For the first time in two and a half years, Guy Sebastian took his band on the road for a regional tour of Australia. The Then & Now Tour travelled the country with BAAC Lights’ Brad Alcock in charge of all lighting and visual elements of the show.
The production makes heavy use of visuals to support the story being told in each of Guy’s songs over the traditional light show style of production.
BAAC Lights’ Mike Fletcher was lead content creator with BAAC’s sister company Pixall looking after the projection design elements. Mike made use of a number of other artists to deliver a number of incredible artistic angles and concepts to Guy’s work.
“Our brief came from both Guy and his manager and encompasses all the creative elements for the show from staging, lighting, vision,” commented Brad. “The primary brief was to create a show on a strict budget for regional venues up to a seating capacity of 1500, with the ability for production to be up scaled or down scaled as is often the case in regional locations in Australia. Guy was very keen to ensure our regional friends receive a show that is as close as possible to what we will do in the major cities with the show over the next few years.”
Brad’s biggest challenge was to work the show into Tamworth and Townsville as both venues are in essence arenas and can very quickly become loss-making for a production unless great care is taken to ensure the production is not overly complex in points, truss and manpower.
The rig consisted primarily of 22 of BAAC’s corflute projection surfaces with the addition of an RGB LED tape surround on all panels. In addition 12 x Fineart BSW470s and 6 x Fineart PIX wash lights were used for a very simple overhead and floor package meaning a maximum three hour window from truck door open to show ready with four crew. A total of 16 x Astera Puck LEDs were used as footlight for both Guy and the band allowing minimum setup and clutter on stage.
Projection was handled by two of BAAC Lights’ 13k Panasonic projectors controlled via their ArKaos media servers and mapped to the projection panels.
“Control of the show was via a HES/ETC Full Boar Hog 4, even though the platform is experiencing some concerning challenges for me at the moment that will be proven to be good or bad, for now it still remains our go to console with my normal note that the console does not make the show,” added Brad.
Brad’s favourite lighting moment of the production was a trade between Like a Drum and Battle Scars: Like a Drum made use of some cool audio sample technology that was injected live into the content and that added a new dimension to how the content reacted to Guys vocals In the chorus.
“Battle Scars was insanely simple lighting wise being one very strong off angle “BAAC light” but the power of Mike’s visuals as a pull through shot of destroyed buildings with various graffiti on the walls tagging various current issues was an incredible piece,” added Brad.
Brad’s systems technician for this tour was Mathew Silk who as always kept all of their equipment working perfectly for the six weeks they were on the road.
Brad and the team will now prepare for stage two of the Then And Now Tour before Guy does a major tour next year with a New Album currently in production.
Brad would like to send a huge Thank You to all the incredible crews that looked after us around the country, saying “It’s amazing to see just how many good crew we have across Australia and it’s incredible as an LD to be able to see these friends as we travel around.”
