JR Lighting provided the lighting, rigging and control package for the U.S. leg of American pop punk band All Time Low’s The Young Renegades tour , a successful six-week run this summer that featured Elation Professional lighting and video.
Lighting designer Jeff Maker has worked with All Time Low for the past eight years and earlier this year used Elation lighting on a string of shows in the UK and Europe. For 2017’s US leg he added a dominant upstage visual piece in the form of an eye-catching LED video wall. “Whereas the UK design was all about the lighting, the US leg was very video heavy,”
Maker explained, referencing the unique cityscape/soundwave video wall made up of Elation EMAG4 LED video panels. “We wanted to create a very interactive design that helped transform the stage with each song having its own personality.” The LED wall added depth to the stage with visuals that fully complemented the Baltimore foursome’s music.
Maker worked with Oliver Hutchinson on the video content, all of which was timecoded. “We worked together on colours and ideas and I think we came up with something special for the band,” Maker said, explaining that the lighting design was partially influenced by the popular mystery TV show Stranger Things.
He had custom rigging stingers fabricated along with tensioning and balancing equipment to safely suspend the video wall. Optimised for high-pace setup and tear down with features like toolless quick locks, the 4.8MM pixel pitch EMAG panels provided outstanding image quality and plenty of visual punch. Video processing was from an Elation-distributed Novastar NovaPro HD.
Helping to frame the video wall were one-metre long Elation SixBar 1000 LED colour-changing battens, multi-purpose strips used as special effects, chases and blinders, as well as pixel mapping. “The colour mixing was great with the SixBars and they were super bright,” Maker said, adding that they had no problem holding up with the brightness of the video wall. Six SixBar fixtures were rigged vertically at different heights above the video wall with six hung vertically on floor truss. A further four were located on the ground – 2 stage left and 2 stage right – facing the band midstage.
Specced in the rig for the UK leg earlier in the year were Elation Protron 3K Color LED strobes. For the US leg Maker turned to Elation’s high-power white light Protron 3K LED strobe with its 80,000 lumens of power and lack of thermal issues. “The Protron strobe’s role was to be a powerful strobe light that doesn’t flicker or thermal during a full-on burst,” the LD stated. “Even though I only had four of them, due to their brightness and fast strobing effects, it looked like there were twice as many.”
A single Protron strobe worked from in-between each floored SixBar with two Protrons positioned under the grated drum riser.
A pair of DMX-controllable Antari Z-350 Fazers was used to provide adequate amounts of haze. “DMX control was great and they covered rooms big, small, and even outdoors beautifully,” Maker said.
JR Lighting played a huge role in getting all the gear needed at an unbeatable cost. “This is the third tour I’ve done with them with two different artists and they were amazing,” Maker concluded, “They are a great team to work with and I definitely would love to work with them again in the future.”