A wild and crazy show that gets bigger and bolder each year.
A live televised award show is pressure enough, but when star power, budgets, ratings and expectations continue to build higher and higher, what do you do?
One, you put a creative team in place with a lot of experience and imagination. Two, you have a lot of meetings. “Yes, we sure had a lot of meetings!” confirms Lighting Designer Carlos Colina.
Univision’s fourth annual Premios Juventud 2007 (the Latin Teen Choice Awards) broke all records when it aired. Like many “choice” award shows, it is set up for people to go online and vote for their favorite movie stars, soap opera actors and music acts. The acts were some of the big-gest and included Enrique Iglesias, Victor Manuelle, Alejandro Fernandez, among many others.
“Since the first show four years ago broke so many rating records for the desirable youth market, the musical artists keep wanting to outdo them-selves and the other acts, so record companies keep pumping more and more money into it,” says Colina. “It’s just gotten really wild and crazy for us!”
Indeed. Six set changes with four flying rigs, including a Hovercraft and a heart made of aluminum; six musical numbers with pryo; ten different host positions; and, of course, the unpredictability of top music performers. “I had 12 (followspots), and for two numbers that still wasn’t enough,” laughs Colina. But it all paid off. It was a highly rated show for Univision, coming in at number two in the prized 18–34 demographic — and that’s all adults, not just Hispanics.
“Literally on the Same Page”
Colina started his career as a camera operator at the Miami PBS station, which was an operation where a lack of resources had the benefit of pro-viding everyone the opportunity to wear multiple hats. “I ended up lighting all the shows there,” Colina says. In 1991, he got a job at Univision as a lighting assistant and worked his way up — so much so that he was able to leave Univision last year and move to Charlottesville, Va., where he still handles all of the network’s big events while also freelancing.
He’s worked on all four of the Premios Juventud, the most recent one airing from the Bank United Center at the University of Miami campus in a 10,000-seat auditorium (though by the time he and the rest of the crew were through with the place, it only sat 7,000 for this particular event).
Since Premios Juventud is now an annual event, it’s a well-oiled machine; planning for the experienced hands begins in May. “At that point the set is approved, which is done by Designer Jorge Dominguez. This year, we went with an industrial warehouse theme, complete with industrial pipes, walls of brick and blinking ‘street’ lights that were incorporated into some of the musical numbers.”
Once Colina saw Dominguez’ preliminary designs of the set, he knew he wanted the lighting and trussing to match it, which led to a creative depar-ture for him. “When I design, I like the show to be symmetrical, but this time I went in the opposite direction,” he explains. He extended the set with lights, a catwalk and trussing from PRG. He was able to get the look he wanted using curved 40-foot and 60-foot circular trusses, which he pulled from PRG’s inventory. The end result was certainly the opposite of symmetrical — the layering of the trussing almost suggests an überfutur-istic warehouse that has been split in half at the seams.
The creative team all used VectorWorks design software, and when the set design was done, Dominguez merely uploaded the file on an FTP site created by Univision so Colina could download it and add his lighting. Then, Technical Manager Mike Karsch took it and laid in the cameras, while audio placed speakers — “all literally on the same page. We had issues with that aspect in earlier shows before we all used VectorWorks, and this time it all went smoothly.”
As the set and trussing started coming together, he decided to go with more washes with fatter beams, as opposed to hard-edged lights.
“Once the lighting design was done, we had creative meetings to go over the musical numbers — the three-hour show ended up featuring a total of 15. But out of those, some were medleys whose sections required a different look, so it was really more than that. It was complicated, and a lot of video content had to be created.” No stock content was used, and High End Catalyst Media Servers allowed him to integrate it all.
He ended up going with High End PC Beams and threw in 10 Syncrolites for good measure — and for the huge beams they could supply. He lit the truss with Coemar Parlite LEDs, which he says are amazing. “We changed the color of the trussing with those for each musical number, and it was never the same.”
Dominguez used nearly 300 Element Labs VersaTubes LED fixtures, mostly outlining particularly parts of the set, including the entrance to the tunnel. At stage left, he had a whole wall of them going both vertically and horizontally.
“You don’t do a show any more without VersaTubes,” Colina says.
A Flying Pig Systems Wholehog III drove it all.
“Something with Robots — Oh Yeah, and a Space Ship”
The creative team found itself serving many clients. First and foremost, Univision had promoted this as a visually entertaining and dynamic show for months. A very close second, though, were the individual acts who came in with their own ideas for their numbers. Colina explains, “They see the ratings for the show, and the acts and their record companies try to outdo themselves and each other with ideas….”
