A Unique Company Supports Top Tours and Events with an Expanding Array of New Lighting Products
Morpheus Lights is one of the pioneer companies of the modern entertainment lighting industry. The Morpheus brand is recognized as a hallmark in intelligent lighting fixture development, with numerous innovations, including CYM color mixing and rotating gobos that have now become industry standards.
Vertical Reach
As a lighting production company, Morpheus led the industry in developing process efficiency for touring productions with innovative truss, power and data distribution systems. In recent years, the company enhanced its forward-focused reputation when it became exclusive U.S. distributor for the award winning LED products of the French manufacturer, Ayrton.
In the 1980’s, Morpheus toured internationally with top acts, including Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Garth Brooks, Gloria Estefan, Grateful Dead, Heart and Madonna. The company built its own moving lights and consoles, which ran an advanced proprietary control protocol and designed their own truss and cabling systems that were radically different from the industry standard. They were not interested in how other companies did things, instead concentrating on exploring the future as they saw it.
The original Morpheus Lights was reorganized under new ownership in late 1999, with Paul Weller stepping into the role of managing partner. In 2005, he brought Mark Fetto on board as chief operating officer.
Both have years of experience in the lighting industry. Weller worked as a production electrician, lighting director and production manager on touring shows in the pre-automated lighting era. He then ran a New York based consulting and equipment rental company in the motion picture business. Fetto was lighting director for such acts as Kenny Loggins and Toto and designer for The Moody Blues. Over a 16-year career at Vari-Lite, he evolved from console programmer to become general manager of North American operations. He was national sales manager for Stage Rigging before joining Morpheus.
In 2010, Morpheus consolidated its operations at the present location in Las Vegas, NV. The 28,000-square-foot facility has executive and sales offices, an area dedicated to distribution operations and, of course, a production shop.
“We’ve invested millions of dollars into new inventory and built up our infrastructure,” says Fetto. “It is all modern equipment. Everything has been updated, so nothing is over three years old.” Through this expansion, Morpheus has become a dealer for many industry standard brands such as Martin, Vari-Lite, Claypaky, MA Lighting, High End Systems and Chauvet.
The Ayrton Connection
Morpheus became the exclusive U.S. distributor for Ayrton in 2012. “The success of the Ayrton line has certainly helped us grow,” says Weller. He was introduced to Ayrton at the 2011 Showtech Trade Show in Berlin and thought their WildSun™500C wash fixture was worth bringing to the attention of Jeff Ravitz, of Intensity Advisors, the lighting designer for Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.
“I thought it might have an application in Jeff’s design for the Springsteen tour,” says Weller. “I invited Ayrton to Vegas to demo their fixtures to Mark and our senior technical and sales staff; Zeb Cochran, Jimmy Winn and Keith Bennett. I left them alone to do their own review. The response I got was ‘Hey, this doesn’t suck.’ (This, in the parlance of PLSN editor Nook Schoenfeld, is high praise indeed in the touring world).
The next step was a comprehensive testing session where Morpheus compared the WildSun-500C to all of the LED wash lights then on the market and to the tungsten-based CYM fixture that Ravitz had relied on for years. “The decision was completely up to Jeff,” says Fetto. “He could have selected any fixture in the room.”
“Ultimately, Jeff was attracted to the 500C’s form factor, warm white chip and its superior color range,” says Weller. “Once he specified them, we put in a substantial order with Ayrton and became their exclusive U.S. distributor.”
The real test followed as the fixtures spent the next year taking a beating under the demanding rigors of touring. Morpheus’ staff has decades of experience figuring out how to keep automated lights working, since long before luminaires came with user manuals. Their road crew (who work as full time employees of the company) and in-house technical department found a few problems that needed to be addressed, while working together to assess the performance of the fixtures.
“In the process,” says Fetto,” we established great communications with the French and formed a solid working partnership with Ayrton. We’ve been through it as a manufacturer,” Fetto continues, “so, we understand what it takes to support a product in the field. We’re not a company that just buys box goods and sticks ‘em out on the road.”
High Standards
In 2013, Morpheus brought the MagicPanel™602 to the U.S. market, and the demand for the fixture was “astonishing,” Weller recalls. “Ayrton did everything they could to keep up with the demand. Not only did Morpheus sell the product, we purchased a substantial amount of it into our inventory and tested it extensively in large arrays. Our past experience as a manufacturer really helped us to be a better distributor. We have high standards based on our history as a production company. We treat the customer’s situation as we would any Morpheus production issue, so if they have a problem, we have a problem.”
That hands-on testing certainly worked to Morpheus’ advantage in promoting the Ayrton brand. “When we say this new Ayrton product is good, it carries some weight with other production companies, who trust us as a supplier. They know that Morpheus will back it up,” says Fetto.
Since the introduction of MagicPanel-602, the Ayrton line has evolved exponentially, first with the “Radical” line, including IntelliPix™R, MagicBlade™R, MagicPanel™R and MagicRing™R9, then by the MagicDot™R, VersaPix™RS and the NandoBeam™ and DreamPanel™ lines.
At LDI 2016, the company featured its MagicPanel™FX, MagicBurst™, IntelliPix™XT and the expanded “Dot-Dot-Dot” MagicDot line with the addition of the sized-up MagicDot™XT and the 8:1 zoom optic MagicDot™SX. Keith Bennett, who joined the company in 2007, is the Las Vegas based national sales manager for the Ayrton line. Rich Dale joined Morpheus in mid-2016 as Eastern regional sales manager.
