I’m having lunch today with Paul “Arlo” Guthrie, who could well be the finest Australian export to the States since Vegemite. He has again assumed his recurring role as production designer for Fleetwood Mac’s latest world tour. The band wrapped up well over a year ago when one of the founding members, bassist John McVie, had to take a leave of absence due to health issues. But that was after another original member, Christine McVie, sat in with the band for a show in London last year. She had been missing from the lineup since 1998, and for the first time in 17 years, the five members from the powerhouse lineup of the 1970s were involved in the show. I also spoke with lighting director Chris Lose and with screens provider Danny O’Bryen about the tour.
PAUL “ARLO” GUTHRIE
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
PLSN: So how did you get involved with this act in the first place?
Paul “Arlo” Guthrie: I started working with Stevie Nicks in 1999. Around 2003, four of the remaining members went on tour, and I had the privilege of working with Curry Grant, their longtime LD, and Bruce Rodgers from Tribe. We worked in collaboration, and I’ve been designing stuff for them ever since.
I hear working with this band is different from most of your other acts. How so?
Well, with the addition of Christine, I now have five individual artists to deal with on a design basis. I came up with the production plot depicting the set, video and lighting elements. When we first sat down, they were all on board with the idea that they wanted video, however they didn’t want it broken up into pieces. Hence I have a huge video wall behind me and then worked around that.
But at no time did you concede to the normal “big-TV-behind-the-band” philosophy.
No, I didn’t. Just because I have this enormous screen didn’t have to mean I had to fill it all full of media all of the time. With that in mind, I designed three slightly curved sections of screen that hung on moving trusses. When above the band, they added to the big wall to make it look higher. At times these layers of video did come down to split into pieces in front of the big wall, but I had to make sure the band members knew what was happening, and why, for each song.
What screens and video vendor did you end up using?
Screenworks out of California looked after me. Danny O’Bryen is the account rep who provided the walls and cameras, etc. He would have to tell you precisely what gear was used. My video director was Jerry McReynolds, who did a heckuva job. We used I-Mag on some side screens and put it up on the back wall sparingly — mostly in the middle of the show — for the acoustic bits, and at the end, for the giant “sing-along-with-the-crowd” parts.
I see from the pics how you wisely came up with idea just to light parts of the screen. Such as the pyramid look displayed here.
Yes, I used two of PRG’s Mbox media servers, one for the back wall and one for the moving panels above the band. They are rock-solid, and I have a certain comfort level with them. I used a lot of video masks to blacken out parts of the rectangular LED wall when I was looking for a different shape to post my video content on. For instance, I loved the black and white scene depicted in this one photo, but I knew it would look better if I cropped it in some way that was out of the norm. Hence the curvy outline you notice on the black-and-white video pic included here.
I understand you developed a lot of the media content yourself?
Now remember, all this was “by committee,” with the band. Basically, there are three songwriters in the band, and each one contributed approximately eight of their songs to the set list. So while Stevie Nicks likes nostalgic and folklore imagery, Lindsey Buckingham leans toward more edgy and abstract visuals. So in the end, the really hard-to-make media was created by a company called Lightborne out of Cincinnati, while I myself built the easy stuff.
On to the lighting. I imagine the band and your long-standing relationship with Curry Grant played a role in choosing PRG?
Sure, I love those guys, but management has to bid it out to several vendors. In the end, PRG had the gear I wanted, and I didn’t have to substitute any fixtures. They made the price efficient, and everyone is happy. The main workhorses are the PRG Best Boys, including the new wash light. They surround the stage from the back wall to the side hang down truss torms.
I see no front lighting truss, so you must have been dependent on spotlights for all your key positions?
With this act, spotlights are a large concern. So much that each night I use six FOH spots but have four of my light crew running them so we can have better continuity. The band will notice spot mishaps, and I didn’t want my director, Chris [Lose], being called out by anyone because of errors. I used Best Boy spot products as truss spots for the three main stars who moved around the stage. They have those cool new spot handles on them, and they are all programmed into the show. We had two other regular Best Boys to backlight the bass and drummer, who stick to their positions. These lights were on a separate truss just upstage of the video wall.
I see you have a bunch of moving light pods as well.
With this video setup, I needed something different in a truss configuration. I have three curved trusses of video and the back wall. The curves are shaped in concentric sizes, so I have a depth-of-field look. I simply placed the 12 pods in rows between the video ribbons and moved them as well when the feeling was right. Obviously, the video content drove the decision of when I could lower them and when I couldn’t.
