SHOW DESIGNER Andy Hurst needed to be able to “play” the visuals like a musical instrument for Chase & Status’s one-off appearance at London’s O2 Brixton Academy (cap. 4,900) and used a transparent video screen to assist him.
He says the music required a high energy collage of lighting and lasers which he created by building several layers of visual effects. These included an 11m wide, six metre high video screen upstage, which he was able to shine lights through, allowing it to appear and disappear throughout the performance.
“You have to be 100 per cent into the music and have an understanding of the structure and narrative of each song,” says Hurst. With lighting equipment and crew supplied by Blackburn-based HSL, and the screen provided by Crawley-based CT, he used Robe BMFL Blade moving lights to project gobos onto Perspex panels, plus Robe LEDWash 1200s for cross stage washes.
For the architectural look of the show, says Hurst, 137 Q-7 LED strobe/floods by Danish manufacturer SGM produced spectacular big looks. The Q-7s were arranged on drop bars, eight rows deep behind the screen and four rows deep to the sides and were used as floods, shining into the audience. Overhead, Claypaky Sharpies and Robe LEDBeam 100s panned into the crowd.