Robe for Newton Faulkner

Thursday, January 3, 2008 || Robe Show Lighting

Lighting designer Martin Dudley chose Robe moving lights as the core element of the “specials” package he used when recently touring with new UK singing sensation Newton Faulkner.

This was the largest tour the acclaimed performer has undertaken to date, and they played a wide variety of venues in which “Lighting had to be as versatile as possible" says Dudley, whose Reading-based rental company Martin's Lights supplied the hardware.

This consisted of 4 Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs and two brand new ColorSpot 700E ATs, specially purchased for the tour, along with four other moving lights, 8 LED Pars, Source Four profiles with colour scrollers, a 36’ white cyc and an Avolites Pearl 2004 desk for control.

The tour included two dates at London's Shepherds Bush Empire, memorable as much for the stonking performance as for the media frenzy! Here Dudley was lucky enough to also be able to patch the 8 Robe ColorSpot 1200 AT house rig fixtures into his system.

Dudley is delighted with the 700s, chosen initially because he really needed the CMY colour mix facilities. When he fired them up at the first gig and started playing around with the animation wheels, he realized that "a whole new world of opportunities" was opening up.

He also likes the massive zoom and the soft beam effects that can be created by combining different colours with the CTO and frost filters and using the split colours.

For the tour, the 700s were positioned at the front corners of the stage shooting back onto the cyc and across the stage, while the 575s were on the floor at the back of stage for forward shooting beam effects. The whole rig was designed to be floor mounted for maximum flexibility, and quick get ins and outs.

This tour was also the first time that Faulkner has performed with a band onstage, so Dudley’s creative plot was to build the show lighting up in layers, starting with a single spot at the top of the set, adding more lighting power and intensity as the show progressed.

Dudley bought his first Robe's in 2005 - 12 ColorSpot 575 ATs - which have worked constantly since then. He's expecting to purchase more 700s in Spring 2008 ahead of Faulkner's first full production tour.