U2 has never been afraid to explore new avenues in production technology. Their 1997-98 PopMart tour broke new technological ground by using an LED video display screen rather than video projectors. Their Vertigo tour in 2005-06 introduced the concept of spherical LED pixels in a beaded curtain look. But the 360° Tour is over the top, with the once-secret but now-familiar 165-foot-high Claw structure. The changing colors washing the skin of the Claw are complemented by the transformable LED video screen that stretches and morphs above the performers on stage.
The Lighting Rig
The willingness to take a chance with new technology extends to lighting designer Willie Williams' choice of lighting fixtures. By lighting director Ethan Weber's account, "Willie went out on a limb and chose the new light after a shootout at Wembley Stadium last winter" – 196 PRG Bad Boys, which provide the main lighting in the show.
"I think we were all a bit nervous about it before showing up in Barcelona (for the first show), but the minute we turned them on, we knew he had made the right decision," Weber says. "I think they are only light bright enough to do the job. It throws from about 80 feet to 90 feet, all the way up to 400 feet for some of the spot platform fixtures. It has a zoom that allow us to light everything from a small section of stage to a huge section of audience. And they are very reliable."
Other lighting fixtures in the rig include 156 Martin Atomic 3K strobes with color changers and eight Zap Technologies BigLites, which are rigged on the roof of the Claw with a crane. The lighting rig also includes seven Novalight Nova-Flowers, five custom 6K lights – affectionately known as "Ripple Drums" – and PARs outfitted with DWE lamps in the pylons of the unique structure, which also poses some unique challenges – and a few subtle advantages – for the production team.
The Control System
"We run the show from the second story of our little front of house hut," Weber says. "The stage is so big that we're probably closer to the P.A. than on most arena tours, so it's a big help in trying to keep button pushes on time."
The control system includes four lighting consoles, one to run automated and conventional lights, one just for the scenic lighting, and two backups. "Our control is a like an MA Lighting ad," Weber says. "Two grandMA full-size consoles, two grandMA Lites and 10 NSPs. I run all the movers and conventionals on one full-size with a networked full-size as a backup. Alex Murphy calls spots and runs all the scenic LEDs (roof polyps, stage and bridge LEDs) on one Lite and uses another Lite as a back-up. There are six NSPs with two spares for my console and one NSP with one spare for Alex."
Power and Data
The power and data distribution is handled with the help of a PRG Series 400 system. Weber said he was a bit skeptical of integrating power and data in a single distro. "I was never a big fan of adding more electronics into the mix," he says, "but it has worked out very well. It made teching the system much easier."
A City Theatrical SHoW DMX wireless system helps make the networking the system easier by sending wireless to the Bad Boys and Nova Flowers that are scattered around the "upper reaches of the stadium. According to Weber, "that's working out well; it saves running miles of DMX cable every day."
The Design Process
Jeremy Lloyd is the production and technical designer who had the responsibility of taking the ideas of the tour architect Mark Fisher and show designer/director Willie Williams from concept to reality. To do so, he started with a "detailed" 3-D model in AutoCAD and added all the production elements, including lighting, audio, video and rigging "to make sure that everything," Lloyd says, "looks good, fits, and can work as it should.
"A large part of the job involves liaising with the engineers, vendors and touring personnel," Lloyd adds. "It's imperative that I have as much information as possible from them so that everything can be designed to work together aesthetically, logistically and efficiently. The tools of the trade are a high spec laptop running AutoCAD, and most importantly a team of engineers, project managers and engineering designers, without whom my job would be impossible."
The show was pre-programmed and well-teched before the first show. They used a combination ESP Vision and grandMA 3D to pre-visualize and pre-program. Why two different visualizers? Weber says they used "ESP for its fairly accurate rendering and grandMA 3D for its real-time speed."
"Unique" or "Insane?"
One of the highlights of the show (and there are many) is the unique video display. ("Unique" is one way to put it; another way of putting it, as Cliff Kuang wrote in Fast Company magazine, is "insane.") It's based on the Hoberman Sphere, which is a collapsible toy ball that you've probably thrown around at the gift shop in your local mall.
The display expands to a height of about 70 feet and it weighs close to 60 tons. It has 888 individual video displays with approximately 500,000 Barco FLX 24 pixels attached to each node of the folding structure controlled by DX700s with signal routing over eight fiber optic links. It looks and works somewhat like a Chinese finger trap.
"I'm not exactly sure about the genesis of the expanding video screen," Weber said, "but I think that between Mark Fisher, Willie and Jeremy Lloyd, they came up with the idea to contact Chuck Hoberman to see if he could turn his Hoberman Sphere into a video wall."
StuFish (Mark Fisher's company), Richard Hartman, Hoberman Associates, XL Video, and Frederic Opsomer of Innovative Designs NV collaborated on the fabrication of the display. Kinesys built the automation system and wrote the software to fly it while Hans Willems of WI Creations BV designed and built the truss system from which it flies.
