 3 IRC par style units, thus ensuring the lighting choice was as bountiful as the best stocked bar.
During the awards ceremony itself, Guenancia relied heavily upon the CHAUVET Professional Legend fixtures to pepper the custom-built stage with sharp beams of bright light, necessary in order to draw attention to and illuminate the award presenters and winners. The powerful zoom and output of the Legends were also aided by the CHAUVET Professional Ovation fixtures, which added a dramatic theatrical spot look to the stage area akin to that of larger awards ceremonies such as The Brits or the European MTV Awards.
The collection of Rogue beams specified by Guenancia played two central roles to the evening. Firstly, they contributed brushes of colour to the awards ceremony, bathing the stage in warm light at selective moments. Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Rogues, however, was during the post ceremony antics. Swirling around and populating the dance floor with aerial effects, gobos and colours, the LED fixtures brought a suitably intense array of colours and beams to the social spectrum.
Intensifying the atmosphere of the dance floor were CHAUVET’s Amhaze II water-based smoke machines. Guenancia incorporated the hazers within the dance floor so as to emulate the club environment so often inhabited by the guests.
Under the gaze of hundreds of representatives from the crème de la crème of London’s club and bar scene, the CHAUVET fixtures certainly didn’t fail to produce an electric atmosphere. The night was by all accounts a fitting event for the last twelve months’ worth of nightlife achievements, made all the more enjoyable by an accompanying full on cocktail party beforehand. Without the guests, such an atmosphere couldn’t have been created. Having stated that, thanks to Halo’s input of CHAUVET fixtures, the whole package served up straight as one perfect annual cocktail per se.
(Birmingham, UK) Held at Birmingham’s NEC from 12-14 September, the PRO show – sister to the long established BPM show – is the latest trade show to cater to the Professional AV industry in the UK. Exhibiting for the second time, CHAUVET Professional took the opportunity to unveil several new products at its stand. What’s more, CHAUVET’s incredible roster of fixtures could be seen at the centrally located CHAUVET Arena, a club-like area which stimulated great interest among the thousands of visitors.
“PRO was a real success for us,” said CHAUVET General Manager for Europe Michael Brooksbank. “Visitor numbers were up at our stand on last year, and the Arena provided the perfect opportunity to show off some of our best-selling fixtures in their natural habitat.”
Some 10,000 visitors were treated with no less than five new CHAUVET Professional product launches, including: the PVP X3, the STRIKE 4, and the Rogue RH1 Hybrid.
The PVP X3, CHAUVET’s LED display panel featuring a tight 3.9 mm pixel pitch and SMD 2121 black body Tri-Colour (red, green, blue) LEDs, created a big stir among those in the video and visuals industries. With standard illuminance of 1,560 NITS (adjustable up to 2,100 NITS) and wide 130° viewing angle, the PVP X3 delivers brilliant colour reproduction and exceptional clarity at both close-range and far-range distances over a broad spectating area. Ideal for touring as well as permanent installations, the lightweight 8.5 kg (18.7 lb.) panel is easy to assemble into video screens and walls of all sizes. It features magnetic LED modules for easy road replacement, and low power consumption (115W), which allows large sections of wall to be powered from a single circuit.
Another well-received addition was CHAUVET Professional’s multi format white warm LED strobe wash, the STRIKE 4. Featuring four independently focusable 100W COB (Chip On Board) LEDs, the fixture offers great coverage and flexibility, along with smooth 16-bit dimming control for incandescent-style fades. Automated strobe effects make the STRIKE 4 great for use as an audience blinder as well, whilst its individual manual pan control of each LED pod and adjustable PWM are ideal for on-camera applications.
Last but by no means least, CHAUVET Professional presented its new Rogue RH1 Hybrid, a fixture which is taking the much championed Rogue series to new levels. Combining a powerful beam and spot effect in one compact unit, this amazingly versatile light can produce a tight beam angle of 1°-4.5° in Beam Mode, and a Zoom angle of 5°-19° in Spot Mode, for an array of beam size options. Plus, it’s got an added Frost feature for use as a wash effect as well. Powered by a 330-watt 8000K Osram Sirius lamp, the Rogue RH1 Hybrid offers a designer’s “dream palette” of mind-blowing visual effects, including: two layerable prisms (5- and 8-facet); two gobo wheels; and 13 vibrant colours. Two DMX profiles – 25- or 30-channel – give users programming flexibility.
