Matt Pitman chooses Ayrton rig as Dua Lipa headlines Glastonbury Pyramid Stage
Matt Pitman, founder of design studio, Pixelmappers, and long-time production and lighting designer for Dua Lipa, employed a massive rig of Ayrton fixtures for the singer/songwriter’s ‘flawless’ headline appearance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage this summer.
Pitman chose a homogenous array of Ayrton fixtures that included the new Rivale Profile and laser-sourced Kyalami, supplied by Lights Control Rigging (LCR) as part of his touring rig, alongside Ayrton stalwarts Cobra, Bora, Perseo Profile and Domino LT, which formed the main house rig and audience lighting supplied by Neg Earth Lights. The Ayrton fixtures were purchased from Ambersphere Solutions, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for the UK.
In one of the first major touring productions to use Kyalami since its release in May, Pitman chose 64 of the compact fixtures which – ‘due to some clever rigging from my brilliant friends at LCR’ – he rigged on either side of the upstage screen in two single vertical rows on 9.5m tall ladders. Only 1cm separated the lenses of each adjacent Kyalami fixture. “That’s a lot of lights for that amount of space!” he says. “This allowed us to create some absolutely awesome looks because of the fixtures’ close proximity to each other and their extreme brightness. They were like my secret weapons, which soared around the side of the set and out through the corners of the hoods on the Pyramid Stage. They were hugely successful!”
“Matt and I began discussing Dua Lipa’s upcoming tour and Glastonbury performance during the initial design phase,” says LCR’s director of projects and live events, Steve Bliss. “He brought some amazing ideas that really pushed the limits of technology and rigging. We had to create a custom bolt-on for our pre-rig ladder system to support 27 Ayrton Kyalami fixtures and some LED battens per side, all while ensuring the weight was evenly distributed within the ladder and fitting in the compact space required to hang next to the US video wall and be ‘tourable’. Our custom ladder system was the perfect option due to the high load capacity and the speed we can rig them. The remaining 16 Kyalami were built into 2 movable booms.”
Dave Stewart, Ayrton’s designer relationship manager for the UK, brought Kyalami to Pitman’s attention shortly after the lighting designer discovered he was designing for the Pyramid Stage. “We needed to deliver a huge look to the show and I was keen to achieve some big vertical light curtains, but had very little space in which to rig,” says Pitman. “As soon as Dave showed us Kyalami we quickly decided we wanted it for Dua. It proved perfect for the job with some winning features: its brightness, speed, the number of functions within such a small fixture and the fact I could rig them nearly touching each other with no need for any physical space between them. Just the thing to create those intense light curtain looks.
“I’m immensely grateful to Ayrton and LCR who managed to turn the Kyalami around on such a tight schedule. They were intrinsic to the design and the amount of support from the manufacturer and supplier was crucial.”
“The Ayrton gear is consistent and solid which is what you need on a tour like this, agrees Bliss. “Collaborating with Matt and his team on this show has been – as always – an absolute pleasure, and the results look incredible.”
Pitman chose 68 Rivale Profiles as his floor package, the majority of which were rigged on the downstage edge of the apron, plus some extra units amid the main stage set to act as dancer footlights.
“We tour with a large number of Rivales as the floor package but augmented this with another 24 Rivale for the Pyramid Stage, placed every 1.1m apart to extend along the entire width of the apron,” he explains. “As it was the first time any artist had a B-stage on the Pyramid Stage, we wanted it to look immense when Dua went out into the audience, at which point the entire back of shot was Rivale Profiles!
“Rivale is my new love in life! It’s everything I’ve been looking for in a spot. It gives me beamy and spotty looks, and the colour mixing is just so rich. They have a super-wide zoom which we often used for a lens-flare look, but you can also narrow down to an almost parallel beam for beam light looks. In both narrow and wide the colours are as rich as cellophane sweet wrappers – it literally feels like someone has gelled the lights. The saturation of the colours is immense – much richer than what we are used to with standard colour mix systems – and reads beautifully on camera. I’ve received a lot of compliments about how well the show translated on television and I absolutely attribute some of that success to the optical and focal system of Rivale.”
More beam effects were provided by 28 laser-sourced Cobra fixtures: “Working with the Cobra for two weeks at Glastonbury, we certainly found its sweet spot! It’s like a secret recipe of the right amount of zoom, focus and mode, which shows them to be the ultimate beam light,” says Pitman. “Neg Earth positioned them just under the stage hood, and a handful either side above the left and right video screens, from where they gave us massive cannons of beams. We tipped them horizontally and fanned them out towards the audience to give the stage these massive eyelashes, which looked awesome.”
The house rig was completed by 34 Ayrton Bora wash fixtures, and 48 Perseo Profiles rigged on four overhead trusses, plus a handful on each of the trusses above the left and right screens, and with 12 Domino LTs in front of house positions for audience effects. “The LT versions were necessary because they were a such a long way from their target and we needed the brightness,” says Pitman.
Not only did Neg Earth Lights provide the house rig and audience lighting for Dua Lipa’s performance but were also tasked with the supply of the lighting fixtures for the B-Stage and truss ‘goal posts’ at both the lighting and sound FOH tents. “We supplied Ayrton Rivale fixtures for these areas, leveraging their versatility favoured by Pixelmappers, as well as their IP rating for outdoor conditions,” says Neg Earth Lights’ project manager, Gavin Maze. “We were delighted to contribute to Dua Lipa’s spectacular headline performance.”
“The moment we heard Neg Earth had populated the flown rig with Perseo fixtures, we immediately requested an exact replica of the house rig for production rehearsals. LCR supplied us with the Perseo and Cobra rehearsal fixtures, and we programmed them in advance so we didn’t need to do the detailed work in the limited amount of time on site. We carefully white-balanced the entire rig for camera in rehearsals, and it was very noticeable that what we programmed on one set of Perseo in a rehearsal room was exactly colour-accurate on another set of fixtures. This was really important for such a high-profile TV broadcast and I was really impressed how the colours translated perfectly from one rig to another.
“We are sticklers for detail at Pixelmappers and tested every single light in every colour to see they work on camera. The fact that the laser-sourced Kyalami and Cobra from the house rig and LED-sourced Perseo and Rivale from the tour rig work together so well shows the technology is complementary to each other. Even though the fixtures were of different ages and optical systems, they all worked well together and felt like they were from the same ‘family’.
“Ultimately it feels like Ayrton are the current market leaders in making quality lights that are also IP rated. Their fixtures have become the industry standard for good reason: suppliers are happy with them, LDs know how to use them successfully and the quality of the product is excellent, and that is testified by what we managed to achieve on the Pyramid Stage with the majority of the lighting rig from Ayrton.”
“We’re so very proud of what we achieved that night, everyone on our team, our suppliers and everyone from Glastonbury Festival worked so hard to make it stand out. It felt like the stars aligned and everything worked, the conditions were perfect and Dua was flawless – it was everything we could have wished for!”
Text: Julie Harper
Photos: © Luke Dyson
Pixelmappers Team:
Matt Pitman – Production and Lighting Designer
Tom Snell – Project Manager
Oliver Martin – Associate Lighting Designer & Programmer
Aaron Veness – Lighting Director
Robin Senoner – Video Director
Oliver Hynds – Production Design Assistant
Lighting Crew Heroes:
Iyestyn Thomas – Lighting Crew Chief
Rob Watson, Sam Worthy, Simon Port & Dickie Brennan
LCR Heroes:
Steve Bliss – Project manager for LCR
Mike Oates
Ryan Hopkins
