PARIS – Parodic metal band Ultra Vomit and EDM solo act Sebastian serve up two very different styles of music. But both share a penchant for pushing musical boundaries, and both are in the middle of popular fall club and festival tours throughout France. The two artists have something else in common too, each is supported by high-energy light and video shows created by Chirac Design and run with ChamSys consoles.

“We tend to have intense clients, and we strive to match their intensity with our shows,” said Chirac co-founder and Marilyn Manson LD Nico Riot. “I have been a ChamSys user for quite some time, because the simplicity of the console frees me up to do the things I envision.”

Riot’s enthusiasm for ChamSys is shared by his partner and Chirac co-founder Romain Dronne, who is using a ChamSys MagicQ MQ60 to run shows for Sebastian, and Gregory Dutein, who is powering Ultra Vomit shows with a MagicQ MQ80 plus an extra wing.

“Sebastian is an EDM light show, but without the cliché of it,” said Dronne. “Our show has to be tight on the rhythm, but with flood lights — and not an army of tight narrow beams. We are doing RGB fast color chasers. Ultra Vomit is more like a theatre comedy rock show that includes standup comedy and light, as well as sound effects, managed via ChamSys Magic HD.” 

Dronne is using the MQ60 for Sebastian because its compact size makes it easy to travel by plane and train on the tour. “This console can be transported as a carry-on luggage, but it gives me 12 universes without additional nodes. It has many of the same features as the MQ80, but in a smaller screen, with smaller fader knobs as well.”

For Ultra Vomit’s tour, the Chirac team began the design process on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500, then once the show was programmed switched to a MQ80 plus an extra wing. 

“Each song Ultra Vomit does is a parody of a musical genre inside the metal sphere,” said Dutein. “We respect all the codes of every genre in term of lights and video contents. On black metal songs we use cold colors, strobes, smoke, and visual elements with black metal fonts. It’s more like a theatre rock show with a lot of jokes and interactions with the audience.” 

Given that Ultra Vomit’s show is very theatrical in nature, it is modified every week. Dutein uses his MQ80 to update his show throughout the tour. It’s power-to-size ratio allows him to make changes while riding on the tour bus. The ChamSys console’s Setlist Feature option makes it easy for him to add to the show mid-tour without cue list issues. 

“The ChamSys morphing option works great because it’s really fast,” said Dutein. “Also, the changing fixture palette option saves a lot of time. I love the cool and simple cue stack macros. It is very easy to change a page in a cue list, or activate a playback with only two characters.”

Each song in the Ultra Vomit show has its own animated backdrop. At the beginning of the tour video contents for the band was made from the visuals of their last album, “Panzer Surprise.” This design was inspired by The Looney Toons cartoon, and this forms the basis of the show’s visual content. 

As the show has progressed, Dronne and Dutein have created more content with different layers, resulting in in compelling interactive effects, such as a text synchronized with the singer to poke fun at various things. The Chirac team is using the Execute Button on their ChamSys consoles They’re also relying on the MagicHD for the content. “It’s really easy to program lights and videos together without losing time searching how to configure an external media server,” said Dronne.

Regardless of where Ultra Vomit or Sebastian stop on tour, the versatility of the ChamSys MQ60 and MQ80 is deeply appreciated. “Ultra Violet plays in a very wide variety of clubs and live music venues,” said Dronne. “Sebastian plays festivals. In both cases we never really know how big our show is going to be. This is why having a console with this combination of flexibility and power is so valuable.”

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PILTON, UK –  It was business as usual during the 36^th edition of the Glastonbury Festival. But given this event’s penchant for delighting the imagination with joyfully spontaneous eruptions of  the outrageous and unexpected, this means that things were anything but “usual” during the five-day free-spirited celebration of music and life.

Of course, there are some things that can be expected at Glastonbury year after year, such as standout performances by major stars, stunning stage designs, colorful banners fluttering on the hillsides, fans in wildly creative costumes, and ChamSys consoles being used just about everywhere.

This year, ChamSys desks were included in the production designs on eight Glastonbury stages, in addition to others being brought to the festival by a host of LDs working for a wide range of artists like Simon Horn for Maribou State, Isabel Del Moral for Rosalia, and Gary Wilson for Lewis Capaldi.

