Two hundred and ten Ayrton MagicBlade™-R fixtures form the dramatic backbone of
Roy Bennett’s lighting design for Maroon 5’s year-long World Tour 2015 in support of
V, the band’s fifth studio album.

Bennett, of Seven Design Works, has used the MagicBlade™-R units to delineate
thirteen jointed truss “arms’, which are suspended in a “V’ shape above the stage to
form a pivotal feature of the stage design. The MagicBlade-R fixtures are rigged in
double rows along the arms, which split along the centre line and move
independently on a series of separate wire winches to shape and sculpt the stage
from above.

“I didn’t know the band well but knew their music. I wanted to give them something
very different from the video-heavy designs of their past tours – and create
something that I haven’t done before!’ says Bennett. “I like transparency, reflection
and mirrors right now so I created a “fishbowl’ from a transparent stage and other
elements based on the album artwork’s V symbol.’

Bennett devised a set composed of an under-lit PLEXIGLAS stage, an upstage wall of
stepped, PLEXIGLAS panels which can be filled with smoke, and a ceiling of
moveable arms etched out by the MagicBlade-R fixtures. “This gives the stage a
volumetric feel below the band as if they are standing on another world, a backdrop
that can be back-projected onto and a ceiling that I can use to change the look, feel,
and shape of the stage throughout the show. My intention was to create a modern,
clean look that was flexible enough to give multiple looks within the personality of
the design,’ he explains.

Bennett uses the MagicBlade-R fixtures both as sources of illumination and as tools
to construct sculptural, architectural effects. “I’m able use the MagicBlades to
accentuate the image of the “V’ and create a forced perspective in both horizontal
and vertical planes. I can gear everything to an apex – in the air, on the ground and
upstage – and use them as a mirror image of each other. At one point I even bring
them in low and flat to compress the stage and top light the band.

Ayrton’s MagicBlade-R is immediately identifiable as having seven 4.5° 15W RGBW
LED emitters arranged inline, each of which can be individually controlled for
greater design possibilities.

Bennett, who first used Ayrton’s MagicBlade-R for the Japanese stadium tour of Big
Bang Korea (the world’s biggest K-Pop band), was among the first lighting designers
in the USA to use Ayrton’s award-winning MagicPanel™602. His design for Nine Inch
Nails’ 2013 Tension tour employed 126 MagicPanel 602 fixtures, arranged in 3 x 3
“pods’ above the band. Now, for Maroon 5’s V tour, he has utilized another massive
quantity of Ayrton lights with the overhead matrix of 210 MagicBlade™-R units.

Maroon 5’s V tour commenced in Dallas on February 16 and concludes in Denver on
December 31, by which time the tour will have crossed America, Europe, the Far
East and Australasia. The lighting equipment is supplied by Upstaging, Inc. in the US
and Neg Earth in Europe.