Taiwanese
rock superstars Mayday are on the road in Asia with a large production
including 56 axes of Kinesys automation – provided by rental and technical
production specialist B’IN Live, who are headquartered in Taiwan with bases in
China and Hong Kong.
The epic
lighting, visual and set design was created by Leroy Bennet and Seven Designs
from Los Angeles – well known for their imagination and style as well as interesting
and provocative designs of which this is no exception!
B’IN
Live – formed in 2014 with the amalgamation of six high level technical
specialist companies into a super-production company – provides full technical infrastructures
and services, incorporating sound,
lighting, video, rigging, automation, set and scenic plus staging and power.
Technical
Director and Production Manager for this Just Rock It tour is B’IN Live’s
Jeffrey Soon and he is co-ordinating all the shows on the current tour which
runs until October. The majority are in stadiums and all are completely sold
out – including three performances at the Beijing National Stadium (AKA Bird’s
Nest) such is the popularity of the
band.
Kinesys
Elevation drives are used to move a number of lighting and video elements which
include a 25 metre wide by 6 metre tall 12 mm LED screen weighing 5 tonnes which
moves up and down on eight 1 tonne Liftket motors being driven by Kinesys
Elevation vari-speed hoist controllers.
The
screen is on the stage floor at the start of the show and then lifts up after the
first number and into a number of other positions throughout the show.
Forty
Elevation controllers alone are used to move 10 lighting pods in the roof over
the stage. Each of which is loaded with 9 x Magic Panel 5×5 LED matrix moving
lights. These pods are each suspended on four Elevation controlled half-tonne
Liftkets they needed to be able to rotate on all axes to achieve the
variation of dynamic looks that Leroy wanted.
The
final eight Kinesys Elevations are used on four straight trusses also above the
stage, which also move up and down. Each of these is loaded with 26 x Magic
Blade type fixtures these account for just a small percentage of a total of
nearly 600 Magic Blade style fixtures on the whole lighting plot!
There
are also 14 sets of LED sticks on pods that are moved by a winch system – the
requirements for these are a lot more straightforward than the Kinesys moves – and
with all these animated elements, the whole architecture of the performance space
can be radically changed which has huge dramatic impact.
There
are around 30 automation cues in the set. These were initially programmed onto
a Kinesys K2 system by B’IN Live’s
Connie Cheng during the design and rehearsal stage and the showfile was then
transferred to a Kinesys Vector computer for the tour, where Connie is also the
operator.
Kinesys
was selected as the most flexible and stable system to provide the extensive
automation elements on the Just Rock It Tour
Connie
and other B’IN Live staff have received advanced product training from Kinesys’
Martin Honeywell since the company first started investing in the premium
automation brand in early 2015.
B’IN
Live now has over 50 Elevation units, 38 x 1 tonne and 15 x half-tonne Liftkets
and Kinesys K2 and Vector control systems.
For
this tour they have also sub-hired 10 Elevation controllers from Impact Hong
Kong.
“I
researched very extensively before choosing Kinesys” explains Jeffrey, “because
it was a serious amount of money, but it has paid off in every respect. There
is now a big interest in Asia related to introducing more complex automation into
shows, and it’s the only system that can do this so comprehensively, easily and
reliably. Of course, people are also really comfortable about the levels of
safety as that’s synonymous with the Kinesys brand”.
The
tour producer is Ocean Chou and joining Jeffrey on the production team are
Production Manager Jason Chang; Artistic
Directors Peter Aquinde, Monster Hsieh and Ali Chen;
Lighting Programmers Jason Baeri and Brian Jenkins from
Seven Designs and
operators Jimmy Shih & King Li; Media server / Video Operator and Programmer
Loren Barton and Animation specialists Spring Yang and Chris Chen.
FOH
sound is mixed by Matsunaga Tetsuya, the Monitor Engineer is ohmixer
Chuang, lasers are designed by Jay
Hsia and the Assistant Director is Jasmine Liu.
http://www.kinesys.co.uk
http://www.kinesysusa.com
Photos : B’IN
MUSIC
