Richard Pilbrow – interviewed on Light Tonight

CX Network are honoured to interview leading UK lighting designer Richard Pilbrow in the latest edition of Light Tonight, the world’s leading lighting show on YouTube.

Also in Edition 11 of Light Tonight:

Guy Pavelo’s design for Drake has to be one of the standout productions of the year! The wow factor comes from 788 glowing balls independently controlled in a 3D space courtesy of Glow Motion Technologies and Stage Kinetik. Guy describes the show as not just a concert but an experience adding that the production team did their best to bring some theatre into the space and combine all elements together. Guy said his biggest challenge was how to fit all of their amazing elements into one show, yet utilize them in a fashion where they each help tell their own piece of the story.

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The Goo Goo Dolls are on the road with lighting designer Dan Hardiman managing to steal the video budget into lighting, with the use of Ayrton MagicPanels! Driven by the Hog4’s new PixelMapping capabilities, Dan knew he could use the MagicPanels as both video and wash lights. In fact apart from a few MAC Auras under the risers, they are the only wash fixture in the rig. The Hog’s mapping ability also drove him to use LED fixtures wherever possible in order to take full advantage. The biggest challenge for Dan was the MagicPanels being able to move. It ended up a similar approach to moving trusses with lots of position palettes, and having lots of different maps for the different stage focuses. Dan also managed to use the continuous rotation capability of the MagicPanels to create kaleidoscopic effects with the central pod. The end result is a design that truly blurs the line between lighting and video.

Matrixx at the Park is a seven-day music festival held in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Lighting and stage designer Joris Schenk was hired to integrate concert lighting into the complex stage design featuring a collage of Nijmegen’s most famous landmarks. With lots of external decorations on the stage, Joris knew that space would be at a premium. He needed fixtures that were not only powerful, but could function in multiple roles on stage. Consequently he chose MAC Axiom Hybrid fixtures because they can provide a very narrow beam, spot and wash all in one fixture.

The 2016 Singapore National Day Parade was held for the first time at the new National Stadium. LD Mac Chan needed to fill this vast space with light and chose 500 of Robe’s BMFL luminaires as the main moving lights. The year’s theme looked forward to the future and the next 50 years of Singapore. The six Act plus finale show lasted around 50 minutes and featured a narrative journey from some of Singapore’s ancient historic myths to the establishment of the island state, its development and success as a gleaming modern society.

TeamLab’s Crystal Universe is an artwork that uses accumulated light points to create a sculptural body, similar to the way distinct dots of colour form an image in a pointillist painting. In Crystal Universe, the particles of light are digitally controlled, and change based on the viewer’s interactivity with the work. Viewers are invited to enter and walk around within the three-dimensional light space. This movement affects the light particles and creates changes in the installation. Viewers can also interact with the work by using their smartphones to select elements that make up the Crystal Universe.

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Bisoü is an upscale club in Monterrey, Mexico, that operates not only as the cosmopolitan city’s newest nighttime destination but also as a showcase of modern club lighting technology with a fully-immersive design that covers the entire venue. Elation fixtures were used for the dance floor light show as well as to fulfil the more decorative architectural aspects of the lighting design. Bisoü owners Victor and Emilio Califa not only have state-of-the-art lighting to complement the club’s modern design and help draw in crowds, they also have an energy-efficient system that will save on power bills and maintenance costs.

Cochavi and Klein’s light installation ‘Reflections of Coexistence’ was featured in this year’s Jerusalem Light Festival, held in the city that many consider the centre of the spiritual world and holy to the three monotheistic religions. The light sculpture symbolises the constant change and movement of everyday life in the Middle East. Two rings of light shine and deflect off mirrors in different directions and pace. There’s a constant change on one hand yet at the same time always around the same axis. The viewer is invited to step back a little and look at the whole picture from different perspectives.

Lighting designer Bruno Poet is well known for his theatre work but we think his design for Icelandic band Sigur Rós is absolutely stunning. In lighting a show of this nature, the biggest challenge, he says, is the lack of narrative as nearly all the other work he does is for a production that tells a story, and lighting becomes part of that storytelling. For Sigur Rós the lighting is a direct response to the music.
The band were keen for a set that would appear to expand and contract with different songs, from intimate to epic, from gentle and lyrical to hardcore and distorted, moving away from the softer and more organic feel of their previous tour.

German heavy metal band The Scorpions are still on their 50 years anniversary world tour with associate LD and lighting operator Manfred Nikitser from MANIK Show Lighting, Vienna, running the lighting for the current touring schedule together with Rainer Becker. Abandoning the stereotypic 80’s rock band look of tons of par cans, the stage is modern and clean with LED masking and large LED screens. With extensive use of video and with a trim around 10m, merging video with lights is extremely important to the look of the stage. The backbone of the system, which means one console, the media servers and all the network devices, are toured. 90% of the time they use local production matched as closely as possible to their generic spec.

Plus we review:

LSC Mantra Lite

Robe Square

Robert Juliat Dalis 860

Light Tonight runs around 26 minutes, including adverts. Watch it here.