Lighting Companies
Upstaging/Neg Earth
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
LD/Lighting Director: Cormac Jackson
Lighting Reps: John Bahnick/Upstaging (U.S.), Caroline Beverley/Neg Earth (Europe)
Lighting Crew Chief: Simon Carrus Wilson (Europe)
Lighting Tech: Justin Hare (U.S.)
Set Designer: Cormac Jackson
Video Content/Creator: Brian Kenny (Lightscape)
Tour Manager: Dee McLoughlin
Production Managers: Jonny Clark (U.S.), Hannah Charlesworth (Europe)
Trucking Cos: Truck’N Roll (U.S.), Fly By Night (Europe)
Gear
2 HES Full Boar 4 lighting consoles
28 Ayrton MagicBlades
8 Martin MAC Auras
4 Half mirror balls
4 8’ sections HUD truss
4 Lighting frames
2 DF-50 Hazers
Tour Notes
FFS (a.k.a. Franz Ferdinand and Sparks) was officially established in March 2015, but the members of the two bands, one with roots in Scotland (FF) and the other (S) based in the U.S., have collaborated since the mid-2000s. They toured on both sides of the Atlantic this year in support of their first official combined album, FFS, which was released in June.
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings
Franz Ferdinand + Sparks 2015 Tour
The formation of FFS (Franz Ferdinand + Sparks) first came about when the Scottish band FF and US band Sparks came together to record a studio album in late 2014, released in 2015 and then followed with a tour. PLSN caught the final date of the tour and spoke with designer & director Cormac Jackson about the tour.
Cormac Jackson
Lighting Designer & Director
“The design was based around a few limitations that we knew about quite early on, namely truck space, budget and routings. When I looked at the original list of dates it was a mixture of festival appearances and theatre headline shows. I knew we weren’t going to be able to load into any of the 30 festivals overnight due to the routing so I wanted a design that I could pre-program on a visualizer and without having to spend much or any time focusing our touring extras package would look consistent. If you only have 30 minutes to program a floor package every night on a changeover it’s pointless having 50 beam fixtures that will never look right so I went a different route with the Ayrton fixtures which once rigged correctly on the frames came back to my position focus’s every day. I knew it was going to be a simple floor package/control and backdrop package. Both Franz and Sparks were mainly involved in the artwork for the backdrop and left me to my own devices. I wanted to pixel map a fixture and make it look like a 80’s/70’s rock show with lots of smaller light source’s which is why I chose the Ayrton Magic Blades and the High End Full Boar 4 which has on-board pixel mapping available.
“I had been looking at the Ayrton Magic Blades for a while and have been really impressed. I had never seen the Ayrton fixtures prior to seeing them in rehearsals in Glasgow so I was a little nervous. I was really impressed by the light output, build quality and reliability. Over a 5 month period with 30+ Ayrton fixtures we had one fixture fail which we fixed in rehearsals. The fixtures didn’t travel in flight cases and were kept on the touring frames so they are obviously very robust and reliable.
“I made the jump to a High End Hog Full Boar 4. I had been waiting for quite a while for the pixel-mapping to be added to the software which happened earlier this year and it worked flawlessly, very simple and intuitive and let me program my grid of Ayrton fixtures really quickly. I’ve been using High End consoles forever and the new Hog 4 is a really great console for the type of shows I’m involved with. It’s reliable and that’s what every show needs. I think it’s probably one of the better festival consoles and the way it handles cloning/replicating fixtures is the best out there.
“Neither band made any requests so I started watching Sparks videos online to try and get some ideas and motifs that I could bring onto this run of shows. The set was going to be split into 4 Franz Ferdinand tracks and 4 Sparks tracks and the remainder from the new album. Any act that is touring after 40 years have to be treated with respect and they (Russell and Ron from Sparks) were really great to work with, total gentlemen. I’m very lucky to have been on a tour with Sparks. Their addition made the show quite theatrical which gave me some space to add a little more than I would normally for a Franz Ferdinand show. I kept the color palette very limited to try and give the show an overall theme.
“Fixtures were the same from both vendors, Upstaging (U.S.) and Neg Earth (Europe) tour legs. I must say thank you to both companies who were as ever, very helpful and delivered exactly what was requested. I’m very lucky to have been involved on the FFS tour. It was a very unique experience which won’t be repeated again. I must thank Simon Carrus Wilson my crew chief and Justin Hare from Upstaging who both helped me out enormously and kept my days simple.”
–By Steve Jennings
For more Franz Ferdinand + Sparks 2015 Tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to:
http://www.prolightingspace.com/photo/albums/franz-ferdinand-gallery-by-steve-jennings
