Popular Music Competition

I was asked to light one of the biggest events at Twyford CofE HighSchool, called the PMC. The PMC stands for the popular music competition, however some people called it the popular music concert. 7 solo artists and 7 bands battle it out to get the grand praise of a recording session at Decor Records. The PMC is a day event however it took almost 4 months of planning and 3 days to setup. I created many design ideas during the 4 months, some more complex than others.

‘First of all, Great Stage design tonight whoever thought of that, the person behind all the smoke, lights and design – its fantastic.’ ~ One Of The Judge

Design Idea 1 was a matrix of par-cans above the artist. This would allow for pixel mapping however it also means that I couldn’t put any moving head lights in-between the par-cans in the matrix because otherwise there would be too much weight on the truss.

Design Idea 2 was to have trusses which started at the centre back of the stage and as the came forward they spread out. This would have been an amazing idea because it has never been done before at Twyford however it would have cost more to hire in the trusses for the week then the lights. So unfortunately I had to rule that one out.

My final idea and the one that I put into action was Design Idea 3. Some of the kit was different from when I was designing it however it had the same results as I had hoped. Design Idea 3 has a triangular truss at the back of the stage and two diagonal trusses beside it. Situated on the trusses were 6 Martin Mac Auras and 3 ClayPaky A.leda B-eye K20. There were supposed to be 3 Chauvet Geysers that were going to be used however during setup one of the Geysers produced a fault, so we only had to. One of the Geysers was put at the top of the triangle facing down at the drummer, which provided back light and smoke for the drummer. Another Geyser was place underneath the stage in front of a monitor. This allowed this Geyser to be hidden so that the audience didn’t see it when they were sitting down. There were two Elation Opti RGB pars up lighting both of the diagonal trusses and one behind the kick drum which was going to be triggered by midi, however I never got time to set the midi up so it was used for busking. Along with the lights previously mentioned I was able to work with 6 Chauvet Rouges R2 Spots which was a nice addition to the stage lighting. I was lucky enough to use an Avolites Sapphire Touch to control all of the fixtures for the event.
I got some glowing reviews about not only the lighting design but also the stage design. One of the external judges said that the ’stage design is amazing’. I also had lots of people come up to me after to say well done. Below is the fixture list and pictures from the PMC. Unfortunately the pictures do not do the stage justice as most of the light was over exposed and the front wash was taken out.

Fixture List:

6 x Chauvet Rouge R2 Spots
6 x Martin Mac Aura
4 x Chauvet Q-Wash 560z
3 x ClayPaky A.leda B-Eye K20
3 x Martin Mac 600
3 x Elation Opti RGB Par
2 x Martin Mac 300
2 x Martin Mac 250
2 x Chauvet Geyser RGB