KONSTANZ, Germany — The three-piece German punk band Die Arzte (The Physicians) used up to 76 moving lights on their recent tour. They performed at 40 European venues, with three set configurations for playing arenas, clubs and headline festival slots. Lighting designer Lui Helmig, who has worked with Die Arzte since they were a new act in 1982, has been using Robe moving lights for the last four years, and the most recent tour was no exception. He credits the instruments for their color range, zoom options, reliability and rental value.
Helmig’s main creative task was to create a show that could compress and expand into A, B and C rigs to fit the different venues and stages they encountered throughout the tour. He also needed to produce a varied and constantly evolving show encompassing up to 35 songs and lasting up to 3.5 hours.
One of his Die Arzte trademark aesthetics is monochrome looks and scenes, so he needed a rig offering plenty of variety and contrast within those parameters.
The Robe fixtures were a mix of ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200E ATs and ColorWash 700E ATs — Helmig’s favorites — all supplied by lighting rental company Satis & Fy.
The rig was based on a 16 meter curved front truss made from JTE SuperTruss, four 10-meter finger trusses running upstage/downstage, hinged at 6 meters. The upstage corners of the four fingers were sub-hung from a 14-meter-by-2.5-meter pre-rigged box truss below the main rig. The pre-rigged box truss also supported a matrix of white-lights used for light box effects and text messaging. A curved 22-meter rear curtain truss supported the soft goods, which included a front kabuki.
Eight Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs were rigged on the front truss, with another eight deployed on the floor at the front downstage edges, to provide cross stage lighting. There were 24 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, including eight on the front truss, eight on the fingers and eight on the floor, used for general purpose lighting on the band. These were complemented by 12 ColorSpot 1200s, which were hung on the pre-rigged trussing box at the back for back beam effects.
For festivals and the largest stages, an additional 24 ColorSpot 1200s were added, arranged around the floor area, in front of the PA wings and side stage camera tracks.
Despite the long length and punk nature of the show, Helmig used the Robes subtly and sparingly, with the goal of creating large “anthemic” images and looks. He often relied upon them to produce white light in subtly different color temperatures, using instrument movements that were often imperceptible to the audience.
The rig also contained large quantities of strobes, LED PARs and battens and ACLs. The upstage white-light matrix allowed for text effects, and there were also several customized frames of Philips SSL iColor Flex SLX LED balls, fed from two Catalyst digital media servers.
The show was all run from two Road Hog Full Boar consoles and three Wings. Working with two assistants, Helmig ran the matrix lights, the three FOH spots, the moving lights and the PARs. The moving truss elements were controlled by a 16-way Cyberhoist automation system run by Tobias Büdenbender, and Martin Heuser looked after the Catalysts.
For more information, please visit www.robe.cz.
