Vari*Lite luminaires on Incubus world tour

15 December 2011

Germany - As the indie rock band Incubus prepared to launch their 2011 world tour in Berlin, Germany, lighting designer Robb Jibson stood ready to unveil both some old and new tricks. Having been the band's designer since 2005, Jibson was familiar with how the music and lighting should blend together, but this year he also had a new look that no audience had seen before. To help him achieve his latest design, Jibson relied upon Vari*Lite automated luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite, supplied by Upstaging and HSL (Europe).

"Having worked in the industry as a designer and technician, I am familiar with the complete product line and I have always been a fan of the Vari*Lite colour," began Jibson. "I mostly default to Vari*Lite fixtures on my projects because of their optical clarity and color systems, but on this tour I chose them for a few other reasons as well.

"First, the overhead system is extremely full with t-bars and pantographs. Next, production management stipulated that the show needed to fit in five trucks which would give us only about one and a half trucks for lighting. And finally, the tour is scheduled to play venues that vary in size and layout. So when adding all these requirements together, we knew the lighting rig had to be flexible with a smaller number of lights handling a variety of responsibilities."

He continues, "The band doesn't necessarily like to go over the top with lighting, but they do like to keep it fresh. To accomplish this, I try to develop organic layers of light that blend seamlessly with all the production elements of the show. This year we have a large video element with a 48' wide x 19' tall curved LED wall, so we knew that 1200-1500 Watt sources would be needed to punch through. As I first started laying it all out, there are always five band member positions on stage, and they each like to have their own 'beam-me-up' look with a big column of backlight.

"Since there was not a lot of room in our overhead truss or the trucks for a series of wash and spot fixtures, I had to find an automated fixture that could act as both. The VL3500 Wash FX fixture was perfect for this application because it has a great zoom that can easily wash a large area, it can create powerful columns of light and color, and it provides aerial breakups. Plus, using the VL3500 Wash FX as a front-mounted truss spot, it is actually acting as my key light as well."

(Jim Evans)