PRODUCTION PROFILE: Disclosure
Below: Cyber Hoist Programmer Robert Gardener; LD and Show Designer Will Potts with his MA Lighting grandMA2; Video Programmer, Icarus Wilson-Write sitting with his d3 Technologies media server; Head Rigger Simon Lawrence.
already had all the designs and looks for each aspect of the show on paper. My first job was to simply provide everything that he needed.” He continued: “With the hoist system we’ve basically got five trusses that move with two hoists for each of them.” On each of these five trusses, Potts used four Clay Paky Mythos’ and seven Philips Showline Nitro 510c’s. Talking about the Mythos Potts said: “The fixture is really one of the workhorses of the design. It’s great for this show because it’s so malleable with multiple functions, which is exactly what you need for an electronic music show like this.” As with most dance acts, strobes play an important role within this show. With a total of 53 Martin Profesional Atomic 3000’s being deployed throughout the rig. Potts explained: “There isn’t a strobe out there that does the job of the Martin Atomic. There are lots of LED alternatives that are technically more reliable and energy efficient. We have made use of the Philips Nitro on the automated trusses as a bar of high power LED. However, for our main strobe solution we wanted a fixture that was truly electrifying. That made the Martin Atomic a clear choice in our eyes.” Potts also gave a special mention to the 32 PRG Best Boy HPs. “These lamps are great; they have a really powerful and even spread of output, and their focal length makes them great for firing through the screen which is mostly why we chose them.” he stated. Also seen on the rig were 24 Clay Paky Sharpys and four 62
Sharpy Wash 330’s as well as 22 molefay 4-Cell Linears, 22 Ayrton Magic Blade-R’s and four Philips Colour Kinetic Colour Blasts. NEW TOYS As well a sizeable lighting rig, Disclosure’s show contained several video elements. Video Programmer, Icarus Wilson-Write talked us through the system: “We’ve got six video destinations; four on stage that are elements and the two side screens. The video destinations are sent through a d3 Technologies 4x4 Pro media server, which is sequenced and controlled, at least in some part, from the lighting desk. Video content is pre-layered and pre-organised then we take in some camera feeds and lay them over the top.” Wilson-Write was brought on board to the project once Potts and Moross had already created the majority of the content for the show. He reported: “I went and sat down with Kate and Will to pull the show together, they were great to work with as they are both very creative and incredibly competent.” While creating the design for this tour, Potts explained how they had centred a lot of there design around the brand new Vanish 25mm which is produced by ROE Visuals and has a transparency of 51%. “We tested the screen while it was still in beta, and chose many other products as result of this, however for the festival run we weren’t able to get hold of the product as expected. But we’ve got it now,
there’s no complaints; it’s doing a great job.” Wilson-Write added that: “The Vanish has been able to integrate perfectly with the lighting show. It’s very lightweight, very fast to rig and it seems to be very reliable too, not to mention the fact that it displays a great image.” For the show, PRG XL Video also supplied MC-18T screens which were placed as a return below the two musicians’ desks, two sets of Pixled F-25s placed either side of the stage and a strip of MC-7 as high resolution automated piece in the flying ‘venetian’ screen. STAR SERVICE Keeping all these various visual elements up in the air was the responsibility of Head Rigger Simon Lawrence and once again PRG acted as a suppler. “Due to the size of this show we had to split the rigging into two sections,” stated Lawrence. “The guys in charge of automation are totally self-contained then on the lighting side we have quite a big job hanging all these fixtures on a daily basis.” Lawrence was only brought onto the tour a month before the Alexandra Palace show and was another member of crew who had worked under Iddison with singer / songwriter Ben Howard. He admitted that this show had been a fair challenge due to the fact that it was a very heavy rig but that it is always part of the challenge of the job. For staging, the production team employed the services of Star Events who provided 65ft by 12ft of VerTech