Tour Designer and longtime Russell Dickerson collaborator Scott Cunningham of Cut2Black Designs served as Production Designer for the Russell Dickerson shows. Programming was carried out by Cunningham working together with Luke Elrod, while the role of touring LD was filled by Nathan Augustyn.
From the outset, Cunningham was clear that a strobe fixture had to feature in the rig and soon chose the Jolt Panel FX ticked all the right boxes.
“Russell is a very high impact show,” explained Cunningham, “so we knew we needed some kind of strobe and wanted to go with something that offered the versatility of both a pixel color wash and strobe/blinder in one fixture. Financially, the budget for motorised fixtures just wasn’t there. And, to be honest, we just didn’t need the tilt function! In fact, for most of the tours that I put motorised panels on, the tilt function isn’t a necessity. So, I had been hoping that someone would come out with a static version for a while. When Chuck [Dillingham of ADJ Rep Firm Freed Sales] showed me the Jolt Panel FX I was instantly impressed. The intensity blows other fixtures away and it has all the functionality but at a price that works for a lot of the smaller bus and trailer tours. For Russell, it was a really obvious choice, not just budget-wise, but because it was the perfect fixture for what we needed.”
Combining strobe LEDs and zone-controlled vibrant colour-mixing LEDs. It incorporated 48 5-Watt cool white SMD LEDs, surrounded on both sides by a total of 800 0.3W RGB SMD LEDs. Both types of LED are grouped into independently controllable zones (6 white and 40 colour), allowing for the creation of eye-catching animated chase patterns. The white LEDs are bright and, when combined in a multiple of 48, generate intense strobe effects. A wide variety of vibrant colour options can be achieved using the RGB LEDs through individual dimming control of the independent red, green and blue elements.
“Because of the channels available on the touring console, we didn’t go full holy-moley 141-channel mode,” stated Cunningham. “But we did have them in 81-channel mode, which gave us 20 segments of colour as well as the six strobe segments. This allowed us to create a variety of different wipes and other pixel effects as well as using the fixtures to create big blinder looks and flood the stage with vibrant colour. The colour wash is great, the strobe/blinder hits are really intense, and the pixel mapping allowed us to make use of the panels almost all the way through the show.”
The majority of the Jolt Panel FX fixtures on the tour were rigged in four groups of four to upstage columns that interspersed sections of video wall. These units were used extensively as blinders, to provide back colour wash to the stage, and for animated pixel effects. The final four fixtures were deployed on the stage itself, two at either side, to serve as side and scenic lights. Two units were positioned at each side of the stage to wash the band members while the remaining pair of fixtures illuminated two risers built into the set which were dressed to look like huge tires.
“I have been extremely impressed by the Jolt Panel FX’s durability,” concluded Cunningham. “For Russell’s tour, we had them loaded on set carts, riding in a truck, being used and abused each night and they proved to be rock solid. From a practical point of view, I also like the flexibility of having a yoke as well as an omega bracket mounting point on the back. Overall, I’ve been blown away by the durability, versatility and functionality of these fixtures and am sure that I’ll be using them for other future tours.”