“Most of the time they were very vague with us, though [Puerto Rican reggaetón star] Daddy Yankee wanted something with robots and wanted to fly in on a space ship,” smiles Colina. “So we’d sit down and try to come up with something like that.” On that dare, they went so far as to discuss the possibility of using Transformers somehow. They pulled it back when someone mentioned a place where robot suits could be rented. “Then someone else knew of a scenic company that had a hovercraft. Then those ideas were taken back to the record company for approval,” says Colina.
There would be four flying gags in total. “A guy from New York-based boy band Aventura wanted to fly in on a metal-constructed heart because, in the song, he sings about a heart,” he laughs. “He was inside the heart. Then it dropped down, and he came out and sang his song. Sometimes people take songs so literally, which sometimes is good, sometimes bad.”
It all went into rehearsal on the Monday before the Thursday show. In those four days, they worked through not only the musical numbers, but through the presenters and other aspects typical of an award show. The creative team had it all down by Thursday morning. “We were ahead of the game, reports Colina, “which doesn’t happen very often!”
But the show is live, and that’s where Colina faced his biggest challenge.
“The spot calling was crazy,” he sighs. “The set also has a catwalk that extends out from the main stage, and that was the biggest challenge. I used 13 (Strong) Super Trooper IIs.
“On shows like this, I like to have an assistant, Noah Mitz, and he helps me with the spot calling. Each operator needs to know when to fade in, fade out, when not to cross each other…. At one point, a band had 12 guys come out all dressed in white — we had to cover the whole stage!”
But it’s the live elements of a show like this that defy rehearsals.
“There were changes during the show — oh yeah!” Colina laughs. “Especially with the upbeat numbers. As long as the spot operator knows who to cover and when, that’s the only way to do it, because it’s never the same.”
Next up for Colina is the Latin Grammys, which will air live from Las Vegas in November. It will be the biggest show of his career so far, he says.
CREW
Production Company: ACME Production, Tony Parodi
Executive Producer: Francisco Suarez, Univision
Director: Francy Gonzalez
Line Producer: Joni Fernandez
AD: Emilio Pimental
Creative Director: Jorge Dominguez
Lighting Designer: Carlos Colina
Lighting Director: John Daniels, Lowell Halpern
Programmer: Christian Choi
Catalyst Programmer: Scott Cmielewski
LD Assistant: Noah Mitz
Head Rigger: Tony Pol
Pyro: Sparktacular, Steve Freedman
Scenic: Global Entertainment Industries, Chris Hyde
Video: Roca Video, Joe Sarchet
Senior Video Engineer: Ian Henderson
GEAR
ACL 4-BAR gel L203
196 Barco MiStrips LED
6 Christie Digital Roadster S+20K projectors
2 Christie LX-120 projectors
2 Christie LX-100 projectors
14 Coemar iWash Halos
132 Coemar Parlite LEDs
41 Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 fixtures
14 Duccio One-cell cycs
281 Element Labs VersaTubes LED
30 Element Labs Stealth LED
12 ETC 10° Source Four Lekos
9 ETC 19° Source Four Lekos
1 ETC Insight 3 Console
2 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog III consoles
1 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog X-wing
8 High End Systems Catalyst V4.05
2 High End Systems F-100 smoke machines
79 High End Systems Studio beam PCs
9 Martin M-12 beacons
10 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
55 Martin MAC 2000 washes
12 Martin MAC 2000 washes w/pc lenses
24 Martin MAC 2000 Profile
24 Martin MAC 2K Profile
Martin MAC 300
Martin MAC 2000 Profile 2
4 2K Mole zips w/egg
21 PAR 64 6-lite bars
10 PAR 16 Birdies NFLs
4 Reel EFX DF-50 haze machines
4 Real EFX fans turbo
4 Sony 42” plasma screens
4 Starklite 1271short throw
4 Strong Super Trooper IIs
8 Syncrolites B52s
4 Syncrolites 3Ks
Vari*Lite VL5Cs (all with clear lens)
10 Vari*Lite VL2500 spots
26 Vari*Lite VL3000 spots
20 Vari*Lite VL3000 spots
12 Vari*Lite VL3500 spots
1 Vari*Lite VL3000 wash
12 9-Lite PAR 56s
2 kW Fresnels w/screens and barn doors
1 kW Baby Fresnel
4’ 0” 3-Cir MR 16 mini-strip
6’ 0” 3-Cir MR 16 mini-strip
8’ 0” 4-Cir MR 16 mini-strip
7 6’ mini-strips
2 19” USB ELO touch screen monitors
All power distribution, cable, support equipment, preparation, freight and insurances.
