"Number one, and something that isn’t often talked about in these types of articles,” says creative director Ray Woodbury, “is that No Doubt is an awesome band.”
Woodbury is describing the creative process for their latest tour and how the subject helps define the project. “They deliver on every level,” he continues, “great songs, great chemistry, great performance ability, great care in how they treat their fans to their show.
They have incredible communication amongst themselves both musically and personally, and that makes for anything that we do a simple complement to the energy they create. So in knowing that about the band, we were able to take some chances with the gear and ideas.”
Woodbury says that the band is very involved in the creative and design process. Meetings were held at singer Gwen Stefani’s house, where concepts were discussed and the expectations were defined.
“My first inclination with design,” Woodbury says, “is to create an environment that makes the artist totally comfortable. I think the set achieved that. After that it all falls into place with all of the conversing, conceptualizing and communication amongst everyone in the buildup of producing the show.”Woodbury is a personal friend of the band members, and that provided insight about the design of the tour. “Whenever we got together we always talked about doing something really great that would eventually meet up with where they were all at in life,” he adds. The first concept for the tour revolved around a black and white photograph in which they were all dressed in white and which they all thought was a good representation of the band. But that idea was scrapped early in the process.
“It wasn’t grabbing any traction, and it was a drag for me to design and try to make something cool out of,” explains Woodbury. So he asked the band if he could try something different. “Gwen then mentioned the Encounter restaurant and bar at LAX as a representation of the style we should be chasing — retro, but fashionably cool, not overdone, and relative to something everyone in the group is about. As it turns out, that architecture is exactly them, as it was born in the areas where they grew up. No one really knew that before the idea was considered.”
Since Woodbury relies on an artist to render his designs (“The best I can do is stick figures!” he says), he explains to Ted Baumgart what he was looking for, and after drawing many revisions, Baumgart rendered the final drawing that was used to convey the concept that was refined, engineered, and built. All Access Staging & Productions was charged with building the set. “I worked with both Erik Eastland and James Casalino,” Woodbury says. “Erik mainly did everything to do with meeting my expectations of the compound curves, supports and overall look of the design. The engineering came to the point of doing it simple or doing it right, which wasn’t so simple and not so inexpensive. But we all decided to do it right, and everyone was thrilled about the results. All Access really came through in every way.”
Lighting Designer Butch Allen was brought in to light the set. “He is awesome, and I highly respect his opinions on everything,” Woodbury says. “He’s one of those walking encyclopedia types, and I love that.”
Woodbury contacted Allen months in advance, but Allen didn’t react right away. “He waited and waited and made me real nervous,” Woodbury claims. “But he waited for great reasons. He wanted to see the foundations of the set so he could really analyze what to do. Then he came up with brilliant ideas and followed through really quickly.”
Allen designed the lighting thinking “digitally,” and among his ideas was to bring in Martin Stagebar LED fixtures for low-res video display. “I think there are 1,000,000 of them up there,” Woodbury says. The show is very video-oriented and to that end, the video was extended from the backdrop to the floor. “The rake upstage made total sense,” Woodbury explains, “as a fractured extension of the already existing video screen. Most of everything up in those Stagebars was content from the video that was running at the same time on the main screen. We just messed with it and it became a cohesive element to the overall show.” Woodbury complimented Allen for his “huge ideas that really brought the thing together.
“My only request lighting-wise,” Woodbury adds, “was about three days before we loaded the show in, I freaked that I had nothing with beamage or extremely directional punch. So he added the downstage truss and the monster Showbeams from High End, which were incredible on this show.”
Allen also brought in Sean Cagney to design the video system affectionately known as “Hippo world” because of the use of Hippotizer media servers. Cagney “was awesome,” Woodbury says. “Between Butch, Sean and Jesse Blevins, the operator and programmer on the tour, I had an incredible team that was fully into making this a great show. Butch also gave me great insight into the Hippos that we used — and the integration between the lighting and video worlds. He was right on the money.”
Sophie Muller was hired to design the video content and she brought in her own team as well. Muller has a history with the band, and with Gwen Stefani, and she has produced “the lion’s share” of their videos.
“I’ve worked with No Doubt since 1996,” Muller says, “so everything is very shorthand as far as the actual band goes. We had a couple of meetings about the overall video concept — 1960s, futuristic, monochromatic — and the fact that there would be a large screen behind the stage structure. I suppose I liked the idea of using the screen to do something totally different for each song, to change the atmosphere and drama and even the appearance of the stage. How could we use this rectangle to create these changes? I treated it like a series of music videos, some including the band, with some graphics and film work commissioned.”
