The BRIT and Grammy award winning artist Mark Ronson has recently wrapped up a UK tour before the wave of summer festivals begin to kick in. Alongside his phenomenally successful record label, DJ and producing career, Mark is also a persuasive performer who puts everything into his shows.

As you would expect; someone with the energy of Mark has a serious hands-on approach to lighting his shows. For the tour he sat down with Matt Arthur, who together with Lite Alternative and together they fleshed out a light show which, like his music, uniquely referenced other great performances.

"Mark really wanted to have a 60's look and feel to the show. A retro ‘bandstand' look that was away from rock and roll lighting. The show was very brass and soul orientated and this fitted together really well with the lighting."

"I went away from our meeting and researched some of the old bandstand television shows on YouTube and other places for inspiration. From this we ended up with a retro, multi-tiered stage with rises ranging from two to five feet and red drapes everywhere." The band was arranged in a ‘V' shape behind Mark.

"We kept the lighting as minimal as possible with not too much movement, but also setting a different scene for each song. There were a lot of individual singers who came out to perform with Mark so it has a variety show feel to it with lots of spot work."

"We had some 5k Fresnel's with LED inside and barn doors to give them an old school look, and we used MAC TW1's as our spotlights and washes. We also had MAC 700 profiles split over three trusses and some MAC 250 Washes on the floor and upstage behind the rises and video screens."

"I went for TW1's to get as much punch down stage as possible. The warm, tungsten was great for skin tones in a minimalist show like this. I knew that I had to have a fair bit of coverage and needed it to be warm yet powerful. I used a wide zoom for washing the whole stage area and drapes, and then spotted them down on performers."

"The fact that the TW1's have the ability for an internal or external dimmer source is great. Using an internal dimmer with a tungsten light source is unique and gives you a nice flexibility. Having tungsten as the light source also gave the show a distinctive feel. There were no dramas and they all worked well. They were easy to set up and they're quite light."

Matt, who originally hails from the warmer climes of Australia, will be working with Mark on some of his coming summer tours, so let's hope this summer reminds him of home...