Ok, so bigger isn't necessarily better every time, but there are those occasions when a massive rig can transform a stage in unimaginable ways, especially when it's designed and controlled with the artistry and precision that designer Jimmy Yeret demonstrated recently at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Working for his client, Pivot Group, Jimmy from Dynamic Vision took advantage of a monumental rig at the venue to create a spectacular and ever-changing stage for the 2025 HASC A Time For Music concert.
Thanks to timecode automation, an impressive motorized sun structure, large staggered video walls, and a solid lighting system—provided by 4Wall Entertainment and Eagle Productions—the stage could transform into multiple visual configurations. In total, the setup included 183 CHAUVET Professional fixtures.
Our stage rig dimensions were 72-feet at their widest point downstage and 35-feet and their narrowest point upstage with a rig depth of 32-feet. The venue's steel reached 100 feet, exceeding the standard 80-foot motor chain length. This extra height enabled a mother grid, crucial for automating hoists and rigging flexibility. This ensured smooth operation of all moving elements, including the motorized trusses, said Jimmy.
This rig 's size and depth allowed Jimmy to take full advantage of one of his show's most dynamic elements, a motorized sun structure consisting of multiple independent moving trusses run on time-coded hoists that gave him the ability to make real time shape adjustments for seamless visual transitions.
Having this level of dynamic motion reinforced the overarching themes of growth and sunrise, for the event, which is a celebration of Jewish music, culture, and resilience. Given the overall shape of the deep rig, with its wide downstage and narrow upstage dimensions, Jimmy was able to add an extra level of compelling power to his automations with depth.
"Creating deep, varied looks was essential to our vision", said Jimmy. "Key to making this happen was the seamless interplay of lighting with video and special effects. Since our first design concepts, we have always ensured a strong relationship between video and lighting elements. Our design philosophy dictates that these components should never feel like separate entities but instead function as a cohesive, immersive environment. A core element of the design was ensuring that lighting, video, and automation worked together as a single, unified system".
Looking at the role of specific fixtures, Jimmy discussed how his rig's 31 COLORado PXL Curve 12 motorized battens contributed to the synergy on stage.
The COLORado PXL Curve Twelve was used on each side to frame the LED video wall. The battens broke up the square shape of the walls and defined their contour, so they blended into the overall stage architecture. The flexible curved nature of the PXL fixtures allowed us to create unique beam patterns that could be blended with the video content.
The flexibility of the rig's 32 Maverick MK3 Profiles and 61 Color STRIKE M units greatly aided Jimmy in creating a sense of cohesiveness in the production as it moved through its many iterations. For example, he notes that the profile fixtures adaptable gobos worked with the overhead sun structure to give each song in the concert its unique look. "We were especially impressed by the 'radial dot' we created with Gobo Number 2 in Wheel 1", he observed.
Describing his Color STRIKE M fixtures as "a game-changer due to their punch, pixel control, and ability to run in 97-channel mode", Jimmy relied on them not only as wash and strobe (along with his rig's 59 STRIKE 1 units), but also to create pixel-mapped effects across the entire stage. "Their pixel effects worked exceptionally well with the video content and timecode programming", he said of the motorized strobe-wash.
"This production was highly demanding due to its complex automation, largescale rigging, and integration of multiple elements, all running in sync via timecode", said Jimmy. "We had a great team led by Dynamic Vision President: Yan Vainblat, Project Manager: Vasily Burakov, Lighting & Pre-Vis Programmer: Sahar Gavrielov, Master Electrician: Anthony Fiorillo, Production Rigger: Alex Giotis, and Head of Video as well as VWX Mastermind: Moshe Baskin, who came up with an ingenious solution for rigging our staggered LED video wall". Baskin's rigging was just one example of resourcefulness in this production.
To reduce the number of DMX lines required for numerous universes, all networkcapable fixtures were configured to run on sACN instead of physical DMX. This allowed multiple universes over a single network cable and a failsafe backup system, where a secondary signal routed directly to the last fixture in the chain could automatically take over if the primary signal failed, said Jimmy.
Resourceful thinking, careful planning and a lot of creativity… with qualities like that any big rig can indeed be made even better.
