Allen Branton, Bianca Moncada Give Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Awards New Looks with CHAUVET Professional

	Cyndi Lauper's performance featured a transcendent rainbow. "The idea was to make the rainbow visuals feel as if they were controlled by the singer's natural movement," says Moncada.

Held at the Peacock Theatre, November 8, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Awards turned 40 with some twists that created more 3D looks onstage. Discussing the new visuals, lighting designer Allen Branton notes: "We added more layers behind the vanish screens and enriched the balcony rail arrays for a rich reverse shot."

Key to the revamped looks was the change in the video wall configuration for this year's event. Rather than being anchored by one large video screen, this year's design used smaller screens, more like individual set pieces. This contributed to the more immersive environment on stage.

"This year we moved away from the dominant flat backgrounds and instead used video as a layered element that blended with lighting, complementing the negative space with the lighting design behind and in front of the screens to create a unified, immersive composition," says video screen content designer Bianca Moncada of Darmah. "For the main show look, we integrated smaller, three-dimensional video elements as virtual scenic pieces that matched the real lighting, so it feels as if physical light is affecting the digital world."

Directing light through the very transparent video panels also contributed to the depth and unified look of the stage. "Letting light interacts with the content and making the stage read as one continuous world with realistic depth and dimension was critically important to this design," says Branton.

A collection of 72 Color STRIKE M motorized strobe washes, 58 STRIKE 1 units, and 22 COLORdash Accent washes from CHAUVET Professional added to the impact of lighting as it interacted with the set's video element. "This is a story of strobes and point sources," says Branton. Both are essential to our approach -- melt down violence on the one hand, and subtle definition of space on the other."

Elaborating on the latter point, Branton singles out his rig's COLORdash units. "I believe this fixture when carefully place leads the cameraman to a certain composition," he says.

The production team, which in addition to Branton and Moncada, included lighting directors Felix Peralta, Kevin Lawson, and George Gountas; gaffers Alejandro Flores and Mikey Smallman; Best Boys Russ Keitel, Adam Hagin, and Matthew Weede, along with Liberty Bock, on operations, served up one memorable look after the other during the three-hour broadcast.

Among the most stunning moments during the program was during Cyndi Lauper's performance when a transcendent rainbow appeared behind the singer and transformed the entire stage. "The idea was to make the rainbow visuals feel as if they were controlled by the singer's natural movement," says Moncada. "We treated these graphics as floating, flowing light energy, using transparency and soft glows. Against a black background, the colors drifted and moved with her, becoming an extension of her performance, rather than just a solid backdrop."