Swedish alt-rock band Takida recently toured their home country beneath a Martin rig that featured P3-100 driven LC Series™ LED panels and Martin MAC luminaires.

Tomas Sagersten of Rentsound AB handled stage and set design for the tour and also served as lighting designer and operator. He comments, “I had the chance to try the LC Series when Swedish lighting company Music and Lights bought them. I was hooked pretty quickly.

“I had been talking for some time with the band about doing something with an LED backdrop and this was the time to do it. We talked fairly early about having the LED screen in two sections and using the transparency of the screen in order to hide the band for a cool intro.”

Sagersten created a 9x6 meter LC backdrop plus a 9x2 meter section that could maneuver up and down in front of the stage set. This was used during the intro where the band was hidden behind the screen.

“I liked the simple rigging of the screen which allowed us to keep construction and tear down periods to a minimum. It gave me more time to program the lights and the video and get more special effects,” Sagersten comments. “I like the power of the screen as well. We ran it at about 70% output and it was enough!”

The LC panels were driven by Martin’s P3-100 System Controller, an intelligent interface between the source and the screen used for video signal processing and integration with lighting control. It lets users treat LED screens like lighting instruments; brightness, image position, image rotation, etc. can be adjusted and changed instantly.

“The P3 made our job much easier when it came to getting custom graphics to work properly,” Sagersten says. “Ceiling height was pretty limited in some of the venues we were in so sometimes we had to leave the mobile screen in the truck. But thanks to the P3 everything looked as if it were shaped to the size of the screen we used that day!” Media content, some of it custom made, was sent to the LED panels via a Martin Maxedia media server.

Martin equipment: 

27 x LC Series™ 2140

1 x P3-100 System Controller™

1 x Maxedia PRO™

18 x MAC 700 Wash™

12 x MAC 700 Profile™

12 x MAC 250 Wash™

12 x MAC 2000 Wash™

8 x MAC III Profile™

16 x Atomic 3000™

16 x Atomic Colors™

Martin Professional

Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, Martin Professional is a world leader in the creation of dynamic lighting solutions for the entertainment, architectural, and commercial sectors. Martin lighting solutions are industry standard on top tours and events, grace prestigious theatres, energize nightclubs, and decorate major television studios around the globe. Other important areas of application are indoor and outdoor architecture and commercial applications where Martin products are increasingly being used to transform spaces through dynamic light. Martin also offers a range of advanced lighting controllers and media servers, as well as a complete line of smoke machines as a complement to intelligent lighting. The company operates the industry’s most complete and capable distributor network with local partners in nearly 100 countries. For more information please visit www.martin.com

For more information contact your local Martin distributor or Martin Professional at:

www.martin.com