A video wall is not the only way to make a band's biggest show look expensive. Lighting designer John Rogers explains how Tigercub took the look of their KOKO show from their own album artwork instead, with backlight, silhouette and a kabuki reveal.

I’ve been based in London since 2009, when I moved south to work for a console manufacturer. Since before then I’ve been lighting (amongst other things) tours, concerts, festivals, film and TV shoots and a few large buildings all over the world.

When not actively working on a gig I also enjoy training and teaching both industry professionals and students alike. There is no more interesting a question than one from someone who is enjoying learning, and while I might not have the answer every time, I can usually show you how to find it.

I’m proud to spend a lot of my free time in the role of Chair of the London Live Events Network branch of my union. The overall aim is to enjoy my work for as long as possible, and to leave the industry better than when I joined it.

Find John at lampyfromliverpool.com and on Instagram at @lampyjohn.

Content is king, I heard a friend say once. When you see a production where the content is a perfect match for the music, it’s stunning. You can tell the creative team are all on the same page when it all comes together. But what if you don’t have an extra zero to stick on the end of the budget?

The question Tigercub brought to their first call

I first spoke with Tigercub on a group call. Jamie had got my details, and the band wanted their upcoming show and the release of their new album to stick a proverbial flag in the ground. They’d recently done a support tour in the US and they’d noticed that a lot of headliners always seemed to have what I call Big TV: a large video wall upstage, usually around a 16:9 ratio. Without the right content on the Big TV, it can fall a bit flat in a live music setting. It’s not like I’m anti video, or even anti Big TV. In fact, when touring into a festival Big TV is essential, so that every act has the same canvas to play with. It’s also the most effective way to add visually to a show in daylight, when most acts are on stage.

Good video, when it’s done as part of a broader visual design where lights and video and FX all work together, looks brilliant. I’m paraphrasing at best, but on that call what the band wanted to know was: did they need to be incorporating video? How big did they need to go with production for their biggest show to date?

More than one right answer, and where the budget goes

I often say that the problem with lighting (and visual design by extension) is that there is more than one right answer. I hadn’t met the lads until then, and for all I knew one of them could be a visual effects artist or a 3D animator in their spare time. They might have had days of brilliant content on a hard drive ready to go. But if they needed good content created for their show, that could eat their whole budget and still not be one of the better “right answers”. Their hearts weren’t set on video though, and none of them had a day job in content creation. So, what if the budget didn’t go into video walls, techs, trucks and content creation?

Taking the album artwork’s silhouettes onto the KOKO stage

The answer was already there in the decisions the band had made for their album artwork. Pictures of the three of them in silhouette make up the back cover. Backlight, big contrasting looks, shadows and silhouette quickly became the obvious theme. The album art had been sent to me a few days before, but the idea of a kabuki was one of the first things that came to mind. I needed lights bright enough to cast shadows onto a translucent, black kabuki gauze for the opening of the show. After putting a shootout together in the hire company’s warehouse, the brand spanking new, fresh out of the box GLP JDC Burst 1 was perfect. Big shadows, super bright, good colours.

Renders and reference videos were sent to the band. With the numbers of units set against budget, in the end the ideal design and what we were able to take into KOKO were essentially the same. The test firing of the kabuki in the venue on the day put any lingering doubts to bed. I loved the look of the show, how it stayed true to the album artwork and announced the band’s arrival on stage.

Content is still king, just a different kind

Content is still king, but the content in question here is the photos and video taken of their biggest gig so far. I’m grateful that the band trusted me to get the picture in my head out on to stage, and doubly delighted it was what I pictured all those months previously.