We asked show designer & director Willie Williams as well as associate lighting designer Alex Murphy and lighting director Ethan Weber to share a few of their thoughts on this unprecedented touring experience.
PLSN: It was a groundbreaking design, certainly in scope, but also in the production elements and visual ambition. Looking back, knowing what you know now, two years later, what would you tell your younger self as you began the design process for 360?
Willie Williams: I’m not sure I’d have any specific advice for myself, other than my standard advice of, “Don’t forget to enjoy it.” The process was long and, at times, was hard work, but in most ways, it really couldn’t have gone better, so there’s nothing significant that I’d do differently, given the time again. There’s very little that I’m not proud of on this one.
PLSN: Talk a little about the visual elements you think were most successful in realizing your design and the challenges of the design.
Willie Williams: Most importantly, the premise itself worked very well. Much of the genesis to playing 360° came from my not being able to bear the thought of U2 doing another stadium tour playing in front of a giant video screen. However, a video backdrop is such a powerful visual tool that if you’re going to dispense with it, you’d better have something pretty remarkable to take its place. For design challenge, building a gigantic video screen that expands through three dimensions in space was not an insignificant challenge. Neither was building a portable structure that could carry 250 tons and span a football field. As with the rest of the production though, aside from having the finest minds in the industry focused on it, the key to success was having time. The first drawings of this show were produced 2-½ years before the first show, so we were able to do the necessary research and worked steadily towards the goal.
PLSN: Were there elements that challenged you and the team even once the tour was underway?
Willie Williams: The show evolved constantly, from opening night in Barcelona right through to the final gig in Canada. That’s the way U2 works and, even though I appreciate that this is unusual, it has become so much the norm in their environment that you take it for granted that things will always be changing. The set-list, the video content, the lighting and staging, the song structures and mixes — all these grew and developed as we went along. The largest ongoing challenge was getting programming time for new things once the tour was moving. I take a holistic approach to programming, so for songs which need lighting, cameras, video and motion control working together, it’s an involved process. On a load-in night, it can take a while to get to the point where everything is in, up, focused and working, with all the necessary crew in place.
Ethan Weber: I think the biggest challenge for me was probably the ever evolving set list. All elements video, lighting, and song selection were kind of a living organism over the two years and things could change a bit drastically not only from leg to leg, but sometimes night to night. There weren’t many load-in/focus nights that didn’t involve a fair amount of programming to try to keep up with things. I’m sure the late night lighting crew would like to never again hear the word transition.
Alex Murphy: We had the very first set of Bad Boys that PRG made with a unique color mixing system [all Bad Boys now use CMY color-mixing], and when we got the set list, moving between songs was sometimes like a car crash of color on the stage. It became a running joke on the tour that Ethan would spend more time working on transitions between songs, only for the set list to change, and for him to need start over again. For me, having different spot operators every show was a huge challenge. There is nothing more frustrating than for it to look like World War II on stage with followspots sweeping around the audience while trying to find the bass player. The lighting crew would take great delight in listening to my pain on headsets night after night.
PLSN: Talk a little about the lighting fixture choices…
Willie Williams: The trickiest aspect of lighting the show was simply the scale. The closest lighting fixtures to the stage still had to handle a throw of around 100 feet, whilst the ones around the perimeter would sometimes be 400 feet away or more. Available lighting positions were very limited, so I knew I would have to make a (comparatively) small number of fixtures do a lot of work. PRG’s Bad Boy came along at exactly the right moment, and we worked together to make it happen. I wouldn’t normally put all my eggs in one basket regarding the workhorse fixture for a big show, let alone a brand new one, but this proved to be an exceptional circumstance. What I needed above all was output, and the finessing of other details was a secondary issue. The Bad Boy was designed with exactly this in mind, so it was ideal. The fact that they proved to be highly road-worthy was a huge bonus.
Ethan Weber: To base the lighting for a tour of this scale on a new, un-road tested product was a very brave decision on Willie’s part. In retrospect, knowing who was involved in developing the Bad Boy, it should have assuaged any fears/doubts, but at the time I think everyone was a little nervous. When we got to Barcelona and saw them in place and in the dark, it was pretty obvious that he had made the perfect choice. I also enjoyed some of the more economically-used lights a lot — the red bulkheads that added that little extra bit to songs, the sodiums that gave a nice warm glow to the Pylon, and the Pylon DWE lamps. I have to hand it to Willie for not only picking the right fixtures, but also for placing them in the right positions; and to Jake [Berry, production manager] for not flinching at sending a large team to the top of the stadiums to carry and hang seven platforms worth of lighting, or bringing in an 80 ton crane to hang eight Big Lites on top of the roof.
PLSN: Was there something you are really proud of having accomplished on the tour?
Ethan Weber: I am just proud to have been a part of a tour that took over 200 trucks around the world, and to have run lights for over seven million people. It was very rewarding to have been a part of something that was so highly regarded by our industry.
Alex Murphy: I’m really proud of being part of that lighting crew. I will always look back and smile about our time together. There was a fantastic mix of people, and everyone brought something different to the party.
PLSN: Every project adds something new to your toolbox, what would you say you are taking away from 360°?
Willie Williams: I had some new team members on 360°, both creatives and crew, all of whom I would hope to work with again. The human element of the tour was one of its major assets. The chances are extremely slim for something this big and this challenging to also be enormous fun, but we had a great time.
Alex Murphy: I am taking away from this project the knowledge that, try as hard as I like, I can’t control the wind direction. Around the legs of the stage alone, we had over 20 haze machines, but still some nights, you would not see a single beam of light through the air. There is always that terrible feeling when the wind then changes direction again and huge clouds of smoke start obscuring the stage. Somebody needs to invent a smoke machine that can suck its fog back in if you have been far too keen on the button.
PLSN: From rehearsal to final performance, it had to be an incredible journey; how would you describe that journey?
Willie Williams: I’m not sure I possess the vocabulary, to be honest. People have gone to college and got degrees in shorter periods of time than it took to do this project, so in some ways it was a kind of higher education. We had two years of prep, three summers out there, complete with various semesters and vacations, so quite an education all round.
Ethan Weber: I got home and sat on my couch after finishing the two years and thought to myself — “What did I just go through?”
Alex Murphy: I was very lucky to have worked with Ethan, we made a great team, I can’t begin to describe how many hours we must have refocused that rig. And with such huge trim heights, it was very easy to get them totally off. It was painful, some times still there at 3 am, slowly going through all of the focus palettes. It was tedious, but it had to happen.
