Ayrton, zactrack, Green Hippo and MA Lighting Partner on Lionel Richie’s “Sing A Song All Night Long” Summer Tour
A wide array of Ayrton fixtures, a zactrack automated follow system, Green Hippo media servers and grandMA3 consoles hit the road with Lionel Richie this summer when he co-headlined the “Sing A Song All Night Long Tour” across North America with legendary band Earth, Wind & Fire, bringing both artists’ classic catalogs to arenas and major venues. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of all of the aforementioned brands in North America.
When The 26-city tour kicked off in June in Saint Paul, Minnesota and made stops in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and more before wrapping in Austin, Texas on August 14.
Eric Wade, Partner and Senior Designer with Crossfade Design, served as Production Designer for the tour, with Keith Hoagland as Associate Designer and Sam Brown and Brandon Wade as designers/programmers. Brian Burke was the tour’s Creative Director and Sagiv Karpel the Co-creative Director.
A Large-Scale Production Built Around Automated Tracking
The production combined a multi-tiered set with a 64-foot-wide LED videowall and a large lighting rig designed around a linear, beam-heavy visual language. Ayrton fixtures were deployed throughout the rig for key lighting, effects, followspot duties and large-scale looks.
Four EagleStrikes acted as followspots operating with a zactrack SMART automated follow system. All of the EagleStrike key lights were mounted on truss an average of 137 feet from the stage.
“I love zactrack. We own several systems for our use and do a lot of rentals, too,” reports Wade. “In our business, we’re always at the mercy of who’s behind the spot, and very few people are good at spot operating. So zactrack is absolutely the best option for us today. Keith just calibrated and tweaked zactrack for 20-25 minutes for each new show, and it worked. It was spot on! Extremely consistent, and that’s what you want in a tour situation.”
Tracking Richie and the Band Across the Stage
Hoagland notes that the new zactrack update made it even easier to use than before. “The band just dropped the Trackers in their pockets. We tracked four guys with a total of eight Trackers.”
Ayrton Veloces also served as followspots for Richie and the band. Six fixtures were in the downstage truss where they acted as static key lights for the band when it remained in position on stage. One Veloce was in upstage truss and was zactrack controlled to follow Richie’s movements. Twelve Ayrton Eurus Profiles also lit the band members who moved to perform with Richie.
Additional Ayrton fixtures provided beam, prism, backlight and silhouette effects throughout the show, with the lighting package designed to deliver consistent looks from venue to venue.
Integrated Show Control and Programming
Crossfade Design also deployed Green Hippo Hippotizer MX series Meuse Media Servers for video processing, alongside a grandMA3 control setup used across lighting, video, pyro, lasers and automation. The show was extensively programmed in Crossfade Design’s previz studio before rehearsals, allowing the team to focus primarily on refinements once on site.
Hoagland notes that being on tour “is like building a small city in a different place every night. Everything has to work. The gear we chose for the tour handled going down the road in a truck with the stagehands and slamming in and out of venues, and it worked every time. You want the show to be the same every day, to keep the same high level of quality. It’s what Lionel expects from us.”
Consistency on the Road
At Crossfade Design Brandon Wade and Sam Brown were instrumental in putting the show together handling the majority of the programming, including zactrack.
Original Artikel by ACT Entertainment: read here
All photos © Tony Wade
