One of the most inventive low budget lighting tricks I've seen live was at a concert in Washington DC. The band that employed this trick was called Maserati and at the time, they were on tour opening up for the Japanese post-rock band MONO. After noticing their stage setup, which had the drumset downstage-center with a guitarist on each side of him and the bass player on the drum riser behind the drums, it was clear that the member of the band that demanded the most attention was the drummer. What I thought was odd was that beside the drum set, on each side of the bass drum, were what looked like two tiny Par Cans focused directly at the bass drum. As I was sitting there wondering what they planned on doing with those fixtures, it hit me. The drummer's kit was an old 70's Ludwig blue Vistalite acrylic kit, and after noticing I realized that the band was aiming the fixtures THROUGH the kit, not at it. Once the house lights went out and the drummer took his seat, the lights fired up at the first crash hit. The entire room was then filled with this watery blue aura that look as if the band and audience were no underwater at a indoor public pool. On top of that, the other members of the band were playing instruments that matched in color and one other detail: Their respective guitars and bass all had pickguards that were made from shards of cracked and broken mirrors. This caused all light from the drumset spotlights to reflect off of the pickguards, creating an almost disco ball effect. It looked as if they were shooting beams of light out of the guitars themselves! That was one of the coolest live shows I've ever seen. And thats just the lighting!
No comments:
Post a Comment