Rob Sinclair
Production & Lighting Designer
Rob Sinclair, who has been involved with System of a Down (SoaD) since 2017, admits he was a little surprised when he got the call. “I think I may have said, ‘I’m the English guy with glasses. I don’t do metal shows,’ but I think that was the point. They wanted a new perspective. We’ve been talking about this redesign since 2019 for a tour in 2020 and, as with many things, it got put on the shelf when the pandemic hit.” They then realized that their previous idea had become too expensive and they couldn’t fabricate anything. Production Manager Chris Roberts then called Sinclair and said, “Let’s do a proper old school rock show,” to which Sinclair agreed that it seemed like a great idea.
“I thought it might be interesting to blend old and new; see how they worked together. We needed to be smart with money, though. Our friends at SGPS had some pods that we could bolt together to make mega pods, a bigger surface and needing less winches.” Sinclair then called Curry Grant at PRG who probably regrets admitting that he had 230 VL5s available. “I don’t think he thought for a minute that I’d take them. From there it all came together: 216 VL5s—with pan and tilt disconnected—in the roof and 216 PARs to fill the space. Then a back wall of [Claypaky] Mythos, which are punchy, more modern and available to us in quantity.” Sinclair says you forget a lot of things like how much power is needed, how much cable, how much weight, how slowly the lights responded. “Hopefully, we used this as an opportunity to do something unusual.”
Sinclair says he always likes to work with [lighting programmer] André Petrus for shows whenever he can. “We’ve worked on Greta Van Fleet and the Savage X Fenty shows already this year. He understands how I work, he’s super fast on the console and has a wicked sense of humor. We had about a week to program. It involved some late nights, but it wasn’t too terrible. The difficulty with SoaD—Lighting Director Matt Arthur and I experienced this last time, too—is that the songs are hard. There’s a lot of strange twists and turns, and you hit a wall trying to program too many in a day.”
SoaD bassist Shavarsh “Shavo” Odadjian is the visual member of the band who worked closely on the show from the first ideas. “He comes when we program and always has great input. He wanted some places to go on stage as well. We’d had success with the ego risers in the previous show; we also have a backline ramp. I’m incredibly grateful to the whole team for pulling the show together using some pretty cranky technology. Corey Tom and his PRG crew, and Tony Dorman and the SGPS guys worked way above and beyond with smiles on their faces. It’s always great to build shows with brilliant people and even better to build them with my friends—Matt, André, and Meg Dougherty—who did additional programming on the show. You couldn’t wish to spend time with better people in a dark room full of PAR cans!”
Sinclair has known Matt Arthur a long time, working as technicians together for Lite Alternative in the early 2000s. “He took over the Keane tour when I stopped touring with them and was the only choice for SoaD in 2017. His dedication, timing and precision is second to none, and he’s now an essential part of the SoaD team. As we know, it’s a strange time to be alive, and Matt only managed to get into the U.S. just in time to see us load out of rehearsals. He taught himself the show—that André had programmed—at home in London while he was waiting for his visa to arrive.”
Matt Arthur
Lighting Director
Matt Arthur notes he didn’t have much time, preproduction-wise. As mentioned, he was working on the show in London for about a month before rehearsals with a console and a visualizer. Petrus set up the file as per his layout and Arthur laid out the cue points of all the songs as a base start. “André was always going to do all the serious programming, as it made sense to not be fixing anyone else’s programming. At that time, the idea was that I would look at the show in previz, knowing the music, and set a bit more. I would come up with ideas about what certain moments could look like when we all got together at LMG for the two weeks of actual production rehearsals to throw ideas around for real. But that wasn’t how it played out at all with hiccups with my visa; I spent zero time actually at production rehearsals with both Rob and André in the same room. I arrived at LMG literally as they were loading out! The first time André and I actually sat together at the consoles was at the first load-in and the show was already in the board. André left on the first show day, and then I took it from there and started to adjust some things to generally make it bigger in a real space. I had a console in my hotel room with WYSIWYG to keep it moving forward, so no days off. Luckily we also had Meg Dougherty around, who was drafted in to potentially take over if my visa didn’t come through, and she helped me a lot with the edits on the show days,” Arthur adds.
