I’ve lit a lot of things before — televised events, concerts, trade shows, cars, boats and planes. But I’ve never lit a church. In fact, I have never had any contact with this whole side of the lighting industry (though I wish I did). So I had to smile when I got a call to light some choirs. But they were not in any church; they were in a touring arena show. Every year I work on some project with a talented lighting designer out of Chicago named Michael Dalton. We met years ago lighting a TV series. We are both constantly busy working for our respective companies but our paths seem to cross each year at some event.
Michael used to be a touring LD, working with various pop stars. Like many other big time corporate designers, I think he wishes he could still tour for like, a week. But touring is a young man’s game. He’s moved on to lighting television shows and corporate events.
Recently, Michael and I both got calls about a large production being formulated by some of our friends in New York City. Since we were both swamped with other projects, we decided to tackle this together. How Sweet the Sound would be a touring gospel show along the theme of American Idol. Choirs would compete in front of judges every night in a different city for the title and some cash at the final televised event. Jeremy Thom was designing the set and in fact already had drawings for us the day we were hired.
So armed with Jeremy’s ideas, it was easy to start a lighting design. First came the truss layout. We had a plan view of the stage, a 60-foot-by-40-foot rolling stage with three-sided choir risers. There was a runway that would jut out into the crowd, running in a half circle from stage right to left. Michael took one look and said “Curves! We’ve gotta follow the curves of the set.”
So we picked out half of a 60-foot diameter circle truss to use as a front truss. Upstage of that we chose a smaller 50-foot diameter half circle, just to change things up from your typical circle truss configuration. We hung Robe 2500 Spots and Martin XB Wash fixtures all over them.
From a front elevation view, we noticed that Jeremy had designed some giant sails — three layers of them, in fact. The upstage sail was 120 feet wide by 40 feet high, with a 20-foot diameter circular rear projection screen on center. Downstage of them were separate sails. The fabrics were all scalloped so they were half the width at the bottom than at the top. We decided we needed some upright curved truss to accent the curves of the fabric. So I drew in four vertical curved sections of truss that rose about 28 feet in the air. We threw a bunch of Martin MAC 700 Profiles on them to be used for eye candy. Color Kinetics ColorBlast LED fixtures were strewn throughout the trusses to tone them.
Of course, we needed lots of straight trusses to hang the sails. So we used 300 feet of 12-inch truss as well as some Swing Wing to finish the structural design. At first we chose Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash lights to illuminate the sails. They would certainly do the job. But in the end we decided to use Coemar SuperCycs for two reasons — they light wide spans of fabric evenly and they don’t need to be taken out of their road case, every day. The crew simply rolled 30 of them in place and took the lids off the cases.
Chris Stinebrink was hired as the lighting director for the tour. We had specified an MA Lighting grandMA console, but Chris felt that a Martin Maxxyz with a wing was a more comfortable console for him. This was actually great for Michael and me because now we could sit in his living room and preprogram the whole show while monitoring the Cubs games (using our peripheral vision and, of course, without the usual beer). The Maxxyz has a really accurate visualizer program on board so simulated each cue we built. Upstaging Lighting supplied the touring package. They didn’t think twice when we asked them to send a console and an oversized flat screen monitor to Michael’s house in the countryside for a week.
The show features eight choirs per night. Each choir would pick one song out of a list of 100. There was simply no way Dalton and I could sit down and cue to cue 100 gospel songs with individual lighting cues, especially since some choirs had only a few members and others would fill the entire stage. We had to design a punt system that would work for us and that Chris would understand. Sometimes my wacky way of setting up consoles can confuse people. But Chris has directed many of our shows so it was a no-brainer for him. Michael and I decided the first thing we needed were 24 separate starting looks, one per song, with different color combinations for each, and a good punt page.
We scripted the opening number and the grand finale, but Chris would have to run this show by feel, old school style. So we chose looks by different stage positions that we had to light. If the choir had soloists that would walk out on the giant ego ramp, we would light the ramp with a specific focus position using moving lights. If nobody was out there, we would focus the lights toward the stage. We basically had eight lighting looks that either covered the ramps and the stage or just the stage. Michael and I decided we should follow the format we use on award shows. We picked out certain groups of lights and dedicated them to specific areas of the stage. Certain lights always lit the orchestra pit while others backlit the big risers. Zap Technology Big Lites were placed on the floor to give us a light source that would “go to eleven” and provide a big back light halo for the singers. The only conventional fixtures used were to light the judge’s platform and the audience.
With the focus positions set, we then had to write cues that would use custom gobos to paint the sails, and others that would use just color. Had to mix it up. On site, Michael and Chris chose to soften all the edges of the hard edge lights to add texture while hiding any wrinkles on the giant sails.
The last thing to deal with was the UV lighting effect. Parts of the scenery were painted with special paint designed to glow under black light. I’ve been dealing with UV scenery for over 20 years and I have yet to see a show where it looks amazing. It’s just been okay, never as bright as the client would like it. In fact the only time I’ve liked these things have been in the fun house at an amusement park (or my buddy’s bedroom when I was in the eighth grade). But we were hell bent to give it a try. We decided to try something new and we specified 12 Altman 705 UV fixtures.
We focused them from the top, the bottom, from downstage trusses, from close and far. I don’t honestly know if they worked. I will see next month when we go to shoot the grand finale for TV. We will have to keep you posted.
In the meanwhile, I’m just happy to get the call. It’s music to my ears.
