DETROIT – Every flower blossoms with time…This venerable adage applies not only to gardens and nature, but also to creative endeavors. The turning of the calendar’s pages tends to smooth out rough edges and bring out deeper meanings, leaving any creation richer for it. Such has been the case with Jeff Maker II and his Grammy-nominated client I Prevail.
Maker, the platinum metal band’s production manager and lighting designer, has been working with them or three years. “Knowing how each band member reacts or plays each part of every song helps to light them more effectively,” he said of his experience with I Prevail.
“This is the case with any artist an LD works with for a while. It’s easier to anticipate where they will be, how they perform, and in what areas. The band and myself also go over moments and locations for those moments, so there is no question when to execute the specific looks that highlight them or make them pop.”
Thanks to his evolving understanding of the band, Maker beefed up the output of his touring floor package, so it better compliments their desired industrial look. “The band loves an industrial look and they wanted to continue that vibe on stage this year as well,” he explained. “I wanted to create greater reflections of the set’s chained grating, so we enhanced the lighting part of the show.”
Key to accomplishing this was the addition of more CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-wash fixtures to the Premier Global Production supplied rig. “We now have 14 Color STRIKE Ms — eight downstage under the grated ego risers and six mid-stage under the grated risers and stairs. The risers have now become a fun reflective surface and the Color STRIKE Ms fit perfectly in the space under them.”
Running his Color STRIKE M units as intense white blinders one moment, then calling on them for colorful washes the next, Maker is counting on them to add depth and variety to his time-coded show. With their intense output covering the entire stage, from the deck and giving it an eerie glow, the Color STRIKE M fixtures set an intriguing somewhat menacing mood that fits the persona of the band.
“The Color STRIKE Ms do a lot of heavy lifting,” said Maker. “There is a lot you can do with these fixtures and I’m discovering new ways to use them all the time.”
