One of my biggest joys of watching a live performance is when I see a lighting show where the designer has put a lot of thought into different aspects, when that lighting person is professional enough to know when to use the latest technological gadgets and when not to, when sometimes “less is more” and old school prevails. That was the case last month when I went to help gaff a large show in Madison, Wis. Every year the UW band puts on a concert that can only be described as one of the biggest pep rallies in the world. This huge band is led by a 72 year-old conductor named Mike Leckrone, who has more energy than any young rocker and works the crowd into frenzy with his stunts. The show opens with some video footage of this guy on the I-mag screens, then the action shifts as spotlights pick him up flying in on a reclining chaise lounge over the crowd (thanks to a Foy flying rig), finally settling down in his pulpit.
Ken Ferencek did the lighting design while sidekick Steve Wojda programmed the lighting and media servers. Rod MacDonald served as production manager. Ken lights a variety of events ranging from ballet to opera to auto shows. He tooled his trade while working in the big leagues of New York City with the likes of Imero Fiorentino Associates, a consortium of lighting designers who were second to none in our industry. This show was broadcast by PBS, so besides just dazzling the eyes of the live audience, Ken had to think about the live shot through the camera’s eye.
Monstrosities in Light
One of the first things you notice as the show starts is a gigantic rear projection screen that serves as a backdrop to the band. To put this cyc into prospective, it is wider than a band that has over 120 trumpet players alone. Evenly lighting a cyclorama of this size from behind is not an easy task. But Ken had a plan; he lit and projected images on it the old fashioned way, with 5k Fresnels, color changers and Lekos by the dozens, all hand focused, sharpened and colored.
As I was working, the crew started moaning about the inevitable second day of load-in when they had to deal with what they referred to as “the abortion truss,” so named because it had to be built 40 rows up in the bleachers. It is tightly packed with instruments such as Lekos with double gobo rotators, 5ks with Wybron color scrollers and a few other choice instruments. I hate whining techs, so I immediately took it on myself to deal with this beast of a structure.
Moving Lights? You Don’t Get It
Everyone kept saying that this truss was stupid, that Ken could get the same effects with a handful of moving lights. But these folks just didn’t get it. It could never look as good as what Ken envisioned by using automated technology. First of all, you have to think about evenly washing a huge cyc. No matter what fixture you use, you will inevitably get some hot spots as you try to bathe it in color. You might think, “Hey, if I just use a bunch of VL3ks and zoom them out, I can cover this beast.” And maybe they could cover it as well as with a Fresnel.
But the problem lies in the color wash. You see, moving lights like that mix color with three different colored flags that move into the path of a beam of white light. The further they move in front of this beam, the more saturated the color becomes. But the color is never complete even using this method. Only by using glass dichroic color filters in a slotted wheel can it produce even color across the entire beam. But if a fixture only has five color slots, then a designer will get bored quickly in a three hour show.
Ken explains that only the Fresnels will give him the “true colors,” like reds and ambers that he seeks. Each year he offers up the same challenge. If you put a 5k with saturated colors on a scroller next to any moving light of your choice, he will fly to your town for a side-by-side comparison. He knows what he’s doing, and old school is going to win out every time.
Bag of Tricks
Then there is the matter of gobos — lots of gobos. Ken has been collecting gobo patterns from all his shows for over three decades. He doesn’t need to spend thousands of dollars having to laser cut hundreds of gobos every year to put new images on the screen. He simply takes his folders of gobos and lays them out on a table and decides which ones would go with the theme of each song. And if he decides during programming that one of them is wrong for the application, he hasn’t wasted any money; he simply pulls another one out of his bag.
But he’s not afraid of technology. Hundreds of moving lights are used to bathe the Varsity Band and bally the crowd into a frenzy when necessary. He also doesn’t rely on just using the conventional fixtures on the cyc for eye candy. This year Ken and Steve designed a shoji-type system where video screens (Martin LC panels) were moved up and down in front of the RP screen in multiple configurations using a series of “Speedwires.” A Speedwire is an Upstaging Lighting device with drums of wire that can raise and lower objects 100 feet in less than a minute using DMX512. So just when he needed a drab of excitement, Steve would blast images across the parked video panels or as they were moving in front of the colorful cyc.
The Camera’s Eye
The band is by no means stationary. At times during the show a couple hundred horn players would jump over the railing and race into the crowd. This is all on camera, so Ken had to light vast areas of the arena evenly without blinding the audience or leaving players in the dark. At one time, all the players lined two opposite aisles of the arena and started wailing some anthem. The whole arena went dark with exception of these two aisles. What amazed me was how evenly lit the aisles were on camera. There was no way that Ken could have lit them with moving arc lights. When I looked up he had dozens of PARs, perfectly lensed to wash only the intended party, and there was no light spilling into the audience.
Last year, I tried to evenly light a 100-piece choir for a TV show and no matter how hard I tried, there were hot spots and dark spots intermixed in the sections of people. The camera director couldn’t have been pleased. No matter how long I tinkered with refocusing lights, all I could think of was how I should have used old school conventional fixtures and barn doors to kill the spill. Ken proved that to me by doing it on this night.
