Lighting and stage designers have the tools at their disposal to create shows that a previous generation of LDs could only dream about. But the complexity of today’s sets and shows often requires repeat visits to the electronic drawing board, with an occasional reality check from someone eyeing the budget and logistics.
“There were about 14 iterations of the design,” says Patrick Dierson, performance environment designer for Artfag LLC, of R. Kelly’s Double Up tour last fall. “Although the lighting itself was “fairly straightforward,” the stage design was more complex. “Robert wanted to open the show with the song "The Champ" off of his latest album, Double Up. The sequence would be reminiscent of a Mohammed Ali prize fight with the fighter arriving in a boxing ring.” Dierson says.
Prizefights may not be that difficult to stage, but in this case, “we spun a square boxing ring 45 degrees and decided to make a triangular stage that came to an apex point at its downstage edge. From there Robert wanted to have boxing ropes slowly rise out of the stage so that the whole scene would transform over the course of the song intro and thus not be revealed before the show began.”
The unusual stage design became the most significant design directive that Dierson would need to follow. “Because this opening part of the show was so important to Robert I knew that we'd have to design the rest of the visual element around this base framework,” Dierson says.
“Robert already had a very well defined vision for how he wanted the show to flow,” Dierson says, noting that Kelly’s clarity of vision helped speed the design process. “We pretty much nailed the rough design of the show within our first meeting.”
The basic concept, Dierson says, was to have the show “broken into four segments or ‘circles.’ Each circle had a tempo. The first would be hard-driving and largely comprised of Robert's upbeat hits. The second circle was reserved for the slower jams and had a very sexy feel to it. The third was mainly about collaborations with other artists while the fourth and final circle was to be an over-the-top finale with a focus on incorporating the audience and conveying a sense of community and unity.”
Dierson’s strategy to effectively light this flow of rhythm and action was to create “moving pods” over the stage. He didn’t need sophisticated design tools to sketch out his initial plan for the lighting and stage, either. “As with most designs, I started with simple pencil sketches. In fact, those sketches started with that first meeting at Robert's house.”
If the initial concept required little more than pencil, paper, and a little creative thought, digital technology served the designers well in visually communicating the nuances of what they had in mind.
Together with Artfag designers Justin Collie, Spike Brant and Zack Guthimiller, “we started to work things up in VectorWorks and Renderworks,” Dierson says. “We use that CAD package for the primary layout as well as our renderings. Our hybrid symbols incorporate the ESP vision 3D representations with a lot more added detail so it allows us to create hyper-realistic build drawings as well as renderings.”
“Justin handled all of the renderings and created each of the packages that
were presented to the artist,” Dierson adds. “It gave us the ability to show the various
viewing angles, potential seating sales, and the staging footprint.” That footprint, Dierson says, was of particular importance to the promoter because of the unusual stage layout.
“It wasn't necessary for us to create animations for the client but we did use some flyarounds and fly-throughs for our own design purposes. It's something that VectorWorks does very easily and helps greatly when you're trying to visualize the sight lines and open up as many sellable seats as possible. “
Aside from the stage layout, “the only other main directive given was that Robert wanted to be able to get up higher to audience members in the surrounding seating levels,” Dierson says. Kelly’s idea of rising to the balconies “was a concept that we toyed with for a long time because there were so many possible solutions to it but very few of them were realistic,” Dierson says.
Dierson happened to be at the Wynn Las Vegas resort and casino in Las Vegas, where he has done extensive work, and drew inspiration from the curving escalators outside the Parasol Down bar. The elevation solution, he realized, would be a “multi-level catwalk with curved stairways.”
Although the basic idea for the stage and lighting emerged early on, “one of the main traits of Artfag designs is that they tend to be very layered and thus have a lot of visual depth and artistic options,” Dierson says. So while the basic concept could be finalized quickly, the many individual details were harder to pin down.
“The staging and props were a design process that didn't stop until the opening week,” Dierson says. “It was a delicate balance of giving the artist everything that he desired while still being able to pull it off on a day-to-day basis, given the challenges of the tour routing, which was also very much in flux up until that same time.”
