MACs, Snakes and Arrows

MACs, Snakes and Arrows

November 15, 2007

Atlantic Records UK announced the release of the highly anticipated new studio album from Rush – “Snakes & Arrows”. This is the renowned Canadian rock trio's first new collection of original material in nearly five years. Rush have accentuated the release of the album with their announcement of a world tour, which included six UK arena dates - the band's first since 2004's "An Evening with Rush: 30th Anniversary Tour."
Their tour started in June in North America and finished with a 16 date UK and European excursion at the end of October in Finland.

The rental company who supplied the lighting for the tour was Premier Global Productions. They supplied 37 MAC 2000 Washes and 21 Atomic Strobes for this tour. The MAC 2000 Washes were modified specifically for the tour.

The lighting and production design was created by Howard Ungerleider of Production Design International Inc of Toronto Ontario.wwwpdifx.com.

Howard has been with Rush since 1974, starting off as their tour manager and lighting designer . Through the years he’s continued to refine his art through his work with Rush, while pursuing other touring events, theatrical and architectural avenues, and simultaneously building his business, Production Design International into a major production player. Howard was assisted in show programming by Tim Grivas of High End Systems and Matt tucker as his associate..

Howard chose the MAC 2000 Washes because they were, “A great light, very powerful. They were one of the lights that did the job for this particular project. I wanted a strong beam that didn’t wash out when utilizing colour mixing and the MAC 2K’s lived up to that.” The only change he wanted to make was the colours. “The MAC 2K did not provide the particular colour that I wanted for this tour, so I had custom colour dichroics made and set into the colour wheels.” Apollo manufactured the different dichroic colours for the MAC 2Ks and the result was amazing.

Howard takes key moments in each song and Choreographs the lighting movements in beforehand and then that leaves the rest to be done on the fly,which keeps the audience interest and also allows for creative changes. He also likes to be able to control things manually to allow for variations with human feel in the songs that musicians always seem to come up with. He also explains that “Certain lyrics beg for certain colours and actions, so these can be programmed in beforehand.”

At the end of the day, the production designer’s job is to merge all the available elements into a cohesive statement. “I’ve always put together multimedia shows,” Howard recalls; to me it’s natural to combine the media – laser systems, lighting, video, etc. There’s a tendency to use them as individual items, but it’s the marriage of all disciplines into one snapshot – and I think it becomes much more effective that way.”

Howard commented that he would continue to use Martin lighting. He has used the MAC 700 Profile with great success and likes the new LED Stagebar. Having used Martin lighting in the past, he talked about three of his favourite pieces of work.

His production company is responsible for the Sound & Light show on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. It is a 5 year long contract and has to be taken down and put up every day as the politicians don’t like things on the grass. It is done in collaboration with Ottawa’s NCC along with AVH Live and is using MAC 2Ks. Errol Reinart is the programmer from Hungry at Dawn in collaboration with Production Design International.

He also created the lighting for the play “Vida” at the Royal Alex Theatre in Canada. It was supposed to be on for a month but was extended by 2 weeks; because it was so successful; from beginning of June to mid July, and used MAC 2K Performances along with Profiles. Gary Wilson was the programmer from Hungry at Dawn in collaboration with Production Design International..

The “Make-a-break” Skeet championships in Branson, Missouri, was made more exciting by making it a night competition. This was done by lighting the field with 40 MAC 600s and 100 MAC2Ks and could be seen from as far as 10 miles away.

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