Robe Leads the PSL Awards

Friday, July 3, 2009 || Robe Show Lighting

Lighting designer Kurt Du Preez used Robe moving lights at the core of his rig to light the 2009 Premier League Soccer (PSL) Awards event, staged at the Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef City, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The show was broadcast live by the SABC, with lighting, AV and sound equipment supplied by Sound Stylists.

The Lyric's house lighting rig already contains a substantial Robe moving light rig - 6 Robe ColorWash 750 AT Tungstens, 24 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs and 24 ColorSpot 700E ATs, all controlled by a grandMA full size lighting console. So Du Preez just needed to augment this with a further 12 ColorWash 700E ATs and some additional LED fixtures to make it work for his show.

To re-rig and set up the lights for the Awards show took 2 days with Du Preez working alongside the Lyric's in-house crew, and also with the event's set designer, Wayne Sprout.

Sixteen of the Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 700E ATs were repositioned along the FOH balcony, and various other fixtures were also moved so they could be optimised for the show - some onto different house bars and side booms.

Du Preez' brief included the requirement to create different lighting states for presentation of the 4 main Awards to match the sponsors' corporate colours.

The Robes offered him plenty of choice and flexibility to produce a lively and interesting lightshow. In fact, they proved so bright that when used as key lights on the presenter positions, they only needed to be run at 30 per cent intensity, and even then, this produced excessive light for certain camera shots!

Working primarily in white, he used gobos to highlight the stage floor for elevated shots, and white beams to bring a nice depth of field to 'classical' theatrical stage shots. He liaised closely with the SABC OB crew throughout the process, and together they ensured that the lighting rig was run at daylight colour temperatures, to which the cameras were then balanced and adjusted to alleviate any lamp flicker issues.