Depence² | A Conceptional Show Project

Depence² | A Conceptional Show Project

We at Syncronorm are pleased to present a multimedia show project, designed & programmed by young up and coming show designer Morgan Evans. His most recent conceptual show project has been visualized with the latest version of Depence².

Morgan studies Creative Lighting Control at Rose Bruford College in London and has been working with current developments in technology including working as an associate on projects with established lighting designers such as Tim Routledge in the UK. He also has worked as a lighting technician on a variety of live events such as the BRIT Awards, Capital Summertime Ball and the National Television Awards. We took the chance to speak with Morgan in detail on his work with Depence² and his brand-new fictional personal project, a conceptual show based on music act Dua Lipa, which inspired him:

https://morgantevans.com/portfolio/depence2concept/

 

Syncronorm: Morgan, what is your new show about?
 

ME:
In my latest design concept I wanted to push the advances in technology and my own design experience to see what results were possible. Therefore I decided to set this personal project in London’s Brixton Academy as a special one-off fan concert programmed to the music of Dua Lipa. The lighting and video design had to be realistic to both physical and financial constraints. I worked independently on this project over several months, starting with initial design ideas, then programming, creating content design and pre-vis rendering.


Syncronorm: What were your ideas & motives behind the show?


ME: My lighting and video designs were primarily influenced by the mood of the songs and their lyrics. I was keen to use moving truss, which formed the central core of my lighting design. The stage automation allowed for a huge variation of configurations, a greater amount of looks and provided more versatility out of the fixtures. It also gives much more depth to something that otherwise would be just static and the movement is used to create feeling in addition to the lighting. My goal was to use video content sparingly to create a bigger impact in the select songs that were video focused. I used a variety of lighting techniques such as video bitmaps and in-sync bumps to tie the design together.


Syncronorm: How did you handle the workflow?


ME: For me the workflow felt very natural coming from a background working with programs such as Adobe After Effects and Unreal Engine. I was able to get my project modelled and visualised in Depence2 very quickly. Importing VectorWorks files is seamless with MVR imports, fixtures are intelligently replaced and models are easily transferred and textured.
 

Syncronorm: What features of Depence² were especially helpful while programming your show?


ME: After seeing the functionality and quality of the renders produced by Depence², I knew it was the best tool for this project – reliable software capable of producing extremely high quality multimedia renders. With game engines and 3D video render engines becoming more and more powerful, software for the live events industry is an ideal application for this new technology. Depence² offers a high level of visualisation that capitalises on these exciting new advances. It has realistic fixtures and 4k photo-realistic video renders that make it far easier for a designer to demonstrate a concept to an artist or band. There is no need to compromise on quality for speed – textures, atmosphere and reflections can be rendered in real time. Camera animation helped add feeling and a variety of audience viewpoints. The realistic renders makes it much easier to watch and visualise how a design project might look in real life. Animated custom characters add another layer of realism to projects, along with a huge library of vehicles, special FX and textures.


Syncronorm: What differences have you noticed, working with Depence² in contrast to working with other show-design software?


ME: The timeline nature of Depence² is one of the main reasons it’s so powerful, allowing for a variety of media cues – whether these are produced internally or recorded from external sources – to be collated. The Art-Net stream recording is a great feature, allowing you to record in all your preprogramming and then scrub through your timeline after disconnecting your hardware.
 

If you’re interested in his work, feel free to visit: www.morgantevans.com or contact: morgan@morgantevans.com