As part of the content development, Muller brought the band into the studio for a day and a half of shooting for the song “It’s My Life.” “The band members are all really great characters,” she says, “so I knew I could rely on them to deliver fantastic performances. That in itself would be a huge element of the imagery. It was by far the most ambitious screen work I have done — with the band, Gwen, or anyone else for that matter.”
The footage was shot on Red digital cinema cameras and post-production was done at Sunset Edit. The majority of the editing was done with Adobe After Effects. “It amazed me the wide variety of looks we were able to get,” Muller says. “What I liked most was the simplicity of the images that worked the best, and as we progressed, a lot of the looks in Avid and Final Cut too.”
“The band really trusts her on every level and for good reason; she is very tasteful and talented,” Woodbury says. “We have all worked together for years now and so everyone is very comfortable with each other. The communication is great. She understands the band with video like I understand the band with production. She really takes the elements that I design into the show that the band likes, like the screens, sizes, shapes, bi-parts, movements, positioning on the floor or above, etc., and then designs the video elements to that hardware design. She’s awesome, and she also gets involved with the programming of the show overall. So she really does more than deliver content; she becomes a counterpart with me in the development of the show overall.”
Jesse Blevins was the lighting director on the tour, this being his fifth straight tour working with or for Butch Allen. “Every one of them has been a blast,” he says. In speaking of this particular tour, Blevins had kind words for the crew. “They are top notch. Everyone knew their gig, worked together, and got along.” Of lighting crew chief Wayne Boehning and video lighting crew chief Kenny Ackerman, Blevins says simply, “They’re pros. There were never any corners cut and everything always worked. I feel safe saying that now that the tour is over…it’s too late to jinx it. The tour staff is almost like a family. They have worked together for the last several No Doubt tour cycles so from rehearsal day one everyone knew what they had to do to make the show happen. The first time off the trucks from rehearsals you would have thought we were eight weeks into the tour. It was a real pleasure to be a part of this production.”
“Everyone was so into this project,” Muller adds. “It’s great to be around inspired people. I think we all knew it was going to be special. No one can ever say that Ray Woodberry is not enthusiastic. And as he says we have all worked together for years so there is a certain familiarity that makes it all easier. I loved the lighting team, Butch and Jessie and our late night sessions.”
Woodbury had his own accolades for the team. “I loved the crew that was out there. Many are friends for years and I trust them all with doing a great job once the tour runs. (Production manager) Jimmy Pettinato, with whom I do many tours, is honest with me about things and always has great solutions to refining ideas. I appreciate my vendors for caring about the production and always going above and beyond to provide everything I ask for. Erik Eastland and All Access in particular really came through, but everyone did an awesome job. High End Systems deserves some great recognition on this particular tour, as they were very helpful with providing us with some much needed lighting at the end of the day.
“No Doubt cares about their quality at every level and is always pushing the envelope. That’s a great environment to work within. They trust me and for that and I am very appreciative. I’m a lucky guy because I love my work!”
CREW
Creative Director: Ray Woodbury
Lighting Company: Epic Production Technologies
Lighting Designer: Butch Allen
Lighting Director: Jesse Blevins
Lighting Crew Chief: Wayne Boehnin
Lighting Crew: Trevit Cromwell, Terry Smith
Lighting Video Crew Chief: Ken Ackerman
LED Tech: Rod Silhanke
Video Company: Chaos Visual Productions
Video Directors: Sophie Muller, Michael Tinsley
Video Programmer: Sean Cagney
Video Engineer: Nelson Funk
Lighting Video Crew Chief: Ken Ackerman
Projectors / Hippotizer Tech: Brandon Oosterhof
Production Manager: Jimmy Pettinato
Stage Manager: Steve Roman
Staging Company: All Access Staging & Production
Tour Manager: Ken Denson
GEAR
Lighting Console: MA Lighting grandMA II
6 Barco/High End Systems DL.3 digital luminaires
7 Vari-Lite VL3000 profile spots
20 Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures
21 Elation Impression LED automated fixtures
19 4-Lite strips
7 Robe Redblinder LED fixtures
16 Philips/Color Kinetics Color Blast LED fixtures
140 Martin Stagebar LED fixtures
17 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
4 Reel EFX DF-50 haze machines
6 JEM ZR33 fog machines
29 1-ton chain hoists
20 8’ sections GT truss
