Robe brought an animated, vibrant, high-impact theatre meets rock ‘n’ roll live show to the centre of its stand design at the 2018 PLASA entertainment technology expo in London’s Olympia.
Putting ‘performance’ at the heart of the presentation, Robe launched its brand new SuperSpikie moving light.
The spectacular show, which also illustrated other new and current Robe products including the new RoboSpot remote follow spotting system running with MDC (multi-device control) and the new iParFect, the first in a series of upcoming IP rated luminaires.
Inspired by the Tomb Raider / Indiana Jones movie and e-games adventure genre – the show concept, The Lost World Trilogy, was originated by Robe’s own creative team led by Nathan Wan and Andy Webb.
Complete with a specially compiled soundtrack, a custom in-house designed water curtain effect, oodles of moody fog and haze courtesy several MDG Fog machines and utilising around 200 skilfully positioned Robe moving lights. Wan explained: “The goal was to create an immersive highly visual environment where people would want to stay, meet, chat and discuss business!”
As well as creating a superlative piece of theatre to follow the acclaimed Robe Cirque show at the 2018 Prolight+Sound Frankfurt and 2017’s popular Mirror Man at PLASA, Robe strives to take interactive exhibition stand design to a new level.
“We are here to sell lighting products” stated Nathan. “So we need to engage people on all levels and get them to look at how the products can enhance their work and projects in an entertaining and fun context”.
Apart from pulling people to the booth, there was a massive buzz around the expo which ensured that Robe was a talking point, right there on the show floor and across social media and other communication channels.
Robe CEO Josef Valchar commented: “It looked amazing the best, most interesting and detailed booth design we have produced to date, which really showcased the products in a scenario for which they were designed”.
The Robe SuperSpikie attracted plenty of attention with 18 incorporated into the show. The product is a larger, more powerful and seriously supercharged version of the phenomenally popular Robe Spikie moving light, with all the same features, and a much brighter, fatter beam plus rotating gobos for producing additional stunning aerial effects.
Robe’s modular RoboSpot remote follow spotting system has been a great success over the last year, and this is now available with Multi Device Control (MDC) for use with up to 12 units of Robe’s newest fixtures, including the Robe BMFL range, Robe MegaPointes, Robe DL7 and DL4 series luminaires and Pointes.
Robe BMFL FollowSpot LT is another new product launched at the show – a brighter ‘Long Throw’ version of the standard Robe BMFL FollowSpot, with all the standard features and a different optical system and a tighter beam spread that is optimised for extra brightness over long distances.
Naturally, the best-selling Robe MegaPointe – its first public physical reveal was at PLASA 2017 – was prominent in the show, together with Robe Spiiders, Tarrantulas, Spikies, iParFects – in the rain curtains – CycBar 15s, ColorStrobes and Divine UVs.
Valchar concluded: “We had a fantastic PLASA all round … the atmosphere was amazing, we caught up with lots of good people – many lighting designers were there this year – plus a great mix of rental companies, event producers and venue managers, lots of programmers and technicians and also plenty of young visitors who will be our future industry professionals! We made some excellent new contacts. Above all we thoroughly enjoyed the diversity and energy of London”.
Photography by Louise Stickland
