BlackTrax brings real-time tracking and creative lighting control together, helping production teams keep every cue, beam, and effect aligned with the action. From automated followspots to projection, media, and interactive environments, it helps technology disappear into performance. It means you and your team can:
- Track performers, props, and moving objects in real time
- Use BlackTrax beacons to connect movement with control
- Support precise, repeatable lighting for complex productions
- Help unify lighting, projection, media, and immersive effects
BlackTrax gives Lighting Designers the freedom to think bigger, move faster, and create moments that feel effortlessly alive.
By connecting precise performer and object tracking with lighting control, BlackTrax helps designers ensure that every beam, cue, and effect lands exactly where it should. It can support automated followspots, dynamic lighting looks, projection mapping, media effects, and interactive environments that respond to movement in real time.
Instead of asking creatives to work within the limits of manual tracking, BlackTrax allows lighting to follow the performance with accuracy, consistency, and intention. For productions where every second matters, BlackTrax lighting control helps transform technical precision into visual magic.
What Is BlackTrax? Real-Time Tracking Built for Creative Control
BlackTrax is a real-time tracking solution designed for live production, broadcast, themed entertainment, places of worship, immersive experiences, and complex event environments. The BlackTrax system tracks positions of people, props, scenic pieces, vehicles, and other moving objects, then sends that positional data to connected production systems.
In lighting workflows, that data becomes a powerful creative tool. A performer wearing a BlackTrax beacon can move freely across the stage while automated fixtures stay locked to their position. Designers can use BlackTrax tracking to trigger precise follow-spot movement, maintain consistent coverage, or build lighting effects that react to choreography, staging, and blocking in real time.
The result is precise automated control, all in the service of creativity.
BlackTrax allows production teams to preserve the nuance of a designed lighting look while removing variables like missed followspot pickups, inconsistent timing, limited operator sightlines, or staging that makes traditional tracking difficult. Whether the goal is to highlight a single speaker, follow a fast-moving performer, or synchronize lighting with projection and media, BlackTrax helps the technology disappear into the performance.
This makes BlackTrax especially valuable for productions with ambitious creative demands. It gives designers the confidence to build bigger visual moments, knowing the lighting can move with the story.
How BlackTrax Lighting Control Works
The power of BlackTrax starts with knowing exactly where a performer or object is in the space. First, place a BlackTrax beacon on the person or item being tracked, allowing the system to capture precise movement data in real time. Then, the sensor shares data with connected production systems, including lighting consoles and automated fixtures.
For Lighting Designers, this opens up a more responsive way to build a show. Instead of manually chasing a performer across the stage, fixtures can automatically follow their position. A dancer can move through a complex choreographed sequence, a presenter can walk naturally across a keynote stage. Or a character can appear in an unexpected location, with lighting that stays connected to the action.
This is where BlackTrax lighting becomes more than automation. Designers can still shape the creative intent of the look — color, intensity, beam size, timing, texture, and mood — while BlackTrax manages the positional accuracy needed to keep the effect aligned.
The real-time tracking system can help support automated follow spots, dynamic offsets, and repeatable cueing that follows the performer rather than relying on fixed stage marks. The result is lighting that feels fluid, intentional, and alive. It gives production teams the confidence to design movement-heavy moments without sacrificing precision or consistency.
BlackTrax for Automated Follow Spots
In many productions, traditional followspots can be limited by operator sightlines, venue architecture, fixture placement, long throw distances, or the speed of the performance itself. Even highly skilled operators can face challenges when performers move quickly, cross paths, or interact with scenic elements.
BlackTrax tracking helps solve that problem by allowing fixtures to respond to real-time positional data. When a performer wearing a BlackTrax beacon moves across the stage, the system keeps the light aligned with them automatically. This allows designers to transform existing fixtures in the rig into precise tracking tools, creating follow-spot looks without always relying on dedicated manual spot positions.
