Avolites for Scouting For Girls Arena Tour

Since purchasing his Tiger Touch, Lighting Designer Jon Barker has been testing its mettle on the Scouting for Girls Arena Tour. Supplied with a Pearl Expert and Wing from Neg Earth, Jon had the best of both worlds whilst at Wembley Arena last April.

At full scale, Barker’s main rig consisted of: 29 x Varilite VL 3500 wash’S, 18 x VL3000 Spot’s, 10 x CK Colourblaze 72, 16 x iPix Satallite’s, 10 x 3000 Martin Atomic Strobes, half fitted with scrolls as well as Egg Strobes and Mirror Balls for added glamour.

The concept of Barker’s design was to bring a full on ‘pop’ show that could be packed down tightly for smaller venues. Barker commented, “I wanted the rig to appear effortless, but utilise an exciting use of lighting positions with scope for variations in its design.” To do this he decided to use straight pieces of truss with angled gates for curvature. This is what Barker referred to as an “aerodynamic look” rather than long straight truss sections you may normally see.

Barker revealed how the peculiar tour booking meant transferral from one venue to the next had to be as slick as possible. The tour could go from a full arena production to a small warm up gig, without production. To compensate this the lighting rig had to be completely flexible and fully modular to comply with such demands. Other factors such as restrictive budgets led Barker to cut back 4 trusses, “this was purely due to budget and logistic constraints” he says. “The main concept remained the same throughout, it just got smaller.”