Robe Followspots on Anirudh Tour's Grand Finale

	"The power, focus, and sharpness of the zoom even when very tight is really impressive," notes Vinod. Photo: Irshad Pookollathur

Indian singer Anirudh recently played a homecoming show as the grand finale to his Hukum world tour, staged at a special site in Kuvathur on the East Coast Road (ECR) in Chennai, India, complete with a lighting design by Bala Subramanya (aka Vinod), Albin Biju, and Guru Somayaji from Bangalore-based design studio, 369 Design Lab.

It was the first time that Robe iFORTE LTX followspot, running on RoboSpot remote following systems, were used for a live music show in India. The RoboSpot system -- six iFORTE LTXs and four BaseStations -- was supplied to the show's main lighting contractor, Bangalore-based Reynolds, by SSL Media from Mumbai. The gear was chosen out of a need for power followspots that could hit the main and B stages easily.

Vinod has worked as the artist's lighting designer since 2020, and for this tour, 369 Design Lab's Albin Biju was the assistant LD, also running and integrating lasers into the show. In addition to coordinating all the lighting, Vinod and Somayaji liaised with the other visual disciplines involved, including Pixadoo Visuals, which took care of all things video, the centerpiece of which was a large 144'- wide LED screen filled with bespoke content.

The six iFORTE LTX fixtures were deployed on four delay towers, left and right of the stage, one each on the outer pair of towers and two each on the inner towers. These beamed across the substantial throw distances to the B stage, which was right in the middle of the concert ground; they were also highly effective despite the brightness of the LED screen, the company says.

"The power, focus, and sharpness of the zoom even when very tight is really impressive," notes Vinod, with Somayaji adding, "It was fantastic to be able to hit that B stage from almost 20' away and for the beams to keep a super-sharp focus, even when tightly zoomed in!"

One song, "Pathikichu," was lit completely in red, and even with this concentration of deeply saturated color, the iFORTE LTXs shone through and picked up the artist with no issues.

Biju, who called the spots while Vinod ran the console, says he and his colleagues wanted to have the four spot ops nearby at the front of house so they could audibly hear the cues if necessary. This proximity also allowed Albin to develop a hand signal system for the follow spot ops as backup.

Somayaji and Vinod were delighted with the results. "The organizers and producers could also clearly see the difference in quality of the light in the artist, and they appreciated why we insisted on having them for this epic show," Somayaji concludes.

Five manual follow spots were on standby to also cover the stage if needed, but only one was utilized as the RoboSpots proved so efficient, the company says.

The biggest overall challenge for the show was the rain -- it was still Monsoon season in India -- and 24 valuable hours of on-site prep and programming time were lost due to torrential downpours, but everyone pulled together in a superlative team effort to ensure that Anirudh's end-of-tour show was filled with a host of visual surprises.