That flexibility can make a major difference in venues with limited rigging or where creative direction calls for a more cinematic approach. A performer can be isolated in a tight beam, followed through choreography, or picked up at the exact moment they enter a scene. Multiple performers can be tracked across layered staging, helping the lighting support the emotional rhythm of the production.
For the audience, the technology disappears. They simply see the right person illuminated at the right time, every time.
BlackTrax Performance Benefits for Live Productions
A strong BlackTrax performance is not just about accuracy. It is about repeatability, flexibility, and giving creative teams more control over the final experience. In live production, every cue has to work in the moment. There are no second takes, and even a small delay can affect the energy of a scene, song, or reveal.
BlackTrax helps reduce such uncertainty. Because the system is tracking movement in real time, lighting can respond to what is actually happening on stage rather than depending only on fixed positions or manual pickups. That makes it especially useful for productions with fast choreography, touring schedules, complex blocking, or moments where performers need the freedom to move naturally.
For touring shows, this consistency can be especially valuable. Each venue brings new dimensions, sightlines, and technical conditions, but the creative goal remains the same: deliver the same sense of magic to every audience. BlackTrax can help maintain that standard by giving crews a tracking workflow that supports precision from one performance to the next.
It also gives designers room to experiment. When lighting can reliably follow the action, creative teams can build more ambitious transitions, immersive looks, and interactive moments. BlackTrax becomes a practical tool for unlocking bigger ideas while keeping the show controlled, polished, and repeatable.
The BlackTrax Beacon
This element lies at the center of the system. Small enough to be integrated into costumes, props, scenic pieces, or other production elements, the BlackTrax beacon ensures the system knows where a person or object is in the performance space.
That flexibility makes BlackTrax useful across such a wide range of productions. A beacon can help track a lead performer through choreography, follow a speaker across a stage, or keep lighting connected to a moving prop or scenic element. For audiences, the effect feels seamless. For production teams, it creates a reliable link between movement and control.
Because the tracking data can be shared with lighting and other systems, the beacon becomes more than a technical accessory. It becomes part of the creative language of the show.
Beyond Lighting: Projection, Media, and Interactive Experiences
While BlackTrax lighting is a powerful use case, the same real-time data can also support projection mapping, media servers, cameras, audio, XR environments, and interactive experiences. That means a performer’s movement can influence more than where a light points. It can help trigger visuals, align projection to moving surfaces, or create immersive effects that respond instantly to action on stage.
BlackTrax will seem especially exciting for designers. Lighting can work in sync with video, sound, and scenic technology, helping every layer of the production feel connected. Instead of treating each system separately, BlackTrax tracking allows them to respond to the same live movement data.
The result is a more unified experience, where technology supports the story from every angle.
Understanding BlackTrax Cost
When teams ask about BlackTrax cost, the answer depends on the production. Venue size, tracking area, number of performers or objects, sensors, beacons, fixture integration, and overall creative goals can all influence the system design.
But cost should be considered alongside value.
BlackTrax can help reduce missed cues, improve consistency, simplify complex tracking moments, and open creative possibilities that may be difficult to achieve with manual control alone. For touring productions, large-scale events, theatrical shows, worship environment, or immersive installation, such reliability can make a meaningful difference.
The best way to understand the right configuration is to speak with the BlackTrax team about the specific needs of a project.
Uniting Precision and Vision
The most powerful technology is often tech that the audience never notices. They see the performer perfectly lit. They feel the reveal arrive at exactly the right moment. They experience projection, lighting, and movement as one seamless piece of storytelling.
That’s the promise of BlackTrax.
By combining real-time tracking with creative control, BlackTrax helps production teams bring ambitious ideas to life with accuracy, repeatability, and confidence. It allows designers to create lighting that moves with the performance, responds to the moment, and supports the story without getting in the way.
For productions built on precision, emotion, and visual impact, BlackTrax helps every moment hit its mark.
Request a quote to bring your stage to life.