“The great method that André implemented was to timecode all the songs, which sounds weird for SoaD, but it was a really good way to just let the songs run and watch what cue points they had programmed rather than guessing what all the hit buttons were for. It is a manual show after all, so I would tap along with all the hits on the console cushion to practice and then muted the timecode and ran it for real to get my muscle memory going. It was a really good and easy way for anyone to learn a show; even a SoaD show.”
Arthur says he hadn’t run a PAR show for a long time, and certainly not a large PAR rig, so it was calling on the “old ways” to a certain extent to try and create an authentic older-style PAR show. “The VL5s had the pan and tilt disabled—due to the tight space of the pods—so their positions were dictated by the angle of the pods; that helped keep it fresh and create some authentic looks. The shapes that were created with the six ‘mega pods,’ as Rob called them, were very cool too and a great way to keep the show moving and to have the impact where you needed it. Then add in the 96 Mythos on the upstage wall and wing trusses—we were never short of options. Working with PARs and VL5s again was a big realization about how far technology has come. The amount of power, dimmer racks, external repeaters and cabling required for one light is quite something. I can’t recall the amount of 400A services—and generators—we needed, but it was a lot! As for the rest of the rig, having the [PRG] Ground Control followspots again is such a game changer. The JDC1s, Mythos, PRG Best Boys are all good workhorses and they all stood up to the challenge as expected.”
Arthur gives a tip of the hat to PRG’s Tom and all the lighting crew. “All really lovely people, at the top of their game. Curry Grant from PRG was our account handler, and he looked after us very well and made sure everything was in order. I have worked with Rob on many things over the years, and he has given me many opportunities to showcase my skills, so I thank him for that. His designs are always new and challenging, and he will always push the boundaries of ‘the norm’ to explore things that I wouldn’t normally think about—which also helps to develop your own knowledge base and experience. I had never worked with André before, but what a lovely guy; talented and extremely fast programmer. He created some amazing looks for this show. I really wanted to spend more time with him in the flesh to watch his workflow, generally learn from him about his MA methods but alas, that never really happened, but the time I did have with him both virtually, and in person, I enjoyed.”
Crew
- Production & Lighting Designer: Rob Sinclair
- Lighting Director: Matt Arthur
- Lighting Programmer: André Petrus
- Additional Lighting Programmer: Meg Dougherty
- Lighting Co: PRG
- PRG Account Rep: Curry Grant
- Lighting Crew Chief: Corey Tom
- Lighting Techs: Doug Eder, Rob Simoneaux, Scott Amiro, Craig Kreider, Kevin Hartrum
- Tour Manager: Gage Freeman
- Production Managers: Chris Roberts, Paul Binder
- Production Coordinator: Trish Quinto
- Staging Co: SGPS/ShowRig
- SGPS Rep: Eric Pearce
- Automation Techs: Tony Dorman, Daniel Sturman, Tim “Squid” Fincannon Stage Manager: Aaron Draude
- Kabuki Drapes: Sew What?
- Motors: Jesse Sucomoto
- Trucking: Source 7
- Riggers: Mike “Knuckles” Dunn, Dave Townsend
- Security Manager: Andy Peloquin
Gear
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA 2 full Lighting Console
- 96 Claypaky Mythos 2
- 23 GLP JDC1 Strobe
- 39 PRG Best Boy HP Spot
- 3 PRG Bad Boy Spot
- 9 PRG GroundControl Remote Followspot System w/ Bad Boy Spot
- 16 TMB Solaris Flare
- 216 Vari-Lite VL5 w/ Stipple Lens
- 108 PAR64, Long Nose, Black, NSPw/ Lee 202
- 108 PAR64, Long Nose, Black, NSP w/ Lee 205
- 8 Reel EFX DF-50 Diffusion Hazer
- 6 High End Systems F-100™ Performance Fog Generator
More photos by Steve Jennings:
