Global pop star Pitbull is out on tour where we caught up with lighting designer & director Michael Smalley and Team Pitbull on the sold-out co-headline date with Enrique Iglesias. We got some background on Smalley who says “I was always playing with lighting and sound gear since I was a child.” He got involved in those aspects in school, and when he got to college, he pursued a degree in technical theatre. His focus quickly changed to concert lighting and set design after seeing a few notable concerts, such as Phish and Chris Kuroda’s lighting design. Smalley worked shows in local bars, and then, in early 2004, hit the road with a band called Moonshine Still.
It was the definition of roughing it, he says… “Two lights — a Coemar ProSpot 250 and a MAC 250+ — set up on conga stands.” He used a Martin Light Jockey to control them along with whatever house gear he could tie in to. Learning a great deal in those early years with the tools he had, he eventually teamed up with a friend, purchased some gear and started doing EDM type shows and was introduced to a great deal of contacts with the EDM scene. Those networks eventually led to working with then-rising DJ/Producer Bassnectar. The years spent working with him was paramount in his development as an artist, he says. As Bassnectar grew to headlining festivals and playing arenas, Smalley was given access to a wide range of gear including the grandMA, which was the biggest development in his technical skill set as a designer and programmer.
“The grandMA2 is simply the greatest console, I wouldn’t use anything else,” he says. “It’s powerful and built for designers and programmers.” He then went to work with Animal Collective and Stone Sour, who were a far cry from the EDM world he worked so many years with — a completely cue-stacked show was anything but gradual, he says, but the band was more than happy to let him explore, experiment, and often, he admits, fall short. Returning to his EDM roots with the band Big Gigantic as well as touring with pop/R&B performer Tamar Braxton and the rock band Daughtry, these last two acts were his first real experiences with time-coding lighting and video for a touring show.
Michael Smalley, Lighting Designer & Director
“I learned a ton from these very different shows both technically and artistically. For every tour and artist I’ve worked with I’ve always been the designer and director. I’ve never actually gone out and operated another person’s show. While I was on tour with Daughtry, the manager gave me and my business partner, Gabriel Fraboni, a call and asked us if we were interested in designing the upcoming Pitbull tour. We were immediately intrigued and excited about the opportunity.
“As far as design concept goes, our first real challenge was the video content. Fortunately, Pitbull has a very specific and clear image. It’s classy, sophisticated and clean. James Bond mixed with Miami and Latin culture. The ideas just started rolling in my head from the get-go. We also had a gigantic upstage video wall for this show. I knew, first and foremost, that I didn’t want to just plaster music videos up on the 60-by-40-foot surface, so we would need to find ways of breaking up the surface through out the show. Gabriel and I came up with the idea of doing strips of video that could tell the storyline of the videos, almost like a comic book, and have a bit of a throwback to the opening credit sequences of James Bond movies. We were given access to a ton of behind-the-scenes footage that his photographer and documentarian Greg Watermann shot. Designing both the lighting and video content for this show allowed me to really blend all the elements seamlessly. I started with the video first, but knew exactly what my approach to the lighting was going to be, so there was no struggle merging the two together. Pitbull is a powerhouse of a performer, while also being one of the most generous and personable artists I’ve ever worked with. I wanted to convey the duality of him as an Icon, while still being approachable.
“Collaborating with an artist that is at once direct as well as open to input was refreshing. He absolutely let me go where I wanted to, creatively, and was extremely encouraging throughout. After the very first shows he told me, ‘the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.’ Those words have fueled our shows’ progression. Once out on tour, I spent my time tweaking both lighting and video content to make things tighter and better, mostly for my own satisfaction as an artist. I think everyone in our camp has that mindset.
“The main rig had been locked in right before I got hired on the tour. So I was really just involved in what fixtures we’d use just for the Pitbull show. We decided to add 72 [Martin] MAC 101s, a fixture I had been using for years. They are simply a fantastic fixture for size, output, and price point. They seemed a logical choice to fill up the space on our band risers. The choice turned out to be a great one as it made the floor package extremely dynamic and energetic. Upstage of our band riser system, we added a row of 10 [Martin] MAC III AirFX’s. I used these fixtures the previous summer on a tour with Papa Roach and really loved the flexibility of the beam and the sure power of the fixture. Our risers were very tall, and I placed these directly on the floor a good 10 feet upstage. While envisioning the design, I kept wanting to have some lights that looked like sun rays on the horizon, much like Sade’s [2011] Soldier of Love Tour, which has deeply inspired me the last few years. They were bright enough to stand out against the video wall. We also added another 10 [Elation] Platinum Beam 5Rs inline with them to continue some of the elements in the flown rig.
