Multi-platinum, award-winning group blink-182 are currently on their biggest global tour ever. Currently, in Australia packing out arenas, the tour commemorates the band’s thirtieth anniversary and is most noted for the return of the band’s iconic lineup of Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Tom DeLonge.
Production Designers for the show are John McGuire and Eric Gorleski of TrasK House Design, and Lighting Director, Griffin Dennen.
Chameleon Touring Systems is providing gear and crew for the Australian run including the must-have Martin MAC Ultra of which there are 42 units.
John McGuire told PLSN Magazine, “The f**king MAC Ultra is so beautiful. I’ve been doing this a long time and you see lights coming out of a cannon all of the time, but then you see the MAC Ultra and it is just awesome. I think ultimately this being a punk rock show, you want to have bright lights that cut through, but not just in white, with colour. We had used Ultras on the Machine Gun Kelly tour and really fell in love with them. For Blink, the shop set up a shootout because they didn’t have the MAC Ultras to give us, but when we looked at all the lights it was just abundantly clear that the Ultra stood out above all of them. Everything from strobe rate to intensity and saturate colour, zoom range. We literally went feature by feature, and I think the only thing it didn’t win in was maybe tilt speed or something. And even that was barely by a hair.”
Lighting Director Griff is delighted to have the MAC Ultras with him in Australia where they provide just about all the light in the air.
“They are my favourite fixture at the moment,” he declared. “I love what Martin is doing in general with all of their fixtures but the MAC Ultra is a killer fixture. Despite the size, they are agile and responsive. All of the major categories are fulfilled at a high level. From shapers to gobos, iris and the focus speed is pretty great too.”
The feature that impresses Griff the most is the colour mixing and he notes that the colour spectrum is vast.
“The reds are the real reason what sold us in the first place,” he added. It’s like, the deep, consistent red without a hot spot in the middle and it cannot be paralleled by any other profile fixture that I’ve worked with. The white colour temperature is perfect, perfectly neutral.”
