Japanese singer/songwriter/rapper George Kusunoki Miller, who performs hip-hop/alternative R&B as Joji, recently held two sold-out, one-off shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. These shows featured a production design by Travis Shirley, principal of Blank Wall Creative and production management by Andrew McClymont of Lobby Call. After the success of these two shows—they both sold out in a matter of minutes—it has been announced that Joji would be heading out on his Pandemonium Tour this fall through North America. We spoke with Shirley about the design for this unique performer, who used to be a comedian before switching careers in 2017. This was the first time Shirley is working with Joji. We also got some thoughts on putting it all together from McClymont, who has been with Joji since 2017.
Creative Direction
Every project that Shirley takes on has him in different roles—sometimes production design, lighting and production design, and sometimes creative direction. “It just depends. Joji was a full encompassing deal for me. When they reached out to me, they had a very large and ambitious goal of increasing production. They were very prepared and already had a creative deck. Usually, when I am approached by clients, they don’t really have much—a couple of ideas, phrases, and maybe some photos of a show that they like. Here, it was the other way around; they had inspiration images and a set list with some notable characteristics he was looking for in the show, one of which was he was really interested in simplicity. He wanted to keep things simple.”
To light the stage architecture, Shirley knows how to use floor lighting very effectively, and this show was no different. “It wouldn’t be a Travis Shirley show if I didn’t have a huge row of upstage floor lights,” he laughs. “When the show starts, we have a lot of floor lights—probably more floor lights than I’ve ever put on any show in my life—but we really need them because while they look great out in the audience doing aerial focuses, the real intention is to be able to flip them back towards the stage and light up all the mirror finish.” As Shirley mentioned, there are a lot of lights on the floor for these shows. “We had a big back row of [Martin] MAC Vipers and 60+ MAC Axiom Hybrids along the downstage as well as stage left and right. Hindsight being 20/20—I’d do it again to be honest. It was really needed to light all the mirrored surfaces. When we flip them around to highlight the mirrors—even for me—it was such a unique, unidentifiable look. I don’t think people really understood what was happening or what they were looking at, because the mirror is just soft enough to where the light in your eye was not super harsh, but it’s still bright enough and impactful to have some light in the audience’s face. It was a cool and unique way to do that. We’d throw gobos and prisms in the light to really help deflect it a bit. It really made the show.”
When the risers were in place, Shirley had masking created for the floor lighting. “We masked off all the risers so you couldn’t see the floor lights behind them. All these shapes and ideas originated from my original meeting with Joji and the team of just ‘simple does it.’ We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel; we were trying to find a modern approach to bring this show up to an elevated level.”
Cubes, Mirrors and Motion
There are five cubes overhead that correspond to five cubes below—four of which work in tandem serving as band risers and the fifth is the ‘Joji riser.’ “In researching his past shows, I noticed that he always had a riser up there. So, we made a large riser and then the corresponding pods to match. Due to budget and logistics, we ended up with only the Joji riser as an actual lift. It was cool as we could bring Joji down to stage level and then bring him up to—and exceed—the band level.”
All the cubes, on stage and overhead, were done with custom video panels, covered with mirrored acrylic, on the fronts. “Everything looked really intentional,” says Shirley. The mirrored acrylic over the LED video panel on the exterior of the cubes and pods is a solution from LMG that Shirley had been looking to use. The Joji show was the first time Shirley worked with LMG. It was LMG’s use of the mirror product on other shows that caught Shirley’s eye. “They won me over with this mirror product. I saw a few previous shows they’ve done, and I loved this mirror product. It was a natural transition into having LMG do this because they’re the ones who helped inspire this idea and design. Craig [Mitchell of LMG] and I have been in conversations for a year or two now. There were a couple other shows that I was potentially pitching that had some mirror product on it as well, but this is the first time I actually have used it. They seemed to be the best at doing this mirror-finish solution. Karol [Luczkiewicz] and Craig, both at LMG, did a wonderful job of reacting when they needed to react and getting done what needed to get done.”
