Lighting Company
Christie Lites
Venue
Various (Tour)
Production Team
- Production Designer, Programmer, Director: Tom Taylor/Tanck.co
- Lighting Crew Chief: Sam “Kenny” Kenyon
- Lighting Tech: Greg Miller
- Tour Manager: Mark Brightman
- Production Manager: Craig Sherwood
Gear
- 1 Avolites Titan Lighting Console
- 82 Martin MAC Aura
- 6 Martin MAC Axiom
- 19 Martin VDO Sceptron (1m)
- 12 GLP impression X4 Bar 20
- 18 GLP JDC1 Strobe
- 1 Robe BMFL Followspot
- 44 Thomas 4-Lite Molefay (Linear)
- 4 Look Solutions Unique 2.1 Hazer
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings:
Tom Taylor is the production designer, programmer and lighting director for Louis Tomlinson’s 2022 tour. Taylor is with TANCK.co the design company in the UK. Taylor had worked with Louis’ management company before, so he says they knew what they were getting into. The original brief was just “no video.”
“As his first solo tour we spent about four months slowly batting ideas about, finding out about each other and what he likes and dislikes,” Taylor says. “We ended up here after about four revisions. Since then we’ve done some live streams and alternative designs for upcoming shows together, and it’s a much slicker process now that we know each other better.”
Taylor says he personally loves using the Avolites console for the tour. “The new boards and recent software updates have really brought it right up there with the more used black console everyone carts about. The timeline feature is incredibly well implemented and the huge amount of faders and buttons give me a lot of flexibility—especially on a tour like this where the venue rigs change almost daily. We do also use MA consoles for our other projects when we have to open it up to the vast pool of amazing programmers there are, but I gotta say I enjoyed working with the Avo on this.”
Taylor continues, “Christie Lites are always an absolute dream to work with. Top prep work from LX Crew Chief Kenny Kenyon and LX Tech Greg Miller meant that every day was slick from start to finish. The kit had zero faults during our six weeks of abuse and went back almost as clean as it came out! There’s 19 songs in the set list but we’ve been sticking to a relatively rigid 16. The order of these changes show to show to try new things out. The entire show is timecoded up to the eyeballs in case I was to go down with Covid, almost anyone can rock up and plug in the cable and every single strobe hit, blinder, end of song look is dialed in.”
“From start to finish the entire US run has been an absolute breeze,” Taylor concludes. “Incredible and lovely crew, band and management team. A perfect way to come back into this tour after taking the last two years off. I also gotta give a shout out to his fans as well—they’re f-ing mental and make every night an experience.”
More photos by Steve Jennings:
