If you have a decent LD he will advance the gig — put in the gels he wants, should they have PARs, or fight for truss and fixture placement ahead of time. Either way, there’s always a game plan involved in the state and large county fairs before you get there. A promoter and their respective lighting and video vendors will most likely have a plot and a budget before you ever chat with them. It’s the traveling designer’s gig to liaison with these people weeks prior to arrival to make sure any extra requirements you have for your show can be dealt with accordingly.
Calf-Birthing Cams
Today, I’m strolling around the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. For two weeks every summer, well over 100,000 people will show up daily. Over 10,000 of them will catch one of the 12 shows at the Grandstands this summer. I find myself talking to Dale Kivimaki, owner of Freestyle Productions. They are a local Minneapolis vendor, supplying the fair with all of their video needs. He has been involved with this fair for 22 years (as well as the Iowa State Fair for 15 years), and he just gave me the ten-cent tour of these massive grounds.
“People think all we do is throw up a couple of video walls on the side of the stage. But in reality we have 10 separate video setups all over the fair. We have a two-camera shoot over at the “Birthing Station” where cows actually give birth to a calf while a live audience watches. Two camera operators, a director and an engineer are on call all day to shoot these births and play the footage back to all the attendees who can’t get up close to the action. We work our way around to other entrances where Freestyle has video marquees set up to direct people in and out and make announcements.
After 22 years, Dale has found the need for a comfortable residence at these state fairs. Each summer he spends two weeks working in Iowa before coming home to this fair. At stage left, there is a retrofitted semi trailer that he has turned into his Video Village. “Air conditioning is a priority here,’ he announces. As are the two refrigerators stocked with various favorite beverages from several breweries.
The working quarters are set up for the three operators. Dale acts as video director and switches cameras for most acts this week, since only a few will show up with a video director. This means he’s working every night the fair’s open, especially since the LED wall is bright enough to be used during daylight. He’s directing cameras from a Sony DVS 7200 Digital switcher. Dale’s flanked by two operators, one to shade and engineer the cameras and one to position a few robocams on site via joysticks on a controller. “We’re basically a Hitachi house, like those robocam controls you see over there. We place a couple of them high on a pole that can be moved around. I like them on the corners of the stage. I can swing and hit the drummer. Get a shot across the mic line or get a reverse shot of the crowd.” Dale states.
When questioned about camera placement, Kivimaki responds, “We have two guys with long lens cameras on tripods out at front of house. Then two other fellows work the pit in front of the stage. Years ago, the folks at the fair decided that nobody wishes to see the cameramen on stage. Hence the pan and tilt robotic cameras came into play.”
Flanking either side of the stage are two Daktronics 12mm HD video walls. They are rated IP65 and hang unprotected from the elements for weeks straight at the fair. Dale did his research quite thoroughly before deciding on which product to buy. This decision didn’t seem hard for him, he states. “When I started here, I remember bringing in four GE Talaria projectors, and the clients were blown away. They barely threw out 2500 lumens. But you couldn’t see them until the sun set around 8:30. We got brighter projectors over the years but still had the trouble with daylight. Finally, we made the move to LED tiles. Daktronics has a helluva reputation worldwide. Look at all the huge scoreboards they build for outdoor stadiums. There is a lot of gear out there that is cheaper, but not anything that’s better. The fact that they are located right down the road in Brookings, South Dakota and they make a proven product made this purchase a good decision.” The video walls themselves are 15 feet high by 20 feet wide.
I asked Dale what he does when the traveling shows are carrying video gear. “We try to help out the traveling production in any way we can. We look to make this a very easy day for them. As in leave as much stuff on the truck as you can. Some bands will have more video elements to hang upstage. They have media servers, which need to tie into our system to throw content onto our side screens. Usually the traveling crew are happy to use our cameras and switching gear.”
Nowadays, some bands want total control over what video goes to every surface. For instance, some acts have a DJ who plays back all the video footage. He wants to just put his rig in line and have a T-bar that chooses whether the screens see content or I-Mag shots of the live performers. “We have a great workaround for that,” Dale declares. “We have a device in line with our system that recognizes anytime an outside signal comes in to the router. Whenever media starts playing, our system diverts itself right to their footage. When it detects that the media has stopped and gone to black, the cameras fade back in.”
