Gary Numan has returned to the road to promote his latest studio album, Intruder, with a show-stopping performance at London’s OVO Wembley Arena which saw Lighting Designer, Dustin Snyder tap into 30 Robe MegaPointes and 88 LEDBeam 150s as well as other fixtures courtesy of a Siyan-supplied lighting rig – which was scaled to 20 and 60 fixtures, respectively, for the rest of the UK tour.
Gary Numan takes an active interest in the look of all his stage shows whilst also giving Dustin the space to develop his own ideas and directions. “He’s great to work with,” commented Synder, explaining that for this the singer-songwriter specifically required “lots of beams,” partly to complement the playback video content, much of which was created by Paul Green.
MegaPointes were key to the show aesthetic. For the tour, these were positioned on the deck and upstage on the floor on top of a row of flightcases. For Wembley, MegaPointes were also added to the overhead trusses giving plenty of powerful multi-layered MegaPointe looks that helped define and frame the stage.
These were complemented with the LEDBeam 150s, some rigged on vertical ladders in between the columns of video panels, in the gaps between a series of vertically mounted LED battens. The battens were all run in ‘pixel’ mode for additional dynamics, running via Resolume.
Another two banks of LEDBeam 150s were under the band risers onstage with more topping six side booms, each of which also had a vertical LED batten below. Their deployment also mimicked a layered grid system similar to the MegaPointes, and juxtaposed with the video design, produced a vast selection of anarchic looks sitting alongside the perfection of symmetry.
The UK leg of the tour all went “very smoothly” according to the LD, in no small part due to the “fantastic” crew from Siyan who dovetailed and worked harmoniously with the touring production team. The lighting crew included Lighting Technicians, Jason Tomes, Tom Hewitt and Sam “Trash Panda” James. At Wembley, Chris Cunningham looked after the extra crew members along with Lighting Crew Chief, Jon Barlow. The tour’s FOH sound was mixed by Tour Manager, Dave Dupuis.
Tom Grant, Siyan Account Handler and Wembley Production Manager, commented: “It was great to be working with Dave again after crossing paths on previous tours and also meet Dustin who came onboard to design lighting this time around. Both are a pleasure to work alongside and presented us with a clear picture of what they wanted to achieve, so we had all the info needed to help develop the creative into physical reality. It also was a huge honour to be asked by Dave to produce and manage the Wembley gig, given the historic significance of this show for Gary. Being part of making this happen will be a career highlight for sure!”
Mike Williams assumed the role of Video Project Manager; IMAG and Live Camera Director, Oliver Bowring at Wembley was joined by DoP, Paul Green for the DVD shoot. Siyan supplied lighting and rigging, with video courtesy of Universal Pixels and Stage Audio Services providing sound infrastructure at Wembley.