At the popular Park Stage, a MagicQ MQ500 Stadium with a Stadium Playback Wing served as the main desk, where it was used by a variety of LDs, including Tom White for Michael Kiwanuka. South West Group Events, which provided stage production, supplied the MQ500 Stadium, as well as the MagicQ MQ80 backup console.   The Lighting Manager for the stage was Callam Thom, and the Console Operator was Steven “Mac” McCracken. 

Southampton-based GLS Lighting supplied a MagicQ MQ100 plus Playback Wing for the Avalon Stage, which was overseen by Console Operator Will Thomas. The impressive artist list on that stage included James Morrison, with the desk operated by long-time  ChamSys user Martin Dudley of Martin’s Lights, and The Cat Empire with LD  Paula Trounce.  

Other places where ChamSys could be found during the festival included:

• The BBC Introducing Stage, which had an MQ80 plus an Extra Wing Compact operated Zac Leighton and Alex Merrett over the festival. 
• Silver Hayes WOW Stage, which featured an MQ100 Pro 2010 kit supplied by Fineline Lighting and operated over the weekend by James “Chimpy” Harrington.
• Left Field– With an MQ80 and Extra Wing Compact supplied by and operated by South West Group Events. 
• Greenpeace Field, which featured a MagicQ MQ500 programmed by David Howard. 
• Unfairground, which featured a MagicQ MQ80.
• The Rabbit Hole Inn Bar, which had a MagicQ MQ80 supplied and programmed by David Howard.

So even though fans have come to expect the unexpected from the world’s largest green field festival, the lighting designers and artists who come to Glastonbury want a consistent level of performance they know they can rely on, which is why ChamSys continues to be a common sight at the Worthy Farm.

BELFAST–  The Harland and Wolf Shipyard on Queen’s Island has seen its share of history. It was from this marshy outpost on the western end of Belfast Lough at the mouth of the River Lagan that the ill-fated Titanic was built. Almost a century later, long since it had stopped building ships, the vast complex was again thrust into the limelight as the main studio for the multi-Emmy winning HBO series Game of Thrones.

A visit to the shipyard-turned-studio with a gaffer friend in early 2011 plunged Keith “Shanksy” Shanks into the fantastical world of Westeros and Essos as the lighting programmer for Game of Thrones throughout its entire eight-season run. With him all the way, on every one of the 73 episodes (plus the pilot), has been a series of ChamSys consoles.

“I met the producers through my gaffer friend and was given the opportunity to work on the pilot,” said Shanks, owner of Key Console Systems in Belfast. “We never looked back, as I’ve been programming the show ever since that day, right up to the final episode.”

Ironically, Shanks had never used a ChamSys desk before working on the Game of Thrones pilot. “I was primarily a rock touring LD up until then,” he recalled. “However, I felt the console I was using would not be up to the task of this project.”

After carefully evaluating his options, Shanks selected a MagicQ MQ200 with a Playback Wing for the pilot show. He soon added a second MQ200 to his setup, followed by an MQ500 Stadium. By the time Game of Thrones reached its eighth season, he had four MagicQ MQ500 Stadiums and two MQ200s with Playback Wings at his disposal.  

The increasing number of consoles reflected the growing complexity of the Game of Thrones set lighting, which went from 14 universes to 19, as it moved from extremely high levels of illumination to more subtle and natural ones. More consoles were also needed to accommodate the variety of different sets used in the series.

During the last season, Shanks positioned the consoles at different locations throughout the Harland and Wolf facility (now the largest film studio in Europe). “We had six consoles here, one of which was in a van for when we shot at remote locations,” he said. “Our production schedule was so sharp that we had to have everything ready to go at every set, as well as the van, at a moment’s notice. Every console has a full system built into it, so we could move from one to the other with no hiccups.

“Speed was of the essence in this project,” continued Shanks. “There were a great many plans for Game of Thrones, and we had to move very quickly from one to the other. The multi-screen feature of the console was invaluable. Having everything at eye level let me get to anything I wanted very quickly. I’ve seen a lot of consoles that have way too many buttons to push to do the same thing that you can do far more quickly with ChamSys.”

