Is there a better way to ensure rock-solid tour lighting than with Coemar Infinity Wash XLs' powerful mastery? Don't think so. A powerful master himself, Rock-A-Fella/Def Jam/Universal recording artist Jay-Z is glad the Infinitys came along for the flights.
From Philadelphia to Charlottesville to Boston to East Rutherford for radio festival support, then on to Cleveland for a Barack Obama benefit, the lighting industry's relied-upon ralliers gave each superb show a superb shine.
According to lighting designer/programmer/director Patrick Dierson, the plan for the five shows, produced by the Phoenix Music Group, started out as something simple but then quickly turned into a "large-scale production that had to shapeshift from day to day. And at some of the locations," he recalls, "there were other artists who needed to be accommodated."
The task was to design a show for a 360-degree viewing audience, with the stage kept at one end of the arena. "PMG was very adamant about giving the people in cheap seats a good show," notes Dierson. "It became a bit of a juggling act to balance out how much production to put there while not detracting from the standard view audience. The show still needed to look huge."
The program of action included the use of 40 Coemar Infinity Wash XL lights, specifically chosen for prism and punch. "We decided to erect a giant video cube over the stage," says Dierson. "This called for the video walls forming a full cube to surround the stage perimeter, creating a balancing act of sight lines."
He says that he and crew needed fixtures that were controllable enough, but also bright enough to punch from a far distance. They'd needed to pull the lights way back in order to get a proper angle and not interfere with sightlines to the video elements. "It was a rather massive video element, very big and bright," remarks Dierson. He claims that, ultimately, the Infinity Wash XLs had the punch required to both complement and compete with it's intensity.
Coemar's Infinity Wash XL lights come complete with electronically adjustable lamp power (700 W to 1450 W), as well as narrow to wide zoom ranges (5-84 degrees total) in one unit. A ground breaking new color mix system, able to achieve CMY and RGB colors (CMY-s, exclusive Coemar patent), is also included. The Infinity Wash XLs incorporate an effects wheel for creating texture and aerial effects with wash light (exclusive Coemar patent).
Dierson loves the Infinitys' "great color mixing, truly saturated colors and brightness. In addition, the prism effect puts out three beams of light that can be rotated," he states. "That was used a lot to add accents to the music and choruses."
He continues: "Jay-Z will call from the stage, at any point during the show, to have specific parts of the audience lit up. He's very interactive with them. So we really needed lights that could punch all the way to the back of the arena, and these worked out great for that as well as having the beam-spread to light up the audience. Jay's very happy with the results that the Coemar Infinity Wash XLs bring forth!"
Dierson's Artfag, LLC partner Justin Collie handled production design. Atomic Lighting provided the equipment, and grandMA lighting consoles were used for control.
About ICD
Located in Sunrise, Florida, Inner Circle Distribution (ICD) is a full-service distributor supplying and servicing professional lighting needs in the U.S. and the Caribbean. ICD stocks multiple types of lighting equipment, including moving lights, LED products, intelligent consoles and much more. For additional information, visit our web site at www.icd-usa.com or call Gary Mass at 954-578-8881.