The video elements, Dierson adds, “posed the most rethinks,” many of them last-minute. “We wanted a combination of high-res and low-res elements but wanted the low res stuff to be integrated as custom scenic pieces.”
In the early stages, the designers pushed for the ultimate in visual impact. “The original pass had three 16:9 screens at various angles across the back of the stage separated by tubes of low resolution video columns. Justin had suggested that we fill the same space with a full hi-res video wall that was at a perfect opposing curvature of the stage. We knew that it would be massive, not just in visual feel, but also in weight and rigging requirements.”
Collie, Dierson adds, “did some renderings of it and the look was absolutely gorgeous. Robert was in full agreement when he saw them and we were about to move forward with that concept.”
But then a dose of reality set in. The set and lighting might be as breathtaking as the Taj Mahal, but almost as difficult to set up, break down, and rebuild. “We started to receive rumors of the proposed routing schedule for the tour and we began to realize that this might be an unrealistic expectation,” Dierson says.
He credits Artfag project coordinator Michael Goodwin for one of the most critical design influences for a show: its budget. “He was constantly wrangling the numbers of this project to help set the client up for success in what we knew would be an accelerated bidding process,” Dierson says. “He also has a knack for knowing how to pull the reins back,” keeping the visions of the artist and design team grounded in reality.
Goodwin’s talent served the production well, because “the initially proposed routing that we were seeing, which also became very close to the reality, was unlike any other that we had seen before. We ultimately settled on a hybrid version of the video system. That was comprised of two 4:3 video walls angled upstage at 45 degrees and a center 16:9 wall, all separated and flanked by our custom low-res scenic pieces.”
Although the initial design meeting took place months before rehearsals, the project still faced a series of tight deadlines and production crunches. “We started our first round of meetings last June (2007) and went into pre-visualization programming the last week of October,” Dierson says. “But the final trigger wasn't pulled until four weeks before we were to walk into rehearsals, which was extremely ambitious given the scope of the project. It immediately became an accelerated process for all of the vendors involved, particularly for Atomic Design and Staging Dimensions, who were handling the scenic and staging builds.” (Light Action supplied the Staging Dimensions staging equipment and techs for the tour.)
“We made a last minute decision to move our pre-viz programming sessions from New York to Upstaging's in-house facility in Illinois due to the fact that there would be need for me to be with the artist for meetings that close to rehearsals as well as his desire to be involved with our end of the process. Just about everything came down to logistics at that point so it only made sense to move everything close to Robert's rehearsal space in Illinois,” Dierson says.
“After a week of pre-viz at Upstaging we then moved into our tech build at the Sears Center in Chicago,” Dierson adds. Once there, “we only had four days to build this monster before talent would be joining us for full rehearsals.”
Dierson relied on outside vendors to help the production through its frenetic rush toward the opening show. Prelite LLC, already on tap to create the ESP Vision pre-viz files, “was called upon to send us an onsite pre-viz system so that we could continue programming throughout the tech build,” Dierson says, noting the loss of “access to our lighting and video system for several days. It also greatly assisted in helping to tech-out the system because the technical personnel could simply walk over to our screens and see exactly what should be happening in reality.
“Once we were through the tech build,” Dierson adds, “we continued to rehearse in the Sears Center for another week before moving to our opening night venue in Columbus, GA. We spent another week in Georgia continuing with rehearsals and changes just before opening,” Dierson says.
Projection surfaces and screen placement figured more prominently in the early, broad-stroke stages of the design process. “It was when we got into pre-viz and started to create the show that the video content started to come into play,” Dierson says.
“We have a large library of stock media server content that we've compiled over the years and we used that as the basis for the majority of our video work. Most of our manipulated clips would be played back from PRG's M-Box and given the effects that it can produce the possibilities are endless,” he adds.
“Our video programmer, Dirk Sanders, was able to work magic with the stock stuff making it look completely different from the original clips.” Even so, “there were many pieces that we knew we would need to have produced. These included aerial effects for the (High End Systems) DL-2 units, pieces that would also play back audio clips for the performances, and some intermission comedy pieces that would be compiled onsite during the rehearsal period.”
