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Lenny Sasso lights UnderOath with Chauvet

“It’s funny, I got into this business because I love light, but as time’s gone on, I’ve found myself being more drawn to using darkness as a design tool”, says lighting designer Lenny Sasso. “Playing with shadows makes the darker moments feel darker, and the brighter ones feel brighter.” Sasso has been balancing these opposite forces to conjure up the looks for UnderOath’s current 24-city “Blind Obedience Tour”.

Keeping his front lighting “to an absolute minimum”, and sticking with monochromatic or basic two-toned color schemes, Sasso is endowing the stage with an underground aura that fits his client’s brand of metalcore music. Critical to creating the light that plays out on the stage against the shadows, often from side or off-center back angles, are thirteen Chauvet Professional Colorado PXL Bar 16 motorized tilting battens, which, like the rest of the rig, was supplied by Sonus Productions.

“I have the PXL16s side loaded to cover a sidewashed look”, says Sasso. “This has allowed me to create some half lit shadows on the band members’ faces that gives you a sense that they’re somewhere between light and darkness. I am also using the battens for some silhouette looks.”

Sasso is mounting six of his Colorado PXL Bars (two apiece) on downstage, midstage, and upstage side poles. From these positions, the units fill the downstage edge, and the midstage, as well as the space between the band members on the risers. The seven remaining battens are arranged in a straight line across the upstage deck, directly between the risers and the spot towers. This creates a wall of light behind the band that, in addition to providing a potent backdrop, serves to hide the spot towers in the rig. The Colorado PXL16 fixtures are being run entirely over ethernet. “For the first time ever, I am using virtually no DMX on stage”, says Sasso. “My entire PXL16 run is done over ethernet. I mainly did this because I’m using each fixture in the 186ch Tour Mode.”

Since UnderOath thrives on audience interaction, Sasso made sure to include a healthy serving of crowd lighting in this design. “The band has several moments, such as the bridge of ‘Dangerous Business’, the bridge of ‘Writing on the Walls’, and the bridge of ‘Hallelujah’, that are characterized by massive crowd chant moments”, he says. “When this happens, I am pointing every PXL toward the audience and throwing them in the widest zoom possible.”

Sasso has timecoded almost every accent hit, every big snare roll, and every fill in this show in an effort to have the lighting follow the music seamlessly with a palette that reflects the mood on stage.

(Photos: Randy Edwards)

www.chauvetprofessional.com

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