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Elliot Baines creates disco mood on Beth McCarthy tour with Chauvet

Director/lighting designer Elliot Baines, of Spiralstagelighting, drew his inspiration for the design for Beth McCarthy’s recent tour from his client’s latest hit “Drama at the Disco”. In light of this, he wanted to keep his stage relatively simple with plenty of stage positions for his dynamic, dancing client to move to during her show. True to this disco-vision, his design featured a 2-meter by 2-meter mirror ball.

Like any disco mirror ball, Baines’ centerpiece required some intense lighting support to realize its full impact. He provided this with help from Chauvet Professional’s Maverick Storm 4 Profile and Color Strike M, which, like the rest of his rig, were supplied by Subfrantic. “The mirror ball was lit from all angles”, says Baines. “Instead of overusing it, we wanted to use it as a set piece, instead of always using it as ‘a mirror ball’.”

“The Strike Ms in our rig created incredible shadows from the mirror ball itself”, he continues. “It was almost like backlighting it. Creative illusions with left to right strobe effects from the Strike fixtures made it look like the mirror ball was almost shaking. We also used the Color Strike for stage wash color. On some of the tracks, we didn’t want the stage to feel too bright, especially for the more emotional songs, so the Color Strike helped us create individual backlighting on each member, rather than using the whole house rig at once.”

On the subject of color, Baines relied on monochromatic palettes, often in the pink family (a signature hue of the client), to engender a hot, clubby mood on stage. “Beth’s favorite color is hot pink, which we decided to use in different shades, along with purples”, he explains. “To balance out this palette and not overuse it, we introduced a darker tone with cold blues, and colder colors for slower tracks. One of my favorite looks with these colors was for the song ‘Rockstar’, where that section/chapter of the set was bright pastel pinks and rouges, but for that track, we only used the Maverick Storm Profiles in blue, with a snap snake chase, utilizing side shadows.”

The Maverick Storm 4 Profiles were also used to enhance the impact of the mirror ball with gobos. “We had them placed strategically and didn’t use them all at once”, Baines says of the fixtures. “Two of them were kept further back, which helped us create wide silhouette looks coming from the upstage side. This added another dimension, and helped us meet our goal of creating something that was more than just ‘another mirror ball’.”

(Photos: Luke Dyson - lukedyson.com)

www.chauvetprofessional.com

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