The cloning and morphing features of his consoles also helped Shanks set up pages quickly. Also adding to the efficiency of the process was the easy interface with WYSIWYG. “We did a lot of  pre viz using WYSIWYG, especially the 3D version,” he said. “The interface between the ChamSys and WYSIWYG was flawless.  It was virtually plug and play. The internal drivers that ChamSys developed for this purpose were spot on.” 

Another valuable feature for Shanks was the broad color palette available on his ChamSys consoles. “During the course of this series we continuously got new heads, and the people at ChamSys were great at keeping the CT colors current,” he said. “The regions that the MQ500 has for color picker applications was quite impressive.”

In a show as multi-faceted as Game of Thrones, last minute edits and adjustments are inevitable. On these occasions, Shanks appreciated the cue stacking features of his ChamSys consoles, which made it quick and easy to edit cues and individual timing. He also relied on his desks’ WiFi capabilities for last minute changes. “The interface was very smooth,” he said. “When a designer wanted to alter something, it could be done very quickly. Again, time was always of the essence in this project.”

On the subject of time, Shanks was amazed at how quickly it flew in his eight seasons with Game of Thrones. “It was a great experience,” he said. “I enjoyed the series, but it was the camaraderie of the crew that I will miss most. There was a sense of family as we all pulled together working on a project that we knew would be remembered for a very long time to come.”

As for the future, Shanks has a new film project on the horizon. “It looks like it will be coming through,” he said. “When it does, of course I will be taking my ChamSys with me.”

Photo #1 Credit: Getty Image

Photo #2 Credit: Helen Sloan

INDIO, CA –  From the instant he stepped onto the Sahara Tent stage shouting, “Make some noise,” before breaking into “J’s On My Feet, “while being supported by the thunderous sound of his band, Wiz Khalifa’s Coachella performance was filled with dramatic moments. But for the Grammy-nominated star’s longtime lighting designer Jason Bullock, the real drama started about 24 hours before the show began.

It was then that the New York-based LD received the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 desk from Upstaging that he would use to run his 90-universe show. “Coachella is a very important festival for all artists involved, so there was some pressure,” acknowledged Bullock. “I didn’t see the ChamSys desk until I arrived at the festival. I built the patch and show file in a Viz room on the site. Being able to build a show with a few hours and only get on the lighting system for three hours made time of the essence. ChamSys was the ideal tool, given that I was in a crunch.”

Bullock’s work was more than fast. As anyone who saw Khalifa’s 20-song show would readily agree, it was also inspired with an abundance of big hits, saturated colors, immersive video displays and airtight timing.

“The Sahara Tent at Coachella was primarily EDM acts,” said Bullock. “Since Wiz brought the entire band with him, I decided to make the show completely different than the other acts by going in the direction of a more classical rock show. Our beautiful set, which was designed by the team from Nimblist, made it easier to create this kind of look with its band risers and large center gate. We also had a powerful video display from Screenworks NEP that covered the front of the set and added to the intense vibe.” 

Bullock controlled a universe of Catalyst to send multiple outputs to the massive amount of video surfaces on the set. His show was extensive (his patch had 21 pages of paperwork), and impressively, he punted throughout its entire length. 

“My whole show was punted,” said Bullock, who ran all the FX, video and lighting. “Wiz is a very prolific artist, so there’s always lots of material to learn. Even right up until showtime at Coachella there were still alterations to the set list. After eight years of being with Wiz, I have developed a formula that works for his show.”

The friendly layout of the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium helped Bullock at Coachella. “I really like how the MQ500 has a row of buttons over the playback faders,” he said. “This gives you way  more options for layering different fixture functions. With the larger screens and a few added buttons, the MQ500 is really a great upgrade. It’s also helpful that the software is consistent. If  you’ve  worked on any ChamSys product before, you’re on very familiar ground.”

Bullock credits his team with helping the Coachella show run smoothly. “Justin Collie and Nathan Wilson from Nimblist, my video content people Dark Matter and Matthew Fuller all contributed to the success of this project,” he said. “This show and the challenges involved were very stressful. My team helped, and so did my ChamSys. With ChamSys I have one less thing to worry about. I know it will always do what it’s supposed to do, and do it easily and quickly. That’s why I don’t use anything else.”