LMG’s mirrored acrylic solution consists of acrylic cut to size for the ROE Visual CB8 panels. LMG’s fabrication partner has all the panel’s dimensions so the screws line up with the LED panel screws. The acrylic covers are mounted and travel on the LED panels. The custom CB8 panels are on the two forward facing planes of the cubes, which are built traditionally using LMG’s standard touring carts. LMG supplied all the video products for the show, as well as a full camera and switching package. The lighting, rigging, and automation solutions were supplied by Christie Lites, including a Kinesys automation system. The staging and lift automation was provided by All Access Staging and Productions.
Tight Tolerances
Shirley notes, “We had the luxury of being in Rock Lititz for about 10 days to put it all together.” The rehearsal time allowed the production team to really align what was moving and where, since there were very tight tolerances. “There was a really unique synergy between LMG and Christie in the way that the automation worked, because really there are video cubes with a separate lighting pods at the bottom of them,” explains Shirley. The lighting pod consists of Elation Professional DARTZ 360s and GLP impression X4 Bars. “While it appears to be one structure, it’s actually two individual pieces. So, inches matter in this situation. It was a really, precise type of automation and rigging aspect where it came down to making sure span sets were wrapped the same way. There were a lot of little details like that, that came into play in making sure that we had a uniform show. Christie was great, as always and of course, All Access was great; they’re the GOAT at this kind of work. This is what they do. Robert Achlimbari is my guy there; no drama and no BS. They knew exactly what to do and did it wonderfully. That was the one thing that was constant; every one of the vendors did a great job, but as you can imagine with a show of this size there’s some ups and downs. The crew was very patient with the process that we needed to go through.”
Shirley also wanted to call out the Production Manager, Andrew McClymont. “It was wonderful that Andrew is the Production Manager for Joji. He has insight into the artist unlike many production managers I’ve worked for. In some capacity, I would consider him a co-creator for these shows. I think without his willingness to collaborate, it probably would not have been successful. As I do with most tours, I walk into a team that’s already established. Joji was no exception. Joji has his lighting directors—there are two of them, Julien Reux and Justus Bradshaw. He had his video engineer—Patrick Wala. My success because of their openness to letting me come in there and work with them. I do a lot of tours, and while I’m always kind of welcomed on tours, these guys were so willing and open to seeing an outside perspective of how to produce this show that they’ve been working on for a while. Their integration and their understanding and execution of my goals are what really made it work. I am proud of the design, the show and the whole team.”
In His Own Words: Andrew McClymont, Production Manager
Balance between the artist and the designer to maintain the intended aesthetic:
“That’s actually a key role of mine in this camp. I like to work largely as a translator at times. I work on the nuts and bolts. I work on the technical, but also, I know Joji’s ideas about the content of the show, which are really different from other concerts. It’s not just a, ‘hey, we’re having all these great Joji moments, all these songs that people are familiar with and these big dramatic looks.’ Those are actually offset by another side of Joji, which is more comedic, more emphasis on the interstitial moments. I talk to Joji and the designer, helping tie all the new stage elements—all the new production pieces—together to see how they relate to Joji; how he can utilize those design elements for all the different aspects of his performance. I’m a bit of a go-between for that process and Travis was a really great ally in the mix, saying, ‘Oh, you want to do that? Yeah, we could totally do that, but let’s make it bigger.’ He gave us a lot of options and ideas.”
Working with the vendors:
“LMG has been great. Craig [Mitchell], Karol [Luczkiewicz], all of the background people, Kevin Mass, have been super helpful. They’re the ones that engineered the mirror facets and how they would integrate. They are exclusively our video vendor for it. They also have given us camera direction, which is a big thing in Joji world. He’s very cinematically minded so we’ve used that to our advantage. LMG has been great in that capacity. We also have All Access. They’ve been solid as a rock with the lift automation. They’ve been completely seamless. All Access realized everything that we’ve needed. Christie has taken on a large portion of the production, doing lighting, rigging, and automation. I have to really shout out Evan Rodecap for example, and all of the lighting techs as well as the Kinesys Tech, Charlie Pike, everybody over there, and Robert Roth, of course, was super hands-on. They integrated, they came up with the mother grid, they provided us with our rigging. They’re the ones that came up with the intricacies of riding video out and having the lighting grids stay in place. They’re our Kinesys vendor as well, which is a pretty cool system. It’s been a really cool facet for the show to augment things. It really brought out the magic of the stage elements being used on that scale.”
