What type of lights are used during this song?

[LightTech]

I just watched this video of the band Muse playing the song Starlight. 1:42 in, these green laser-like lights turn on. Anyone have an idea of what they are?
YouTube - [HD] Muse - Starlight (Live @ MTV EMA 2006)

 

[metti]

I'm pretty sure those aren't "laser-like lights". Those look like run-of-the-mill green lasers.

 

[xander]

Ditto what metti said

 

[chausman]

Lasers!!!

 

[EBB]

Curious question about lasers, how difficult is it to program them?

 

[TimMiller]

They appear to be lasers though you can cheat and get laser effects pretty well in certain moving lights. Lasers are a different animal due to they can cause blindness unlike other lights though I do not suggest looking down the barrel of any instrument. You have to be careful when doing crowd scanning effects. I personally never go below 10' above the highest seating area so if you have an 8' basketball player in the croud you still have an extra 2' of headroom. When doing some large dispersion effects you can get away with very fast croud scanning though I find safe areas in the room to shoot for such as balcony rails and walls where you get the laser effect without possibly harming someone. Also ease of programming depends on the laser and what options it has.

 

[Pie4Weebl]

Curious question about lasers, how difficult is it to program them?

Programming them is easy as any other moving light. The difficult part is getting the training and permits to do so safely.

 

[tyler.martin]

although, after working in europe (where this video was shot?) for 4 months, Laser work was not nearly as restricted and controlled as much as it is over here. I went to a nightclub in Germany that had 6 ancient RGB lasers that were controlled from Windows 3.1 doing crowd scans constantly and 2 of the 6 lasers had damaged? mirrors and were just shooting a solid beam... I was talking to the operator, who didnt know when the last time they had been inspected, and didn't even know 2 of them were not functioning...

 

[JChenault]

They do look like lasers - but at 1:59 or 2:00 it looks like they are shifting to just an arc lamp. ( you can see a unit which has a big beam, and one small one left) so I would not discount a gobo. I am not aware of any lasers that put out a large beam like I am seeing in this frame.

 

[TimMiller]

Looks like to me they were running a liquid sky effect. It's a safer effect and has a really nice wow effect also. The beam just pans back and forth at an extremely high rate.

 

[LXPlot]

When I saw Muse, they definitely used these same guys. They seemed to be about the size of your average vari-lites, had what appeared to be carbon arc, had a ring of LEDs around the area with the lamp, CMY, the works. I believe they were programming on a GrandMA, but don't quote me on it. Hope somebody might recognize that

 

[soundlight]

When I saw Muse, they definitely used these same guys. They seemed to be about the size of your average vari-lites, had what appeared to be carbon arc, had a ring of LEDs around the area with the lamp, CMY, the works. I believe they were programming on a GrandMA, but don't quote me on it. Hope somebody might recognize that

No one has made a carbon arc light for years. Modern arc lamps have two electrodes in them that are sealed in a center chamber of the lamp with an arc that goes across them.

And those green things were definitely lasers - no question. No moving light can do that.

 

[RonaldBeal]

Not lasers. I have never seen a automated yoke laser.. for safety reasons they don't exist. Some of the wide shots you can make out the fixtures . They change gobos a couple of times, and the "laser" effect is a spinning starfield gobo. If they indeed have a LED ring, then they are High End Shoguns. Lots of haze, and peak the cameras for green during that song and you get that effect.

 

[len]

Not lasers. I have never seen a automated yoke laser.. for safety reasons they don't exist.

Martin made one. And a couple Chinese companies. I don't think the Martin product was ever sold in the U.S. Too many liability issues, as you can imagine. I'm sure some others did as well. It's just as easy to aim a moving yoke into an area it doesn't belong as anything else.

As to the original question of what lights are used, remember, it's 2006 or 2007, and you'd have to look at what was available back then.

 

[soundlight]

Not lasers. I have never seen a automated yoke laser.. for safety reasons they don't exist. Some of the wide shots you can make out the fixtures . They change gobos a couple of times, and the "laser" effect is a spinning starfield gobo. If they indeed have a LED ring, then they are High End Shoguns. Lots of haze, and peak the cameras for green during that song and you get that effect.

If you look thru the whole part with the things that look like lasers, you see a lot of stuff (liquid skies and so forth) that cannot be accomplished with moving heads. You also see the liquid sky refresh line in the liquid sky effect and individual beams within the star beam look shooting off to the side in one specific cue. The only thing that would be able to do this other than a laser is a super-powerful, high-contrast, excellent video black projector with content programmed to simulate a laser scanning mirror.

They do look like lasers - but at 1:59 or 2:00 it looks like they are shifting to just an arc lamp. ( you can see a unit which has a big beam, and one small one left) so I would not discount a gobo. I am not aware of any lasers that put out a large beam like I am seeing in this frame.

That would be a liquid sky effect - you can see the laser scanning happening in the video, and the camera passes thru the beam which is insanely thin like a laser liquid sky (it'd be very hard to get a gobo beam that thin and yet that bright at that color, and the visible scanning gives it away as a liquid sky).

 

[TimMiller]

I need to go watch it at the computer for an even closer look but if you watch closely the true laser effects such as liquid sky are being projected from the ground and then all of your major scanning is coming from moving heads. This leads me to believe they are using lasers on the ground and probably showguns for the audience effects. Showguns are painfully bright and can project gobs. They also have the led rings in the front. Also around the same time the DL2 or 3 came out so you have that possibility also. DL's can do some pretty close to laser effects including emulating liquid sky.

 

[shiben]

Im pretty sure I read that they mostly use lasers for that kind of stuff with Muse. What implies to me that they are all lasers is when the same unit starts to make 2 beams starting from a full and making each smaller in the fan type shape. I dont know if you can do that without electronic scanning. In fact, I cant think of any way to do it on an ML at all.

 

[LuxMax]

Those were definitely lasers. DL2/3 type projectors do not have that look even if they have laser-type graphics running through them, they just do not have the punch.
The moving head lasers were built by a company in Florida and called the trinity-one IIRC.
You will never see a show like that in the US. The video comes from a show in the EU which has much more lax regulations when it comes to audience scanning of laser effects. The CDRH here in the US regulates lasers for entertainment usage and are very strict when it comes to laser beams over an audience. You are basically not allowed to have any beam over 5mw come anywhere closer than 6' over head height.
I have used DL3 projectors to do laser effects and let me tell you they are not even in the same ballpark, the real deal is so much better looking, especially for liquid-sky effects.

 

[Blacksheep0317]

As much as you all are on this laser kick, Im going to say Mac 3000s. Thats what I see on the circle truss above their heads, and you would be amazed how solid a 3000W lamp can look with a little bit of haze. With a quality and versatility of moving lights now, and the cost benefits of them, you very rarely see lasers on the road anymore. Last US tour of muse they played here and I cant say I saw a single laser on any of their truss.

 

[shiben]

As much as you all are on this laser kick, Im going to say Mac 3000s. Thats what I see on the circle truss above their heads, and you would be amazed how solid a 3000W lamp can look with a little bit of haze. With a quality and versatility of moving lights now, and the cost benefits of them, you very rarely see lasers on the road anymore. Last US tour of muse they played here and I cant say I saw a single laser on any of their truss.

The relevant video is three years older than the last time you saw them. Also in europe. I maintain that you just cant do that without the abilities of a laser. 2:10 in the video is one example, the last bit is another. They are swapping patterns and positions near instantaneously. Show me a moving head that can swap positions that fast.