Elation On The Road For Brit Floyd Discovery World Tour

Currently touring North America with a rig of Elation Professional lighting that includes Platinum Beam 5R and Design Spot 1200C moving heads, Brit Floyd's Discovery is a stunning three-hour musical journey that recreates the legendary band's music and gives audiences a retrospective look at a classic lighting setup.

Billed as the world's greatest Pink Floyd Show, Brit Floyd has performed to more than one million fans around the world since its first show in Liverpool in 2011. Lighting design is by Dave Hill, who has been designing Brit Floyd for years and incorporates the Platinum 5Rs into the trademark Pink Floyd arch and circle light show.

"The Platinum Beam 5Rs do most of the big effects and are situated around the circle and on the trusses above," Hill says of the narrow 2.5 degree ACL-type beam effect that can project 12 colors and houses rotating gobos. "I particularly like the speed of the 5Rs in motion, and they make a wonderful contribution to the show. The Design Spot 1200s are on the floor and do wonderful gobo and beam effects through the band."

Out on the road with the production is lighting director Stu Dingley, who started working for Brit Floyd in 2012 as an operator and works with the Elation gear on a daily basis. "The Elation equipment is really very good for the price and they are robust fixtures," he comments. "The 46 Platinum Beam 5Rs in the rig are versatile fixtures that enable us to create large, aerial looks as well as bring the show back to basic rock and roll washes using the frost and color correction filters. They are also fast and very bright."

Used as part of the floor package are eight Elation Design Spot 1200Cs, a hybrid spot/wash fixture that Dingley says has required maintenance only a handful of times in the last couple of years. "The optics are excellent," he says, "often rivalling output from other fixtures with larger apertures and lamps. We noticed this especially on the shows where we had to hire in an alternative floor package."

The Brit Floyd production has developed and grown in size since its inception and is now a highly precise show with time coded lighting, media, and lasers. The Video designer for the show is Bryan Kolupski who accompanies the musical performance with original video and new animation inspired by the artwork designs of longtime Pink Floyd collaborator Storm Thorgerson.

The show is produced and promoted by UK-based CMP Live, which supplies the Elation lighting gear. US tour support in the form of lighting gear supply and personnel is from Performance Lighting of Chicago. "Elation are affordable, reliable, and do a great job for us and Pink Floyd's music," says CMP Live owner Chas Cole. "The price, quality of the beam, and reliability is great considering the very large number of shows we do a year."

Brit Floyd wraps up the North American leg of Discovery on June 22 with a European tour scheduled to kick off in early October.

See Elation at PLASA Focus: Baltimore, May 8 - 9.