I ask one last question. “How do you know what cameras to use, and who’s going to solo next, since you don’t know all the live music?”
Rocking the Looks
We walk out to front of house for him to answer this. LD Jonny “Tosar” Tosarello is focusing his light rig du jour for Lynyrd Skynyrd, tonight’s headliner at the fair. He and Dale pow-wow for a few minutes about how they will handle the video needs this evening. “We will need you on headset with me,” Tosar explains. “I have three guitar players alone in this act, and they each play a lot of solos. It would be guesswork for you to figure this out without listening to me.” Tosar hands a sheet of paper to Dale that shows stage placement of all the band members, with numbers attached to them designating which spotlight operator is assigned to which musician. “All of my solos are done in Open White. So if you hear me say ‘standby spot two to bump to no color,’ that means this guy here (points at his chart) is going to play the next solo.”
Tosar notes that Skynyrd are a mainstay at a lot of fairs. He reckons they play between 30 and 50 of them per year, and none are ever the same. “We seem to play a butt-load of Stageline mobile stages. I’ve grown accustomed to shoe horning my lights into the little stages. Having this huge stage with all these automated lights is a luxury.” Premier Global Productions supplies the roof structure as well as the lights every year for the Minnesota State fair, and everyone is happy with their performance.
For his touring rig, Tosar is carrying a single 40 foot truss loaded with Martin MAC Vipers, LED wash fixtures, MAC 401’s and some Atomic strobes. He also carries some drop-down torm pipes full of MAC 101’s. He places a row of MAC 2000 Washes upstage on cases for a blast of light through the band for dates where they carry backdrops as opposed to a video wall. These wash fixtures come in to play nicely as a cyc wash. By using Color Kinetics ColorBlast fixtures to uplight the drums, keys and BV’s, he adds some depth to whatever other lights he gets everyday.
“I advance the gigs well before I get there,” Tosar adds. “The singer likes to see his people. So we add some mole lights upstage to complement the usual downstage ones, so the front rows get lit. The thing about this band is they really like the shiny silver PAR cans, dating back to their days in the 70’s, when they had hundreds of them. But Johnny Van Zandt told me when we first talked shop that he wanted ‘those lights to dance.’ So we use the PARs for static looks and the movers for the action.”
“We cannot guarantee what we will get every day, fixture-wise. I love the Vipers, and they are my guaranteed hard edge fixtures every day, so I depend in them. But today I find I have a bunch of VL3K spots in the local rig.” I ask the LD if he just cloned them into his rig today. “Yes and no. I am missing a whole lot of Lekos I like to use as upstage key lights for today’s performance. So rather than clone Premier Global’s Vari-Lites to my Vipers, I focus them on the musicians, then just park them. Then I clone my Lekos to those fixtures to make rear specials out of them.
“I have been on the grandMA2 for the last couple of years and I just love it,” Tosar continues. “The band has been primarily using Christie
Lites as a vendor for many years, even prior to my arrival, and it’s been a smooth ride. We have one tech on tour that has several ‘hats’ out here to play, one of which is to manage the floor package and whatever else each day brings.” Tosar has nothing but praise for the Premier Global crew (Blaire, Matt and Kurt) today, as their patch was great and they had their act together. He wishes it were like this at every gig. “You would be surprised how many local lighting companies I come across that are just clueless. I mean, they can’t patch their own 120K rig!”
All in all, it’s a smooth day, as it’s the ninth of 12 straight shows for the Minneapolis State fair. The talent at the fair runs the gamut. Last week, they had the likes of Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban and Def Leppard, just to name a few, play their stage. This weekend they host local radio favorite Garrison Keillor and the Prairie Home Companion show, always a fair favorite. In closing, Dale injects a little Midwest humor. “Why is truss made out of aluminum?” he asks. “So it doesn’t rust during sound check.”
