Elation IP-rated lights for Puscifer performance in Arizona desert posted: 16/12/2020
Colorado production house Brown Note Productions was hired by longtime client Danny Wimmer Presents to provide audio, lighting and video production for a special online performance by alt-rock band Puscifer from experimental town Arcosanti in the high desert of Arizona. Called on to create evocative visual atmospheres for the shoot was lighting designer Sarah Landau (A Perfect Circle, Childish Gambino, M83), who turned to an IP-rated rig of Elation lighting to brave the desert elements.
Landau has designed for Puscifer since 2016 and handled production design for the Arcosanti event along with Puscifer guitarist and producer Mat Mitchell. Puscifer, known for their eclectic live productions, performed their new album Existential Reckoning across a 3-day shoot September 24-26 from the arcology site, a one-of-a-kind lifestyle project that is a fusion of architecture and ecology. The stream was released on October 30th
Arcosanti has the goals of combining the social interaction and accessibility of an urban environment with sound environmental principles, such as minimal resource use and access to the natural environment,' and sits amidst a land preserve 70 miles north of Phoenix. The ethereal site supports perfectly the alien tones of the album, and as Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan lives and runs a vineyard just an hour north of the site, it was a natural choice for the performance.
The show took place in three acts in three locations around Arcosanti to showcase both the desert environment, as well as its epic experimental architecture, explains Landau, who says she was thrilled to be able to work there. The first night of shooting, two songs were performed in the amphitheatre (Location 1), but with the band facing upstage and the tiered audience seating as the backdrop. Then, incorporating the production elements in a different arrangement, acts 2 and 3 used an in-the-round set of scaffolding with the band separated into quadrants by blow-thru video walls. This second plot was built twice, in two locations over two days: first underneath massive concrete arches (Location 2), and then in the desert overlooking a canyon and the Arcosanti buildings (Location 3).
The performance, which was filmed with multiple cameras, was embellished with dynamic lighting, video graphics and fog effects, a combination of visual atmospherics that gave the shoot a powerful cinematic aura. Landau drew inspiration from video designers Mat Mitchell and Alisa Akay to make cohesive performance environments for the shoot. Mat and I discussed early on his overall concept for the flow of the show from one location to the next, having different positions for the vocalists and ending with the sunrise. After starting more mysteriously, with shadows and close-ups, the camera shots evolved to gradually reveal more of the context, landscape and architecture.
The designer says the lighting brief was very open-ended and that the band trusted her to create a rig with looks that were aesthetically appealing from any camera angle. Whether they ended up using a close up, or a jib or drone shot, dynamic lighting would be in the frame. The lighting setup included eight Proteus Maximus LED Profile moving heads used as key/front lights from trusses outside the playing circle for Locations 2/3 while four floor-positioned units worked as low sidelights in Location 1. Landau said she required lights that would stay bright even in very saturated colors, and that had precise rotatable shutters to minimize spill.
Some 42 Proteus Rayzor 760 LED wash moving heads were the main workhorses of the rig, used for backlight and eye candy. The fixtures were positioned on the floor in rows up the amphitheatres seats with five used as individual floor backlights for band members in Location 1. In Location 2 and 3, Rayzor fixtures hung from the scaffolding and truss and also served as band floor backlights. The Rayzors sold me with their sparkle LED element, as well as the 360-degree pan and tilt, she states and says the look of the song A Singularity was built to showcase the Rayzors unique SparkLED background sparkle system. I matched the palettes of all the other fixtures and the video content to the SparkLEDs CTO, and used a breakup gobo for key light with the Maximus fixtures. The twinkling of the SparkLED, glittering video content, and rotating gobos made it my favorite look of the show -cohesive, simple, and classy.
Twelve SixPar 100 IP LED lights were used as uplights for the arches in Location 2, and for the buildings in the distance in Location 3. Six tiny battery-powered Volt Q5E LED wash lights provided uplighting for trees in Location 2, and for the low brush and bushes in Location 3. The Volts were helpful for flexibility and changing placements without having to worry about cabling, Landau said.
The Elation IP-rated luminaires were outside in the dust and extreme heat of the Arizona desert for three days yet Landau reports there were zero problems on site and that nothing needed switching out or repairing. She is grateful to Ryan Knutson at Brown Note Productions for suggesting the Elation gear and adds that they were also budget-conscious when choosing equipment. I'm thankful for the lighting team of Joe Casper, Parker Wall and Kyle Wolfe for working hard and bravely in 100-degree days and rattlesnake nights. I am also appreciative of programmer Joe Watrach, who made the best of every fixtures parameters with speed and precision, she concludes.
About Elation Professional
Based in California with facilities in Florida and Mexico City, as well as European offices in The Netherlands, Elation designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of innovative lighting and video products known for its
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Elation IP-rated lights for Puscifer performance in Arizona desert posted: 16/12/2020 
