Supporting Bonobo’s 23 March 2018 appearance at San Francisco’s Midway music hall was an engaging light show created by Bryce Cherpelis of 12BC Pro that was anchored by a collection of Chauvet Professional moving fixtures.
“We used lighting to engage the sold-out crowd,” said Cherpelis. “We didn’t surround the artist with a lot of eye candy; the projection video behind him set the tone. What our lights did was support the overall mood that reflected the music and the video images. We put a lot of light on the audience without distracting them. The ceiling at this venue is pretty high. That, along with the output of our Chauvet fixtures, made it relatively easy to cover the entire crowd.”
Cherpelis used 2 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Hybrid fixtures, positioned 1 apiece on vertical truss structures stage left and right, for long throw spot and beam effects.
He supported these hybrid units with a pair of Chauvet Professional 440W LED Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures, which were also positioned on either side of the stage. “The 4 Mavericks gave us more than enough output to create some interested spot effects over the audience,” he said.
Providing atmospherics were 3 Amhaze foggers arranged on the stage deck. Also included in the Bonobo rig were 6 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrid and 4 Rogue R2 Wash fixtures.
These movers were flown on a horizontal truss that ran on either side of the audience, starting about 20’ from the stage apron. “The Rogues were excellent for lighting the crowd,” said Cherpelis. “Given the nature of this show, we wanted to keep the light on stage to a minimum. The zooming features of the Mavericks and Rogues made it easy to get all the audience lighting we needed without having anything spill over onto the stage.”
Wanting to keep fixtures away from the stage, Cherpelis had to make adjustments with his wash fixtures. “We had the Rogue R1s mounted at 90° level,” he said. “This created a bit of a challenge.”
Cherpelis addressed this issue quite easily, however, by making an adjustment to the Patch Page of his ChamSys MQ40 console. In the end, he delivered a smooth and seamless light-show that touched the crowd on an emotional level, just like Bonobo’s latest brand of engaging music.