SUSSEX, UK–  Simon Horn never worked with Maribou State before, nor had he ever seen the multifarious  electronic music duo live, when he signed on to light their sold-out Brixton show.  Once he became involved with the group, however, he was quickly taken by their supple, infinitely complex sound. “I fell  in love with their music from the word ‘go,’” he said.  “I can only describe them as being to electronic music what Queen was to rock, with high-energy rhythm, mystical deep moments and dramatic charm that takes you from having the hairs stand on the back of your neck,  to shedding tears of love.”

So inspired, Horn, the owner of Purple Lighting, used his ChamSys Stadium MagicQ MQ500 console to power a lightshow  that captured the elusive essence of Maribou State’s music by serving up a seemingly endless array of big multi-faceted aerial effects that flowed across this entire rig with every evocative note. The fit between sound and illumination was so tight, that Horn’s “single show” quickly led to him lighting the band’s Kingdoms in Colour tour.

For Horn, the music of Maribou State is a fertile incubator for his design vison. “I am all about creating drama and movement in the air by not actually wobbling fixtures, but by creating pulse and chase effects in different arrangements and in different orders across the rig,” he said. “Just because a fixture can move doesn’t mean it has to. I can create a sense of movement by doing something as simple as having the beams on the X Bars punch through at different times. This tour is providing me with a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my design philosophy. The band was very keen on moody dramatic looks and was open to thick smoke and silhouetted moments. It was an LD’s dream come true to be so dynamic.”

Like all creative visions that come to fruition, however, Horn’s ambitious design for the Kingdoms in Colourtour had its share of demanding twists and turns. He credits his MagicQ MQ500 with helping him achieve his vision for the show. For example, he relied heavily on his console’s Group Based Effects feature to create a fluid sense of motion without  having his fixtures themselves actually move.

“I used the Group Based Effects often to adjust the way different effects were applied,” he said. “The group based pixel map effects were great fun too, as they helped me apply multiple effects over each other. This  made for some great intricate moments across the X Bars. There was a lot of pixel mapping in this design, so I depended on all of the ChamSys Pixel Mapping features, both the main pixel mapper and the group grid based pixel map.”

The speed of the MQ500 also was important to Horn. “This is an incredibly fast console to program on,” he said.  “With the large screen, I have access to groups while still having instant access to color and beam palettes.  I built a large amount of groups to give me quick access to a variety of fixture orders. I also broke up the rig into quick accessible sections. Another thing I love is how easy it is to view what’s in the programmer, cue and palettes.   This makes for some very quick editing when I need to change or remove something I’ve accidentally included.”

Perhaps Horn’s biggest challenge was to integrate video content so it  could work together and cross fade between the visuals and the lighting. “I didn’t want the contrast of light and dark to be compromised by having a white canvas in place all the time, and there wasn’t the budget for an LED screen offering transparency, so I elected to project onto a dark sharkstooth,” he said.  “While directly behind the sharkstooth  I had six towers with LED washes and linear blinders.  On the first two numbers, I held back from using them. Then on the third song, they came into play as a massive surprise for the audience.”

Although the vast majority of the show was timecoded,  Horn had some “adlib moments” at the end of sections. He delivered in these instances without missing a beat, relying on the MagicQ’s controllable audio trigger functions. “The audio interface allowed me to  select certain frequencies of the audio feed to attack certain values with great accuracy,” he said. “It did things like give me very tight control to bump a cue stack of intensity stabs to this particular set of drum beats.”

With no production rehearsal and no previous experience with the band, Horn “hit the ground running” for his roughly 1000-cue show. “It was very gratifying to see the show come together for the first time after all the programming,” he said. “I’m grateful  to Keely Myres of Global Touring Office for bringing the opportunity to me, as well as Lite Up Events for the fantastic pristine equipment, and Ben Cullen Williams for the excellent content. This experience was unexpected, but it is something I will always value.”

CHICAGO –  It was still 32 days before the beloved Cubbies kicked off the 2019 baseball season, but as one of the most frigid winters in memory drew to a close, a group of 400 Windy City rock fans jumpstarted summer on the 20^th annual Chicago Music Cruise, a weeklong Caribbean excursion on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of The Seas. 

