I’ve recently worked on a couple of gigs that truly required more than one lighting designer. Each gig had multiple lighting systems supplied by different vendors. In the past I’ve done gigs like these where I was the only console programmer/operator. While there was a staggering amount of overtime, the end product delivered to the client was not as good as it could have been. That’s because I wore too many hats and burned myself out. Nowadays I’m thankful to share LD duties on many large gigs.
Last month, Phillip Morris was hosting a large convention in Chicago. They had business meetings, seminars and all the usual gak that goes with these sorts of corporate gatherings. My friend Steve Irwin has been lighting their events for quite some time and again he was at the helm of his Jands Vista console for this event. Steve lit a giant room with countless moving lights and DL.2 projectors while corporate CEOs and motivational speakers paraded across his stage. This was his normal gig and he was pretty much chained to his console.
While this was being presented in one ballroom for several days, there was a big event ending party being set up in another. The folks from Marlboro cigarettes had hired some party planners to set up an extravagant Western-themed party. There were saddles set up as bar stools, a corral was built around a dance floor, etc. Frost Lighting out of Illinois had supplied a pretty large lighting package to light all of this décor. I did not catch the name of the fellow lighting this room, but he certainly did an amazing job illuminating the décor. Besides lighting the obvious set he would be responsible for dazzling the dance floor with mood lighting (from disco to two-step) during the party.
I was there merely as the programmer for the third LD on this event. My friend Eddie “Bones” Connell was here lighting the main event of the party, which was a Toby Keith concert. Bones had called and asked me to design a light rig on which we could both punt 90 minutes. We’d done this in the past and it has always been a pleasure to gig with Bones. I knew the room, and more importantly, the rigging points. Because of the rigging options, I was limited to an upstage video wall truss and three straight trusses for lighting — a little boring of a configuration, but hey, this was a party. Upstaging Lighting provided the system. The only requirement they gave me was that it all fit in one semi truck.
I split the lights between two consoles. Bones would control the moving wash lights and all the conventional fixtures like moles and ACL PARs. He would also call the spot light cues, something he has been doing for this artist for years. I controlled all the hard edge lights and strobes, which would provide all the hoopla for the event. “Hoopla” is a term used by LDs for eye-catching light moves that dazzle the audience — things like ballyhoos, audience sweeps, strobe flashes and the like. I programmed both of the lighting consoles in one day. Bones gave me a list of the colors he would like to see for each song, but other than that we punted the entire show.
In the end, this corporate event went off without a hitch, simply because one LD dealt with the corporate business side, one dealt with the party lighting and Bones and I dealt with the rock star. We each kept busy for days and rarely saw each other outside of the lunchroom.
Last month I shot a live DVD for another pop star. We shot it in the U.K. and used four LDs with Neg Earth supplying all the gear. Alex Skowron designed the stage rig for the pop star and would run the Martin Maxxyz console. He was the main LD for the event. The producer went down to see Alex’s show a couple weeks before we were to shoot. Often enough, a good looking show may look fabulous live, but on camera it will need some help. The producer hired a TD who is also a lighting designer in his own right. He made notes of all the lighting and video content for each song and made a list of potential scenes that would not look good on camera.
The producers decided they needed more lighting fixtures in all the camera shots, as well as a load of more video elements. He also designed a sizable audience lighting package to capture the audience’s enthusiasm and for the cameras to capture light cues on reverse shots. They then sat down with Alex to go over a game plan.
Alex knew he needed more programming time to tighten up his looks, something he never had when the tour started two weeks prior. He also needed someone to call spots for all the dancers, roaming singers and musicians in the band. Extra key lights would not work here because everyone was moving during 90 percent of the concert. So I flew over and reworked the lighting cues for two straight 20-hour days with Alex. We pretty much nailed it. But we still needed another LD. Why? Because LDs seem to control the video content for concerts more and more each day, and we all felt we wanted the video to be controlled by someone along side of us at the front of house mix position.
The producers mounted Element Labs Stealth video walls that lined the sides of the trusses like velour curtains would on a proscenium stage. Stealth panels are lower resolution, light weight, see thru LED panels. They hired Ollie Metcalfe to run these. Ollie is a brilliant LD and video content creator in his own right. We gave him a list of the color scheme we were using for each song and he then built all the custom content and controlled it from a Catalyst 4 media server and a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 3 console. He also controlled the content on the upstage 30-foot-by-20-foot wall.
Last of all the TD had designed a giant audience lighting package. It consisted of hundreds of ACL PARs and another 80 moving wash lights. The truss configuration looked like a giant umbrella and it was important to the director. On a 24-camera shoot, he would have plenty of cameras shooting reverse angle shots. So we would utilize the wash lights to bathe the audience in a color similar to the look on stage, and then bump all the ACL PARs on beat for streaks of white light and background camera fill. I was going to run these as well, but we came up with a better plan — use Ollie for something else.
Since all he was doing was pressing play to run video content for each song, he volunteered to control all the house lights. I was overjoyed because this allowed me to call the spot cues and concentrate on the camera monitors without having to look down at a console the whole show. So we threw all the extra lights on Ollie’s ‘Hog and we all ran with it.
In the end it took four lighting designers to do this gig properly. When I look back at all the shows I have done where I ran the stage lighting, audience package and video, I realize how much easier and better this show came off. Handing off one of your hats to an equally talented comrade can make you look twice as good in the end.
