When lighting designer David Howard needed dramatic washes and high-quality key lighting for Gary Numan’s acoustic tour, he selected VL5LED WASH luminaires from Vari-Lite, the originators of the modern moving head luminaire and Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) entertainment lighting brand.

For the production, Howard wanted to capture the feel of a traditional Gary Numan production, but in a design tailored to the acoustic set of this latest tour. “This stripped back acoustic tour still has the Numan DNA but is a very different presentation of these songs,” explains Howard. “The design needed to reflect this. Playing churches and other beautiful and nontraditional spaces meant a scalable design was required, something that worked well on camera but also brought the crowd into an intimate presentation of music.”

The artists are surrounded by light in an arced backdrop, which took inspiration from organs and other church architecture. “These venues had no discernible key light for the most part,” Howard says. “The VL5LED was selected specifically to act as the key source for face light because of the quality of its spectral output.”

“The show is soft, but also carries forth the electronic roots of the Numan sound in its programming,” Howard adds. “As part of the show, in lieu of a support band, film footage of previous Numan concerts play as a 30 minute opening piece. The VL5s were used exclusively to provide eye candy and beam work during this film, to immerse a live crowd in the footage of shows gone by.”

An important aspect of the design for Howard was the need for plenty of high-quality light. “It’s hard to describe why the whites from the VL5LED are superior to an RGBW source, but going from the depths and tones of a 2300k Tungsten or deeper candle light up to a snow white and cooler tones in the higher color temps really delivery a quality face light both on camera and in person. The power from a relatively small unit is also impressive. Six units were used as sidelight at around eight to fifteen percent and provided ample key light. The dimming at the low end is impressively smooth too.”

Asked if he would use the fixtures again, Howard replied, “Absolutely! This is high quality light for key work as well as a cool and vintage feeling effect in its face. The size weight and power make them a really nice unit to tour with, and the color depth in these units is the best I’ve ever experienced in an automated fixture.”