Organized by local rock icons 7^th Heaven, the cruise featured a group of leading Chicagoland bands and radio personalities. When cruise-goers weren’t walking the ship’s promenade or dining at its restaurants, they were packing its theatre to dance to a relentless procession of rock and country tunes. Keeping pace with the hard-driving music notes was a dynamic and colorful Zach Scott-designed lightshow, run with a ChamSys Maxi Wing and ChamSys Extra Wing Compact.

“Given that space is always an issue in a cruise ship environment, I wanted something with a small travel footprint that would still give me enough power to run a 22-universe show with no hiccups,” said Scott. “I’ve been running shows with the MagicQ MQ 500 Stadium, but size was an issue here. It was also very important that whatever I used had the ability to be up and running quickly from show to show. Having used ChamSys for a long time, I knew that it would do the trick.”

In addition to his Maxi Wing and Extra Wing, Scott’s system included a MacBook Pro and Elo Touch Screen. “The MacBook Pro running the MagicQ on PC was the core of the operation,” he said. “I received plots a couple of months prior to the cruise, which gave me ample time to build the rig and preprogram the show. The Maxi Wing is great in this regard, since it lets me do my programming and playback through real faders, buttons and encoder wheels. The transition from pre vis to actually running that show on board the ship went very smoothly.”

Scott ran three different shows, two 60-minute versions and one 90-minute variety, during the cruise.  He controlled each show live through the playback faders and cue stack buttons on his Maxi Wing and Extra Wing Compact. 

“With 12 faders and 12 executable playbacks, the Extra Wing Compact expanded my options,” he said. “It’s a great tool. I counted on its flash buttons to bump up output at key points, and they are always very responsive. I was also able to execute very smooth fades with them. Dividing my rig between the two wings, I was able to run a full production show in a somewhat restrictive cruise ship setting.”

For Scott, the Chicago Music Cruise offered an opportunity to connect to rock fans in his hometown. “When you go to a concert, people see it and then they’re gone,” he said. “On a cruise, people spend days together, so there’s more interaction. I like that – plus this was a great chance to get away from the Chicago winter weather, too.”

Photo Credit: JPM Photography

THESSALONIKI, GREECE – Over 2,300 years ago Cassander of Macedon founded a city on the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. Blessed with a gentle climate and beautiful scenery, the settlement became home to a thriving theatre community in the ancient world. This tradition continues to the present day, as Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city , has established itself as a leading entertainment center in the eastern Mediterranean with a thriving nightclub scene, a highly regarded film festival, popular theatres and a seemingly never-ending schedule of live music concerts. 

Indicative of the city’s current entertainment panache was the winter concert series at the Pyli A Performance Stage, which featured world-class entertainment and stunning patterns productions. A highlight of the series was a concert by multi-platinum contemporary Laïkó singer Antonis Remos. Supporting the legendary star’s passionate performance was a majestic George Porros-designed lightshow that immersed the audience with a stunning display of 144 overhead light tubes.

Suspended over almost the entire stage and extending out over the audience stage left and stage right, the tubes created an impressive image. Constantly morphing into different configurations as different tubes were turned on and off, the overhead display changed the entire look of the stage to reflect different aspects of Remos’ music. 

Kiriakos Dimitriadis of Audiotech controlled this overhead panorama with his ChamSys PC Wing and dual DMX. “We used the ChamSys for pixel mapping, and to control the tilt and intensity of the tubes,” said Dimitriadis. “I have been a ChamSys user for nine years. It is a very friendly tool that makes it easy to navigate my way around any show, even when I don’t have a lot of time to prepare, which was the case with this concert. 

“The lightshow for Antonis Ramos was rather elaborate with a lot of different angles and patterns. For this concert, my ChamSys PC Wing helped me plot a lot of the fixtures and hold the focus. It also was very convenient in remote in terms of controlling fixture positions, which was important, since the designers gave this show a great many special looks. The MagicQ software was excellent for controlling the fixtures.” 

