This is not Broadway, this is a concert. I take my daughters to shows and I look up and can’t find the talent located on stage. We didn’t want that. We wanted a polished act with classy props. Think of a Bette Midler-type show where the singing is never second fiddle to the spectacle. Don’t get me wrong, we have dancers and a great stage set, but our artist is the center of everything.”
And so it starts for Chris Gratton and his team as they load in for only the third show of Ariana Grande’s tour in support of her second studio album, My Everything. After nine months of constant press and one offs, Ariana Grande has embarked on her second headlining tour, dubbed “The Honeymoon Tour,” and she and the crew are in for a long run. While her first tour, “Listening Sessions,” in support of her debut album, Yours Truly, was more of a “mini-tour” with 10 shows in 2013, “The Honeymoon Tour” will take the artist and crew throughout North America and Europe and with a tour stop in the Philippines as well, for a total 77 shows over a nine-month span in 2015.
Gratton is employed by Ariana’s manager, Scooter Braun, as the head of touring worldwide for SB Management. He was brought in from the start to production-manage the arena tour, a process that started by finding a scenic design. Gratton approached more than a dozen people in the biz and asked them to submit designs. “We had some designers offer to gladly submit a design for $100K down payment,” he says. “But we didn’t really want those kinds of designers. Nothing against them, but we didn’t want our show to look the same as some of the other huge female pop stars.”
The Set and Stage
Once they whittled the designs down to six submissions, Ariana’s camp had a party and invited all the management and booking agents to view the proposals lying around the house. Eventually the concept that got the most hits was by an up-and-coming designer named Nick DeMoura, and he was named the creative designer for the show.
DeMoura’s background goes from being a dancer to a professional choreographer to his new role. Gratton points out that, because of his own lighting background and DeMoura’s dancing, they made a great team — each one knew the requirements necessary for a dance show.
DeMoura had to concentrate on scripting the show and where to place set elements precisely at times. He would leave much of the other choreography details to Scott and Brian (“Bri”) Nicholson, twin brothers, who had never worked with anyone on this scale previously. But they would adhere to one strict rule, according to DeMoura: “All the entrances and exits on this stage have to be seamless.”
The idea of a player on stage standing in line to exit will never happen on Nick DeMoura’s watch. The 60-foot-wide stage has 12 staircases surrounding it. It also includes a total of seven lifts, used to make both performers and various set pieces appear at times.
Upstage center, there is an elevator that gets used for the grand entrance. Later on, it raises the performer another 15 feet in the air. Mid-stage center, there’s a 12-by-eight-foot lift that is utilized to reveal a piano number where she rises out on top of it. Across the downstage edge are four “toasters,” the rapid-lift mechanisms utilized by stage shows to help performers make their entrance by popping them up from below. For this tour, however, the toasters also needed to function regular slow-moving lifts later in the show.
The original stage design had certain shapes that resembled diamonds, an element envisioned by the artist herself. DeMoura also had a three-tier design going with wide-open spaces for dancers. Scooter advised them to add a fourth level upstage for the performers to expand to, and while they were at it, figure out the video needs.
Besides the obligatory upstage video wall, the design team decided to fill out the different tiers with video tiles. The video wall and front video fasciae were to be made out of the same LED video elements.
With the vision for the set and stage movements sketched out, Gratton had enough info to take care of logistics. He knew that Show Group Production Services (SGPS/ShowRig) had toasters that ran using pneumatic lifts as opposed to being solenoid driven. He met with Eric Pearce because he knew his company had all the correct gear Gratton would need for the show, and the two of them sat down to talk sizes. He also contacted VER because he knew that the design called for concentric sized video panels that were 1/2m high on the bottom level, 1m at the mid and 1.5m at the top. Gratton relayed that info to SGPS so Pearce’s company could figure out the exact dimensions of the stage levels. The company is supplying the tour with lighting and audio as well as video gear.
