Patrick Woodroffe, Michael Keller and Upstaging Shape the Looks of Ozzy’s Scream Tour
Ozzy and Sharon’s family lifestyle may differ a bit from the previous generation’s Ozzie and Harriet, but LD Patrick Woodroffe, lighting director Michael Keller and other longtime-supporters of Ozzy’s live shows say an extended family feeling exists nevertheless.
“It’s like a family — a truly dysfunctional family — who you get to choose,” Keller jokes. “This, in conjunction with working with some great new people, made this tour one for the books,” he says, of the recently-concluded Scream arena tour.
“It’s always enjoyable — always a laugh, with Ozzy,” agrees Woodroffe. “He tends to not let us take any of this too seriously, but his approach is then balanced by the professionalism and organization that production manager Dale “Opie” Skjerseth and Michael and their crew bring to the project.”
Woodroffe, who has also served as LD for The Rolling Stones, Genesis, The Police, AC/DC, has lit many of Ozzy’s solo tours and his Ozzfest events in the past. “I’ve known Sharon for 30 years, from when I lived in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, so when I got the call for this tour, it wasn’t unexpected,” he says.
“I brought in lighting director Michael Keller right from the beginning,” Woodroffe added. “He’s done most of the Ozzy-related shows I’ve designed, and he is very much my co-designer. He programmed the show in rehearsal, and then continued to develop it once the tour started. We spoke right from the beginning and once the rig and the stage set were designed he very much made the show his own.”
Previz vs. Reality
The timing wasn’t ideal — Keller was on a different tour when he got the call, which threatened to put a crimp in the pre-production schedule. But he managed to work it out.
“Since the time was limited, I started to preprogram on by MacBook Pro using grandMA on PC and grandMA 3D Visualizer,” Keller says. “On my days off, I programmed a song or two a day. I was able to preprogram the entire show, so when we showed up in San Bernardino, it was a matter of cleaning up the cues.”
Although many of the looks onstage could be pre-visualized, there were still the inevitable surprises. At one point in the show, Ozzy uses a power hose to shoot foam into the audience, and gets soaked himself, for example. “We did have to cut and move some floor fixtures so they wouldn’t be power-washed every night.”
Other surprises are gear-related. “Patrick’s design for Ozzfest 2010 incorporated a few fixtures I had not worked with before,” Keller says. “I had not used the Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300 before, and, in the visualizer, you really don’t get a real grasp of what they actually do. When we were in production rehearsals, I was pleasantly surprised.”
An Efficient Rig
Upstaging Inc. is the lighting contractor for the tour, Woodroffe notes, and “as for fixtures, I try to keep an open mind, but, really, all the moving lights nowadays tend to be pretty amazing — reliable, bright, clever. And so one tries to work with what is available in a given situation to get the biggest bang for your buck.”
As a whole, the tour didn’t come close to setting any world records for total fixture count. But as Keller says, “for being a small fixture count system, we got the most out of what we had. The Vari*Lite 3500 Wash FX fixtures were the backbone of the system; their ability to ‘beam blast’ made them a great choice for this show. The Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300s were the ‘eye candy’ for the show — very much like an ACL, but with the ability to control them as a moving fixture.
“We added [Martin] MAC IIIs in the show as another texture,” Keller continued. “They worked very well with the VL3500s, and we also used them in followspot mode — all of Ozzy’s spots were MAC IIIs. Upstaging’s Ron Schilling designed a mount and a handle, so that all the operator had to do was point the fixture at Ozzy and let the grandMA control it.”
The grandMA 1 console, he adds, “fit the needs of the show…The ability to network and use the grandMA apps on my iPhone to focus helped make this choice. In a daylight-type focus situation, it’s so much easier to focus on yourself than another person.”
The rig, Keller notes, also included 25 Martin Atomic strobes. “Did I mention strobes? Our sound man, Greg Price, loves strobes. I would probably never use them, but he insists,” Keller jokes.
Video Montage
Screenworks provided the video gear for the tour. “We like to use video in different ways,” Woodroffe notes — “I-Mag, special content and generic backgrounds, plus, of course, the wonderful opening montage that we try to incorporate on every tour now.’
But if the “toys” are now cooler than ever, the best part of the Ozzy Osbourne touring experience, both Woodroffe and Keller agree, is still the human, and not technological, side of things.
“Since Ozzy and Sharon both trust and respect Patrick and myself, we pretty much are able to produce the lighting to what we feel the needs are. I’m lucky to be able to work with such great people — Opie, Greg Price, Martha Price (who has done Ozzy’s dressing rooms for 15 years) — we have been together for quite some time now.” Keller also credits Upstaging crew chief “Ron Schilling and his crew” for making “each day a breeze.”
Ozzy Osbourne Scream Tour
Crew
Lighting Company: Upstaging Inc.
Set Design: Atomic Designs
Video Company: Screenworks
Lighting Designer: Patrick Woodroffe
Lighting Director: Michael Keller
Lighting Crew Chief: Ron Schilling
Lighting Techs: Marta Iwan, John Bailey
Video Crew Chief: Angelo Bartolome
Production Manager: Dale “Opie” Skjerseth
Tour Manager: Tim Brockman
Stage Manager/Head Carpenter: Greg Santos
Rigger: Chad Koehler
Pyrotechnics: Casey Lake, Chris Davis
Gear
1 grandMA lighting console
21 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash FX fixtures
17 Martin MACIII Profiles (3 in followspot mode)
6 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
24 Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300 fixtures
25 Martin Atomic Strobes
42 PAR64s (7 6-lamp bars)
