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Robe’s iFortes and Spiiders selected for Amble arena shows

Irish indie-folk trio Amble played three sold-out shows at Dublin’s 3 Arena - their largest headlining gigs to date - plus one at Belfast’s SSE Arena, with lighting designed by Steven Douglas. He used 68 Robe iForte and sixty Robe Spiider moving lights as the primary lighting and effects fixtures for the show, supplied - together with other lights, sound, video and rigging - by Dublin-based rental company Just Lite, project-managed by John McGuinness and Paul Smith.

Douglas first met the band when they were opening for Hozier, also one of his clients, on a US tour. They liked what he was doing and asked him to produce some lighting for them, culminating with these four high-profile arena shows. Amble liked the idea of having a big back wall of lights, so after initial discussions, Douglas took this as a starting point and framed this with an eye-catching LED pros arch to complement the wall of Spiiders. In addition to the three members of the band, these Dublin shows featured up to six guest performers onstage.

“I didn’t want to have a 60 ft wide stage with a load of dead space and people feeling uncomfortable”, Douglas explains, so the LED pros and the back wall of lights functioned as practical set pieces, to which he added risers for guest artists. The back wall of ten wide and six high Spiiders on ladder trusses made a dramatic statement and Douglas also used it to create subtle twinkling and kinetic effects. The Spiiders were interspersed with some blinders and strobes.

The iFortes were positioned on the overhead and front trusses and also on side torms with twelve fixtures on the floor for some rear lumen power. Douglas has used the iForte numerous times, he says. This time, six units rigged on the front truss were paired with a remote follow spot system with two front lights each designated to the three Amble band members, together with one iForte from the back - on a separate truss just upstage of the pros - so for every person there were three iForte follow spots. They were complemented by side lighting from another eight iFortes to complete the key light picture. The twelve iFortes on the floor were used for big, bold, sumptuous beamy backlight looks.

There was no pre-production time at the arena, they loaded in and went straight into the first show. However, Douglas was able to build most of the show on Capture and spent two days of pre-vizzing at Just Lite’s studio in Dublin. Prior to the Arena shows, Douglas completed a quick run of shows with the band in the UK in smaller venues like Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom and London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, carrying only a small floor package in a trailer with the main workhorse being six Spiiders.

(Photos: Steven Douglas/Adam Heffernan)

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