Production/Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair is using Elation PROTEUS MAXIMUS LED Profile lighting fixtures to support country star Zach Bryan on his ongoing “Quittin’ Time” tour.
Sinclair has handled lighting design duties for both the tour’s arena and stadium shows, with the outdoor shows commencing in May. Kyle Lovan operates the show with lighting programming by Andre Petrus. Lighting supply in by Upstaging.
“Everything we do with Zach is about getting him as closely connected to his audience as possible,” Sinclair stated. “We do that in arenas by putting him in the middle of the room, but we couldn’t do that in stadiums, so Zach and the band perform before a large video screen that is 160 feet long and 55 feet high with IMAG.”
The entire rig needed to be weatherproof. It also needed to be able to operate at a very high trim height of about 60 feet so IP-rated fixtures that could cut through the video wall lighting at that distance were a must. Sinclair not only emphasised the importance of a powerful lighting system that could withstand unpredictable weather but also insisted on one that could maintain consistency of colour and beam.
Sinclair looked at several options in partnership with lighting vendor Upstaging, who encouraged him to select IP-rated fixtures. “Upstaging was a natural choice for us,” he said. “Their support and expertise have been invaluable. We spent time putting a meter on the MAXIMUS and comparing them to the competition and in the end, we decided they were the right choice.”
Sinclair deployed evenly spaced PROTEUS MAXIMUS along a single upstage truss that follows the length of the 160-foot screen with the same number of units lining the upstage floor. “Everything we do is in service to Zach, his songs, and the storytelling,” he said. “The lighting is very supportive of the performance and is not a light show by any means. There’s no time code and no playback so lighting director Kyle Lovan has to really think on his feet every day.”
“Ten years ago, if you had put a system out like this in that type of weather you would have lost lights everywhere. The general reliability of everything we have used on this tour has been really incredible.We’ve lost minimal amounts of fixtures across the whole rig, so the IP rating has really saved us,” Sinclair said.
