|
|
|
|
LD Dan Hardiman chose Avolites consoles to control lighting throughout Moby’s incredibly successful Play world tour – drawing to a close after 18 months.
Hardiman was first approached to design Moby’s lighting in June 1999, when he was designing and running the Dance Tent at Glastonbury Festival. |
|
|
|
|
The tour has been in various formats since then, visiting all corners of the globe en route. Dan has used an Avo desk all the way, starting with a Pearl, then increasing to two Pearls. As the show grew in stature, popularity and number of lighting fixtures, he needed more power, so migrated to a Diamond 3 for the summer 2000 festival section of the tour. He continued with the Diamond 3 for the current, final, arena size UK and European legs of the tour.
The largest gig on this current tour was the recent Wembley Arena show. Here Dan’s Diamond 3 was controlling his touring rig including 14 High End Cyberlight
Turbos, 13 Studio Color moving washlights, 6 High End Studio Spots and a vast selection of generics including PARS, Molefeys and ACLs plus Diversitronic and Dataflash Strobes and 100 Watt Coemar Panorama Cyc units.
|
|
|
|
|
He also added in 24 Martin MACs for audience lighting, more strobes and extra Cyberlights and Studio Colours on stage and for illuminating the audience. These were also easily patched into the Diamond 3. Dan spent two days prior to the Wembley shows at Avolites in West London, programming the additional fixtures into the show on an Avolites Visualiser system.
Dan likes Avo desks for many reasons including the individual flash and Solo buttons on each fader, their flexibility, the quick and easy programming philosophy and the console’s intuitive ‘buskability’.
Earlier in the tour, his two Pearls were used for moving and generic lights. During this phase, he made his own preset-palette disks to maximize set-up speed at each venue and event. He prefers using a Pearl for one-off shows, stating “It’s the ideal desk from which to programme from scratch every day”. He says the time saving properties of Shape Generator for festival and one off situations have been a life-saver on many occasions. |
|
|
 |
|
Dan adds that Avo desks are wonderfully resilient to all sorts of meteorology – having encountered most conceivable weather extremes on Moby over the months.
Apart from the equipment, Dan’s been continually impressed with the ongoing support, commitment and interest Avo has always shown in him. This started when he was a student keen to explore a career in lighting. He trained at Avo’s demo room facilities and has subsequently returned for numerous programming sessions on different consoles. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s people who suddenly want to know you when you’re happen to be LD’ing a million dollar grossing act ….. when before they wouldn’t give you the time of day!”
Dan Hardiman won the Live! Young LD Award in 1999, and has also worked for Ronnie Size and Reprazent and as LD for the Dance Tent at Glastonbury for Bristol-based Utopium Lighting, plus numerous other dance acts and shows.
Main lighting contractors Fourth Phase LSD also supplied several Avolites dimming systems for the tour.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Date of issue : 21st November 2000.
For more information on Avolites, please contact Steve Warren on 020 8965 8522.
For more press information, contact Louise Stickland on 01865 202 679/07831
329888 louise@loosplat.com.
|
|
