Music fans hungry to see Drake and Future perform their hits this year are being given a gourmet experience on the “Summer Sixteen” tour, which extends into autumn with the help from a mind-blowing production design by LD Guy Pavelo and tour director Steve Kidd of GP-SK Design & Production. With support from PRG, PRG/Nocturne, SGPS and Pyrotek, “Summer Sixteen” hit the road in July with 143 DMX universes, a whopping 27 trucks and 200,000 pounds of gear. PLSN caught up with Guy Pavelo to discuss exactly how he and his team have raised the bar with this production.
Staging and Rigging
A massive performance space and moving scenic elements provide the staging platform used by Drake and Future. Staging and rigging vendor SGPS / ShowRig constructed Summer Sixteen’s 72-by-48-foot full rolling stage and its arena grid, using a total of nine lifts on stage, their custom truss, as well as an innovative Wi-Fi fly car basket used during the show. Mike Dunn is serving as lead rigger for the tour.
The upstage is framed by Drake’s 6.5-foot “hill,” with a 12-foot-deep incline with pyro, LSGs (for low-lying fog) and other show bells and whistles. The lifts hold WinVision 6mm product, with two of them enabled for 270° rotation. “In addition to all the staging, SGPS also built all of the framework holding the video panels used to create the curved screen,” says Pavelo. “They also provided all the motors and rigging.” A programmer facilitates control of the lifts and fly basket, but other than audio and pyro, the LD handles all other show elements through his grandMA lighting desk.
Pavelo says Drake came to the table with several intriguing ideas for show elements, including the curved video wall, the expansive stage and set design, and a jaw dropping visual element — close to 800 moving LED spheres that change dynamically throughout the show. “Drake found these spheres and wanted them incorporated, and told us to figure it out,” Guy explains. “Steve and I went back to the drawing board and designed the show ‘pole to pole’ with products including lighting instruments all the way to front of house, as opposed to just over the stage area.”
There are 788 automated 22-inch LED spheres from Glow Motion Technologies, which morph in color and position throughout the concert, moving via a winch system from Stage Kinetik. “We ended up filling the system that held all that up with many different lighting fixtures — with the goal to be more interactive with the crowd, not just on the main deck itself,” Pavelo continues. “We continued layering in elements until Drake was happy with all the different ideas we had. We had so many different objects placed, it was a challenge to fit them all into the show. But even though there are mountains of equipment, at times it can be extremely minimalistic, and as the show progresses, the look evolves and changes drastically.”
All the winches receive power and DMX and are controlled by the grandMA. “The LED component is Wi-Fi and runs through Glow Motion’s proprietary technology,” Guy says. “We pushed the envelope with this, as it was a derivative of their wristband system. I needed pixel control to achieve what I wanted, and I programmed them like another moving light product. It was a lot of work, but at the end of the day, what good is it to do the same thing as somebody else? We use 24 spotters when the balls are moving, and heaven forbid there’s an issue with motors or sync, but if the ball comes close enough to an audience member to touch it, we have somebody in place to stop that. This is DMX controlled on a Z-axis object, so there is no e-stop. We’ve been trying to create a fake stop button, because as this progresses I will need to be able to stop a winch on a dime, anywhere, and know where it is and what it’s doing.”
Lighting
Through his work with Drake and other top artists, Pavelo has refined his use of automated lighting instruments to a fine art, with every piece of gear purposed for maximum effect as well as roadworthiness. PRG is the lighting and video supplier for this tour, and PRG gear is prevalent on the show, with 26 Best Boy HP Spots, 26 Best Boy Wash fixtures and 52 Icon Beams. Pavelo is also using PRG’s GroundControl Followspot System to gain remote control over PRG Bad Boys and eliminate house spots. There are also 79 Martin Atomic Strobes and 34 Clay Paky Sharpys in the rig, and major eye candy comes from a large number of High End Systems’ latest LED based
SolaRange fixtures. Pavelo specified 66
SolaSpot Pro 2000s, 62 SolaWash 19s and 77 SolaWash 37s — many behind the main video wall — which give a fresh look to the lighting.