“At CHAUVET Professional, we put a lot of thought into developing products that meet lighting professionals’ ‘wish list’ and offer the performance enhancements and features that our customers demand, so we were very excited to display our latest offerings at PRO 2015,” concluded Brooksbank, “What’s more, we’re exceptionally pleased at the feedback we’ve been getting both about our products and about the show itself, which, in our opinion, has the potential to be one of the most important for the UK market.”
CHAUVET Professional made a huge impact at BPM and The PRO Show in Birmingham England from September 12 to the 14th at the NEC Hall. Comprised of Rogue, Legend, NXT-1, PVP, COLORado, Ovation, and Nexus series products, the light show inside the aptly named CHAUVET Arena was mind blowing!!! Way to go team UK!
RALEIGH, NC – An impressive Romanesque structure that reaches over 115’ high, the Memorial Bell Tower defines the heart of the North Carolina State University campus. After athletic victories by the school’s “Wolfpack” teams and at other major events, the tower is bathed in brilliant NCSU red. However, during one big celebration at the start of the 2015 school year, the giant tower stood by colorlessly as if in admiration of a more spectacular lighting display. The riveting lightshow that overshadowed the tower and captivated a crowd of 50,000 on the campus’ main square was created by LD Daniel “Tebo” Thibault, using a collection of LED fixtures anchored by the Rogue R2 Wash and COLORado2-Quad Zoom Tour from CHAUVET Professional.
Working for Alpha Production Group, Thibault drew on the color and intense output of the LED fixtures to create a commanding visual aura around the 40’ x 40’ “Bell Tower Stage” at Packapalooza, an annual festival/block party for students and locals to welcome in the school year. I’ve used the COLORados and Rogues at a lot of events over the past year and I’ve come to rely on them for giving me really bright colorful looks,” said the LD. “This is a big outdoor festival that started in the afternoon and went well into the evening, so I really had to go bold with the lighting in the day and colorful at night.”
This year’s Packapalooza was built around a “Hip Hop Time Machine” theme and featured North Carolina State alum rapper Rapsody. She was joined on stage by other rappers with roots and connections to the Tar Heel State, including Southern alternative wonders Nappy Roots, who performed their hit “Good Day,” North Carolina native Petey Pablo, and Terminator X, formerly of the Grammy-nominated Public Enemy.
The CHAUVET Professional fixtures provided the visual energy to keep up with the performances on stage, said Thibault, who controlled his rig with a grandMA2 on a PC setup. Flown on back and mid-stage truss and spaced evenly, the COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tours were used to backlight the performers. The Rogue fixtures were positioned on front truss to help fill the front wash and add color tone to the front lighting. The fast-moving LED heads were also swung out to do double duty as moving blinders.
“In some places on the rig, I subbed out a Rogue for a COLORado on the mid-stage truss to give me some movement capabilities, which allowed me to make specials and area washes,” said Thibault. “The rig was flown the day of the event and run in the daylight, so it was hard to do a focus – so what was really good was that the Rogues killed it for me by being able to fill in the holes we missed.”
Thibault also appreciated being able to match the colors between the COLORados and Rogues. “I love using the different Chauvet fixtures together,” he said. “The colors and the dimming curves match wonderfully and it makes for some great looks. It also gives me more freedom when designing, since I don’t have to worry about the lights meshing.”
After Packapalooza ended and the stage was torn down and Thibault’s lighting rig was packed and moved away, the NC State campus returned to normal and the Memorial Tower was ready be bathed in red light again, as the Wolfpack resumed another football season. For one night though, the “legend in stone,” as the big tower is often called, took a back seat to a legendary lighting design created with a dynamic LED package.
For more information on Alpha Production Group visit www.alphaproductiongroup.com
For more information on Daniel Thibault visit www.liastudios.com