YEAH! I wrote about PRG’s Bad Boy a few weeks before I saw it at LDI, but when I laid hands on it, I was hooked. Bad Boy is bad ass. I normally keep lowball swearing out of my blog, but I thought that was appropriate.
Oasis Debuts Bad Boy to the World
New Windsor, New York-April 23, 2009- Production Resource Group, LLC, (PRG) celebrated the debut of its Bad BoyTM luminaire on the recently completed first leg of the Oasis Dig Out Your Soul tour. Of his fixture choice, lighting designer Rob Gawler said, “The Bad Boy was just what I had been looking for-a big bright large-format luminaire, that could be used as a narrow washlight with a couple of gobos as a bonus.”
From a Roman amphitheatre in Vienne near Lyon, France to stadiums in South America, with sold-out dates throughout Asia, Mexico, Western Europe, the US and the UK, Oasis has been literally touring the world with production support from PRG’s Concert Touring group. Oasis’ Dig Out Your Soul tour marks the largest tour the band has ever embarked on with stops in several countries for the first time, including dates in Lima, Peru and Taipei City, Taiwan. Gawler turned to PRG’s Concert Touring group knowing it could effectively handle the global aspect of the support as well as the wide range of venue types.
Providing 48,000 lumens with precision speed and control over color and gobo changing as well as spot to flood zoom and full-field dimming, the PRG Bad Boy was exactly the unit Gawler wanted. “The units worked great ‘out of the case’ and I was pleasantly surprised at how many different beam looks I could really get out of the unit. I was initially a bit unsure about the fixed color mixing but it is working out fine, in fact it is nice to see all eight lamps the same color rather than the three or four hues that you get with some of the ‘true’ color mixers.”
In addition to the accurately matched colors, several of the Bad Boy’s other features, including optical clarity and smooth fluid control of focus, zoom, dimming and imaging-thanks to high quality lenses and high-speed servo motors-have been ideal for Gawler’s Oasis design. “I wanted a design that would fit into a number of different venue formats and scale between them well, without compromising the overall look. I knew I wanted to use a selection of contemporary fixtures but to create a look that is reminiscent of a more progressive, psychedelic period.”
Gawler also points out, “I like that it’s relatively simple to hang and once it’s up there it is going to work. I especially like being able to zoom it down to an almost parallel intense spot beam, or when I drop a gobo in and zoom it out, it just keeps going, until you have a sharp image covering a surprisingly large area of stage, cyc, or even the back of the house. It may seem a bit big in the road case but the power consumption is reasonable. And the status display on the fixture is intuitive to use, as well as informative. While the units we have out on Oasis have proven very reliable, it is clear that maintenance has been carefully considered.”
Gawler is enjoying the tour and working on the next leg. “The challenge is to put on a consistently good show, without being dependent on rigging capacity, load-in time and specific production elements. It has been an exciting design challenge and PRG’s Concert Touring group has been fantastic to work with-they have provided good kit, fantastic crew and great support.”
For more information on PRG, please visit www.prg.com.
