At the Glastonbury Festival, Shangri-La is a festival within a festival that is entirely dedicated to creativity, arts, and underground and independent culture – has been a special area for many years now. The sophisticated lighting set-up, for which lighting designer James R. Dickson from Elixir Lighting opted to use the Cameo OTOS® H5 and ZENIT® W600 SMD, played a major part in creating this atmosphere.
The CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M made over 100,000 pairs of eyeballs dance at Glastonbury this year. Playing a role for Saturday night headliners Coldplay, the motorized strobe-wash was used to create a seemingly endless flow of brilliant looks that captivated what was one of the largest crowds in the festival’s history. Supplied by Upstaging, the high-output IP65 rated fixtures were positioned throughout the rig by LD Shaheem Litchmore.
Chris Lose looks at Green Riders for tours and how everyone has a part to play in going green on the bus, onstage and at the FOH.
Chris Lose makes the case for the newest kid on the block: laser source lighting fixtures. With some expert advice and thoughtful advice, he suggests looking at navigating these new fixtures’ unique considerations.
“Billboard” magazine recently ranked tours around the world by total ticket sales from November 2021 through October 2022. The Showtime section within PLSN’s January 2023 issue focuses on the lighting, staging and video production teams and equipment supporting these tours.
Live entertainment lighting and trucking company Upstaging marked its 50th anniversary in 2022. During the past half century co-founders, brothers Robert and Don Carone, and Robin Shaw, joined in 1979 by John Huddleston, have turned Upstaging from a garage-based pioneer into a stalwart of the industry. The four share with PLSN some of their reflections growing a company alongside the concert touring industry—the beginnings, the milestones, and what they hope people know about Upstaging today.
U.S. rockers Panic! at the Disco kickstarted their highly anticipated Viva Las Vengeance arena tour at Austin, TX’s Moody Center in September, with a ’70s and ’80s rock-influenced high-octane show. Conjuring up rich colors and sharp beams were 128 VL2600 PROFILE luminaires from Vari-Lite, the originator of the modern moving head and a Signify entertainment lighting brand.Read More »Huge Vari-Lite VL2600 Rig Invokes Vintage Rock Glamour for Panic! at the Disco
Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour features a bevy of sustainable elements including four inflatable LED spheres that played a role in supporting the band’s green goals. PRG worked with their team on the engineering and fabrication of this innovative technology. In this video Production Designer Misty Buckley, Production Manager Jake Berry, Video Director Ant Barrett, Screens Director Josh Koffman, and Managing Director, PRG Projects Frederic Opsomer take us behind the scenes of the design.
Read More »The Technology Behind Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ Tour
The lighting rig for Coldplay’s current “Music of the Spheres” tour includes 74 Claypaky Xtylos fixtures. Claypaky notes how its lighting gear passed an audition of sorts with flying colors when LD Sooner Routhier used them for Coldplay’s show at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena last fall.
On Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour, there are powerful video and camera systems that provide the video team the ability to take in any signal—in any flavor—and play it back where, and whenever needed on the many playback surfaces of Production Designer Misty Buckley’s massive set. Those playback surfaces include two 14m (45.93’) circular I-Mag screens—which are used constantly throughout the show; a large arched video wall—known as the Moonrise—that is approximately 44m (144.35’) wide by 6m (19.68’) at the tallest; and four large inflatable LED video spheres suspended high above the Moonrise. The I-Mag and Moonrise LED screens are made from ROE Visual Carbon Series CB8 8mm LED panels and the LED spheres are covered in PRG LED Strip with a nominal 25mm pixel pitch. [For more details on the inflatable LED spheres, go to page 24.]Read More »Coldplay’s Video and Camera Systems