During the design process, Ariana Grand provided input as well. Coming from a theater background her whole life, Grand had specific ideas, sometimes modifying DeMoura’s concepts. DeMoura cites a case in point. “I had this idea where she would be up in the air in a ship, flying through the clouds. She thought for a second and replied that she didn’t like the ship idea. But she loved the idea of floating through the clouds.” So the design ended up placing the upstage video wall on a track so it could open wide enough to reveal her flying downstage on a track system. Both tracks and all the rigging were supplied by SGPS and operated by one of their in-house Navigator controllers, with automation crew chief Zach Purciful handling the motion control devices.
Meanwhile, lighting designer Chris Kuroda had been chomping at the bit to get his hands in the mix. Gratton waited until he had the basic set figured out before bringing Kuroda into the fray. The three designers started going round and round on finishing touches. Kuroda brought some fresh ideas to the table and the process was finally concluded. As DeMoura states, “the end product was driven between Art, Practicality and Money.”
The Lighting
One of Chris Kuroda’s other acts is Justin Bieber, who happens to be one of Scooter Braun’s clients as well. He knew a year ago that at some point they were going to call on him for the lighting design. Right away the LD grasped the concept of Diamonds and that would be the base for his light rig. He formulated three sizes of enclosed truss structures — small, medium and large diamonds.
Kuroda worked on perfecting his truss structure for a while before the first wrench was thrown into the mix. “They added the fly gag, which meant I had to give up the real estate in the air and divide my light rig into two halves,” he notes. His original concept was still able to work; he just had to do a bit of CAD-juggling, so to speak. Diamonds were modified and moved around until he was satisfied with the physical structure.
The entire truss was specified as Tyler GT, with the fixtures riding inside for quick load-ins. Over the stage were four large diamond-shaped pods to hold lights. Suspended just inside and below each large diamond was a smaller diamond shaped pod made of four sticks of truss, each five feet in length. The idea was to make a chandelier-type structure that moved into different configurations, which included the large diamonds that would flatten out and point directly at the crowd. There were more medium shaped pods above the stage as well as four more “diamonds” over the crowd. “I like to immerse the whole floor in lights so everyone in the back of the house gets the same feel from lighting as the fans in the front rows,” Kuroda says.
For sidelight, Kuroda had trusses that ran the depth of the stage, rising with the contours as the tiered stage grew in height. Downstage, the truss was barely two feet off the deck, but the rise worked perfectly, giving the dancers ample room further upstage to get under it when exiting. The setup also allowed the light fixtures to be perfectly placed, height-wise, to meet the requirement for side lighting up to 12 dancers at a time on stage. Kuroda lined the side trusses with overhung Robe Pointes to get beautiful fans of tight beams. The truss also housed 30 Solaris Flares. While Kuroda originally put them in there to act as colored strobes, he was blown away by the wash light ability he gained using them in that mode, so those fixtures work double duty.
The hard edge workhorse of this rig was the new Robe BMFL. He had 74 active fixtures in the rig, and it was evident by the insanely bright white beams these 1700-watt monsters emit. Kuroda knew from the minute he saw these fixtures that this was what he needed to get big fat beams that could be seen even when video was playing. A big fan of the effects wheel, he was thrilled with the aerial breakouts this fixture provided him with. The rig contained 78 Pointes in total as well, so Robe was well represented.
For wash lights, Kuroda chose the Clay Paky B-Eyes. They gave him some flexibility as the LD once again proves that he doesn’t play along by anyone else’s rules when it comes to lighting. “While I liked the punch of the B-eyes, there were times I though the beam was just too fat. So Andrew Giffin, my associate designer and programmer, would turn off the outer ring when we used them for wash lights. Of course, when we did anything related to lighting individual pixels, we used all the LEDs in the fixture.” Kuroda acknowledges that he may have lost some lumens doing this, but it was aesthetically pleasing to his eye.
Clean, Precise Looks
When I saw the show during its March 1, 2015 tour stop in St. Paul, MN, I noticed that Giffin did, indeed, use these fixtures to the full extent. He had many different eye candy patterns on the lights at different points of the performance. But what impressed me most were the little off-speed chases he built. They were timed so impeccably that one surely thought the show was run in timecode.
I asked Kuroda if he took advantage of the pixel-mapping feature on the grandMA console to run these effects. “On other shows I have certainly utilized this function,” replies the LD. “However, on this particular show, we relied well-conceived, pixel by pixel programming with chases and effects engines to get a very clean, precise look.”