Each pod was identical and consisted of a Clay Paky B-Eye K20 in the front and center. Behind it were three Sharpy washes. On the side of each pod were also four GLP X4’s, which I grew quite fond of. I used the smaller X4S on the side floors as well for sexy sidelight.
What did you use to control all these moving pieces during the show?
First of all, the band is not big on stuff moving and flashing all the time. So we more or less set a truss or pod position for each song and stick with it until it was finished. Curry Grant and PRG bought some super truss from Tomcat and designed a mother grid that went up incredibly fast. Then the moving Tait motors were hung from the grid and utilized Tait Towers’ Navigation system to control the positions. Tait built custom frames for the LED ribbons that moved. The back video wall was stationary, but it, too, curved, just in the opposite direction of the flown bits.
Did you use any conventional light fixtures?
Funny you should ask. We had the usual audience Moles scattered across the top of the supergrid and down the side torms, but the most important two fixtures were a couple of PARs behind Mick Fleetwood, the drummer. He likes to be warm all the time, and playing hockey arenas in the winter doesn’t make it easy. So we took two gel scrollers from the Smithsonian and put them on PARs behind him. I think we carry a whole case of spares.
CHRIS LOSE, LIGHTING DIRECTOR:
PLSN: Chris, you’ve been known as a good programmer around Las Vegas for some time. How did you happen to end up here?
Chris Lose: I looked forward to moving on with my career, and Paul gave me this offer. I always wanted to tour with an arena act, and it’s certainly more fun to tell people you are the lighting director for Fleetwood Mac as opposed to being a club lighting guy. The difference in being surrounded by 16,000 people nightly as opposed to 3,000 took a little getting used to.
The band did a full month of production rehearsals. Did you program the show for Paul?
Paul has been lighting this band for so long that he knows all the nuances of each song and where to hit a cue and where not to. We split the programming time because there were just so many cues where he knew exactly what he and the artist wanted at that moment, and he’s quick to program himself. But he let me put a lot of looks together. He would just steer me in another direction if he saw something out of place. For instance, he would say things like “That’s really great and all, but we are using that trick in this other song we haven’t gotten to yet.”
Well, there were probably several new songs that needed cueing since Christine hadn’t been in the band since Paul started with them.
True. This band is a stickler on everything being in the same place as far as video, light cues and truss moves. They are accustomed to the comfort level of a stable show every night. So we had a full month of rehearsals at Fox Studio in L.A., and I was there from the get-go. This gave me the confidence that I could nail every cue. Arlo had the cue structure for all the songs the band had been playing for years. Of course, we had to fill all those cues with new looks and write seven new songs that Christine sang from scratch.
So what was different about setting up this show compared to the normal gigs you program?
Since I knew I would be out here for a year, I set it up in my own OCD fashion of numbers, which was pretty cool for me and the way I think. For instance, we don’t have regular focus positions per se, with typical labels like “fan” or “cross stage X.”
Instead, all my focus positions were simply labeled for whatever truss and pod configuration we were in for a particular song. So in my world, I would press Macro 1 to preset the start of the show. Macro 1 would have the truss pods in position 1, the lights focused in position 1, the song labeled position 1, and so on.
So with that said, I gather you didn’t have a lot of movement with the fixtures during the show?
No, that’s not what this band is about. We set a pretty pic and change intensity and color on cues to augment whatever the band and video were doing on stage. It worked out pretty cool, because each song was a totally separate look and light rig for that manner. The band doesn’t use any smoke on stage, so many of the typical dramatic moves that lights can do may not have been seen.
So with no smoke and the presence of the video elements, it probably meant no gobo patterns in the lights?
Well, it would be useless to try and see aerial break ups of the beams, but we did use gobos, for two reasons. One was to texture the set elements, and the other was because when you point any movers at the audience, we made certain not to blind anyone. By putting a slow rotating gobo in the fixture, the audience would catch a twinkle of light here and there and never be forced to shut their eyes.
DANNY O’BRYEN: NEP SCREENWORKS
PLSN: Danny, How did you get involved on this production?
Danny O’Bryen: Tour manager Marty Hom and I go way back, so when this show was going out to bid, he and I chatted so I could make an offer on what products I thought Arlo could really use on his design. Marty has worked with video director Jerry [McReynolds] for quite some time, and we all have a certain comfort level with each other.
