I work a lot of corporate shows each year. Many are events where a company brings its national sales staff to a nice resort for four days of motivational speaking and sales pitches. These events usually include a dinner followed by a big-name musical act. These acts are usually bands that were big 20 years ago and had a slew of hits that they gladly replay for a phenomenal fee at your corporate dinner party. Many of these bands make more money now than they did in their heyday selling out arenas. They still have pride in what they do, even while intoxicated 40-year-old women try to dance on stage with them (a normal occurrence at these galas). All these bands also have good lighting designers to ensure that their show will look good regardless of what gear is available for each gig. And they keep a lot of my friends working.
I’ve known Greg Maltby forever, or so it seems. Greg is an Emmy Award-winning LD who designs several musical tours and TV events each year. But for 25 years, he has been working for a living lighting Huey Lewis and the News. Huey works a few days each month playing corporate events. The old folks love him, and his string of ‘80s hits makes him perfect for this type of gig. Sometimes I cover for Greg when he has a scheduling conflict, but I can’t match his talent. After all these years, he knows every drum hit or horn blast and nails them with lighting cues.
Being an LD for these kinds of acts is tough. First of all, you have to be able to handle the pressure of having to program different fixtures on different consoles almost every gig. But if you do your homework and are willing to fight for what you want, you can be quite successful at this type of gig. Demanding the right tools, especially the console, is a big part of the gig.
Basically, an LD will have a specific light plot that he tries to use for all of these gigs. For Greg, it consists of about 180 kW of conventional PARs and lekos. He carries around an old Celco console just to run these shows when he can talk the client into duplicating his rig. When Greg can’t get his PARs, he will ask for an Avolites Pearl console to quickly program the moving lights with a series of cues he punts with. He likes this little console, and it is readily available in most places he goes.
If he can’t get that, he’s stuck spending the day with the lighting company rep in charge of programming the consoles. This can be trying because everyone has their own style of running a show. Greg likes to use lots of faders to run his show. He wants all the cue info (dimmers, color, beams) on the same fader. But nothing ever moves during the show. Huey hates moving lights and Maltby accepts that. If the band did not hire Greg, there would be a different LD every night doing something the boss does not want. Therefore, he has job security. People who take on these permanent jobs must have a formula that works for them and their client. This formula becomes a unique punt page that they can set up on almost any console, and it will allow them to grab specific lights at specific times for maximum dramatic effects. Greg sets up things differently than I do, but his system works for him and that’s what matters. Last week, I was hired as a liaison between the lighting company at a trade show and Greg. It was a smart move, since Greg trusts me to program the Hogs that were available to him, and the event didn’t have enough power or generators available for 180 kilowatts of PARs. He has never been a fan of the Hog and wing, so here I am.
Greg needs 10 faders designated for key lights on his band members. He then needs one fader just to store the pan and tilt info for the lights since they will rarely move during his show. In the other 20 faders, he will assign color combos and intensity values. Each time he brings a fader up, it will snap the lights to a new color. The intensity values for each light will be proportionate to the color. In other words, blues, reds and lavender will always run at full, but lighter colors will have to be turned down so you don’t blind or melt the band. This is a big consideration, since most of these types of gigs take place in resort ballrooms, the kind where a 15-foot truss trim makes for a good day.
Greg will make five separate pages of these punt faders, but he has a system that is quite clever. Each page is designed to have the same color front light. There is a page each for blue, light lavender, amber, pink and CTO. On each fader of a page, the front light will be close to the same, but the back and side lighting will change in zero time. This is good for video, because the band will always be lit the same from the front, while the back light changes to accent all the timing changes and things like drum hits or sax solos. It also proves that you don’t necessarily have to sweep all the lights to a guitar player to accent a solo; you can simply turn down the color and intensity of all the fixtures not focused on the guitarist.
Using all your faders is important for these types of gigs. There are usually a few key spots in a performance for some dramatic light cues that will wow an audience. Greg needs about five special cues for certain places in the set. For instance, there are a couple of a cappella songs that Huey does. At this point, Greg needs a simple look that just highlights five guys singing downstage center. So he may move some fixtures (in black) to a new position for these numbers and store the look on one fader. He also needs a spot to put in a random color chase for the intro to a song and one audience sweep at the end.
Additionally, you must always have what I call a “stop cue.” These will be used in special places. A longtime LD for an act always knows when they’re coming, but a locally hired LD will probably miss the cue. These can be anything from turning everything off but one bank of lights, to hitting the mirror ball on cue. In the case of Huey Lewis, Greg wants to turn all the lights to deep blue except for the Martin MACs on the white cyc upstage. Those he wants to bump white and move to the first gobo on any wheel. What gobo it actually is, is not important; it’s the effect he’s after.
He uses this cue two or three times each night. Everything on stage stops for a split second (no music/band stands still), then resumes a moment later. Except during that second, everything changes dramatically and the audience gets a visual treat. It’s so fast that the crowd never knows what actually happened, but they know it was cool. Greg labels this cue “Ahhhh,” because that’s what the audience says in unison whenever he hits it. Especially the 40-year-old intoxicated women.
Nook Schoenfeld is a freelance lighting designer. He can be reached at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.
