Robe Gets Close to the Edge with $UICIDEBOY$ The underground rap duo $UICIDEBOY$ completed their GREYDAY2024 US and Canadian tour with a production design -- lighting and set -- created by Ian MacDonald, who used Robe moving lights to help deliver an in-the-face lighting aesthetic. McDonald is based in Ottawa and has worked with the band since 2021. This latest tour design featured 42 Robe iFORTE LTXs, 34 Spiiders, and four iFORTE followspots, all supplied by Fuse, who purchased the iFORTES for this project, which was coordinated for them by account managers Matt Kirkpatrick and Kevin Foreste. Known for their stark, often brutal lyrics and narratives touching controversial, complex topics like suicide, addiction, and depression, communicating these messages and stories live is hugely challenging. It was the first time MacDonald used Robe's iFORTE luminaire, which he saw at LDI 2023. He especially likes the color-mixing and zoom functionality. His starting point for the design was the "obnoxiously big" portrait-oriented slab of upstage video screen trimmed at 64' high from the floor and flanked by two stage lift platforms framed with video panels. The big screen needed something seriously hardcore on all the open sides to fill in the space, so he drew four lighting torms on the plot and populated them with various fixtures including some of the Spiiders. Their mission was to assault the vision of all in the room. All the iFORTES were rigged on four finger trusses above the band, trimmed at 60' from the deck. "I needed a crazy-bright and super-raw light source to blast down at the stage with real impact," he explains, "and iFORTES were perfect." Often the units were used in narrow mode for max intensity and maximizing the more menacing feel produced by top lighting blasting directly down onstage. MacDonald says the iFORTES held their positions very well and he rarely had to do any tweaking or adjustments. By contrast, he has used Spiiders many times before, usually in full wide mode for building kinetic effects. For this tour, the rest of the Spiiders were deployed on audience trusses with six automated 2m-by-2m internally lit scenic skulls constructed by Glow Motion Technologies, which tilted, pitched, and moved up and down. The Spiiders on these trusses were used for room sweeps that wrapped the audience up in the action. The whole show ran to time code. Programming/running a hip-hop show like this was very different from a rock or a metal concert, MacDonald says. While much of the music is fast and aggressive, several poignant moments had to be punctuated, and more space and air onstage needed to be filled visually. "I programmed a show with multiple contrasts," he explains "Top lighting can be really harsh, especially with the power of the iFORTES behind it, which was great, but there were also numerous intimate and emotionally charged drops which I built these into the cue list." The song "whatwhat" was lit completely in green, which is unusual, but a concept that worked in this context, capturing the mood. $UICIDEBOY$' fanbase is also very passionate and into the band, music, and conscious of lyrics which, as with all rap, are imperative to the storytelling. MacDonald worked closely with video producer Tristan Zammit, especially during the show programming to ensure that lighting and visuals worked harmoniously -- either together or in contrast. IMAG camera feeds were integrated onscreen -- often tweaked live using Notch effects -- with all the playback video content running via a Disguise media server. The touring lighting crew was chief'd by Temple "Mel" Dorough and comprised techs Jim Meredith, Vreje Bakalian, Jacob Jordan, Guillermo Medina, and Matt Margulis, and the video team was led by Curtis Miller (crew chief) working alongside Chris Small, Colin Johnston, Marcus Taylor, and Miles Pierce. 
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