I get a break from designing this week. Instead I have been hired by LD Alex Reardon to help out on the programming of the American Idol Tour.
Alex has designed a large rig with a variety of cool fixtures. The punch of the system comes from about 50 Robe 1200 spots.Besides that he has Coemar Infinity wash fixtures, pods full of ar 64 ACL's, and Atomic strobes. The typical oval shaped video wall has a custom surround with another 20 or so custom Mac300 LED fixtures.
There are 3 straight trusses and 4 x 10' circle trusses. The circles and acl pods hang from a mother grid of truss. Inside this grid Alex has a bunch of Kinesys motors that move these trusses in variable times. The Kinesys v2 system also controls 4 x 36" mirror balls that come down thru the middle of each circle.
Chris Stinebrink will be operating the show for the run of the tour. Chris chose a Martin Maxxyz console. It took me about 2 hours to train Chris on the console. But because of the long hours of programming, I was brought in as a fresh set of hands. Stinebrink does the bulk of the programming. They are keeping me around to to the cool whoop di dos. That means when Alex wants to see the lights doing something that normally takes a 30 step chase, I figure out how to write it quickly using fanned delay times and some effects engine stuff. Kind of my forte, so to speak.
Over the course of 4 long nights we write the cues for the 36 cover songs. These are extremely painful for me to listen to, but a lot of fun to write. The cool thing is that Alex is one of the few designers who knows exactly what he wants to see in every look. He is certainly not the typical LD who depends on his programmer to come up with looks. Instead, he depends on his programmer to keep up with him.
Alex is a great programmer in his own right. But with shows this large it's necessary to concentrate on his visions of each song and not burn himself out with the actual concentration it takes to program. I've known Alex for years, but have never actually worked with him til now. What a great guy to work for. I had a lot of fun in 96 hours.
This is the 4th tour I have programmed this year at Upstaging Lighting's rehearsal space. There is no better place in the world for this. We program the consoles in a sound proof control room while the actual rig is on the other side of a giant window.
The room comes equipped with ESP systems that run on giant plasma screens. So if the crew needs to bring a truss in to work on it, we simply look over at one of the plasmas to see what the lights would be doing if they were at trim. Upstaging has simply taken programming to the next level. I don't have to work all night in an arena anymore. The chef at their facility supplies us with beautiful meals and puts the leftovers in the fridge for our late night enjoyment. The visualization suite has been stocked with bottles of wine that Alex has spec'd with his lights, all kept at perfect temperatures in the wine fridges.
Have we gotten spoiled? You betcha.
