Italy – Even a quick glance at Vasco’s Modena Park is impressive: an event of exceptional proportions and a world record concert attendance. A glowing sun suddenly invaded the big screen, followed by the roar of 220 thousand people as Vasco Rossi entered the stage on the strains of “Colpa d’Alfredo”.
The margins of error were very tight. The occasion required a great deal of production work to set up a dynamic, explosive stage, technical installations, and an exceptional lighting rig. Lighting designer Giovanni Pinna put together an impressive, creative lighting set-up.
Pinna said: “In these circumstances, we needed to procure a huge amount of lighting equipment to put the rig together, using a limited number of types of lights: only reliable, easy to program lights. By doing this, you ensure high light quality and optimize the programming time needed to create the scenes.”
The Claypaky Mythos was the ‘leading light’ at Modena. It is a hybrid spot/beam unit with high luminous efficiency, and a 4°-50° zoom.
A total of 170 Claypaky Mythos units were evenly spread in three distinct areas, in three linear bands, to illuminate the entire stage. The backdrop, i.e. the backlit rear wall with 45 supporting frames, designed by Giovanni Pinna, created a pattern of lights on the stage.
“It is a crucial area for the purposes of the show since the back wall faces the audience. A Mythos unit was placed on each frame, amounting to a total of 45 units, and sixty Sharpy Wash 330s were placed on a protrusion which ran along the entire length of the foot of the back wall. These wash lights were dedicated solely to enhancing the scenic impact of the stage. The Sharpy Wash units were almost always on to illuminate the entire backdrop, and this was a highly successful choice.”
The Sharpy Wash lights were also among the “bright stars” of the concert. They are powerful, compact and agile, and have excellent colour rendition, high light output, and amazing visual effects and optical performance. They were used just like traditional wash lights to illuminate the band and the stage, precisely owing to the special quality of their colours.
Other lights, including 64 Mythos units, were hung on 33-foot batten rings hanging at the 85-foot tall automated towers. It was as if they were pouring down onto the stage.
The rest of the lights, including forty Sharpys, 28 Alpha Beam 1500s and other Mythos units, were all placed on the ground. The lighting design followed the features of the stage. It was simple, linear and well distributed, lighting every part of the enormous structure with great power. The impact of the Mythos units, which lit up and moved six and a half feet apart, was absolutely remarkable. Their movements were smooth, quick and quiet.
The pressure on the event, from TV stations and others, was very high. However, the dress rehearsal two days before the great day went very well. It was all surprisingly perfect for a unique event, on a single evening. “Everything went as the production team and Vasco expected,” said Pinna.
The real finale, as always, was Albachiara, a poignant farewell to the horizon, which slowly became distant and endless as the night went on.
SPECIFICATIONS:
BOTW (Giancarlo Campora): Lighting service company
Giovanni Pinna: Lighting designer
Marco Piva: Media video server operator
Nicholas Di Fonzo: D3 technician
Ross Marshall from ER Production: Laser operator
Fabrizio Astarita: Cyberhoist automations
Fabrizio Moggio: Chief technician