Alex Mungal opened a window to an array of looks in support of the band’s 18-song set by drawing inspiration from Star Trek’s iconic Romulan and Klingon warships.
“I grew up watching a lot of Star Trek and Doctor Who, so it’s no surprise that I draw on the architecture and set design from those stories,” said Mungal, owner of Alien Lites. “For this tour, we based our overhead truss configuration on the wing-shaped warships. This gave us a lot of different angles to direct light from. We had glowing light coming in from the sides of the giant wings. Also, the control centre of the ‘spacecraft’ in this configuration is top middle, which was ideal for us to use when creating unique looks with our octagon pod.”
Mungal was able to maximise the advantage of this starship configuration, while at the same time more than making up for the absence of front lighting by deploying a rig that featured 56 CHAUVET fixtures supplied by Premier Global Production.
Making the wing structure come alive were the rig’s 16 Maverick MK3 Washes. Mungal hung four of the RGBW units on each of the double wings over the stage. Drawing on the fixtures’ brightness and colour rendering capabilities, he turned the structure into a glowing centrepiece. He also relied on the wide 5.2° to 65.1° zoom range of the wash units to engineer changes in coverage areas.
“The Mavericks were very important in creating varied looks to reflect different moments,” said Mungal. “They were used as bright punchy washes to light the band and dancers. They also gave us everything from wash looks and pixel effects, to great aerial effects that played off beautifully against the haze and fog. We called on atmospherics for some creepy scary songs, in addition to rolling out lots of pyro and flame effects. Given the kind of band this is, we had a lot of variations and scene change ups throughout the show.”
Contributing to this diversity of looks in the show while also filling the role of front lights were the rig’s 40 Color STRIKE M motorised lights, which were run in 97channel mode.
“We had the STRIKE Ms all over the stage and relied on them for everything imaginable,” said Mungal. “Some were in the air and used as effect/strobe lights, as well as audience blinders, since we had no standard FOH Truss. Others were on the upstage riser, where they worked as drum lights as well as audience lights – we really made good use of the tilt function in those cases. On top of that, we had some STRIKE Ms downstage underneath the risers, and in side stage positions, so we could use them as scary uplight for the artist. Again, not having a direct front wash pushed us to use the side and uplight fixtures to our advantage.”
Colour mixing elevated the impact of every look in the tour’s panorama, which was evident in one of Mungal’s favourites during the song, “Another Life,” when the stage is saturated in a blue/lavender shade as cold white spots cut through faux snow.
Another one of the designer’s top moments was in the show opener “Meltdown,” when the band walks on to a dark stage that suddenly erupts with fiery red and orange light and video displays, as an image on the big centre stage wall shows earth receding into the vastness of space.
