As another year closes, I have lined up a birthday party at a stadium, followed by a tour with an old client of mine. Kid Rock is turning 40 and wants to throw a party with one set and light configuration, then go on tour with another one. I have designed every tour he has done since 1999 with the exception of a six-week run he went on last year. I agreed to actually go on tour with this show and make everything look stellar again. I believe this artist is among the most gifted performers in the world, working a crowd like few can. So after a long hiatus of actually touring with a band as an LD, I have agreed to go back on the road. A Little Help from my Friends
While designing his set, the boss looked me in the eye and said he felt it was time to take his show to the next level. This is music to my ears, as it translates into the fact that my budget is getting increased dramatically. And I now have some money to pay other people to help me design this large-scale production. This particular artist juggles his set list often, and usually minutes before we open the arena doors to the public. I decided early on that I did not want to be responsible for developing all the video content or playing it back through the media servers. In effect, I wanted to give the video control back to them and not control it from my lighting desk. I also knew I needed a friend that could do the work for me so I could concentrate on the set construction and lighting programming. So I reached out to an old friend, John Featherstone.
John owns a branch of Lightswitch, a world-renowned production design firm. We've been friends for years, yet rarely got a chance to work together, something that's always itched at me. So I rang him up one day to see if he was interested in working for me on this project. John's musical interests flared up and we immediately got in sync. I explained what I had in mind and how I needed to bill his services through the video vendor for the tour, so we could spread the cost out. I then got with Shakes the tour production manager, to discuss who the video company would be. To me it was a no-brainer. I wanted to use Nocturne Video. Their gear always works, and I simply love the processing on their hi-def and medium res rental panels. Owner Bob Brigham and I are old friends so we set a lunch date for all of us to meet and map out a strategy. Nocturne is located about five minutes away from Upstaging, the lighting rental house and rehearsal facility.
I could easily set up the video control system and an ESP Vision lighting rig for virtual programming. Nocturne was glad to help, even offering up the services of veteran video director Paulie Becher to cut cameras for the stadium show and set an example for the touring video director.
A Well-Lit Workplace
The Upstaging facility is the perfect workplace for my projects. I designed and pre-programmed eight tours out of their shop last year. Besides being an ideal work environment for designers, their lighting gear is maintained so well I prefer to use them on every project I can. I booked their design suite for a week and had Nocturne purchase two Maxedia media servers from them John had spec'd on the tour. A Maxxyz playback wing would be used to execute the video cues during the show. So for a week, I would program the light cues while John looked over my shoulder at what color combinations I was using for each song. Besides a few specific things I wanted to see, I left John and his colleague (content creator Austin Shapely) to do what they do best, use their imagination and whip out new media content.
The boss wanted to use lasers this year. I agreed, but told him I saw some video on You Tube from last year's show, and the lasers looked like crap. He agreed, explaining that nobody listened to him last year and they didn't get it right. I explained my philosophy that when using lasers for a light show, we should turn off the other lights and let these work. Exactly what the boss wanted to hear. At this point, I realized I needed to call in an old friend. I needed one of the top dogs and laser pioneers in our industry. I called Howard Ungerleider, the popular lighting designer and owner of a special effects company out of Toronto named Production Design International. Howard is the only person I know who actually rents out 60-watt surgical lasers for lighting effects, and if I was going to be playing some stadium shows, I felt the need for both Howard and his big guns.
Of course, contingent on me using his gear, I was specific in the matter that I wanted to use Howard's mind as well. So he was enlisted as part of my dream team of designers for this project. I gave Howard a CD with 10 songs where I needed specific laser cues, and instructed him to have a bunch of effects in the can before we loaded in.
More Helping Hands
I also needed a crew chief that I could hand the ball to and never think back on any details. I called up old friend J.T. McDonald and we developed a game plan. Now that I assembled my team, I sat down and started getting to the work of programming the shows. I had used a Maxxyz console on previous tours. But Martin did not manufacture this desk any longer. Finding reliable consoles worldwide was difficult. So I decided to use the Maxxyz one last time for the stadium show, then switch to a grandMA console for the tour. For the stadium show, I used a similar rig to one I used for a string of dates last summer. I cloned a few new fixtures into the show and added a load of audience lighting effects trusses and 20 5k Syncrolites to splatter around the stadium. I spent three days at Upstaging tightening up the show as best as I could, being that I would not actually see the light rig in person until I got to the stadium.
Last of all, I decided this was one of those rare occasions when I needed to hire a lighting programmer. I usually program my own shows, because not many people are as fast, and I get frustrated. But for this project, I felt the time crunch and brought programming ace Chris Merriman into the fold. Upstaging has several visualization systems in their shop. So I hooked up the Maxxyz console to one system that could play back my stadium show, while the GMA was hooked up to another ESP system that had my touring design running. I would watch what I programmed for one show, then bark orders over to Chris to duplicate this cue with various light fixtures on a different set. Three days of nonstop programming, and we were close to show-ready.