Playing two venerable venues, Madison Square Garden, and the Kia Forum:
“A lot of my crew has been with this camp since the very beginning, so these were insanely pivotal and exciting productions for all of us to be a part of. It’s really great to be able to have a team that could actually build up to these shows together. These are 100% apex shows for us and a real testament to Joji’s arc overall.”
Production Team
- Production Manager: Andrew McClymont, Lobby Call
- Assistant Production Manager: Andrew Minter
- Stage Manager: Steven Calley
- Tour Director: Mathias Cobbaut
- Tour Coordinator: Louisa Rochdi
- Production Designer: Travis Shirley, Blank Wall Creative
- Lighting Designer: Julien Reux
- L1/Automation Show Caller: Justus Bradshaw
- Lighting Programmer: Drew Gagney
- Lighting Crew Chief: Charles Phan
- Lighting Techs: Jason “Sarge” Hudgens, Caleb Rupers, Dante Esparza
- Dimmer Tech: Daniel Castaneda
- Technical Project Manager/ Data Manager: Evan Rodecap
- Rigging Manager: Bill Rengstl
- Lead Touring Rigger: Dan Michaels
- Kinesys Techs: Charlie Pike, Joshua Harvey
- Kinesys/Lighting Techs: James Harrelson, James Brazil
- Video Director: Johnny Hayes
- VJ/Video Op: Patrick Wala
- V2/Lead Video Tech: Joshua Platt
- EIC: Hector Alfaro
- Projectionist/Camera Op: Ryan Furr
- LED Crew Chief: Timothy O’Nell
- LED Engineer/Camera Ops: Sam Petty, Kiki Prophete
- LED Crew: Cameron Winters, Sebastian Martinez, Rudy Juarez
- Staging Carps: Eric Williams, Kendal Williams
- Set Technician, Trebuchet Programmer: Kyle Glaser
Vendors
- Lighting/Rigging/Automation: Christie Lites, Robert Roth
- Video: LMG, Craig Mitchell, Karol Luczkiewicz, Kevin Maas
- Staging & Automation: All Access, Jennifer Davies & Robert Achlimbari
- Gag Set Pieces: Lux Aeterna, Kyle Glaser
Gear
Lighting
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA2 full size
- 4 MA Lighting grandMA2 NPU
- 90 Martin MAC Viper Profile
- 62 Martin MAC Axiom Hybrid
- 113 Elation DARTZ 360i
- 22 GLP impression X4 20 Bar
- 20 GLP JDC-1 LED Strobe
- 56 TMB Solaris Flare LR+
- 3 MDG Me2 Fog Machine
- 4 Martin JEM ZR45 Fog Machine
- 4 Reel EFX DF-50
- 3 Reel EFX DMX Controlled Fan
- 8 Ultra Tec Versa Fan
Video
- 408 ROE Visual CB8 Full Panel
- 22 ROE Visual CB8 Half Panel
- 1 Lot Mirrored Acrylic Mounted on ROE CB8 Panels
- 6 Brompton Technology SX40 Processor
- 1 Resolume Media Server
- 1 Ross Carbonite 2ME Switching Package
- 1 AJA Ki-Pro Ultra Plus Record Package
- 3 Panasonic AK-UC4000 4K Camera
- 1 Sony BRCX-1000 PTZ Camera
- 4 Marshall CV500 POV Camera
- 2 Panasonic PT-RQ32K 4K Laser Projector
- 2 Screenworks Projection Surfaces
