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Ayrton MagicBlade-R used on Maroon 5 world tour

Ayrton MagicBlade-R used on Maroon 5 world tour

Two hundred and ten Ayrton MagicBlade-R fixtures form the backbone of Roy Bennett’s lighting design for Maroon 5’s year-long World Tour 2015 in support of ‘V’, the band’s fifth studio album. Bennett, of Seven Design Works, has used the MagicBlade-R units to delineate thirteen jointed truss ‘arms’, which are suspended in a ‘V’ shape above the stage to form a pivotal feature of the stage design. The MagicBlade-R fixtures are rigged in double rows along the arms, which split along the centre line and move independently on a series of separate wire winches to shape and sculpt the stage from above.

 

“I wanted to give the band something very different from the video-heavy designs of their past tours - and create something that I haven’t done before,” says Bennett. “I like transparency, reflection and mirrors right now so I created a ‘fishbowl’ from a transparent stage and other elements based on the album artwork’s V symbol.”

 

Bennett devised a set composed of an under-lit Plexiglas stage, an upstage wall of stepped, Plexiglas panels which can be filled with smoke, and a ceiling of moveable arms etched out by the MagicBlade-R fixtures. “This gives the stage a volumetric feel below the band as if they are standing on another world, a backdrop that can be back-projected onto and a ceiling that I can use to change the look, feel, and shape of the stage throughout the show,” he explains.

 

Bennett uses the MagicBlade-R fixtures both as sources of illumination and as tools to construct sculptural, architectural effects: “I’m able to use the MagicBlades to accentuate the image of the ‘V’ and create a forced perspective in both horizontal and vertical planes. I can gear everything to an apex - in the air, on the ground and upstage - and use them as a mirror image of each other. At one point I even bring them in low and flat to compress the stage and top light the band. Occasionally we run content through the MagicBlades along with the other lighting elements on stage but most of it is pre-programmed.”

 

Bennett’s lighting programmer for the ‘V’ tour was Jason Baeri.

 

(Photos: Todd Kaplan)

 

www.ayrton.eu

 

Ayrton MagicBlade-R used on Maroon 5 world tourAyrton MagicBlade-R used on Maroon 5 world tour

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