Where does the design process begin? For Erich Bertti, the answer is clear. “When conceiving a design, my first concern is for it to be versatile,” said the Santos, Brazil-based designer. Bertti hooked up with the perfect creative soul twin this summer when he created the lightshow for Grammy-winning Swedish hard rockers Ghost on their 27-date USA tour, which ended with a September 11 show at LA’s Kia Forum.
“The main characteristic that caught my attention about Ghost is their versatility,” said Bertti. “I love their interaction of rock and theatrical. The way they go from real heavy ballads to up-beat tempo rock tunes is great – and it demands the same level of versatility from a lightshow in terms of color and look changes.”
Working with a set design by Ghost frontman Tobais Forge and Sooner Routhier, Bertti had plenty of opportunities to spread his creative wings in multiple directions. “The truss configuration on this tour made it easy to create symmetrical, yet aggressive, looks that interacted really well with the intense changes between songs,” he observed.
A collection of 36 CHAUVET Professional Maverick MK3 Wash fixtures, which were supplied by Premier Global Productions, played a key role in helping Bertti serve up his broad mix of looks. The muscular wash light, which is powered by 27 40-watt Osram LEDs, was arranged evenly on each of the six “fingers” on the set’s star-shaped truss.
“With the Maverick’s macros I could do so many different things to keep giving the show unique imagery,” said Bertti. “On tunes like ‘Miasma,’ and ‘Watcher in the Sky,’ I used them to get a starship sort of look. On the song ‘Cirice,’ the outer rings created a hypnotic pattern, while in ‘Dance Macabre,’ they brought the audience to a colorful party. I had a lot of fun experimenting with these fixtures in Nashville at Premier Global Productions during some previz to integrate the new fixtures for this tour.”
The set’s high trim also gave Bertti many opportunities to conjure up different looks, including dramatic color changes, blinding white light effects, evocatively playful shadows, and distinctive down light-side light mixes, as well as some captivating accent lighting on an inflatable church backdrop.
“Having the high trim played a big part on this design due to the ideal rake of the star shaped truss that I had in my mind,” he said. “We had to deal with different limitations on trim height playing various venues, but we made the best out of it. Using downlighting from this rig is my way of giving it a starship vibe and also creating the game of shadows I love so much.”
Bertti also wove the set’s dramatic church backdrop into his design. “This tour was our first with an inflatable church,” he said. “It was one of the best additions to our touring gear due to the way the inflatable responds to light. We also had LED screens in the back to act as the windows.”
Looking at the powerful set in its entirety, Bertti described it as being an “artistic vision” shared by a group of creatives. And like all such visions, this one could not be pigeon-holed. Instead, it moved boldly in multiple directions… exactly the sort of “versatility” that Bertti keeps firmly in his mind at the start of every design process.
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