Rounding out the lighting gear that was run from a single full sized grandMA2 console were 164 Martin Rush LED Pars. They were utilized as truss toners, bathing the black truss in color. Through the use of individual as well as blocks of light chases, the Diamond pods became floating set pieces. Fanning fade times on fixtures is a big hit with Giffin, and the color peels across the aerial set looked divine.
Giffin is quick to point out that they do not have that many different fixtures types this time around. They rarely if ever turn all the lights on at the same time, preferring to utilize one type for one look, and then quickly blacking them out to create a scene with a totally different fixture type.
All in all, Kuroda’s initial design started with almost 700 lighting fixtures. That was until Gratton started working the budget — and out came his infamous red pen.
“You know me, Nook; I can let the designer spend days re-thinking his plot and redrawing it countless times to get within budget,” Gratton says. “Coming from a lighting background, I knew the importance of the design to everyone, and I really did not want to tinker with that. But this is the artist’s first real tour, and we will surely revisit some things down the line. But right now I felt I knew what we could cut and still maintain the integrity.” So out comes Gratton’s red pen, and out go the truss spots, portions of the motion control system and a bunch of fixtures. In the end, Kuroda still had his diamonds and 427 light fixtures, making for a large — but not huge — production.
Special Effects
Along with lighting and video, there was enough room in the production budget for special effects including seven custom high power RGB Coral ARC series lasers developed by Arctos and provided and operated by Strictly FX. Four of them were spread out on the stage and three more were mounted in the truss, where they aimed for mirrors for bounce cues. Lauren Nelson and Grant Sellers programmed the lasers, with Nick Curry firing the laser cues during the shows.
Strictly FX also provided eight CO2 jets mounted in the stage, and pyro shooter Tony Alaimo ignited the gerbs and rockets seen and heard through the opening number and for some of the more upbeat songs. During a ballad that featured beautiful snowy visuals on the video screen, a piano rose out of the stage depths accompanied by LSG (low-lying fog). Halfway through the song, everyone on the arena floor realized they were seated in a faux blizzard themselves. Large confetti blowers as well as mini machines mounted in the truss made a mess of the arena as the finale brought the house down.
Another distinctive effect is achieved in the audience. “The fans can purchase these special cat ears — a staple look of Ariana’s — that come equipped with LEDs,” says lighting director Nick Van Nostrand. He has control from the lighting console via DMX to Glow Motion’s RF system. At precise times during the performance, Van Nostrand can turn every set of ears into any color. Rather than go through the expense of buying and distributing these ears to the fans, they sell them at the T-shirt stands. Glow Motion Technologies, the company behind the cat ears system, is the same that provided those glowing LED orbs that were used for Katy Perry’s Super Bowl halftime show (glowmotiontechnologies.com). It’s a nice gag, and the act doesn’t have to foot the cost.
One Dress Rehearsal
A month before the show was set to go into rehearsals, Kuroda and Giffin locked themselves away to pre-visualize the show and write the lighting cues. This was necessary as, from the start, they were only allowing two weeks of production rehearsals before the tour.
Because of the artist’s busy promo schedule, those two weeks became one week. Then the Grammys called, then another artist called, etc. and so forth. In the end, they had Ariana for just three days of tech rehearsals, something unheard of for a production of this caliber and size.
“Most of those three days was spent with the artist acclimating herself to the stage and trying out all the new gags, like flying for instance. By the time we got to Independence (MO, near Kansas City; the first show) we had done one dress rehearsal. That was it. Every bone in my body was crossed as I prayed nothing would go wrong that first show.” A couple of first show hiccups did occur — “I almost died,” the artist tweeted — but, fortunately, nothing stopped the show.
As the crew loaded in the morning before the third show, in St. Paul, the three LD types were busy fixing all of the previous nights’ cues via the MA 3D visualizer. They looked at each cue and fixed color schemes and timing on a show that was about 95 percent done being written. Once everyone was happy with the lighting, Kuroda plans to depart, passing on the daily lighting director duties for the next year to Van Nostrand, who hails from Canada.
