Tag: MagicQ MQ500 Stadium

BABENHAUSEN, GERMANY —  Multi-award winning rapper Apache 207 holds nothing back in “Angst,” a gripping unsettling song of alienation, isolation and fractured relationships. The relentless emotional force of this powerful piece is reflected in a recent video of the same title that the chart-topping recording artists made to kick off 2021. 

Drawing on the brooding aura of its physical setting, Babenhausen Kasserne, an abandoned and desolate former military base that was built 120 years ago, the video evokes a haunting air of mystery. This quality is accentuated by Adrian Schmidt’s riveting lighting design that he powered with his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 console. (Another MQ500 was brought to the production site as a backup, but was never used.)

Like his client, Schmidt pulled no punches when devising his creation. From the very beginning when Apache 207 seems to be entering a swirling tunnel of light, each of his steps illuminating the ground beneath his feet, it becomes clear that this video is going to challenge perceptions.

Throughout the video, Schmidt creates wave after wave of lighting intensity that includes towering aerial effects, brilliant white flashes, and cascading “waterfalls” of light.  Helping him navigate his way through this vortex of looks was his trusty console. 

“I have worked with ChamSys for over 10 years now,” he said. “It’s a very stable desk that I know I always can rely on. With the MQ500, my work is made much easier because of its very intuitive layout and easy timecode programming.  I am also a big fan of the MQ Track.”

During the production of the Angst video, the MagicQ MQ500’s reliable, rugged design was especially appreciated because of the high humidity and cold temperatures.

“All the features of the ChamSys helped me in this project, as we had limited infrastructure, a huge  (113m x 85m) area, and long cables for data transmission via ArtNet,” said Schmidt. “We also had very little time for setting everything up, as the sun went down at 5 pm.  My console performed flawlessly through it all.”

With help from his MagicQ MQ500, Schmidt, along with the rest of the production team, prevailed over these conditions. Perhaps their challenges even added to the intensity of a music video. Who can say? But in any event, the end result is one that sears itself into the viewer’s memory.

HANGZHOU, CHINA – JSTV’s 99 Juhuasuan Shopping Day Show is big by any measure. The sheer volume of sales generated by the event sponsored by this Alibaba subsidiary leave no doubt about that. Neither does the spectacular lighting design by Ghent, Belgium-based Arf & Yes.

Hovering over the 40-meter wide by 45-meter deep stage like some giant extraterrestrial craft, the stunning show transfixed the audience at this high-profile happening by directing intense, colorful beams of light outward, downward, and in every other conceivable direction to create an immersive matrix of effects that was balanced beautifully against a captivating pixel wall.

Featuring 1,533 moving heads, 800 RGBW scenic lights, the show involved 148 universes and 49,515 parameters. This massive design was controlled by four ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium consoles without the need for any distribution nodes.

Amazingly, the entire show was programmed on-site in a matter of days. “Because of a delay in the building of the rig, we had to program the show while some parts of the lighting rig were not finished,” said De Mets.  “Our multi consoles allowed us to program songs and offset at the same time. While I was programming songs, Michiel Goedertier from our team was offsetting a group of lights on stage with a third console. Fortunately our entire team, including LD Ignace D’haese, Philippe Vanderheeren, Tijs Coene, and Joeri Pluym did a great job handling everything.”

De Mets also praised the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 for making a vital contribution to the success of this impressive show. “Given the scale of this project, it involved a great deal of teamwork and reliable performance from our consoles,” he said. “There were three moving screens, two moving risers, and two catwalk elevators to give you an idea of the show’s size. We  worked with four consoles on the same network on the same show, and the MagicQ performed extremely well. The Replace Pallet, Offset Patch, Group FX and Page Holdover were all very helpful in this application.”

The Arf & Yes lightshow was more than just grand in its scale. Its power to move the audience also emanated from the artful balance of its design. Brilliant shafts of light that rained down on the stage endowed the show with an evocative translucent quality. The  triangular configuration of lights on three levels positioned over the stage, created a sense of depth. As these mesmerizing looks were being created, deft key lighting seamlessly supported each of the 36 songs from the north and south of China that were performed at the event.

A highlight of the design, and one that gave the show a magical, transcendent quality, was the 26-meter by 10-meter pixel wall that the Arf & Yes team created with the inbuilt MagicQ Pixel Mapper. “I used the Pixel Mapper with many layers with the addition of extra normal FX on the duplicated heads,” said De Mets.  “What’s more, I added sometimes extra normal FX on the duplicated elements”

The dreamy pixel wall played off well against the overhead lighting elements. At an event fueled by excitement and tinged with anticipation, this balance between raw power and evocative imagery fit the mood to perfection.

Client: JSTV

Set design: Space Warp Engine

Lighting Design: Arf & Yes

LONDON –  Lighting designers draw their inspiration from a variety of sources. Sometimes it may be the artwork on a client’s album. At others, the spark comes from the lyrics of a hit song. Simon Horn’s captivating design for Anastacia’s Evolution Tour grew out of the name of the tour itself, as is evidenced by the DNA-shaped double helix set pieces that run across the back of the stage.

Like the evolutionary process, Horn’s design has been marvelously adaptive, allowing him to maintain the look of his show as the tour moves through a wide variety of venues, often incorporating house lights into its rig. Key to this flexibility has been his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console.

“We started as a full production tour at theatres and small arena venues, then went to a mix of shows, including multi-band festivals this summer, often working with locally supplied rigs,” said Horn of Purple Lighting (West Sussex, UK).  “My MQ500 has been invaluable in terms of making our show very adaptive, without losing its core identity. We always have the DNA-shaped set pieces on the rear of the set flanked in pixel LED tape with two cell blinders mounted to the back.”

