Lighting Co
PRG
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
Lighting Designer & Director: Dave Taylor
Lighting Techs: Tommy Horton
Video Content: Mathematics
Tour/Production Manager: Tim Peterson
Stage Manager: Michael Quinn
Stage Technician: Casey Hilliard
Monitors/Video: Brandon Jones
Video Co: Felix Lighting
Staging: All Access Staging & Productions
Trucking: Janco
Smoke Effects: PRG
Gear
1 ChamSys MQ Pro 2014 & PC, w/ Maxi-Wing, SnakeSys R4 & SnakeSys B4 (2)
18 GLP impression X4s
12 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot
5 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures
14 Color Kinetics Color Blast TRX
14 Clay Paky Sharpys
12 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
20 Martin Atomic Strobes
4 Reel EFX DF-50 Diffusion hazers
4 HES F-100 smoke machines
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings
Dave Taylor
Lighting Designer & Director
“I first started working for Empire of the Sun over a year ago when I was approached by the bands management, and former designer Simon Aitken. I had seen a few of the performances in the past and was excited by the opportunity to take over the reins.
“Throughout their career, Empire of the Sun has been well known for their visual and imaginative show and have had a history of brilliant lighting designers and operators within their team. It was a easy ‘yes’ from me.
“The show continues to build and with it we are constantly evolving. We have variations to the song list depending on our environment, from festival settings to our headline shows. Although the video content is time coded I still continue to run my ChamSys console live and have a great deal of fun in doing so.
“We carry a large amount of equipment and staging with us around the globe. We have custom built many pieces of the staging and lighting effects into the set pieces and costumes which create a wonderful addition to any venue we walk into. We tour a complete setup of ChamSys network devices and wireless DMX to control the lighting elements and set pieces.
“I think the greatest advantage to having toured so many various sized stages and venue locations is to build a big show file and to do your homework, it is much easier to downsize fixtures or aspects in my ChamSys console to suit the various capacities and ever-changing lighting elements that we come across. Doing your homework is 90% of the gig and my ChamSys console makes this task a breeze with it’s incredible speed to patch and manipulate fixtures and parameters to suit each show. We run the video content out of our pro tools rig on stage, the method and the system is a great way to approach our setup particularly with time out the front often being very limited and changeovers being very tight.
“We are very lucky to have such a creative and imaginative team, everybody associated with the show contributes endless hours and commitment to building our spectacle and pushing the performance boundaries. The communication between the artist and production elements is very important to what we do and is not only seen in the work that we present but also in the imagination of the fans and crowds that embrace it. I look forward to what is to come.”
More Empire of the Sun 2014 tour photos by Steve Jennings at www.plsn.me/Empire2014Tour.
