News

22 Nov 2016

Jezabels – Live

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By Cat Strom

One of Australia’s finest bands The Jezabels, have completed their long-awaited national album tour for their third album SYNTHIA.

Lighting designer Tim Beeston of Flash Bang Productions has lit the band for quite a few years and managed to achieve some pretty impressive looks out of his rig at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

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“The lighting for The Jezabels has been a single, evolving design over their many tours and finally I have got it to where I want it to be,” commented Tim. “It’s a big over-arching look with three fingers of truss, something that isn’t often done in The Enmore because of the straight trusses they’ve got in there already.”

Having the fingers of truss shapes the whole upstage area from the floor to the ceiling, filling the void and wrapping around the band so they’re in their own stage world.

Tim’s design saw the three fingers of Tri-Truss sub hung from the Enmore house truss above the band. Each truss held a couple of Martin MAC Vipers, two MAC Aura XB, Duets, Tri-colour mini PARs and Atomic Strobes. Back light was provided by Studio Due CS4’s, a fixture Tim has always used with The Jezabels saying they suit the old-school ray can look.

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“I originally specified Robe BMFL’s instead of MAC Vipers purely because they have a better optic range and the animation wheel is much better,” said Tim. “

Tim’s floor package included four 4m black pipes positioned at angles, two per side, with each pipe holding three Ayrton MagicBlades broken up by a couple of Duets. Between the angled pipes, there was an array of plastic Fresnel lenses that scatter light; when shot from behind they create nice breakup looks that appear to be coming out of the set wall itself.

Side lighting was provided by a couple of ETC Source Four fixtures, 36 and 26 degree, either side of the stage to cover downstage. Lead singer Hayley Mary moves around the downstage edge quite a lot and unfortunately a follow spot wasn’t an option due to budget restraints.

“I also wanted Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330’s for the floor but had to go with MAC700 Washes,” added Tim. “Obviously they’re not quite the same thing but for this show it was important that they be an arc-based wash fixture rather than a LED wash. I wanted to get some big, punchy looks through that kind of fall over with LED.”

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Also on the floor were six Clay Paky Stormys, a fixture Tim is not a fan of saying that in the bottom range they’ve got no intensity dimmer curve.

“So when you turn them on its 0 to 100% straightaway which is fine if you want a big strobe bang,” Tim remarked. “I had wanted TMB Solaris Flares which give you a nice wash too.”

Tim was adamant that an MDG Hazer was provided for Hayley as he has found every other hazer affects her voice plus he said that the haze it produces is unlike anything else.

Tim was touring his own Chamsys Maxi Wing and Extra Wing (in a custom setup with an inbuilt DMX merger, Wireless and Ether Switch) as it’s easy to fly around so the show structure from a programming point of view was a bit different as usually he uses an MA2.

“We cut the MA2 probably a month out to try get the cost down,” said Tim. “By taking my own Chamsys, I save about $900 per show which in the long run adds up to quite a lot. The Chamsys still packs a serious punch for what it is and I didn’t feel that I was missing anything I needed with it. The workflow on it is slighter slower than with an MA2 but if you spend enough time programming it’s not a big deal.

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“Working for The Jezabels is a lot of fun,” commented Tim. “They’re a very technical band especially the timing from all the drumming. Some of their songs are quite unusual which gives cool range to what you can do with the lighting.”

Entertainment Installations supplied lighting for the tour except Adelaide where it was provided by AJS.

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