LSM and CHAUVET Professional Help Gil Perron Flow with Flo Rida

	"We got more energy by strobing at selective moments," Perron says. "Fahed and I sat together in previz and hashed out something more focused on heavy color than massive movement/strobes.

When the rapper Flo Rida burst onto the stage at the Strangers in the Night Gala, an annual event in Montreal, he instantly transformed the sprawling Videotron Centre into a Miami nightclub, its atmosphere packed with strobing, color changes, and dramatic light angles.

"Color played a key role in this," says Gil Perron, who designed the Montreal show and another one that followed the next night at Quebec City's Videotron Center arena. "Flo-Rida is the quintessential '305' artist [Miami's area code], and that means his shows are all about warm colors and vivid hues. That motivated me to use the quadratic color wheel. I went with two opposing sets of complementary colors -- one color per instrument type."

Reaching into his toolbox, supplied by the Quebec-based supplier LSM, Perron selected four different CHAUVET Professional fixtures. "This rig was built on the Rogue Outcast BeamWash, the Maverick Force 3 Profile, the COLORado 1 Quad, and the COLORado PXL Bar 16," he says. "They produce great whites and colors, they are extraordinarily bright, and they have great coverage. When you have a hip-hop artist like Flo Rida running all over the stage, coverage is everything. Trust me, it works."

Meticulous strobing, by board operator Fahed Hammami from LSM, was part of the free-flowing stage dynamics. "We got more energy by strobing at selective moments," Perron says. "Fahed and I sat together in previz and hashed out something more focused on heavy color than massive movement/strobes. Fahed programmed several layered chases on his ChamSys MQ500, which he could apply to his fixture groups. As he would show me different ideas, we would lock them in on the track list.

"In addition to Fahed, I also got a lot of help and support from our master electricians; Ryan Germundson and Penelope Tremblay, both of whom dealt with my many 'ideas," continues Perron. "Production directors Fakhri Ben Mariem and Olivia Cosentini were also invaluable. They consistently pulled rabbits out of the hat to keep things going."

Perron and his collaborators thought outside the box when they added an exciting element to the show by varying light angles to change eye level. "This was a 'let me try something" moment," he says of the decision. "We realized that because of the higher trim potential we could push truss angles quite a lot, such as by opposing 10 degrees for mid and upstage truss...and we didn't even get a frown from the riggers!"

The results of this adjustment were "beyond expectations," notes Perron, explaining that the light angles made it seem as if the fixtures intertwined.