As a production company, Morpheus has to pay close attention to whatever products people are requesting and manage its production and rental inventory accordingly. While Morpheus obviously has an interest in having an ample inventory of Ayrton products, they have also invested heavily in grandMA control surfaces and high-demand fixtures like the Martin Viper and Quantum, Vari*Lite 3000 and Claypaky Scenius. The Hog line and other desks are also available, albeit in less depth.
“Our production manager, Jimmy Winn, gets calls and is handed plots with requests for a wide variety of gear. He works to fill those plots with the specified luminaires. We invest in products that are in high enough demand that it makes sense to have them on hand in inventory,” says Fetto.
While Fetto deals mainly with the touring segment at Morpheus, account executive Chris Perron handles local production rentals to hotels and conventions plus one-off rentals across the U.S. In December each year, the National Finals Rodeo rolls in for ten days at Thomas & Mack Arena. Strangely enough, “it is the toughest ticket to get in town the whole year in Vegas,” says Fetto. Morpheus supplies lighting systems for the entertainment support at MGM during the run.
Jumping Through Hoops
“Morpheus has come a long way,” says Weller. “We have great personnel, great equipment and can support any size production project. On the distributor side, we jump through hoops to make sure people get what they need to make their projects happen.”
“Our production management and tech staff understand what it takes to put on a show successfully,” he adds. “They have been out on the road as crew chiefs and programmers. They bring that knowledge and those talents to supplying gear to people, for both the one-off shows and the tours we are supplying, while always looking to see if something can be done better or faster.”
The company’s long-term manufacturing experience comes into play for custom projects. “We have processes in place and know how to specify and fabricate things very quickly,” says Weller. Such was the case for the 2016 Springsteen tour, which was originally envisioned as a nine-week run in support of a boxed set re-release of The River on that album’s 35th anniversary. Morpheus assembled the tour on very short notice over the 2015 holidays. “Jeff Ravitz envisioned an oversized 9-light LED ‘Maxi-Brute’ unit for audience blinders. We got started on the “Morpheus CP-9” project the Monday after Thanksgiving and had the fixtures designed, assembled and packed into custom road cases the day after the New Year.”
“Decisions that we made to get the nine-week run out the door on short notice were immediately reviewed once the tour was extended to 35 weeks into stadiums in Europe as well as the U.S.,” says Fetto. “We went to work to make the rig more efficient for the extended tour by purchasing Tyler GT truss.”
Designing and manufacturing custom leg extensions for the GT truss permitted Morpheus to get Ayrton’s oversize Magic Ring™R9 LED beam projectors, the CP-9 blinders and the PRG Bad Boy spots linked with PRG’s GroundControl followpot system inside the truss.
While the first leg of the tour progressed in U.S. arenas, the Morpheus shop was specifying and building the improved “Rig 2,” which was then shipped to Europe via ocean freight. One design consideration/concern was that two-high stacks with the extended legs might not be as stable as a standard GT truss stack. (The lateral wheelbase on 24-inch Tyler truss is only about 18 inches.) Emulating the heavy-duty dollies that transport Morpheus’ original FlipBox™ trusses, Weller and Cochran designed similar dollies with a 22-inch wheelbase, which minimized the problem. The four-inch increase in wheelbase substantially improved lateral stability, cut down on deployment time and made the production faster, safer and more efficient.
The Gigs
With inventory investment and expansion has come a wealth of work. Morpheus supplied and supported five tours in the summer and fall of 2016; including Springsteen, Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band, Boston, Korn, Breaking Benjamin and String Cheese Incident. Virtually the entire String Cheese rig was brand new gear, featuring Ayrton VersaPix™RS, MagicDot™R and NandoBeam™S9 wash units, along with Claypaky Scenius Spots.
On the rental side, Morpheus recently supplied the Bruce Rodgers/Roy Bennett/Bob Barnhart design for Lady Gaga’s performance at the Super Bowl LI Halftime Show (see “Event Lighting” feature, this issue, page 42), with a large package of Ayrton LED units including the new MagicPanel™FX, MagicDot™XT and Cosmo-
Pix™R fixtures.
“Super Bowl was a huge success and has spurred demand. We’ve had lots of interest in both fixtures,” says Fetto. “The expansions of the MagicPanel and MagicDot lines offer designers new options that are really attractive.”
Weller and Fetto are quite aware that their customers for Ayrton products are also potential competitors. “Competition is real, but it’s friendly,” says Fetto, “The biggest lighting companies in the world have shops in Vegas. They know we offer a high-level service that’s very attractive to certain customers. Regardless of who’s providing the gear, Morpheus’ philosophy incorporates a cooperative production model that asks the question: “What do we have to do to make this design happen?”
“While certainly not a normal distributor model,” he adds, “that flexibility has been useful in promoting the Ayrton brand, and also makes Morpheus a go-to company for other production houses to supplement their own Ayrton inventory on shorter-term projects.”
Rising demand for Morpheus production values, staff and the Ayrton product line has brought several recent new hires to the company with business development manager Tom Celner and Pete Engel as Ayrton product support manager.
Celner, based in Chicago, will assist Morpheus’ sales and management team in expanding and diversifying their clientele. An award-wining programmer, director and designer for many of the industry’s most prominent artists, Celner is an experienced product development manager, specializing in console development manufacturing.
Engel is responsible for national customer service and technical support. Based in Morpheus’ Las Vegas headquarters, he works closely with technical services manager Zeb Cochran. Engel’s experience includes many years representing Robert Juliat products in the U.S. That, coupled with Cochran’s systems level diagnostics capabilities, promises to take Morpheus’ support services to new heights.
In an industry that has never stood still, Morpheus, something of a David among Goliaths, continues setting new standards with its pioneering innovations.
