Behind The Design Of Prospa's "Prophecy" At Magazine London With Creative Director Elliot Baines

Leeds-based electronic duo Prospa, made up of Harvey Blumler and Goshka Smith, brought their Prophecy show to Magazine London for the biggest headline performance of their career in the capital. Known for fusing classic house foundations with rave-era euphoria and for reviving the iconic Stress Records imprint, Prospa arrived at the 3,000-capacity Greenwich Peninsula venue riding a wave of momentum that saw the date sell out well ahead of doors.

A London takeover at this scale demanded a production that could match the moment while honoring the moody, club-rooted DNA of Prospa's sound. It also needed be repeatable with more Prophecy shows already in motion for later this year. Leading creative direction and production design was Elliot Baines of SPIRAL, who approached Prophecy not as a standard concert but as an immersive, chapter-driven journey built from light, video, lasers and sculptural set pieces.

"Our concept was about amplifying Prophecy into a fully immersive light, visual and artistic production. We wanted the entire audience to feel involved in something that lives far beyond a standard concert." - Creative Director & Production Designer Elliot Baines

Lighting and video were delivered by Coloursound Experiment, with lasers from ER Productions, automation from Liteup, content from OMBRA World, and set design from Studio FortyThree.

Photography // Josette Crispin (@jcrispinphoto)

Designing Against The DJ-Show Default For Prospa's Prophecy

The defining creative decision on Prospa's Prophecy was what the team chose not to do. For a duo playing their biggest London headline to date, that restraint is the interesting part of the design.

Instead, the design leaned almost entirely into backlight, side light and silhouette, letting shadow carry as much weight as the fixtures themselves. The two sculptural hands suspended over the stage and the angel figure set behind the rig became the emotional anchors of the room, framed by the lighting rather than buried under it.

"We wanted it dark, moody and sexy. We built show chapters through the whole set for specific moments, so nothing was overused and nothing was pushed past where it needed to sit. The goal was a cohesive visual journey that worked in harmony with the music and complemented Prospa's identity." - Elliot Baines

Chapters, Automation, And A Room That Kept Moving

One of the traps EDM shows often fall into is visual repetition. An hour and a half of the same look, no matter how well designed, starts to flatten the room. Prophecy avoids that by treating the show as a series of distinct acts, each with its own architecture overhead.

A deep automation package let the rig physically reshape itself between chapters, so the space the audience was standing in at the start of the set was not the space they were standing in by the end. Low, oppressive moments gave way to tall, open ones. Kinetic tube and batten looks handed off to hard beam work, then back to pure atmosphere and silhouette.

Beams, washes and overhead color were shaped around those transitions rather than the other way around, keeping the rig busy enough to feel alive without ever pulling focus from the two figures in the booth.

A Video Canvas Built For A Duo

Content design by OMBRA World sat at the centre of the room on two large portrait-oriented screens, one for each member of the duo. The framing pulled Prospa out of the booth and onto a shared video canvas, giving a traditionally static performance posture a front-of-room presence that scaled to Magazine's capacity. Feeding that canvas was a six-operator camera team running a mix of mirrorless, cine and PTZ bodies through a live switch, with gimbal and slider coverage working alongside locked-off positions. The live feed was cut into OMBRA's designed content in real time, so the screens were never just playback. They were reacting to the room.

The result was a show that kept the audience connected to the artists even through the darkest, most atmospheric passages of the set, where the DJs themselves were barely lit at all.

The Takeaway

Prophecy at Magazine London landed less like a club show with production bolted on and more like a complete piece of work. A dark, ethereal room built around Prospa's sound, chaptered carefully from start to finish, and engineered so that lighting, video, lasers and automation all spoke the same language alongside each other, instead of overtop. If you want to get into the specifics behind how it all came together, scroll on. The full gear and crew breakdowns are below.

Crew List

Creative Direction // @Spiralstagelighting (SPIRAL) Production Design // @Spiralstagelighting (SPIRAL) Production Manager // Reuben Gilmore (NTRP) Lighting Director // Joseph Thomas VJ // Lewis Benfield Content Director // Lorenzo Depa (OMBRA World) Executive Producer // Giulia De Paoli Creative Producer // Giovanni Greco Project Manager // Valentina Confortini Art Director // Emanuele Kabu Content Designers // Alessandro Doria, Gianluca Barbiero, Renato Buono, Andrea Manusé Camera Ops // Fraser Hawkshaw, Cayden Akerman, Daniel Ford, Jaden Tigermoss, Patrick Gavaghan, Roberts Kalvans Set // Studio FortyThree Lighting Vendor // Coloursound Experiment Video Vendor // Coloursound Experiment Winch Vendor // Liteup

Laser Vendor // ER

Backline Audio // Patchwork

Photography // Josette Crispin (@jcrispinphoto)

Gear List

2 x GrandMA3 Light (Mode 3) 1 x MA3 PU M 17 x Ayrton Rivale Profile 6 x Robe T1 5 x GLP Impression X4 Bar 20 12 x Chauvet Colorstrike M 36 x Robe Divines 45 x Astera Titan Tubes 45 x DMX Winches 4 x Lasers 6 x Tour Hazer 2 with Fans

2 x GrandMA3 Light (Mode 3) 1 x MA3 PU M

6 x Sony FX3 1 x Blackmagic 4K G2 (TBC) 1 x Blackmagic PYXIS 6K 1 x PTZ Camera 1 x Sony 16-35mm G Master 1 x Sony 24-70mm G Master 1 x Sony 70-200mm G Master 2 x Sony 100-400mm f/2.8 G Master 1 x Lens TBC 1 x E-Image Tripod 1 x Tripod (Roberts) 1 x DJI RS4 Pro Gimbal 1 x Gimbal (Cayden) 1 x Rhino Motorised Slider 1 x E-Image C-Stand 3 x Manfrotto Super Clamp with Stud 3 x Tilta Half Cage 3 x SmallRig Cold Shoe to ¼" Thread 3 x Accsoon CineView Master TX/RX 6 x Canford 12G SDI Cable 50m 4 x Canford 12G SDI Cable 20m 6 x Alvin's Cables HDMI Coiled 3 x HDMI to HDMI 1 x Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio 4K8 1 x Samsung ViewFinity S8 Monitor 3 x Blackmagic Design Mini Converter HDMI to SDI 12G 6 x Neewer NP-F970 Batteries 5 x Hollyland Solidcom C1 Pro 1 x Large On-Camera LED Panel 1 x Small On-Camera LED Panel