Every year, I find myself at some stadium lighting something. If it's not a rock show, it's often the halftime entertainment or pre-game ceremonies of some sporting event. The gigs vary drastically, but the one thing that they all have in common is that it is broadcast on live TV, and you only get one shot to do it right. Plus, it's inevitable that I'm gonna end up gigging with some folks I haven't seen in a long time. Thanksgiving is a day that most people have off. I rarely get the luxury of having that weekend with my family. This year was no exception. I was working because the Detroit Lions play every Thanksgiving at home and I have a few clients who live in Michigan. One of them, Kid Rock, was scheduled as the halftime entertainment for the football game. I am in charge of making sure he's properly lit for every public performance he makes, so I was on site doing my job. A production company had been hired to build a stage and provide special effects and lighting prior to my arrival.
Blasts from the Past
I walked onto the field two days prior to the game and saw a couple of MA Lighting grandMA consoles on the sidelines. I headed over to them to introduce myself and noticed two guys battling Green Hippo Hippotizers and choosing video content to be played back on a video wall sometime during the five-minute performance.
Soon enough, one of them turned around, and I found myself face to face with John Orchard from AVI, Inc., a production services company. Orca (as he was known in the rock ‘n' roll biz) and I worked together at See Factor almost 30 years ago, but I haven't seen him in at least 10 years. Right away, both of our comfort zones are widely increased, and we knew the event would go smoothly.
We had a 50-foot wide bunch of set carts loaded with pyro and lights that John had designed. I had a 10-foot high wall of Philips Color Kinetics
ColorBlaze LED striplights. Well over 100 of these fixtures made up a lighting system that resembled a low-res video wall. In addition, a 40-foot-wide WinVision LED wall was to fly in from the rafters and sit above it. Orca had four and a half minutes from the time the team gets off the field until we had to be camera ready to shoot. They would rehearse the move continually until they got the time down.
Waving the Flag
It was obvious that the design team had their hands full, so I offered to program the lighting on one console while the other guys sorted through the media servers on the other one. The song my artist was doing was his new hit single, "Born Free." The lighting had to be all red, white, and blue. So I took every individual pixel in the ColorBlazes and painted a giant flag across the back of the band. Using the effects engine in the console, I laid out a dimmer chase that made the flag appear to wave. Next, I wrote about 10 separate chases of red and white stripes going in every conceivable direction. The effects generator on the grandMA made this a snap, and I was done in no time. Last of all, Orca asked me if I could spell out the words "Born Free" across the wall of lights. This took about an hour, but I finished in time for band rehearsals. In the end, it all went off without a hitch, and we were at a sushi bar by 8 p.m.
Hockey On the Field
Now it's New Years day, and I find myself at another stadium. Today I am lighting the annual NHL classic at Heinz field in Pittsburgh. Once a year they play a pro hockey game outside. Normally they play it in the snow. Unfortunately, as game time approaches, it's 50 degrees and raining outside. It's too warm to make snow on the field, so they covered it with a truckload of faux snow. Strictly FX and Upstaging Inc., both out of Chicago, have been retained to provide the gear to make the opening events more memorable. I have a great working relationship with both of these fine companies, so they called on me to press a few buttons and work with NBC on the telecast. Reid Nofsinger from Strictly FX is the lead pyro guy shooting the show, and some yellow trusses were custom-built by Travis Shaffer at the Upstaging scenic shop. The trusses were designed to resemble the multitude of bridges that span the rivers surrounding the stadium.
The producers envisioned both teams walking out of the stadium's end tunnel side-by-side through these arches as they make their way onto the field. They are not sure what they want other than the fact that they want some dazzling bright lights to silhouette the players as they come out of the tunnel. Stealing a scene from Orca, I put up a smaller wall of lights alternating between ColorBlazes and 60 Color Kinetics iWhite LED fixtures. The clients want me to shine a big blue light out of the tunnel (the color of the home team's jerseys) followed by white light when the players walk out. I park my grandMA Lite console in a hole of the tunnel so I will be able to take my cues manually when I see the players walk out of the locker room because it will be too loud to hear the producers call me on the squawk box over the audience and the pyro blasts.
There is a drum corps lining the sides of the runway to the ice rink. As the players walk down the runway they pound their instruments while Reid blows blasts of flaming propane 20 feet into the air. Under the fake snow, I have scattered 100 Martin Atomic 3K strobes that run in a random chase to the beat. Upstaging thought of weather conditions well in advance. They have furnished a white plastic tub to individually enclose each strobe prior to the rolls of fake snow covering them. With the rain pouring down, they are completely protected from the elements and perform flawlessly.
The Upside of Downtime
The one thing I have learned over the years is to take advantage of downtime when working in television. When I write my chases, I record them with various timings as well as different levels of intensity. The cameras and the producers are unforgiving. As we ran through the opening ceremony several times, I was told that the first strobe chase was too fast. So I whipped up a different fader with a slower speed. This one wasn't random enough. On the third fader I had yet another cue. This time the producer said that I had nailed his vision and it's a wrap. The same with the ColorBlazes. The shade of blue I had chosen apparently did not match the players' jerseys, but the second cue made them content with color. Nobody wants to wait on the LD, and I give them no reason to.
To see Kid Rock's halftime performance at the Detroit Lion's game, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0298yfQ5B0&feature=related.
