Phaseshift Productions sent their new Martin MAC Viper XIP and MAC Ones on Lime Cordiale’s arena shows on the East Coast, with their lighting designer Dion Prasad commenting that their crew absolutely smashed it!
Before their massive Australian tour, the band toured Europe, taking Dion, who hadn’t worked with them before, so he could learn the songs and get into the general vibe of the band.
“The Australian run has been Lime’s biggest show to date,” said Dion. “They saw it as an investment to take me to Europe, learn their set list, and get familiar with it all. It worked out well. We started from scratch to play around, and I built the show throughout the Europe tour. By the time we got to Australia, I had a show file ready to go, and it was probably one of the best I’ve done.”
Dion says that the show’s design was a collaborative project between him, the band, production manager Billy and a designer called Ace, who lives in London.
“The design is theatrical and cinematic instead of crazy flashing lights,” he added. “It’s designed to fit in with the screen content, so it was a visual show. I would emphasize that with lighting to make it seem bigger than what it is.”
Five pre-rigged trusses holding a combination of lights such as strobes, LED bars and movers enabled Dion to produce dynamic lighting through different songs. The five linear trusses were all raked at various levels, making the room seem larger.
Initially, Dion asked Lawrie at Phaseshift for some Martin MAC Vipers, and when Lawrie suggested the MAC Viper XIP instead, Dion said that the smile on his face was from ear to ear!
“I was thrilled to get those from Lawrie!” he added. “I had five for front lighting because the framing shutters on those new XIP Vipers are phenomenal and quick. So what impressed me is a little bit nerdy is these new XIPs they boot up within 10 seconds, which is very different from the old Vipers. They used to take time to boot up and then lamp them on to get output. With these new XIPs you are ready to go within 10 seconds of booting and powering them up. It makes a world of difference when you’re trying to get a whole show together in such a limited time.
“The other thing that really impressed me when I was just testing them out was the gobos within those lights, the depth of field I got, and the output alone from those gobos. Usually, when you put a Gobo through a light, you lose some light output. I didn’t see that on these XIPs. They were phenomenal, no matter what you put them through.”
Dion was originally going to spec Robe Spiiders for his floor wash lights as their zoom range is relatively wide and pretty bright; however, Phaseshift offered him MAC Ones as a replacement. Dion thought he’d best test them out before he agreed to take them, and to his astonishment, he discovered that the zoom range on these little fixtures was phenomenal.
“I think a lot of people see them, and they think, oh, you’re not going to do much,” he said. “But they’re light, small and very bright. I wanted to check the red output as I use a lot of red in the show for side light, a lot of red and amber, and my biggest concern was that it wouldn’t be bright enough. But the MAC Ones do an exceptional job with the red chips.”
The MAC Ones were used predominantly as Dion’s side-fill light and silhouette light. Three were located on each side of the stage, and then eight were positioned behind the band to hit them and make them look cool, silhouetting them throughout the show. Also in the rig were a dozen old-school MAC Vipers.
Whilst touring Europe, Dion built his show file on an MA Lighting grandMA onPC, switching to a grandMA3 full-size for the Australian tour.
Photo credit: Tim Swallow
