Martin LED Teams with MACs on Tom Petty Summer Tour

American music legend Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers backup band recently concluded a summer tour across North America that saw the three decades old band rock adoring crowds across 36 cities.

Lighting designer for the tour was long time Petty friend and colleague Jim Lenahan, who attended high school with the rocker back in the day and has designed the band’s lighting ever since – that’s nearly 35 years worth of lighting experience.

Jim turned to a Martin lighting package of LED luminaires and MAC moving heads consisting of Stagebar 54™ LED luminaires, LC Series™ LED panels, MAC 700 Profiles™ and MAC 2000 Wash XBs™, the first show in the US using the extra bright MAC 2000 Wash fixture. Martin Atomic 3000s™ provided the strobe punch with mid-air projection haze from Jem ZR33 Hi-Mass fog machines. Lighting supply was by Ed and Ted’s Excellent Lighting.

MAC 2000 Wash XB™
The rig was made up of five trusses, each curved quarter circles, or fingers, based together at upstage center like a hand. Each truss hosted three MAC 2000 Wash XBs and was outlined with LED.

Jim explains that the choice to go with the XB came down to brightness. “There was a shoot out with the VL 3500,” he explains, “and although both went well, we picked the MAC 2000 XB because it was a bit brighter. They are incredibly bright. In fact, I almost never use them at 100%. They are the real workhorses of the show and have a real richness and saturated color to them.”

The MAC 2000 Wash XB is a new 1500 W Fresnel that takes the optical and effect qualities of Martin’s MAC 2000 Wash and adds even greater brightness (over 60,000 lumens of power), new efficient fans, ballast, starter and more.

Stagebar 54™
Inside the fingers and overarching 40 foot diameter semi circle truss are Martin Stagebar 54 LED lights used as truss toners. The Stagebars, positioned in four 2 x 2 foot squares and clipped directly onto the truss, is a compact and powerful RGB, Amber and White LED fixture that can function as a pixel bar for displaying imagery or as a wash luminaire for floodlighting.

Also mounted on the truss fingers are MAC 700 Profiles whose duties include an occasional dress of green that Jim describes as “great.” A rear projection screen with Imag is also draped in gobo effects from the MAC 700s. “It’s nice to have a bright mover that moves fast,” he says.

Square panels, round hole
Splitting the five fingers is the semi circle arch truss, “like a horseshoe in a tree,” Jim says. ColorBlaze and MAC 700 Profiles line the truss with the interior of the horseshoe filled with Martin LC Series™ LED panels, floating mid stage. Jim describes it as “putting a square peg in a round hole.”

Jim likes the LC panels’ brightness, clean look and transparency. “The LC panels are so stealthy,” he says. “When they’re not on you can’t see them. A great look is when we use dark content on the panels; it looks like they are floating in mid air.” Lights are positioned behind the semi-transparent panels, and with a curtain of MiPIX “Chinese balls” hanging in front of them as well as MiTrix cubes, the illusion is visually stunning.

Messing with your vision
There are actually four different resolutions of video incorporated in the design; full HD, medium def cubes (MiTrix), the LC panels, and the Chinese balls. “Combining the different resolutions makes for different illusions,” Jim states. “It messes with your vision - you can see through a series of layers and there’s lots of depth.” Jim also uses a variety of light beams in his design. “The idea was to use multiple qualities of light to go with the multiple screen resolutions. It makes for great visuals.” he concludes.

Martin Equipment:
8 x Martin LC Series™ 1140
33 x Martin MAC 700 Profile™
16 x Martin MAC 2000 Wash XB™
50 x Martin Stagebar 54S™
9 x Martin Atomic 3000™
2 x Jem ZR33 Hi-Mass™