Guy Pavelo of GPDesign.net was the production designer and creative director for the recent Drake vs. Lil Wayne concerts that toured arenas throughout the U.S. this year. He previously designed Drake’s performance at last year’s Toronto-based OVO festival and his Would You Like a Tour? 2013 tour. This design morphed out of what Pavelo created for Drake’s performances at this year’s OVO festival at Toronto’s Molson Arena. PLSN sat down to speak with the designer about how he approaches his designs overall, his knack for pushing technology, and about this tour, for which he also operated the lighting on the road.
Supporting Pavelo were leading industry vendors. PRG provided the lighting, rigging and motors, and rigging steel for this tour. VER supplied the WinVision LED walls; Strictly FX provided pyro and lasers; and the set and automation equipment was handled by SGPS.
PLSN: Where did you begin with your design?
Guy Pavelo: It’s basically an arena-size show that does not fit in a shed, but we’re putting it into a shed every single day. It’s the biggest Drake tour so far. This one began with a big conversation with Drake, we discussed the scale and scope of what we wanted to present for the tour, which was oversized; over-scaled. Basically, we put the size of the sheds to the side and then just moved forward with as much as we possibly could. It’s a new definition of wall-to-wall carpet.
How do you scale it to the different venue sizes?
We find the different components that we can actually pull out in certain divisions of size; 8-foot to 10-foot increments, because it has to go across the board. It’s not just the lighting rig; the set has to adjust the same way; the video system has to adjust the same way; even the audio has to adjust the same way. Everything is built together. It was designed not just with the lighting and the video in mind, but even the PA was part of the design. Everything is an intricate portion of the entire system, so everything has to scale together, which makes things quite difficult on some occasions.
Tell us about your video design.
When we scaled it down, we found to a certain extent that we had issues with our I-Mag screens. For venues where we can’t put the I-Mag screens up due to weight restrictions or because literally there was only the sky and nothing to hang from, we actually had to find a way to re-scale the video and to put everything back into the main screen. The way some of the content was created, if you’re missing the I-Mag, you’re missing part of the story line, part of the movie, so we actually had to find ways to pipe it into the main wall. We didn’t re-write everything. We put the [PRG] Mbox media servers through the main video switch back around and then back through the Mboxes again to reclip it back into the main wall, so we actually have full I-Mag coverage plus the content that was supposed to be there.
Can you expand on the Street Fighter imagery, and how you’re incorporating that content with the show theme?
The game company Cap Com is one of our sponsors on the content side, so we got the rights and an LA-based company called Iam8bit, built all the Street Fighter content. They made characters for Lil Wayne, Drake, and other assorted extra characters. They built the content up so we were able to scale it out. Because everything’s one to one, so we didn’t want to do any weird zooming and cropping and “Oh, my head’s narrow, I look like an oval. No ‘Mr. Potato Head.’” We kept everything one to one and Iam8bit really worked with us and tried to make sure everything was exactly how we wanted it so that it was good to just create our alignments, pop it right in there, and blast it right out. Iam8bit came out to the site to actually work on the coloring because they’ve never done a show like this with a video wall. The content looked good on my computer, but that didn’t translate to the video wall. Reds are red, but they get oversaturated. Congo doesn’t look Congo; blues and violets look different. So they came out and readjusted all the colors, worked with it, took some pictures, and got an understanding of it. From then on, everything was pre-treated so it worked really well with the wall and with the video system.
There’s a lot of kinetic movement with your set and lighting. Talk about that on this production.
There has to be a distinct segregation from the two guys — Drake and Lil Wayne — the two characters. Also, the set is 54, 56 tracks long. We try to stay away from the same look for four numbers and then move forward, we try to make as many different ones as we can, plus there is enough equipment out there that we can do that. It’s not just “turn it all on and let it go.” There’s some real dynamics going on. It’s similar to what we had success with on the last tour — using one light, two lights, three lights; not all hundred plus of them at one time. That is something we carried over into this one and continued, I believe, with success.
What are you using to create all of your aerial beam work?
We have the [Clay Paky] Sharpys as gag trusses. We have the new [PRG] Best Boy Wash, which we used with all of their new narrow lenses; we can get a lot of aerial and effect work out of that unit. We also have the new Beam FX aerial beam gobo loads in the [PRG] Best Boy and Bad Boy Spots, which work really well, so they actually blend in with the Bad Boys on the towers. It almost looks like they all blend as one type of fixture, even though they’re two totally different units. We try new things out of the box whenever we can. At the moment, our shows aren’t super LED-style; so certain things have their day.
You started as a technician, then moved into programming. How does that affect your work as a designer now?