A Hand-Picked Crew
Gratton was able to hand-pick his crew straight down the line. He and Kuroda are well pleased with lighting crew chief Kevin Parsley and his team of guys out there. His lead carpenter is Sammy “Sam I Am” Herrington, who he has toured with for years. Along with Zach Purciful, who handled the motion control for the scenic elements, Niles Anderson mans the automation for everything from the flying gags to the toasters to anything else that moves. The stage manager is Timmy Doyle. Gratton has so much faith in his top dog that he no longer feels the need for his own self to constantly be around the stage.
While watching the show in St. Paul, my favorite part was when the singer appeared on top of a traveling chandelier. This chandelier flew downstage and eventually landed above downstage center for her to escape out of the bottom. The piece then rose up again where the designer beautifully lit the stage and video with it as a centerpiece.
Video director Richie Parkin had side screens for I-Mag, and at times, he snuck the pop star’s image on the big wall behind the artist. Kuroda applauds his direction. “Richie is very perceptive not to turn the video into a giant TV,” Kuroda says. “He turns it off at times to allow the lighting rig to breathe and accent the musical hits. At the same time, content creator Nicholas Militello from It Factory has given him a lot of tasty material to work with. He and the artist have been tweaking video clips and colors constantly since the design process started.”
Camera-wise, Kuroda explains some hurdles they have overcome. “You have to remember that this singer has been a product of TV. Harsh bright spotlights take a while to get used to, as does seeing your face on a 60-foot-wide screen. She is adjusting to thinking about what the cameras are seeing, as well as that person in the upper mezzanine.” Interpreting the client’s vision is something he works with and embraces. He points out that she constantly puts her two cents in, telling him things like, “I like where you are going with this. But let’s make it pink.”
It takes 14 Artisan trucks to move this show from town to town. Within a week of when I saw the show, the production crew was anticipating trimming load-in and load-out times to less than four and two hours, respectively.
Including the artist, there are a total of six people involved in the overall visual design of this show. “At first, I thought, ‘Geez, with six creative minds out here, this is going to be a train wreck,’” Chris Gratton says. “But in the end, it turned out to be a cohesive, positive design process.”
Crew
- Lighting/Video Co: VER
- Production Manager: Chris Gratton
- Lighting Designer: Chris Kuroda
- Creative Designer: Nick DeMoura
- Programmer: Andrew Giffin
- Lighting Director: Nick Van Nostrand
- Lighting Crew: Kevin Parsley (crew chief), Jessica LaPoint, Rhaneman Rhodes, Ty Brooks, Matt Butler, Edgar Serrano, Chris Reyes
- Video Director: Richy Parkin
- Video Content: Nicholas Militello/It Factory
- Video Crew: Kenny “The Don” Ackerman (crew chief), David Vega, Chris Campbell, Jabriel “Brill” Perry, Randall Garriot
- Tour Manager: Janet Laski
- Production Crew: Timmy Doyle (stage manager), Roshad Ismael (road manager), Alicia Loggan (coordinator), Jess Sheehan (assistant)
- Carpenters: Sam “I Am” Herrington (head carpenter), Andrew “Dru” Biba , Niles Anderson, Ryan Snyder, Chase Paulino
- Riggers: Rylo Merfy (head rigger), Gerard Moriarity
- Pyro/Lasers: Tony Alaimo (crew chief), Andrew “Mitts” Johannis II, Nick Curry, David Johnson
- Automation: Zach Purciful (crew chief), Niles Anderson, Trev Cromwell, Brian Benauer, Jeremy Sorensen, Rob Flood
Gear
Lighting:
2 grandMA2 full-size consoles w/ 5 NPUs
76 Robe Robin Pointes
74 Robe BMFL Spots
66 Clay Paky A.leda B-Eye K20s
16 Vari*Lite VL3500 Spots
164 Martin Rush Par 1 RGBWs
30 TMB Solaris Flares
2 Color Kinetics iW Blasts
Video:
96 WinVision 9 tiles
168 WinVision 9 Air
2 Catalyst media servers
1 Grass Valley Kayak 3ME switcher
5 Sony HXC100 HD cameras
4 Panasonic PTZ HD cameras
2 Barco FLM 22K projectors
2 Rear projection screens (20’x11’)