Playing a key role in creating those engaging looks were the geometric patterns of beams and lasers (created by laser designer Tsitsanis Themis) that changed continuously, and often dramatically, throughout the show, giving the stage very different auras to reflect the wide emotional range of Remos’ music. 

Many of the geometric patterns were pre-programmed, but Dimitriadis added some just prior to the show. “ChamSys is very easy to work with, so it allows me to add looks quickly to a show,” he said. “All the functions I need to control a show are right there at my fingertips. The layout options are very user-friendly, and the fader options allow me to control some cues with great speed. The Fast Panic button for correcting mistakes was a big help.

Regardless of when they were programmed, the elegant and complex patterns of floating tubes of light and lasers gave the concert a transformative three-dimensional quality. In so doing, they added an ethereal quality to this timeless concert setting, making the music of this Greek national treasure all the more evocative. 

DENVER – Popular Colorado dream rockers Evanoff have their moments of dark bass-driven jams, but for the most part their ethereal psychedelic-tinged music doesn’t travel on the same sound waves as the thumbing traps that EDM star G. Jones swims in. Still, the two share an affinity for dramatic moments in music — and lighting. This was evident when the Boulder-based trio went to a G. Jones show recently.

So impressed were the band members with the infinite pans and tilts that fed off the energy of Jones’ musical performances, that they talked to their lighting designer Matt “Jonezy” Jones about moving away from the video -heavy look of their last tour and going with a beefier moving beam design. Jones was only too happy to oblige. Drawing on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 with wings, he created a deep, saturated other-worldly show with EDM-style visuals that wraps the band in immersive blankets of light from 36 moving fixtures.

“It was a great new look for the band,” said Jones of the lightshow, which appeared for the first time at Evanoff’s Saturday February 23rd concert at Denver’s Bluebird Theater. “We brought in 36 movers for our floor package, all patched into the ChamSys, then out via Art-Net to my 4-port ChamSys Node.”

Jones positioned many of his movers in ways he rarely has before. “I don’t usually do this when I design rigs, but I yoked many of my movers straight out,” he said. “I am usually not a fan of this type of hang, as it can take considerably longer to get perfect angles and beams to cross just right. But in my experience, when using infinite pan/tilt, this is one of the most valuable ways to hang.”

A ChamSys user for over 10 years, Jones relied on the pan/tilt offset features of this MagicQ MQ80 to help him align his beam angles. “The offsets allow me to get fixtures lined up via my patch window quickly and easily, so all things move symmetrically when fanning,” he said. “This saved an immense amount of time when we had to deal with wonky hangs. Another thing I valued in this job were the ChamSys’ cloning and morphing. This made it easy to create consistency from our existing programming into this new rig.”

In addition to his MQ80 console, Jones used his execute wing for most of his FX, as well as strobes, gobos and prisms, and all of his “hard looks.” His extra wing was relied on for beam positions, as well as all FX speed and size masters. “I break these out per fixture type, if possible, to allow for very granular FX control,” explained Jones. “Alec ‘Red’ Szuch, who worked with me on this project, did a remarkable job in this and every area of the show. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Designing his show in Vectorworks, Jones exported it to LIGHTCONVERSE, and patched the ChamSys console and PreVis. This allowed him to see his beguiling beam patterns in a myriad of positions and from a range of perspectives.

“This design took a couple of iterations to get the angles just right for the room,” he said. “Beam positions are the single most important part of my programming, so I spent many hours pre-vising, as well as dialing in my beams onsite. With 36 beams, I designed the rig to wrap around the band, so we were really able to create some cool patterns by tossing the lights everywhere in symmetrical and asymmetrical movements, then stopping them at various points, all while keeping front light to an absolute minimum.”

Jones accented these intricate patterns further through the adroit use of colors. At times he saturated the stage with very dark, almost brooding hues, to create trance effects. Then, when the band took its music in a more upbeat direction, he used the flash buttons on his MagicQ MQ80 to crash bright whites through the colored patterns.

As it moved through patterns and colors enveloping the stage and artists in its immersive looks, Jones’ lightshow never strayed from its primary mission of supporting the music. “I am guided by a philosophy of ‘turning the music into light,’” he said. “In other words, my mission is to follow the music. Ultimately, this is what we were going for in this design.”