Butch Allen's Dazzling Design for Paramore Uses Elation ACL 360i

	Photo: Craig Mitchell/LMG Touring

Lighting designer Butch Allen created a stunning visual design for American rock band Paramore's Tour Two US tour using a bevy of Elation Professional's compact ACL 360i beam effect lights. Supplied by LMG Touring for the fall leg of the band's US tour, which wrapped up on October 17th, 72 of the single-beam moving effects formed the aerial lighting focal point throughout the show.

"I needed a very small fixture with big output," Allen said. "The lights were in the projection field for video and minimizing shadows without sacrificing the lighting look was a challenge. The ACL 360i fit the bill perfectly." Allen, who was using the luminaire for the first time, praised its intensity and named its small size and low weight (33cm/13" tall and 5.2kg/11.5lbs) as important factors in its choice, as well as the ability to fit the budget.

The ACL 360i effects lined three concentric truss circles over the band -- 12 on the inner, 24 on the middle and 36 on the outer -- and were framed by rows of strip lights. "I love this fixture. It's fast and gives 360-degrees of endless chaos," Allen exclaimed. "It's a fantastic fixture and was the savior of our budget. True bang for the buck!"

Each single-beam ACL 360i light houses a 60W RGBW LED and projects a narrow 4-degree beam. With the ability to rotate continuously in both pan and tilt, the large number of beam luminaires created a gorgeous swirling effect onto a backdrop cyc with ever-changing rays of light projected onto the stage or out to the audience.

LMG Touring, a full service touring provider that operates offices across the US, stocks a wide range of Elation products, including over 200 ACL 360i fixtures, and supplied both the lighting and video package for Paramore. In order to speed load in and load out on the tour, LMG had the ACL fixtures mounted on custom pipe brackets, in groups, to easily go on and off of the circle trusses. "The Elation ACL 360i has a good price to performance ratio which gives the possibility to do a large matrix like this without blowing up the budget," commented Craig Mitchell, director of touring at LMG Touring. "They've been very reliable for us, just a great fixture and clients like them."