A crazy Diamond of a lighting design
UK – The Australian Pink Floyd Show (TAPFS) has been packing out arena size venues across Europe and the UK as if they were the real thing!
While TAPFS make absolutely no attempt to look like nor do they pretend to be Pink Floyd, they do sound eerily like them. The show takes a rather Brechtian, almost didactic approach in its presentation. The band arranges itself in a reminiscently static Floyd style fashion across the stage, and very skilfully plays the music and sings the songs. The show is not about the band and its individual members per- se, but rather about the music and the experience as a whole.
Close your eyes and you’re listening to Floyd, open them and light-hearted video images remind you this is very much a tribute band. However just like Pink Floyd TAPFS clearly understands that – short of a good supply of LSD – what the psychedelic, soul-searching music needs most of all is a good PA and an extravagant, jaw droppingly dynamic light show, and that is exactly what they deliver.
Lighting Designer Phil White has been taking care of the band for the past six years: “When I first got involved we were doing much smaller venues. The set was a circular truss hanging from a goalpost! Over the years the band’s following has grown as has the show and now we’re filling arenas!”
White’s current design is based around the spectacular 1994 Pulse / Division Bell light show originally lit by Floyd’s seminal LD Mark Brickman. The set comprises a huge arch that spans the upstage. Behind this is a stage wide projection screen and in between them is a circular truss with a screen stretched across its aperture.
White discusses: “I first got involved with TAPFS when I was working with Dave Hill on some festivals in Liverpool. He needed someone to tour with the show and Noreen from Entec put me forward. Since then I’ve taken the reigns a little bit more each tour. Dave is now busy with other projects so this year it’s very much my design – albeit based on Mark Brickman’s original concept.”
Unusually for White his focus is not the bands faces but the music itself. His role takes on a unique and rather different perspective; lighting is basically another performer as opposed to a performance enhancer.
Projection is used throughout the show – mainly onto the circular screen but also on the wide screen behind. This gives an impressive, Pink Floyd scale to the production. Content combines Floyd style animation with tongue in cheek references to the band’s Australian heritage.
TAPFS is using the same set as its 2007 tour but White has taken the opportunity to modify the lighting design, he elaborates: “To get a sharper punchier look, I upgraded the Martin MAC250 Wash lights we used last time to Beam lights. “They’re brilliant – literally! The upgrade has given us so many more creative options. It’s a beam light with diffusion, offers full colour mixing and a colour wheel. We’ve actually swapped out three or four of the colours for gobos! Basically we get a whole heap more effects from one single fixture. The only thing they can’t do is rotate the gobos!”
According to Smith the fixtures are robust and tour very well. “All the equipment has come from Entec in London. The upgrade to the Macs actually makes each one around six inches longer. Rather than take the noses off every night and then put them back on every load in Entec kindly had some new boxes made up for the tour.”
The whole rig packs into one truck! Smith is restricted by time and budget: “We are a tribute band. There’s only so much we can do. We have just 22 lights on the arch and 16 on the circle. IPix satellite LED fixtures internally light the circle, which gives the set some extra depth. On the floor there are six Mac 700 spots and four mac 700 washes.”
Taking care of the band’s front light are three mac 700 washes and across the front of the stage is an array of pars. Of course the show would not be complete without special effects and Smith has the requisite, supersized Floyd mirror ball. “It takes up most of the space in the truck, he laughs. “I’ve been looking at inflatable ones but they’re just too diffused. I also have two nova flowers on the floor, which I used towards the end, although we do sneak it in during other parts of the show!”
Smith progrmmes and runs the show from a GrandMA full size, “We run Ethernet down to the side stage where we have a GrandMA Lite. On stage there is a Fostex, which runs various sound effects and clicktracks. It also triggers certain lighting and video effects via midi. Because midi has a distance limitation of around 10 – 20 meters we can’t deliver the signal direct to FOH. We use the GrandMA Lite to get the signal onto the GrandMA network. The network then triggers certain lighting sequences and DMX intensity control systems in three Barco R10 projectors plus a Radlight media server.
Of course no tribute show to Pink Floyd would be complete without lasers. Colour Sound Experiment has provided two Blitz Tipo 5Gs, which are rigged 8ft high each side of the stage. Three foot lower and in the centre White has an 8W laser to provide fill.
TAPFS is a really great fun show. White uses his relatively modest rig expediently and creatively. His cue sequences are dynamic, stimulating and fluid. He fabricates the look and the effects for each song by skilfully weaving haze exposed beams, colour and pattern together to form an ever shifting and vibrant picture. If you like Pink Floyd you’ll love this show.
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Lighting design – Phil White
