Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 - PLSN.com

PRODUCTION PROFILE
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
Club Shoots for the Stars, Gets Rabbit in the Moon
Adapting the touring rider for a nightclub
Text by ThomasH.Freeman
Photography by JustiAkard
Limiting the stage movement of the Bunny character helped keep the
lighting design within budget.
The Rabbit in the Moon production is a scaled-down version of the
extravaganza envisioned in the rider.
When Kevin Mitchell of Sugar Society
booked Rabbit in the Moon
at Amos’ Southend, the ace up his
sleeve was Jack Kelly of Eye Dialogue, who
had four years of experience doing shows at
the Charlotte, NC music hall. He handed Kelly
the tour rider and asked if he could light
it for $4,000.
Rabbit in the Moon shows are legendary.
If you’ve never witnessed one of their
events then you have no idea what a show
with great visuals, lasers, giant beach balls
with people in them and a million beams
looks like.
“I never imagined that one day I would
be the designer for their show,” Kelly mused.
But it would not be easy. The rider was
some time for Kelly to wrap his mind around
the budget, the stage, and the rider. Welcome
to the club touring circuit.
“I don’t know if any music venue or night
club can completely satisfy a rider,” Kelly
said. Like a lot like of business plans, riders
can look good on paper. But when it comes
down to realizing them, they have to be flexible
or they will fail. “Just like drawing a map
based on the descriptions of explorers, the
real landscape seldom looks like the dreamscape
of a touring rider,” Kelly added.
Though the rider for Rabbit in the Moon
included a large stage plot, massive towers,
and myriad fixtures, it supplied the key to
satisfying the band’s artistic goals, including
important information about the artistic di-
the same energy in the venue, all the while
honoring the promoter’s budget. It was a tall
order.
“The first step was to squeeze everything
into a 10- by 17-foot picture frame,”
said Kelly. “Lots of lights on a big stage is
easy; power-packed shows on a small stage
is not.” He designed the projection using
two custom 5.4- by 4-foot projector screens
framed in “goalie post” trussing on each side
of a stage riser. Behind the riser was a 6- by
8-foot fast fold screen. The smaller screens
were rear projected and the upstage screen
was front projected. All together there were
24 linear feet of video projection surfaces.
Although the whole stage set could only
be viewed from the middle of the room, the
sual presentations in Charlotte this year.”
To complete the set and to conveniently
mask all of the cables, two 42-inch monitors
were placed in front of David Christopher,
the keyboard and digital effects player. Besides
hiding the cables, the LCD monitors
also hid the stands and provided another
layer of visuals.
“I love using prime numbers with
screens,” Kelly said. “The five-screen visual
packed onto the stage created a very balanced,
yet focused look. A single centered
screen followed by two pairs of screens
shrinking in size as they move towards the
floor subconsciously distorts depth perception
and keeps the eye traveling up and
down stage.”
“I don’t know if any music venue or night club can completely satisfy a rider.”
– Jack Kelly, lighting designer
very detailed with CAD drawings and an
equipment list that exceeded the budget
and size of the stage. There were truss towers,
moving lights, strobes, blinders, LED up
lights, down lights, five LCD TVs, and three
projector screens, all covering a 40- by
30-foot stage.
“My brain went into overload,” Kelly said
later on. Since the stage in the club was only
17 feet wide and the ceiling is lower than the
lighting plot specified, Kelly thought, “I have
to really rack my brain for this one.”
Mitchell and Kelly have worked countless
events together, creating some of Charlotte’s
most memorable parties. Still, it took
rection for layering, elevations, and effects.
With this in mind, Kelly’s approach was to
“scale the performer’s vision with a little
imagination, creating a dynamic performance
on any stage.”
“Typically, bands are not trying to establish
a dictatorship,” Kelly said. “Most bands
understand that every space is different and
they want help from those who are familiar
with a space. However, they are understandably
upset if their rider and their vision are
completely ignored.” His job as the lighting
and video designer and supplier, he said,
was to try to understand the purpose of
the stage design and create a design with
expansive set upstage created a nice visual
from all angles.
In order to stay within his budget, Kelly
had to use a smaller projector and work to
control the ambient light on the stage and
in the room. “In a dark room,” he said, “a 2000
lumen projector can look amazing.” Part of
keeping the environment lit correctly meant
having to avoid putting light directly on the
screens and keeping the stage illuminance
under tight control. “Three 5000-lumen projectors
would have taken most of the budget
before we even started,” Kelly said. “However,
with the right lighting, three 2000-lumens
projectors pulled off one of the biggest vi-
The audience blinders that were specified
in the rider were both out of budget and
too big for the stage. So Kelly subbed Color
Kinetics ColorCast 14s, using four of the LED
fixtures on each truss leg. The units proved
to be ideal for a stage of this size. Kelly used
them to build anticipation with color changing
flashes, strobing, and sweeps through a
range of colors, until front man Bunny (Steve
Eachon) took the stage.
To light the moon bunny, two 250-watt
Elation moving head fixtures followed him
wherever he ventured. To help make the
task a bit easier, an 8- by 8-foot platform was
used for “Bunny control,” limited his move-
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PLSN MARCH 2008