Halcyon Days might imply times of languid repose, but with Elie Goulding’s fast track to success, the U.K.-based singer/songwriter has been busier than ever, and her career keeps hitting new crescendos. Her first album, Lights, sold more than 850,000 copies after its 2010 release. Together with her second album, Halcyon, released in Oct. 2012, which was re-released as Halcyon Days in Aug. 2013, her total album sales have topped the 4 million mark.
Along with a broad range of festival gigs and prominent opening act slots for major tours, Goulding has sung at both the White House tree lighting ceremony and Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding reception. Her voice has proven to be as popular with musical collaborators as well, featured on releases by Tinie Tempah, Skrillex, Calvin Harris and Zedd, among others. This year, Goulding took home the BRIT Award for Best British Female Solo Artist.
As LD/lighting programmer Cate Carter notes, Goulding’s tour in support of Halcyon Days has “gone from strength to strength, selling out increasingly larger venues worldwide as her popularity has grown over the past two years.” Carter has been quite busy herself, supporting tours for Goulding and also for the band Elbow. She and her business partner Pablo Beckett set up Bryte Design a few years back, with Beckett’s prowess in content design complementing Carter’s background in lighting design.
Having worked on more and more shows together, they set up the design company as the next logical step. The mainstay of their work is for concerts and live music touring, although both have previously done a lot of work in corporate events as well.
PLSN caught up with Carter and Robin Haddow, tour lighting director, when the Halcyon Days tour made its way to California.
Cate Carter
Lighting Designer & Director
“We started working with Ellie at the start of her Halcyon Days live campaign. The campaign has seen the shows go from strength to strength, selling out increasingly larger venues worldwide as her popularity has grown over the past two years. For this tour the design of the stage set is based around a 19 diamond video wall, hidden behind scenic elements and framed with lighting.
“Ellie had strong ideas for the artwork influences behind the set design and visual content. The stage set is intended to represent these… mixing modern technology with more classic themes. Ellie was keen to bring video in for this tour, and one of our main ethos for design is that all elements should be visually coherent…. so stage set, lighting and visuals should work together as one. We wanted to avoid the upstage LED screen being too overpowering, and we found by using the diamond formation, this gave us a really interesting shape to design visuals for as well as a striking backdrop for the stage.
“All the content was designed specifically with the shape of the wall in mind. We tried to play on the geometry of the diamonds to achieve 3D effects at times and, at other times, use this as one big canvas for more coherent content. Hiding the video elements behind the gauze meant that when we were using none, or just part of the video wall, the unused part disappeared behind the ‘oil painting’ backdrop. Some of the content was designed to follow the specific themes behind the songs and other pieces are intended to add a dynamic — following the energy of the music and performance.
“It’s been an absolute privilege working with Ellie and her team over the last 18 months. It’s been hugely exciting watching the shows and audiences grow; we’ve had a lot of fun on the road. Ellie is really sharp on how she wants her shows to look, which has made for a really fun and interesting project for us. Robin (Haddow) has been absolutely brilliant. We started touring this design together with Robin looking after video and myself on lights, and as the shows have developed, Robin has taken over directing cameras in addition to running servers for the larger shows and is now running the lighting as well as video for the U.S. and Australia/New Zealand tours. He’s incredibly talented, and it would appear that he can turn his hand to anything, whilst being the most laid back person I know!”
Robin Haddow
Lighting Director
“When I first came on board with Cate at the start of the year, I was looking after the media server side of things for her, as this was my first bit of programming on the grandMA2. I’m usually a Hog guy and had recently enjoyed switching to the new range of Hog 4 consoles, which are excellent. However, as the lighting was initially programmed and operated by Cate on an MA2, it was a great opportunity for me to learn a new console, and with Cate showing me the ropes on it, it has been a great way of doing it…. Thanks Cate!
“The system was designed to use two consoles over one show file. This allowed me to program the media server at the same time as Cate would be programming the lights. By using ‘Worlds,’ we kept things safe by making it impossible to accidentally store the wrong data in the wrong cues. A very useful feature when you’re getting tired and under pressure programming, and mistakes do happen!
“The video side of things was initially programmed with the idea that I would go on to run both lights and video. Thanks to timecode, this was a relatively painless process. All the video is triggered by timecode and looks after itself. I have one master intensity fader that I can use if the video is too bright, which it can be in some of the smaller venues. The timecode is not only sent to the MA2 but is also fed into the Catalyst machines, allowing these machines to chase the timecode, guaranteeing frame accurate playback every night. The combination of Catalyst and MA has been faultless.
“Previously I have covered the band Editors for Cate, and I also looked after Ellie when she supported Bruno Mars dates in the U.S. in 2013. Getting to actually work alongside her at the start of this year was a first, and I greatly enjoyed the experience. I think its always great to have a team of people looking after the visual side of things as it allows ideas to be bounced off each other and more importantly having someone tell you your idea is not so good, which can happen after long nights of pre-programming and staring at lights and LED screens for hours on end!
“This has been the first time in the U.S. I’ve used a company for lights other than PRG. Brown Note Productions are providing the lighting gear, and wow, what a breath of fresh air in the lighting world they and their crew are. A wonderful team, with good gear and without problems. Great fun to work with, and I will definitely be recommending them to others.
“Catalyst has also performed very well. As all the touring frames are hung at 45° to form the diamond shapes, it’s not a straightforward setup. Catalyst ‘Exact Mapping’ takes care of this and seamlessly adjust the content to make it read correctly on the LED screen. The media server system has been faultless since day one. In my view, for what we are doing, Catalyst is still the best and most reliable system available.”
Ellie Goulding Halcyon Days Tour
Production Companies:
- Lighting: Brown Note Productions
- Video / LED: XL Video
- Trucking: Upstaging
Crew
- Lighting Designer & Director: Cate Carter
- Lighting Director: Robin Haddow
- Lighting Crew Chief: Chris Ruppel
- Lighting Tech: Ali Siegel
- Video Tech: Phil Leech
- Production Manager: Tyrone Brunton
- Tour Manager: Rebecca Travis
Lighting Gear:
1 grandMA 2 console
2 Catalyst media servers
10 Martin MAC Viper Spots
28 Martin MAC Viper Washes
14 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
8 Martin MAC TW1 washes
6 Showtec Sunstrips
6 Clay Paky Sharpys
19 4’x4’ touring frames of F19 LED screen
