Celebrated Lighting Designer Jeff Maker employed an Avolites Sapphire Touch to drive his other-worldly design for Californian pop-punk quartet Pierce the Veil’s UK and Ireland tour, which followed the release of their highly anticipated fourth studio album Misadventures.
Maker, who has been nominated for the Parnelli Awards’ Lighting Designer of the Year (2012), and twice nominated for the TPi Awards’ Lighting Designer of the Year (2015 and 2016) is a longstanding Avolites fan, having used the British manufacturer’s products for the past decade.
“I use the Sapphire Touch because it’s user friendly and it’s easy to edit all aspects of the show live if necessary,” commented Maker. “The console has a bright, sharp and precise touch screen and with the array of effects, from pixel mapping to key frame shapes, it helps me to create dynamic show files in half the time of other consoles.”
Maker’s tour design was based around two crashed rocket ship set pieces, using stark lighting to create a launch pad/space station vibe. After the show’s intro – an animation projected onto a white kabuki drop, which saw the band flying through galaxies and battling different aspects of the album artwork – the four-piece emerged in space suits and kicked off the show.
“I wanted to create a high-tech, spaceship look around the stage so turned to Elation Professional ACL 360 fixtures, rigging them on four separate upstage ladders.” Maker explained.
The rest of his rig consisted of 24 x Robe BMFL, 16 x Robe Pointe, 12 x Robe ROBIN 100, 8 x Robe ROBIN 600E Spot, 8 x Molefay 4-Lites and eight Elation Protron 3K Color LED strobes. Using these fixtures, along with the rigged truss, ladders and floor package, Maker created a huge V as a nod to the band’s name.
To answer the band’s thorough creative brief, Maker drew on the revamped software features of Avolites Titan version 10.
“I started using the Key Frame Shape feature on this particular tour and it’s been an exceptional help in programming multi-layered, complex looks for specific songs,” Maker added.
Key Frame Shapes allows designers to create incredible effects from scratch. Using palettes to define the frames and powerful tools such as transition curves and spatial direction, it is possible to create entirely different looks for various channels instantly.