Following the mid-June release of Linkin Park’s The Hunting Party album and 30 Seconds To Mars’ Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams in mid-May, “The Carnivores” tour, which also featured opening act AFI, took shape this year. The 25-date arena and shed trek kicked off in early August at the Cruzan Amphitheatre (West Palm Beach, FL) and we caught up with the tour where it wrapped up Sept. 19 at the Concord Pavilion (outside San Francisco).
The combination of three compelling alt rock bands on a single bill led to a string of packed dates, although there were also considerable logistical challenges to overcome, including a very short time frame (in fact, no time at all) for LD Oli Metcalfe to tinker with the nuances of the actual rig in a darkened venue for Linkin Park’s looks before the first show.
“I had to rely 100 percent on previsualization tools,” he notes. While the virtual world is never an ideal substitute for an actual 3D immersive environment — rehearsal time spent in a real (and darkened) space with the actual rig — didn’t keep Metcalfe from crafting knockout looks for Linkin Park’s performances.
Oli Metcalfe
Lighting Designer/Director
“For the Linkin Park tour, I was approached by their longtime production manager, Jim Digby, about designing the tour. He had been given my name by the band’s management. I must assume they and the band were able to have seen some of my previous work with Muse in North America throughout 2013. I had started to base the show’s narrative on an idea that Joe Hahn (DJ for Linkin Park) wanted to achieve for their show. This formed the basis for the cubic video elements and, of course, the stage layout for the performance space. I wanted to re-explore the cubic video idea, and the V-Thru offered a great way to do this.”
Virtual Prep
“I was given no physical time with the system at all prior to show one. I had to rely 100 percent on previsualization tools in order to program lighting and video, which can present its own problems. It was a challenge to convey the show’s flow and formation to the band from the virtual world too. I can see past the limitations in these offline systems, but my client found it more difficult. We did have three days in the first venue in order to work out the physical build of the production, but this was by no means ideal when most of this time is spent under full work light in order for everyone to make the systems work.”
Support from Christie Lites
“This is the first time that I have been asked to work with Christie Lites. Martin Kelley (account manager for Christie) offered up an inventory. I really like their ‘F’-type trussing system, and I think they have some elegant packaging solutions for their equipment. Having a full set of all the Martin products, they were able to give me the tools I was happy to embrace. I had to bend on my spec for the truss spots, which were initially Robert Juliat FLOs; these quickly became Mac IIIs and turned out to work fine given the low trim of the spot bridges. I provided all of the control infrastructure including consoles, media servers, and all of our own Art-Net nodes all the way to the DMX splitters in the Christie racks.”
A Martin-Centered Rig
“I did have [Vari*Lite] VL3500s in the design in its initial rollout. Christie Lites are a ‘Martin Shop,’ which meant I quickly turned things around in order to meet the inventory on offer, which was in this case the [MAC] Viper AirFX. I had a lot of Martin fixtures on my spec in the way of Vipers, Quantums, and Auras anyway, as I really love these fixtures for their effects, reliability and the ability to source them across the globe without too many issues. I have worked on many shows with the Auras now, they are amazing lights and team up very well with the Vipers. The Quantums were a first for me on this show and offered extreme power as well as some subtle beam effects when you start to play around with the position and rotation of the front lens. The Atomics were fine, but we did struggle somewhat with their color changers. The birth of decent-looking LED strobe is long overdue. I will begin on my next production with some of the Clay Paky Stormy CC’s.”
Ghost Town Media Video Content
“GTM provided most of the video content, based on the narrative and direction given to them by Joe Hahn. I offered up some pieces in which to fill in the gaps. Joe worked with GTM for months on the content. It was delivered to me in stages, and simply required playback and sync to the group’s Ableton elements for the show. The sections I added were implemented to fill in some gaps that appeared after the band decided to add some tracks from the show that had content commissioned to them. I added some simple elements that were animated to suit the screen geometry and also to work with a number of camera looks and styles for a selection of tracks.
“Skip Twitchell, the video director, worked backstage to cut the camera feeds to me. I could work with up to four inputs from camera world. Skip knows the show so well, having worked with the group for a number of years now; he was always firing the money at me no matter what chaos might be happening up on stage. We added several looks, layouts and styles to the camera feeds, which added a great deal of energy to the screen formations.”
Staging the Show
“I had fun working with PM Jim Digby, he and I both knew that I was on the back foot from day one because of the no pre-production rehearsal scenario of which I knew would be a tough aspect to deal with. Jim helped to soften the blow and was very supportive in helping me to achieve what was needed for the show, which was to be straight out of the gates. It was a challenge to work with Linkin Park because they were unable (as a band) to convey what they wanted for the show. It’s difficult because you don’t know if you are living up to their expectations, and you never will… I would get constructive comments from management when they were at the shows or Jim if he had something to say. Jim made the decisions on budget, he worked solely with Christie and [PRG] Nocturne to make the numbers work, I had no involvement in this process, which was a good thing for the creative department.
“For staging, I worked with Matt Hales at Tait. I was able to send 3D geometry and specs to him. He countered to Jim, and I with a lovely set of drawings and costs. Tait constructed the risers with custom integration for the video as well as a grilled 60-foot-wide stage extension, which housed the monitors and air conditioning. Their engineering on elements such as risers and custom staging are things they can turn out as bread and butter; hence it was executed well. It was a simple build on a daily basis and allowed flexibility depending on the venues offerings.”
Summing Up
“Learning to deliver a full show under a virtually programmed environment with no time, with the complete (working) system until show one, will never be ideal. Having the support of a great crew and people who know how one likes to work is all important, especially when conceiving these shows. I was aided with the help of my small team of people back in the studio. Thanks to Darragh [McAuliffe] and Steve [Belfield] for offering day to day support on the road with this show as well as their continued hard work on many productions to come in the future.”
Crew
Lighting Designer/Director: Oli Metcalfe
Lighting Co: Christie Lites
Lighting Crew Chief: Chris Maeder
Lighting Crew: Darragh McAuliffe, Ian Saunders,
Will Anglin, Jason Hicks
Video Co: PRG Nocturne
Video Content/Creator: GTM/Oli Metcalfe
Video Director: Skip Twitchell
Video Techs: Mike Warow, Jorden Goodfellow,
Drew Welker, Josh Marrano
Production Manager/Tour Manager: Jim Digby
Production Coordinator: Megumi Kusano
Stage Manager: Ethan Merfy
Kinesys Motion Control: Steve Belfield
Rigger: Chris Wilson
Production Electrician: Larry Adams
Staging Co: Tait
Trucking: Upstaging
Motion Control/Mother Grid: Neg Earth (U.K.)
Gear
1 High End Systems Hog 4 console
1 Catalyst Media Server
36 Martin MAC Viper AirFX fixtures
28 Martin MAC Viper Profiles
52 Martin MAC Auras
18 Martin MAC Quantum Wash fixtures
24 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes w/ colors
4 Martin MAC III Profiles (followspot mode)
4 Radiant hazers
50 Square meters Nocturne V18 LED screen panels
32 Square meters Nocturne VThru LED screen panels
18 Square meters Nocturne V28 LED screen panels
2 Long lens cameras
2 Short lens cameras
For more Linkin Park 2014 Carnivores Tour Photos by Steve Jennings, go to:
http://www.prolightingspace.com/photo/albums/linkin-park-2014-extras