“What really made me enjoy using Chaos Visual Productions on this tour was the expertise of their techs — especially Doug Hallman and Bo O’Brien. These two guys are the definition of dedication and customer service. Doug was especially exceptional. He had to deal with the needs of both myself and Enrique’s team. No small task, considering we both had different servers and means of controlling them. I chose to use ArKaos MediaMaster Pro on this tour. I had been using it for well over five years and found it to be stable and easy to use. Our entire show is time-coded, so the ArKaos was receiving DMX via Art-Net to trigger clips, and we used MediaMaster’s VideoMapper software to handle screen allocations. On the second leg of this tour, we decided to add I-Mag to the show. We decided to develop animated borders and build alpha channels into our existing content, so that we could integrate I-Mag into the concepts for video we already had. Doug was integral in manifesting this. He did a bit of R&D to figure out how we could best accomplish this, given the limitations of the servers we already had, and Bo was great at getting the shots I wanted when we did use I-Mag. Both guys took personal pride in accomplishing the vision I wanted. It takes a village to get things like this done and they were the best.
“We really only functionally had three weeks to develop all the content and lighting — a really tight schedule. Gabe [Fraboni] and I worked around the clock to get it done. It was one of the most exhausting and rewarding processes of our careers. Creatively, I felt on fire. We only had one full day on the actual rig. We programmed three songs total with the rig; everything else was done in previz using Capture Polar. We spent as much time each day on tour tweaking as we could. I’m never satisfied, so I’m always changing and tweaking the show. The biggest changes were the Platinum Beams, they were originally spec’d as Sharpys, but were changed last minute. It took a little time to change those profiles around, but it wasn’t terribly difficult. I think the biggest challenge is having never seen the full show until the very first night of tour. Incorporating Spot cues and dancer key lights was a daily challenge the first couple of weeks. I tried to make the cues as flexible as possible in pre-production so I wasn’t locking myself in once the tour got underway.
“Production manager Max Kernich is also the set designer. We have a riser augmented with [Martin MAC] 101s and a little bit of video. Pit is all about interaction, whether it be with the crowd, the dancers, or the band. Our current setup gives him a clear line of sight and access to all of those. Max and I, as well as the rest of the camp, are all really excited about the future and having more time to collaborate on the next environment of the Pitbull experience. Max is brilliant at hand-drawing his ideas; I’m more based in CAD to brainstorm. We’ve been having a great time bouncing ideas off of each other. SGPS is a great staging company, and the guys they sent out were awesome.
“Doing a co-headline tour with such individually accomplished artists and with very different stage setups can be a serious task. It took every member of the crew working all day to get it done. I loved my techs from all the vendors — I was always met with a smile, regardless of the struggles they were experiencing. I feed off teamwork. In my mind, it’s the most empowering thing in the world, and I appreciate their dedication to my vision and the vision of the artist. A specific thank you to my lighting crew chief John Santos and his Christie Lites team. Those guys are the real deal, and I can’t wait to work with them down the road.”
Crew
Lighting Designer &
Director: Michael Smalley
Lighting Co: Christie Lites
Lighting Crew Chief: John Santos
Lighting Techs: Dave Albert, Colin Frye, Daniel Knight, Patrick Flynn, Ryan Hodge
Christie Lites Rep: Robert Roth
Video Content: Michael Smalley, Gabriel Fraboni
Video Director: Michael Smalley
Production Manager/
Set Designer: Max Kernich
Production Coordinator: Misty Roberts
Tour Manager: Frida Karlsson
Stage Manager: Rafael Gantus
Video Co: Chaos Visual Productions
Staging: SGPS
Trucking: Stage Call
Gear
Lighting:
2 grandMA2 Full consoles w/ 4 NPUs
41 Martin MAC 2000 Wash XB’s
34 Martin MAC Vipers
10 Martin MAC III Air FX’s
102 Martin MAC 101’s
28 Elation Platinum Beam 5R
21 Atomic 3000 strobes
21 Atomic Color Scrollers
10 Thomas 4-Lite Molefays
4 DF-50 hazers
Video:
2 ArKaos MediaMaster Pro 3.0 units on MAC towers
2 ArKaos MediaMaster Pro V3.2.2 units
4 Folsom Image Pro scaler/switchers
420 WinVision 9mm LED display panels
For more Pitbull tour photos by Steve Jennings go to plsn.me/PitbullJenningsShots2015
