Production designers James Scott and Louis Oliver formed Okulus Ltd. in 2014 and have since gone on to work with many clients at different stages in their careers, supporting shows in venues ranging from clubs to stadiums. PLSN spoke with Scott and Oliver about the current Chvrches tour they designed.
James Scott & Louis Oliver
Production Designers
James Scott: “So often you find yourself in a creative rut, when you’ve been staring at the same drawing for days and nothing new has slapped you in the face. It’s really exciting and energizing to have a like-minded creative to bounce ideas off. It’s a trend that is becoming more and more common in this industry. Okulus is a great platform for us both to vent our creativity and take on bigger and more challenging projects.”
Louis Oliver: “This is the second project working with Chvrches. I’ve looked after them from their beginning. So now under the Okulus brand we came up with a simple, sleek but iconic look for the band to support their second album, Every Open Eye. The way things have worked with the band in the past is that we come to the table with a few ideas as discussion points and then go from there. After we presented the band with the 3/5 Monolith idea, they loved it and how it drew the audiences eye into the performance on stage.”
James Scott: “We were given the phrase “distorted reality” as a brief, which is broad but very open to interpretation. Working with Paul ‘Pablo’ Beckett, who created the video content, is a real treat, he’s great at deciphering the babble that can be a “creative direction” and he’s forever educating us on tricks and new techniques in the world of video content creation.”
Louis Oliver: “We collaborated with Pablo of Bryte Design, coming up with concepts for each song that would work with the full production. The band’s request was that the content felt more like lighting than it did video content — so keeping everything simple, effective and responsive to the music.”
When in the initial design stages for the show, Scott and Oliver wanted to keep everything about it really minimalist, and that even went into choosing the lighting fixtures…
Louis Oliver: “We chose three fixtures — the Clay Paky Mythos for their dynamic ability to be a beam, spot or wash; the Philips Showline Nitro 510C for the flexibility in control, using them primarily for eye-candy effects and strobing — as we wanted any effects or large moments to accent the music and not just be a ‘strobe’ moment; and then the Martin MAC Aura, which are strategically placed around the stage to highlight certain areas of the performance. Any one element out of all of these wouldn’t make the show, it’s when we combine them all together that each fixture really begins to shine.”
Scott and Oliver say that one of the best advantages they had when prepping for this tour was the opportunity to sit in a studio for weeks prior to the productions rehearsals. That gave them the time to be very subjective over what they were creating.
James Scott: “That’s not always possible when you’re under time pressures on site. We live-capture everything we are producing and present it to the artist for feedback. It’s a great way of working and gives you the time on site to focus 100 per-cent on tweaking from virtual to real word. And, of course, it gives the crew time to amend / repair / modify the equipment before the tour starts.”
Louis Oliver: “We spent a couple of weeks in pre-viz (using WYSIWYG), setting up the show, programming the lighting and video elements, then bringing it all together under time-code. When we got into production rehearsals (three days in Glasgow, Scotland) this allowed us to spend 100 percent of the time rehearsing and making edits and refining the show.
Everyone that has been brought on board for this latest campaign has given 110 percent all of the time, A big thanks to all suppliers, and specifically Michael Cristino, our video tech, who I wouldn’t have been able to do the first few months of touring without due to his hard-working attitude and dedication to the job.”
Crew
- Production Designers: James Scott, Louis Oliver/Okulus Ltd.
- Lighting Director: Louis Oliver
- Lighting Companies: SES (U.S./Michael Brammer), PRG (Europe/Roy Hunt)
- Lighting Crew Chief: Troy Grubb (U.S.)
- Tour Manager: Cara McDaniel
- Production Manager: Anders Karlsson
- Production Assistants: Sara Monroe (U.S.), Felicity Pilsworth (Europe)
- Video Content: Paul “Pablo” Beckett
- Video/LED Company: Screenworks (U.S./Randy Mayer)
- Video/LED Supplier: SET (U.S./Jim Brammer)
- Video Techs: Marty Vidinha, Michael Cristino (U.S.), Richard Corns (Europe)
- Stage Manager/Backline: Gareth Russell
- Trucking Supplier (Europe): Fly By Nite/David Coumbe
- Freight: Sound Moves/David Gleave, Darren Cox
Gear
- 1 grandMA2 Light console
- 22 Clay Paky Mythos
- 22 Martin MAC Auras
- 46 Philips Showline Nitro 510C
- 2 MDG ATMe Hazers
- 63 ROE MC-7H video panels
- 1 Hippotizer Rackoon media server
More CHVRCHES 2016 tour photos by Steve Jennings at www.plsn.me/PLSN-Chvrches-2016.
