Will Chandler recently worked on Hayley Kiyoko’s European tour, side-hanging 10 CHAUVET Professional Next NXT-1 panels on poles behind diamond-shaped band risers for her stage setup. The symmetrical diamond-on-diamond design created an engaging, balanced look on stage and served as a supportive backdrop for the 2018 MTV Push Artist of the Year’s famous dance moves.
Chandler, the owner of Envizion Entertainment, also relied on the versatile and powerful Next NXT-1 fixtures to help him reflect every emotive moment in light.
“This show is a mixture of very powerful, beat heavy songs and some slower, more subtle moments,” said Chandler. “Especially with having dancers on this tour, I wanted to be able to create some really bold hip-hop moments with blocks of light, and also to be able to have a lot of the rig disappear into the background during slower dance solos. We toured last year with various designs incorporating LED strips, but with this version of the show I wanted to break up those lines into bolder blocks of intense light.”
Chandler credits the Next NXT-1 units in his rig with helping him achieve his design goal. “First of all, these are incredibly powerful fixtures with the ability to create some epic aerial effects with their narrow beam angle,” he said. “For dance breaks and similar moments, I used them for strobe/blinder effects, which helped give us a hip-hop vibe. Also, I really enjoyed using the NXTs to create some sizzle effects.”
Designed in Los Angeles for rehearsals before the start of the European tour on January 29, the rig did not include video panels. This brought a focus to the pixel-mapping capabilities of the Next NXT-1 fixtures.
“With no video in this version of the show, I focused on creating some nice fluid pixel-mapped effects running through the NXTs to create another layer of movement onstage, aside from other pan/tilt effects and gobos,” said Chandler. “I enjoyed using just groups of pixels for certain looks. For instance, in some slower darker songs I’d just play with intensity effects on the outer ring of LEDs rather than having the whole fixture lit.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were some dance breaks where Chandler ran the NXT-1 units at full power. “Some of our intensity sizzle effects not only looked cool on the face of the fixture, but also translated into the air surprisingly well,” he said. “The fixtures really gave me a lot of options, which was very appreciated on this tour.”
Photo Credit: Topher Shrigley