He says, “I really liked the LED engine in the SolaSpots, and was impressed on how white it was. They seemed to have enough horsepower to compete with what I normally use, and in considering cost, weight and power consumption, I found it to be a very good option. We have 11 electrics over the stage that hold a few of the SolaWash 19’s and all of the PRG gear. Out in the house flanking the scoreboard are the balance of the SolaWash 19’s as well as Icons and Sharpys. We have more Icons built into the stage deck, and its’ upstage ledge holds another 18 SolaSpots as well as all six of the projectors.”
“With the SolaSpot’s Animation Wheel, and in conjunction with the mapping and colorization — along with the massive amount of smoke we use at times — it looks like it’s starting to pop out of the screen. It makes you think its projection mapping as opposed to just being content. Then, by using the lights in the same fashion, it makes that effect have even more depth. Certain results were merely by chance, as I believe many things turn out to become, but it was cool how the multiple internal effects could draw out these unique looks.”
Video
Not surprisingly, the show’s video element runs neck and neck with other creative aspects in pushing Drake’s creative envelope. Supplied through PRG Nocturne, the centerpiece of the system is an 88-foot curved wall fitted with 400 pieces of WinVision 9 mm Air panels. The video laden stage lifts use an additional 180 tiles of WinVision’s 6mm Air. Six Barco HDF 30 projectors with MMS-100 server heads provide looks only previously achievable with high powered lasers. Grass Valley Karrera Sport 2 ME K-Frame switcher and five Grass Valley LDX-80s round out the video control package, and Pavelo serves as the “gatekeeper” for the visuals shown on screen. Cameras include Fujinon 99s long lens, 17×7.6 and 12×4.5 super wide models.
“The wall adds a lot of dimension; we wanted to incorporate more video towards the ceiling, and started with the directive of a lot of overhead video,” Guy says. “When Drake’s team saw the spheres, I throttled back to leave room for those effects — so how do I incorporate some sort of overhead video? Usually, we do a white or flat deck top, but this time we wanted reflective but sleek, and we moved into a gloss black deck top. By curving the wall, you get reflections of the content off the stage top, so now the people in the 300 level can also watch the video on the floor. And then Mike Carson created content that assists in throwing the dimensional aspect of the curve, so depending on position, it almost starts to look three-dimensional, because the content is exaggerating the depth. Everything that goes on that wall comes out of my six PRG MBox 4’s. I have four input feeds from my main director with his switch, but I enable anything that is allowed to pass through to that wall. The high def cameras in my Bad Boy fixtures are fed to my director, and he cuts those into the show as well. I think we’re the first to pipe that feed into the master system — we get a totally unique perspective from the cameras on those spotlights.”
Moving Mirrors
The Barco MMS system (moving mirror system) was used to open the show, and halfway through is used exclusively to complement underlying content. Guy explains, “The MMS allowed us to get looks we’ve been trying to do with lasers for some time — square cones and dishes and waves overhead and through Drake, but we’re always at the mercy of the barricades. Nine times out of ten, we were able to get the cone, but it cuts off his head, because it always has to be focused lower. We also went a few steps further using some Axon server functions, and we’re running multiple layers of content with negative space that all match and yet crisscross. It became less of a specialty fixture and more of a core element, because it is so versatile; the Axon’s ability to manipulate aspects independently, on different layers of the same content, and once you finish moving it around in the server itself, now you can move the mirror — that’s just an even bigger bonus. The color is so vivid, and I think the fact that we picked the right lens helped out a lot. We were able to achieve the looks that he’s been after for a long time.”
Special Effects
The staggering amount, and frequency, of pyrotechnic effects supplied by Pyrotek gave Pavelo another set of unique tools to manipulate the viewer’s perspective. The LD worked with Pyrotek to push the creative envelope for pyro and atmospheric effects seen on arena and stadium tours. “We use around 600 individual shots during the show, ranging from gerbs to comets to mines, concussions, falling stars, shooting stars, etc. We have 16 Dragon Heads, and quad salamanders for backup, when we can’t use the propane. There are also Stadium Cryojets and Standard Cryojets built into the main deck as well as up in the upstage portion of the stage, so we get multilevel fire and cryo, and shoot fire as high as the video wall. We loaded the deck up around all our lifts, and it reaches the full grid at times, resulting in a massive rear wall of cryo with lighting and video pushing through it.