Dierson says the design team worked with several companies to develop the video content, “each chosen based on a specific strength or timeframe need. Mike Sear and his team at Teamworks Media in Chicago were utilized for anything that required professionally shot footage of the artist as well as anything that would require audio playback during the show,” Dierson says, adding that their Chicago home base also helped with logistics.
“Rodd McLaughlin and the staff at Idyll Hands Imagery were tasked with creating the aerials footage for the DL-2s,” Dierson adds. “They're very good with creating eye-candy and have extensive experience with the DL-2s so they knew exactly what I was after for these units. They made the beams of light look much more organic and liquid than what was available natively in the units.
“Mode Studios out of Seattle were called upon to create a very specific piece for the show,” Dierson continues. “It was a jungle sequence of fairly epic proportion that the artist threw at me somewhat last minute. I had watched the choreography of the piece and discussed with Robert what he had in mind for it all and we were both in agreement that it needed something visually special in terms of content. I called Bob Bonniol at Mode and he was able to have his team jump on it right away. It was a piece that would ultimately involve rotoscoping monkeys swinging from vines along with a plethora of other visual elements.”
“Another very last minute call went out to Mode Studios just a couple of days
before our opening night,” Dierson says. “The rehearsal process was pretty exhaustive on
everyone involved. People were working very long hours. We all had video cameras at the ready as well. When you put that combination together there's bound to be some shenanigans caught on tape.”
More than a few shenanigans, it turns out. “We had several hours of footage showing various members of the production team falling asleep on the job and being rudely awoken at one point or another. Robert's a bit of a prankster at heart and he ultimately decided that we should put this footage together and make an entertaining blooper reel of everyone being disturbed from their slumbers.”
That footage, combined with a variety of video "shout outs" from other artists to R. Kelly, “was a perfect intermission video as we went into the second quarter of the show, which is based around Robert's collaborative works,” Dierson says.
“The ideas were all well and good but we were about 48 hours away from our opening show and this really required the attention of a professional editor onsite to make the necessary edits and changes in time. Mode sent Matthew Skerritt, their finest video editor out to us on an emergency flight and he did a fantastic job creating some very creative pieces for us.”
Although lighting came first, Dierson notes a “chicken and egg” scenario of mutual design influences between lighting and video. “During our jungle sequence, we knew that we would have very specific, pre-produced video content that would set our specific color tones throughout the piece. Lighting naturally followed its lead. In other nstances the video followed suit. “
Audio was another key consideration for the lighting design. “Throughout the first quarter of the show, there are various explosions that take place. Some are accompanied by pyro, others aren't. In all instances I had decided that the entire visual space should be affected by that audio element. The lighting naturally had a rather random strobe hit to it while the entire pixel space on stage shook violently and took a deliberate static hit. This gave the effect of the music hits being so powerful that the entire performance environment was violated.”
Last-minute changes and surprises are inevitable for any production built “on an absolutely massive scale for an arena tour with custom staging, custom scenic pieces, custom props, custom lighting fixtures, and custom control software, all pulled together within five weeks time, ” Dierson notes. After a while, he adds, it gets to the point where “the surprises tend to stop being surprises. You become more surprised by things that go smoothly.”
In that respect, “there were two things that surprised me the most,” Dierson says. “The first were the two major pieces of software that drove the whole thing. The Control Freak Systems 'Encore Bridge' which drives all of the video mapping, routing, and so on, and the (MA Lighting) GrandMA control system did not crash once throughout the entire programming process. I know that both systems are stable which is why we tend to use them as our first choice for control but they're still computers so you're likely to see them take a dive at some point. But these two pieces never ever crashed.”
The second surprise, Dierson says, was R. Kelly himself. “The last thing that I expected was to actually have fun working with Robert, given the production schedule. There simply was not enough logical time to pull this off and still be able to casually goof around. Under circumstances like this you expect both the artist and the designer to be so incredibly high-strung that neither will be enjoyable to be around,” Dierson says.
“This process was the complete opposite,” Dierson says. “The guy was so dialed in with his performance and so confident in the entertainment value of what we were all producing that we both ended up being relaxed enough to joke around and have fun. I doubt that we'd be filming our friends falling asleep and putting it in a blooper reel for the show on the opening day if the stress level was so high. His relaxed attitude and defined creative vision made him an absolute pleasure to work with.”
