After his phenomenally successful Live By Demand tour last year, John Farnham decided he couldn’t keep away and so through October / November he performed a further run of shows – John Farnham Live!
As usual Chris Newman was his lighting designer and this time he had to design a rig that would fit into one 48 foot semi-trailer so he had choose compact fixtures and trussing.
“Consequently I’m using 300mm box truss instead of 500mm box truss and for moving lights I’ve chosen Martin MAC700’s instead of MAC2000’s even though we’re playing outdoor shows,” he said. “However I’ve designed the show to get maximum output from the MAC700’s. There are four trusses onstage, starting at four meters from the ground, that stagger up from upstage to downstage at one metre increments. As the MAC700 at the back are low and shooting forward they tend to look brighter than if they were up high shooting straight down.”
In total Chris used thirty-four MAC700 Spots and thirty-four MAC700 Washes with no other moving head fixtures.
”The MAC700 is a fantastic light and I prefer the gobos in them to the standard gobos in the MAC2000. They aren’t quite as bright as the MAC2000, especially with a wider beam, but you can usually get away with it as it’s not that big a deal.
This tour was the first time that Chris had used the Studio Due CS4 with four of them on stage providing a unique look whenever Chris required. Also in the rig were sixteen Par 64, thrity-two ACL, ten profiles, twelve DWE 8 lites and two follow spots.
For control Chris was using his console of choice – a full size MA Lighting grandMA.
Photos: Troy Constable
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