Horn credits the easy morphing and cloning features of the MagicQ MQ500 Stadium with helping him adapt his 22-universe show to different venues. “The quick and easy morphing and cloning are an absolute godsend,” he said. “Being able to expand palettes, when being presented with a fixture with extra attributes that I don’t already have programmed in existing palettes and cues, is a massive time-saver. I can use the expand palette feature to push new attributes added to a palette to all cues in the show file that have used said palette. For example, when moving to a fixture with a second prism controlled by a second channel, it would normally be ignored in cues even when recorded to my prism palette . However, after completing the expand palette process, this is instantly rectified.

“The same goes for when having only recorded RGB values on an LED fixture in my show,” continued Horn. “If I want to use the amber chip on a new fixture after morphing, as only RGB values were present in the cues, it will only look to reference the RGB values stored in the referenced palette. However, by adding the amber attribute values to a palette and then hitting expand, the amber chip will now be used wherever that palettehas been used.

“The MQ500 also makes it easy to morph from a mega point to a normal point, even with effects that previously referenced CMY values, it is very quick and easy to edit color FX to snap rather than fade between colors and easily change the color palettes being used by the FX rather than re-recording the FX,” continued Horn. “Even on the fly when I miss something, I can quickly jump in and edit the cue, then just as easy view the upcoming cues and edit them without affecting the current output.”


As flexible as it is adaptive, Horn’s lightshow covers a wide range of moods and looks, from dance solos, to soft theatrical moments, to heavy rock with punchy beams, to fun colorful pop.  

“Anastacia describes her show as ‘“Sprock” Soul Pop and Rock,’ so I created a show that defines all these elements,” said Horn. “The DNA towers work well as a backdrop, allowing me to deliver some very vivid looks as well as a starry sky effect for a slow ballad. Those towers go everywhere with us. I designed them so they can be split easily and taken on checked baggage.
These took some serious pixel mapping, but I’m in love with the outcome.”

The DNA towers and the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium both come into play to add a dramatic finish to Anastacia’s show when the star performs a beefed-up dance version of her Top Ten hit “I’m Outta Love.”  During the chorus of this song, Horn “turns the DNA towers into UV meters” by utilizing the ChamSys Audio Input Interface. “This allows me to overlay a spectrum analyzer in the pixel mapper,” he explained. “A bit cheesy perhaps, but it looks and works a treat for that particular moment!”

LONDON –   There’s a good reason why words like “dreamy” and “ethereal” pop up often when critics write about Oh Wonder. The tightly woven male-female voices and lofty synths of this alt-pop duo seem to wrap themselves gently around listeners, sweeping them up in a transcendent musical swirl.  On their current tour in support of their album Ultralife, the group’s free-flowing sound is supported by an appropriately imaginative and far-reaching Ben Mansfield lightshow run on a ChamSys Magic Q MQ500 Stadium supplied by LeSmurf Lighting.

“There is no one set look for an Oh Wonder show, but many different looks,” said Mansfield of Tourlite Design.  “I wanted to create an isolated performance environment that flows with the music. The idea is to create a canvas that I can build on, something that goes in different directions on different songs to reflect the scope of these two artists.”

Mansfield has his entire show timecoded. He builds cue stacks on this ChamSys console and runs them through with the timecode rolling, recording the go triggers with the “Record TC” function. To trigger bumps, flashes and executes, he records a macro that references external TC.  “One of my favorite ChamSys features is being able to open a cue and change data without including it into the programmer,” he said. “I do this all the time during shows.” 

Key to Mansfield’s design concept for the Ultralife tour was the creation of evocative visuals that could transition smoothly into a wide variety of venues on the US leg of the tour. “We really wanted a design that would convey the energy and vibes of the Oh Wonder show to anyone who sees it, wherever they may be, from an 800-capacity club, to a 6,000-capacity music hall, to a big festival in the day or evening,” he said,

Mansfield selected the Magic Q MQ500 Stadium for this tour in part because he wanted to ensure that his rig had the versatility to meet the varying demands of different venues. “ChamSys can morph to any local rig very quickly and simply,” he said. “I chose the MQ500 for this tour because of its accessibility and larger format. My system is very parameter heavy, so even though an MQ100 would have been perfectly adequate for the show, the console design and layout of the MQ500 has made the work flow so much easier. I make a lot of changes during every show, and the way that ChamSys lets me do this is fantastic.”

Regardless of where the band performs, Mansfield’s lightshow is built around the same 8’ luminous O and W letters. The LD had these letters built for Oh Wonder when he started working for them in 2015, and they’ve been in every one of the band’s shows since.

 “When I hit the drawing board for this tour, I knew that I had to one up myself in my overall design, yet still keep the O and W part of the show,” said Mansfield, who used 130 pixel-mapped strips driven by Resolume to build the letters. “We gave the letters color and movement through the pixel-mapped fixtures, which really brought them into the sweeping movements of the show.”

In addition to colorizing the O and W letters, the pixel-mapped strips are used to accent the outline of the stage, creating a framing effect that focuses attention on the artists. Mansfield’s rig also includes 22 high-output battens that serve as the main light source of his show. The battens use six universes and the letters one. However, he has patches that allow him to expand his rig to 30 universes for larger festivals. 

“This rig was designed to expand and contract so we can deliver the same experience to every audience regardless of the site,” said Mansfield. “We even will bring out an MQ80 for some of the smaller gigs.”

The space of venues on this tour is of secondary importance. What really matters is the show that takes audiences on a journey that transcends space. Oh Wonder does this with every song regardless of venue, and Ben Mansfield matches them with a lightshow that’s as expansive as his client’s music.

Photo Credit: Tim Toda