Amy Shark Tours Australia with Chameleon

Multi ARIA award-winning singer-songwriter Amy Shark’s Cry Forever national tour kicked off in June in Newcastle, one of the first arena tours since the beginning of the pandemic.

The tour is the Gold Coast local’s most ambitious live undertaking yet, performing in some of Australia’s largest venues. Lighting designer Tim Beeston was asked to create a show that looked BIG, on a budget, with a very short lead-time to create something amazing.

“All of the design tricks had to be deployed and our suppliers delivered a high amount of value for a carefully balanced expenditure,” Tim laughs. “What we did use, I feel we used pretty well. The show had no content-driven video element, which always makes an arena-size show more demanding to design.”

Chameleon Touring Systems supplied the eclectic rig of Robe, Martin, GLP, Chauvet, and Portman lighting fixtures, with the design created around fifteen Robe BMFL WashBeams.

“They’re the first truly multi-functional, bi-functional light that I have used,” he said. “The animator, air effect gobos, and wide or narrow beam dispersion make them a great tool. With the budget in mind, instead of twenty spots and twenty washes, I engaged with fifteen BMFL WashBeams. Plus the 40,000 lumens they deliver means you can carry through into deeply saturated colours and not lose out in brightness.”

“I also had thirty Robe MegaPointes that have beautiful prism effects. Again, as a hybrid, you can blow it out into a spot, add two gobos and a prism, and the intensity is all still there. Slightly saturate the colour and it all punches through, pull it back into a beam and you get a crisp, sharp beam with a wide-body coming off the larger front lens.”

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Upstage is five Kinesys pods each holding four Chauvet Aw Nexus 7×7 that have been used in previous designs and were an important element to carry through to this tour. During the show, they move to six different positions, with four songs featuring automation in the chorus builds. In Amy Shark’s hit song Everybody Rise, they do just that! Also on each pod were five Robe MegaPoints, three GLP JDC-1s, and four Sunstrips.

Mid-stage is the Amy Shark sign, central to the show, and constructed by Thomas Creative. It comprises a 24-volt RGBW LED neon on black ACM with a mill-finished aluminium surround, fitted with diffusers to diffuse the light. The size had to suit all venues and be festival-friendly for the future.

Downstage is two flown chevron-shaped trusses with the one closest to the stage housing Sunstrip Actives and ten Robe MegaPointes for some dappling onstage and top fill. The other is also lined with Sunstrips and houses eight Robe BMFL Blades for all of the pickups done with framing, to avoid stage pollution.

Eight Martin MAC Viper Profiles were used as edge-wrap for Amy on stage left and right, where they could give her a back-edge for all of the Instagram photos every show produces.

“On phone cameras, you need enough light to capture what they’re trying to shoot whilst not over-exposing her,” adds Tim. “It’s become an important part of lighting design nowadays, as every show is immediately posted on Instagram. It’s tricky to do well and still deliver a great entertainment lighting show.”

On the floor upstage are eight Robe BMFL Spots for a big, punchy upstage push. 22 Robe Spikies are located around the front fascias of the three risers, filling the gap between Amy and her band.

“It’s the first time I’ve deployed Spikies in an arena and I was concerned that they might not be bright enough,” commented Tim. “However they turned out to be the perfect fixture for when you do an audience hit, zooming right out to a nice soft source. They are a great little light.”

Successfully filling the void left by the lack of video were the moving pods and a line of 24 Martin Sceptron towers of varying heights, stretching across the stage behind the band. Each tower is topped by a Portman P3, and half of them also house a GLP JDC-1.

“In a very abstract way, it’s meant to be shark fins,” clarifies Tim. “Normally I’d top each tower with a duet or molefay, but with the Portman P3s, you can run them to full brightness pointing at the audience without hurting their eyeballs. It’s bright but soft at the same time.”

Tim describes the 44 Sunstrip Actives as bright yet gentle, and although they have been around for years, sometimes old things just work best! He adds that a strip of four uses 40 channels, and you can run some nice looking effects.

This was the first Amy Shark tour where control moved to MA Lighting grandMA2; a full-size console and three NPUs.

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“I have been using an MA2 for the past six months whilst working on the movie Thor, so switching from the ChamSys wasn’t a problem,” said Tim. “It’s great to timecode on, and makes festival life easy as everyone has MA2s or MA3s. For the Sceptrons, I’m using Madrix with Madrix to the Martin P3 controller, pixel-mapped in DMX mode, resulting in 60 universes of DMX control for the Sceptron. I think the Volumetric Effects Generator in Madrix provides higher-quality lighting effects for something like Sceptron than having to create custom content for each song that would need to be sent via DVI out of VJ software. For me, it makes it more of a light than a video element.”

Four Robe BMFL Spots with two RoboSpot control systems were used for followspots.

“The creative direction from the client stated that they don’t like the FOH spot look and to be honest, neither do I,” said Tim. “What you end up doing is flattening out your subject and losing all definition. With the RoboSpots, I was able to light Amy properly and I enjoyed using them. Lewis Gersbach from Chameleon did a great job with the tennis balls getting the stage position correct. Being able to plot two fixtures to one controller gave great flexibility.”

Effects were a couple of JEM ZR44 foggers and two MDG theOne, with Tim amazed at how quickly the venue could fill with fog.

Tim commented that the Chameleon crew comprising Lewis Gersbach, Levi Boes, Graham Walker, David Goldstein and Andrew ‘SOS’ Ritchie did an outstanding job, with a tricky build from a demanding designer.

“It’s easy to draw lots of lights on a piece of paper but you need skilled professionals to translate your vision into reality. I received great service with high-end delivery from Chameleon,” says the demanding designer.

www.chameleon-touring.com.au