“We use the pyro every few numbers, with a micro finale half way and a massive finale at the end, and many punches, hits and stabs throughout the whole show,” Pavelo continues. “Everyone says ‘Isn’t that expensive?’ We have a client that is onboard, and with Pyrotek we have a vendor that is willing to go the extra mile. The show is 48 tracks long, so to shoot pyro in three of them would be kind of lame. We also use an enormous amount of LSG [ground fog]. It’s running around 45 minutes of the show. Eight LSGs with Dewar vessels hide the lifts and the band and are used for dramatic effects when Drake is on the staging lifts. On a good day, the band is buried in six feet of LSG in the back of the deck, and Drake looks like he’s standing on a cloud. We also shoot the cryo right into all the vaults as they’re returning to home position. We can produce some interesting and organic looks when all the conditions are right.”
In closing, Pavelo says this Drake tour has been a phenomenal experience for GP-SK Design & Production, and they’ll be on the road with it for many months to come. “We start with the vision he wants, we work together for that, and then when things pan out, it’s extremely gratifying.”
Crew
- Tour Director: Steve Kidd
- Lighting Director: Guy Pavelo
- Lighting Co: PRG
- Lighting Crew Chief: Andrew Mitchenson
- Lighting Techs: Tom Corey, Scott Amiro, Scott Naff, Josh Bazett-Jones, Matt LeRoux, Dale Jewett, Jennifer Dymond, John Scalera
- Production Manager: Chris Roberts
- Stage Managers: Paul Lovell-Butt, Tom Speiser (floor)
- Production Assistant: Angela Haines
- Staging/Rigging: SGPS/ShowRig
- Head Rigger: Mike “Knuckles” Dunn
- Rigger: Hector Mimosa, Gerald “G-Mack” McDougald
- Video Rigger/Motor Op: Tom Armstrong
- Video Co: PRG/Nocturne
- Video Director: Mark Stutsman
- Video Engineer: Mark Burnett
- Video Crew: Mark Sinscoe (LED1), Brian B Bateman (Crew Chief), Will Stinson (Robo/Media), Wesley Goins (Projection/Cam), Austin Colby (LED/Climber), Steven R. Haskins, Christina Sepulveda, John W. Hayes, Victor Davis (Cam/LED)
- Lead Carpenter: Michael Devlin
- Set Carpenters: Carl Wayne Young, Scott Waller, Jordan Matson, Corey Settle, Julian Monsalve
- Automation Crew Chief: John Lunio
- Automation Programmer: Nick Snyder
- Automation Techs: Julian Aguirre, Anthony Dorman
- Automation Carpenter: Steven Lee Davidson
- LED Ball Tech: Pierce Scott
- Stage Kinetik Techs: Dennis Schneider, Bent Walther
- Pyro Co: Pyrotek Special Effects
- Pyro Head/Shooter: Simon Brierley
- Pyro Techs: Dave Harkness, Alex Toverada, Hayden Hale
Gear
- 2 grandMA2 Full consoles w/15 NPUs
- 55 HES SolaSpot Pro 2000 LED fixtures
- 60 HES SolaWash 19 LED fixtures
- 48 HES SolaWash 37 LED fixtures
- 34 Clay Paky Sharpys
- 26 PRG Best Boy HP Spots
- 26 PRG Best Boy Wash fixtures
- 52 PRG Icon Beams
- 32 PCK ColorBlast CB12 TR RGB LED fixtures
- 5 Chroma-Q Color Force 12 RGBA LED battens
- 79 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
- 7 PRG GroundControl followspot systems (for PRG Bad Boys)
- 1 CTI SHoW DMX Neo transceiver/receiver combo
- 2 CTI SHoW DMX Neo D4 dimmers
- 3 MDG Atmosphere APS hazers
- 3 HES FQ-100 fog generators
- 8 DF-50 Diffusion hazers
- 3 Jem AF-1 DMX fans
- 3 Reel EFX RE 2 fans
- 6 HES MMS systems
- 6 Barco HDF 30 Projectors
- 400 WinVision 9mm LED tiles
- 180 WinVision 6mm Air LED tiles
- 6 MBox 2016 X2 media server kits
- 35 Opto Box XLR5 – XLR5 X8 Pathway 9024 units
- 1 Grass Valley Karrera Sport 2 ME
- K-Frame switcher
- Fujinon 99S long lens, 17×7.6 and 12×4.5 super wide model cameras
More Drake Summer Sixteen tour photos by Steve Jennings:
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