13 Video Cameras
The display provides one of the most inviting videoscapes ever devised. Stefaan "Smasher" Desmedt is the video technical director who has the honor of switching the video and he directs 13 cameras. The cameras are fed to a Grass Valley Kayak switcher. A secondary switcher is used just for the monitor engineers that live under the stage so they can see their person on stage.
"I use four aux outputs that go into a d3 system with a four-input card," Desmedt says. "I have three pole cams that go 12 feet up with a joystick and are attached to the stage, and then two other railcams."
The d3 from UnitedVisualArtists maps the video to the display in real time, and it is triggered by MIDI from the video "underworld." The Kinesys system tracks the screen by its XYZ coordinates and feeds that information to the video techs. Stefaan Vanbesien is the show operator for d3.
Desmedt uses a Medialon system for his presets in the switcher, d3, and router. "It's very handy when you can do this with one click," he said. "I know it's a bit risky to run everything through a PC," he added, but it is working well. At the same time, he takes no chances and everything is running in synch with a redundant machine.
The video engineer is Jeroen "My Way" Marain, and he is assisted by shader Jeroen Mahieu during the show. New on this tour was Tom Kreuger, who comes from the cinematography industry. He was involved with keylighting and the positioning of the cameras and the band.
"We pre-vizzed everything with content creator Luke Halls and show director Willie Williams in London," Desmedt says. Of the video display itself, Desmedt says, simply, "it's pretty incredible."
An All-Star Crew
The massive and complex stage and video display comes with a massive labor requirement. There are 15 people on the lighting crew alone, and Weber refers to them as "an all-star crew out of PRG.
"Craig Hancock (systems tech) did a great job setting up the tour and doing most of the advance work," Weber says. "Rod Clay was surrogate crew chief, getting the system out of PRG UK and through the first few shows until Nick Barton could join us.
"Nick was an obvious choice for crew chief," Weber adds, calling him "a commanding presence who crews love working with, and who's not fazed at all by the size and scale of a production like this. Alex Murphy was brought in from the theatre world by Willie to call spots and run the scenic LEDs. He is probably the most pleasant surprise to all of us; he's hard working and always has a great attitude.
"Blaine Dracup is our lead moving light tech, pylon constructor and resident wit," Weber adds. "Russell ‘Bits' Lyons and Chris Davis have the onerous task of getting gear up to the seven spot platforms at the top of every stadium and did so without moaning about it. Gareth Morgan and Mick Stowe get all the cabling up and down the claw's legs, and, with Craig, round out the best dimmer team one could ask for. Andy Beller and Chris Keene are kind of all-arounders, putting up the pylon, fixing BigLites and Nova Flowers, and directing crane drivers to plop down the BigLites on top of the Claw. Jake Sullivan, Stuart Lee, Jessica LaPoint and Alison Triplett spend their days and nights attaching and detaching trusses and lights from the roof, video truss and Claw legs."
Of his boss, Willie Williams, Weber says, "I had never worked with Willie as his director/programmer before. It was a very enjoyable experience."
U2 Design & Production Crew
Show Designer/Director: Willie Williams
Tour Architect: Mark Fisher
Production Director: Jake Berry
Lighting Director: Ethan Weber
Associate Lighting Director: Alexander Murphy
Lighting Crew Chief: Nick Barton
Lighting Systems Tech: Craig Hancock
Production & Technical Design: Jeremy Lloyd
Video Technical Director: Stefaan "Smasher" Desmedt
Tour Director: Craig Evans
Video Director: Tom Krueger
Lighting Company: PRG
Video Company: XL Video
Video Screen: Innovative Designs NV
Stage Set: Tait Towers, Brilliant Stages
Staging: Stageco
Automation Truss: WI Creations BV
Automation: Kinesys
Rigging: Five Points Production Services
U2 360° Tour Equipment
Lighting Consoles: 1 MA Lighting grandMA, 1 grandMA Lite, 8 grandMA NSP 2s
196 PRG Bad Boy Automated Lights
156 Martin Atomic 3k Strobes with Atomic Color Changers
8 Zap Technologies 4.5K BigLites
7 Novalight 2k Nova Flowers
498 650W DWE Lamps in Custom Pylon Structure
39 300W Red Bulkheads
33 Tamlite 400W Sodium Lights
5 Specialz 6K HMI Custom Ripple Drum
36 Custom LED Polyp Fixture w/ 8 LEDs in circular array
7 Strong Xenon 4k Gladiator Followspots
12 Lycian M2 Followspots w/Medium Throw Lenses
1 Custom LED Microphone
1 PRG M-Box Media Server
1 PRG S400 ArtNet control system
5 City Theatrical SHoW DMX wireless systems
{mosimage}