What gear did Screenworks provide for Fleetwood Mac?
We have our own product we designed called the X-7HD video tile. These are one-meter squares of 7 mil high-definition product that look great from any angle. We built over a thousand of these panels in the last year alone to keep up with demand. The design called for a concave curve in the wall upstage, and Arlo needed that to be totally seamless. It was 55 feet wide by 23 feet high. With a band of this stature, there is no room for error, so we stepped up to the plate and nailed it.
How about all the video on trusses above the band that moved. Was that all Screenworks gear as well?
Here’s the thing, I got the concept the designer was looking for right from the get-go. Of course, he needed the best high-def screen he could utilize upstage, but there would be video pieces he would use to make all the elements appear to be one piece. Of course, this is really hard, due to the fact that the audience members were all looking at a 3D setup of video from a different angle. So the thought was we needed a product that was a little lower resolution, but not so much as 18-20 mil products provide, because that wouldn’t look as seamless from top to bottom. So we offered up the 12-mil product from Lighthouse that Screenworks has in stock. Tait built us the frames for these tiles that would perform flawlessly with their Navigation system. These convex ribbons were 56 feet wide at the most, and 3 feet, 10 inches tall.
How about the camera package and projectors for the I-Mag? All Screenworks?
All Screenworks, soup to nuts. We had two cameras behind front of house and two located back in the crowd for some off center-angled shots. Jerry also used three robocam models. The projectors and screens were ours as well.
Crew
Lighting Co: PRG
Video Co: NEP Screenworks
Production Designer: Paul “Arlo” Guthrie
Lighting Director: Chris Lose
Lighting Techs: Ronnie Beal (crew chief), Matt Levine (dimmer tech), Keith Stacey, Alison Triplett, Matt Le Roux
Tour Manager: Marty Hom
Road Manager: Allan Tate
Production Manager: Bobby Herr
Production Coordinator: Dave Rahn
Stage Manager: Bjorn Melchert
Video Director: Jerry McReynolds
Video Engineer: Jon Huntington
Lead LED Tech/Crew Chief: Gregory “Grit” Frederick
Projectionist/Camera Op: Dave Jacobs
Camera/LED Techs: Matt Lindstrom, Jeff Apregan Jr., Jason Simpkin
NEP Screenworks Rep: Danny O’Bryen
Automation Programmer: Madison Wade
Riggers: Russell Glen (head rigger), Brittany Kiefer (automation), Matt Rynes
Carpenters: Jack Deitering (head carpenter), Pat Boyd, Pete Perez
Gear
Lighting:
2 grandMA2 full size consoles
33 PRG Best Boy 4000 Spots
17 PRG Best Boy Wash fixtures
12 Clay Paky B-Eye K20s
36 Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330s
54 GLP impression X4 fixtures
12 GLP impression X4S fixtures
3 Tait LED band risers
11 PRG BAT truss sections (3x 8’, 8x 10’)
12 Tyler HUD truss (8’)
38 Tomcat 20”x30” Supergrid truss sections (26x 10’, 2x 8’, 6x 5’, 4x 3’) w/14 corner blocks
11 20.5” truss sections (9x 10’, 2x 5’)
6 12×18’ truss sections (4x 10’, 2x 5’)
52 CM motors
39 Tait Navigator hoists
1 Tait Navigator control system
Video:
1 Concave LED wall (upstage), made from Screenworks X7-HD (55’4” by 23’, WxH)
3 Convex LED ribbons (above stage), made from Lighthouse DUO 12mm (each 56’ x 3’10”, WxH)
2 rear projection screens (each 12’x21.5’)
2 Barco 26K HD projectors
1 Ross Carbonite 2M production switcher
4 Sony HSC100R HD cameras
2 Canon 86 x 9.5 HD broadcast lenses
2 Canon 75 x 9.5 HD broadcast lenses
3 Sony BRCH700 PTZ HD cameras w/ optical multiplexers
2 Panasonic AG-HCK10 HD POV cameras
2 M-Box Extreme media servers (provided by PRG)
2 AJA Kipro HDD recorders
1 Zeus 3 intercom matrix
For more Fleetwood Mac tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to:
http://www.prolightingspace.com/photo/albums/fleetwood-mac-extra-pics-by-steve-jennings
