Lighting Co
DPS Inc.
Venue
Various (tour)
Crew
Lighting Designer/Director: Alastair Watson
Lighting Programmer: Alastair Watson
Lighting Crew Chief: Thomas “Biss” Kelleher
Lighting Tech: Jack Brigden
Video Director: Alastair Watson
Tour Manager: Mick Brigden
Production Manager: Russel Giroux
Video: DPS
DPS Account Rep: John Lee
Trucking: Roadshow Services
Gear
1 High End Systems Full Boar 4
6 High End Systems Intellaspots
4 High End Systems Showguns
6 Vari*Lite VLX
6 Martin Atomic Strobes
20 GLP impression X4
6 GLP 120 RZ
14 Custom bulkhead lights
2 High End Systems Axon media servers
2 DF-50 hazers
For more Joe Satriani tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to http://plsn.me/SatrianiExtras
Designer Insights
Alistair Watson, Lighting Designer & Director:
“The design for this tour started a year ago in the fall of 2012. I was just finishing a G3 tour with Joe, which is one of Joe’s other projects. We were in South America, and Joe’s manager, Mick Brigden, started the conversation about a new album cycle and concepts for the tour.
“I started work on a napkin immediately. After a lot of sketching, two weeks later back at home I sent Mick a first draft of the way I saw the design, and we went with it for Europe, which was to be our first leg in the Unstoppable Momentum Tour.
“We had two box trusses, one flown above the band, the other stood on end upstage housing a 38 by 18 foot white cyc. There were various fixtures spread through the design, but the idea was based around FOH projector, in this case a Barco FLM HD20. I wanted the projector on the ground so it went through the band and cast their silhouettes on the cyc.
“As we roamed though Europe, I decided that the upstage box truss looked good, but I wanted to make the design look a little more organic and not so “trussy.” As we were doing a lot of theaters in the U.S. on the next leg, I decided to have just a straight stick for the cyc and use a theater pipe wherever we could.
“Before we even left for our first show in Europe, I had time to lay down the lighting cues at home with ESP Vision. I have been using ESP for around five years now, and it’s been invaluable in getting me into a great place for the first day of rehearsals. I also spent a lot of time sourcing, picking and in some cases building the content for the show.
“Joe and Mick have been around and have a lot of great relationships with a lot of talented individuals. This enabled us to use a couple of pieces of fantastic looking content that they had built and gave us two complete songs right off the bat. These really were showpieces in the show. I pulled the lighting right back and let the video do the work in these songs.
“The creator of one of the pieces gave me access to his original clips, which allowed me to edit a piece together to completely fit into the song, all broken up into sections for the cue stack. It obviously doesn’t get any better than that!
“We used video for about 70 percent of the show. Some songs were just lighting — more to give the audience a break from the content. In the end, they are going to see a music concert, they’re not going to the movies. But the beauty of the projector was that I used it on occasion just for a backdrop, for textures, or even just colors.
“So far on this tour, we’ve done 96 shows in 18 weeks of touring. I’m sure it’s not over yet. I had the programming pretty much locked down in the first week, but I still tweak looks for songs or add new songs as they come into the set.
“As usual, being in charge of the whole visual aspect of the show — video and lighting — I went about the programming in two different ways. For the songs that had really strong video pieces, I would apply those and then work the lighting around that content. For the pieces that I felt were lighting strong, I would add video to that.
I chose the High End Systems Intellaspot and Showguns as the workhorses for this show. I wanted to keep the fixture count to a minimum for the profile lights. I prefer 10 big bright pattern beams to 30 lesser ones; I like lights that have a punch. Especially with video, I don’t want the beam to be lost to the background all the time.
“I also wanted to get some really dark moody looks on the stage, and the indigo highlighters on the Intellaspots took care of this for me. I was also going to use the new Solawashes on the floor, but they were not yet in production, so I went to the relatively new but still old faithful VLX LED wash on the floor. It’s a great light and pretty small for what it puts out of the front.
“In Europe, I used some Martin 101s for the show. I wanted some lights to have a white finish, so I could hang them in the way of the projection screen and not have a big black blob in the way. This light offered this finish, and Scottie Sanderson at PRG in Birmingham went the extra mile to track these down. I still don’t know where he found them, but he did.
“In the U.S., my lighting vendor of choice is DPS, based out of Burbank, CA. They bought 10 of the GLP X4s in white for me.
“I’ve worked with John Lee on a lot of projects over the past 10 years, so when he moved to DPS from PRG, I naturally wanted to give him a shot with the new company he was at. They didn’t disappoint, and since then, they have also provided lighting for other clients I have been designing for — Stone Temple Pilots and AFI.
“I used some custom bulkhead lights as set pieces, which looked great and added a bit of “industrial” atmosphere to the stage.
“Video as I mentioned, was a Barco FLM-HD20. We had a spare with us for the 45 shows in the U.S. but never took the lid off the box — absolutely solid. I used two Axon Media servers for content, and the whole show was run on the new High End Systems Wholehog Fullboar 4 desk with a playback wing. Super reliable platform — the show was easy to program, and it felt good to be on ‘the bridge’ during the show.
“It’s a fantastic crew out there — a real family vibe. The weeks are long; not a lot of days off. But everybody gets on well, and it’s a real pleasure to be out there.”
