U2 Lighting

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From Techietalk.com

Nova Flower 2Ks on U2

PRG Lighting’s newly purchased Nova-Flower 2Ks are being utilised on the phenomenal U2 “360″ world stadium tour, as part of show director/designer Willie Williams’ amazing lighting design.

Seven of the fixtures – specially developed by Italian manufacturer Novalight for the tour and now in full production – are positioned around the stadiums in the audience bleachers, pointing back at the stage. Say’s PRG’s group asset director Paul Weaver, “They are an incredibly powerful effect, even contending with all the other lighting and LED screens, we’re really impressed with their effect”. He also reports that they are withstanding the rigours of touring extremely well.

The fixtures were sold to PRG, U2’s main lighting contractors, by Lightfactor Sales, Novalight’s exclusive UK distributor.

Ahead of the tour, Williams initially examined the original 1.2K Nova Flowers among other products, as he wanted a powerful ‘dominator’ style effect for specific sections of the show. He liked the build quality of the units, and the Nova Flowers also had the benefit of colour mixing and various effects, but he needed something brighter than the 1.2K unit for U2.

Novalight responded by producing the 2K version. These 8 units (7 plus a spare) are the first Nova-Flower 2Ks production units out of the factory in Viterbo….. and the first in the world to go on the road.

Weaver says they were confident of Novalight products being rugged enough for an arduous tour as PRG had previously used the High Ground sister product very successfully on Robbie Williams’ 2006 tour.

Lightfactor’s Peter Coles says, “Novalight are a very creative company and passionate about their work. They were extremely keen to accommodate Willie’s specific requirements, and it’s great to work with a manufacturer who has the attitude and flexibility to deliver solutions like this on demand”.

Nova-Flower is a unique product and ideal for numerous high-impact, dramatic lighting effects like back-lighting and silhouetting of performers. It is also the first fully programmable moving yoke ‘flower effect’ with DMX controllable pan, tilt, colour and shutter, plus other standard features. It has CMY type mixing, a rotating reflector (in both directions), pan/tilt and remote lamp re-strike.

For rapid rigging onto a truss, these Nova-Flowers have been supplied to PRG in the new two way flightcase. The units can also be used in stand alone mode programmed via the display buttons on its base. It has a weather-resistant IP 43 rating.

The U2 fixtures are being tech’d on the road by Andy Beller. The PRG “360″ account handlers are Robin Wain (UK & Europe) and Tim Murch (US) and the tour’s awesome “Claw” set was designed by Mark Fisher of Stufish.

U2 tour the US for 2 months from mid September.

Drowning Man & Bad?

Tweet Found this very interesting note from U2's Willie Williams about how the band was working out the setlist for opening night in Barcelona. Gives some insight into why we haven't seen Drowning Man yet...but also proves that U2 wanted to try and get Bad into the show right away. Read below:

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Saturday, 27th June 2009. Barcelona. Production rehearsals.

We did another full run-through this evening, which has brought us very close to the set that I think we'll play on Tuesday. It's working well overall, with only a couple of things still proving troublesome. Drowning Man is one of these and I am beginning to wonder whether my judgement has been clouded by my sheer delight and joy at hearing this being performed live after 25 years waiting in the wings. Everybody really wants it to work and it sounds great but it's proving to be a very difficult mood to recover from. We tried going into Bad afterwards but by the end of that double-whammy of beautiful melancholy the set didn't recover for about half an hour. This may well be why U2 never performed this song in '83. I remember we tried a set which opened with it (brave move) but as far as I recall this was never unleashed on the public. We were all a bit too post-punk at the time, I think. The plan is to rehearse bits and pieces tomorrow night then do a final dress rehearsal on Monday at which point we'll make the call. We're going to shuffle its place in the show a little too, so it may not be over for Drowning Man just yet.