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Joker Out’s “Karneval” extravaganza lit with Robe

Robe’s new GigaPointe moving lights made their Slovenian debut with indie rockers Joker Out, who celebrated their tenth birthday with a special show - “Karneval”, a festival-style, circus-themed extravaganza, including special guests - staged at the outdoor Kardeljeva ploscad venue at the university in capital Ljubljana.

Tasked with designing lighting this event was visual design agency Blackout, who have been working with Joker Out since 2021. The lighting design team was led by Klemen Krajnc with Crt Birsa taking care of key lighting, and they chose to work with a large rig of Robe moving lights.

This included a set of thirty-two Robe GigaPointes, which had just been delivered to rental company Event Lighting. Also on the rig were thirteen Robe Fortes, six iForte LTXs, thirty-seven MegaPointes, forty-nine iSpiiderXs wash beams and fourteen Tetra2 moving LED battens.

The band picked the spherical-shaped stage and worked with set designer Maja Moravec on creating various circus props, intricate draping and other scenic elements to evoke the Big Top look, including the band risers onstage. The central arched stage was flanked by wings dressed to resemble circus tents and some of the guest performers were aerialists and other circus acts.

Krajnc added the lights to this stage layout, which were overhead and around the sides of the stage structure and on eight independent scaffolding towers, six behind the stage - graduated in height but all taller than the stage and wings so they were visible over the top - plus left and right PA towers framing the central section just in front of the stage.

The GigaPointes were on the deck, positioned along the full width of the front edge of the 70-metre-wide, 2-metre-high stage, including the two wings and the wing returns at each end. All of these sat on a ledge half a metre below stage level. These were used primarily for creating dramatic effects and reaching out across the arena with narrow piercing beams.

Twenty-seven of the thirty-seven MegaPointes were rigged on nine over-stage finger trusses - running in an upstage/downstage orientation with different heights following the curvature of the roof arch, and the other ten were upstage in a straight line. Krajnc worked these and the GigaPointes together to create some of the show’s most memorable lighting scenes.

Fourteen Robe Tetra2 LED battens were used to illuminate the stage wing set elements, rigged on the floor for optimal up lighting of the vertical parts of the set. Twenty-seven iSpiiderXs were also on the finger trusses - three per truss. Another eighteen were used for lower side light across the sphere stage, nine per side, running front to back on low parts of the stage structure.

Four iSpiiderXs were used for front key lighting for the static members of the band in two high cantilevered positions on the downstage sides of the stage structure; two for the drummer and one each for the keyboardist and backing vocalists on their risers. These were under Birsa’s control for the show. He additionally layered in more keys using a combination of the six iForte LTXs and thirteen Fortes, for lighting the mobile band members plus several guests.

The side keys onstage utilised four Fortes, two each positioned on the far stage left and right (of the eight) towers and throwing onto the front of the stage, covering the performance areas at the front of the wings, the central stage apron and the thrust area/runway. On the two delay towers left and right of FOH were eight Fortes, and the thirteenth Forte was rigged in the mid front position on the sphere stage to back light performers as they sashayed down the central catwalk.

Above the Fortes on the delay towers were six iForte LTXs, three per side, programmed to catch all the onstage, forestage, wing and runway action. The six iForte LTXs were running on five RoboSpot systems - the BaseStations were under the stage.

Krajnc and Birsa pre-vizzed the show as much as was practical and on site had two days of programming with the full rig. However, the main challenge for this show was nothing technical or artistic - it was the weather. Ljubljana is situated in a wide, flat basin known as the Ljubljana Basin, surrounded by hills and mountains, and this has its own microclimate.

A violent thunderstorm complete with torrential rain unleashed itself a couple of hours before Joker Out were due to take the stage, resulting in extensive flooding and emergency adaptations being needed on the site. Some elements of the kit were drenched and waterlogged and some of the upstage back drapes were ripped off by the high winds and had to be reattached as best as possible. Thankfully, everything was deemed safe and 17,000 Joker Out fans were able to enjoy the show.

(Photos: Sasa Krajnc/Miro Majcen/Janez Strukelj)

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