Australia’s greatest sporting rivalry is back, with the 2024 Ampol State of Origin Series now underway. Game II headed to the iconic MCG with The Temper Trap performing for the pre-game entertainment. The Indie rock band was formed back in 2005, they have won multiple ARIA awards, including Best Group twice, and Best Rock Album in 2013.
The dream team of production and event management gurus The Spark, lighting designer Tom Wright and Chameleon Touring Systems once again joined forces to deliver one the best-looking shows ever!
Design-wise, Tom commented that they wanted to try and increase the footprint of the stage to fill the enormous performance space of the MCG.
“So we created the four Stage Pods to place the artists on and then the ring of lights to give another layer,” he explained. “We wanted to move away from the last few years of a single stage and some backlights. We had a new camera director and he was willing to take wider shots and more interesting angles. So I wanted to give him something to shoot!”
Tony Davies, Managing Director of CTS, had just taken delivery of Ayrton‘s new IP65-rated, laser source Kyalami designed to revolutionize creative lighting. The essential performance capability of Kyalami is based on its unique design, extreme miniaturization, and minimalist cylindrical footprint that allows multiple luminaires to be installed only a few centimetres apart. Naturally, Tony was keen to see these incredible fixtures perform on such a widely viewed show and sent Tom six of his Kayalami.
“Initially I was very thankful as the more lights the better,” said Tom. “Then I had to do some research. I’ve worked with some other laser source fixtures before with varied results, however, I was happy to read about some of the features the Kyalami brought to the mix.”
As Tom had no beam effect lights in his design, the Kyalami filled this void with colour and dimmer chase. Now Tom had some beams to shoot into the sky giving more height to the design. And with the fixtures located behind the band members, the cameras got a good look at the beams.
“The Kyalami is very impressive,” commented Tom. “It’s a small fixture which means you can get more in a design and you can get more on a truck on a small tour. They look good so will please the corporate clients. They have a great tight beam and they were SUPER quick. I didn’t get to delve into many colours but been told they are fantastic.”
Four Ayrton Perseo were located on the field to create some backlight effect on the performers.
For the Stage Pods, Tom needed a lightweight and reliable fixture to attach to the frames. The Pods travelled with the frames, disassembled to fit into the tunnels. 72 x Martin VDO Sceptron 10 with 1000mm square diffusers was the ideal choice as they are solid and have easy connections to reconnect on the field.
“They are also easy to program,” added Tom. “Drawn in Vectorworks and exported via MVR to the MA3 – so easy to create simple effects on the fly using grids and MAtricks.”
Also packing a punch were the eight Lighting Pods arranged in a circle, each comprising two Martin MAC Aura XIP and two ShowPRO Collider FC Strobe.
“The ShowPRO Collider has been a staple of my NRL gigs as they are easy to program, are IP-rated and bright,” remarked Tom. “The MAC Aura XIPs were chosen for the same reasons. Knowing they won’t get cut if it rains is massive to me. The Lighting Pods were there to expand the design out into the field and create large swathes of colour. Plus any simple dimmer effect running around a circle looked huge.”
Tom programmed and ran the show from his MA Lighting grandMA3 Compact XT running the whole show with an onPC setup doing backup. He has been touring an FOH rack that deals with network and timecode routing. The show was all pre-programmed using CuePoints.
Pre Game performance photos courtesy of the NRL
