This year’s Mardi Gras party was bigger, sparklier and more fabulous than ever and with Kylie Minogue as the main act tickets sold out in no time at all. Held after the Parade, the ten hour party spanned five huge venues with Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter transformed into a theme park entitled Mardigrasland.
The Royal Hall of Industries was the main venue and it was here that Kylie performed in the wee hours of the morning to a crowd of 15,000 devoted party goers.
Lighting designer Richard Neville, a director of Mandylights, wanted to get away from the traditional stage set up of a set build and do something a bit cooler opting for thirty-two Martin LC Panels.
“As the LC Panels are so lightweight we could over-rig them and under-rig them easily on the automated truss,” explained Richard. “The LC Panels are bold, bright, fairly cheap and easy to set up.”
Together with the automated trussing, the LC Panels were able to change the physical set up of the stage whilst the media content magically transformed the look.
“We didn’t want a straight forward, solid video screen preferring something a bit more creative,” remarked Richard. “Mandylights made custom media content for the entire night taking inspiration from Kylie’s tribal theme for her performance and a big geometric techno backing for Sneaky Sound System. We wanted to do content that people hadn’t seen before and obviously with Kylie there’s a pretty high standard of production, so we were keen to impress.”
With ten hours of partying to cater to, the LC Panels with their unique video content were able to constantly provide the venue with new looks. The moving trusses were not used until Kylie came onstage.
Twenty Martin MAC301 LED wash lights were situated on PRG’s hexapods hung over the audience and Richard was blown away by their performance.
“It’s the first time that I’ve used LED wash lights in a party situation and the MAC301’s were incredible,” he said. “They are just so bright! We ran them at about 50% for the shows when they were being used for stage lighting and then at 60% for the dance party part of the night. They’re really punchy and the colours are very bold and good for dance parties. The pods that they were on were on Kinesys so they could come down to about three metres above people’s heads and up to nine metres.”
Richard used a MA Lighting grandMA for control.
Lighting Designer: Richard Neville
Lighting Operators: Richard Neville, Alex Grierson, Clint Dulieu, Nick Craven
Video Content Producers: Mandylights
Party Producer: Brad Wright
Lighting Supplier: PRG Australia
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