Back in the day, I started with Disney as a spot op, and over time, worked my way through the ranks — chief, tech, rigger, pyro tech; moving up, learning how to do stuff, how to build stuff. Things like what works well, and what doesn’t work well, in the actual assembly of a show. It’s interesting building something like this show. I worked with Cliff Sharpling, my crew chief, and we asked, “How can we make this so it’s feasible and able to be assembled on a daily basis?” It helps, because it’s not me saying, “Oh, just get it up there. That’s what I drew. I don’t care what it is, just make it happen.” We can actually work together to know that it’s feasible or it just doesn’t work like that.
You are working as your own programmer and operator for this tour…
It’s just something I kind of fell into. Operating somebody else’s show is fine, and I’ve worked with designers before where it’s their vision. Now, this situation is great because I could keep tweaking it, we can keep working with it and if Drake wants something changed he and I can sit out at FOH with the grandMA 3D and build it out and make it work. Also, I know that when I programmed it, if something isn’t working right, I know how I wrote it, so I know how to fix it. Sometimes, you program a show, you give it to somebody else, you have to change something, whether it’s minor or major, and everybody just shrugs their shoulders because I didn’t put it in so I don’t know how they did it. It’s just a bonus, and helps it out. It’s also great that a lot of the crew was out with me on the last tour; they’ve been great to work with again this time around.
Have there been a lot of changes to your original design?
The basic initial venture is pretty well intact. There had been minor requests, some adjustment, which is fantastic. We’re able to build it, create it, deliver it, and then be done with it which is a great step compared to some of the years where it’s a consistent battle until you get to the first couple shows. We strolled to the first show and moved in on the second and didn’t change a thing, so it was great.
Crew
Tour Director: Steve Kidd
Production Manager: Chris Roberts
Production Designer/Lighting
Director: Guy Pavelo
Stage Manager: Michael Devlin
Production Coordinator: Kris Martinez
Lighting Co: PRG
Lighting Crew Chief: Cliff Sharpling
Lighting Crew: Christopher Shafer, Anthony James Clark, Jennifer Dymond, Gerald John A. Croteau
Video Co: Upstream Touring, Inc.
Video Director: Nick Fletcher
Video Tech/Camera Operator: Matthew Monahan
Video LED Tech/Camera Operators: Donald Freitas, Patrick Gibbs, Thomas Matthews
Video Media Server Operator: Nelson Funk
Pyro and Laser Co: Strictly FX
Pyro Head/Shooter: John Lyons
FX Techs: Jeremy Fox, Jackson Frazier
FX Tech/Laser Lead: Mike Hartle
Set and Rigging Co: SGPS/Showrig
Head Rigger: Mike Dunn
Riggers: Justin Mercurio, Paul Hicks
Head Carpenter: Gregory Gish
Set Carpenter/Utility: Julian Monsalve
SGPS Carpenters: William Bass, Kyle Wolfson, Tom Rogner, Julian Aguirre
Gear
1 MA Lighting grandMA2 full console
4 MA Lighting grandMA2 NPUs
88 PRG Bad Boys
20 PRG Best Boy Spots
50 PRG Best Boy Wash fixtures
145 Clay Paky Sharpys
4 Syncrolite SXL 7K Xenon fixtures
52 Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast CB12 TRX LED
40 SGM XC-5 RGB LED strobes
50 SGM P-5 RGBW LED Wash fixtures
85 Philips Showline SL Nitro 510 LED strobes
6 PRG Bad Boy followspot controllers
7 PRG Virtuoso Node Plus units
4 PRG Series 400 Super Nodes
4 PRG Series 400 power and data distribution racks
6 Pathway Connectivity Via12 Ethernet switches
2 PRG Series 400 FOH control boxes
4 Reel EFX DF-50 Diffusion hazers
2 JEM ZR44 fog machines
2 Ultratec Radiance hazers
4 Bowen Jet Stream fans
1 Pyro digital control system w/12 remote control modules for 250 pieces of pyro from Strictly FX
8 Mega Flame units
12 Mega CO2 Jets
6 34W RGB Lasers (Coral Series) w/ Pangolin control software from Strictly FX
6 Confetti Cobras w/ custom confetti
16 Columbus McKinnon ½-ton hoists
54 Columbus McKinnon 1-ton hoists
6 Truss chairs, top mount
16 PRG BAT truss sections (15”x24”x8’)
15 PRG BAT truss sections (15”x24”x10’)
8 PRG BAT truss sections (15”x30”x8’)
8 PRG BAT truss sections (15”x30”x10’)
98 PRG BAT truss stacking extenders
22 PRG truss pickup bars for motors
