By the end of “Girl Gone Wild,” the first song in Madonna’s MDNA tour, you know that this will be a concert experience unlike any before. More operatic in design style than pop concert, the creative team has married technology, music, and choreography with the precision and glamour that exemplifies the star herself. The MDNA tour opened in Israel in June and is currently touring North America.
For MDNA, Madonna continues her creative collaboration with show director Michel Laprise, who directed her well-received Super Bowl halftime show, bringing to stage a highly theatrical production that is both visually stunning and technologically innovative. The crew is overseen by the production director (and 2009 Parnelli Lifetime Achievement honoree) Jake Berry. Other key members of the creative team include show architect Mark Fisher of Stufish, lighting designer Al Gurdon and video director Stefaan “Smasher” Desmedt.
Video-Driven Scenery
Fisher’s stage design at first appears straightforward but impressive, with an LED screen backdrop measuring 29.5 by 63 feet (HxW). Then this massive screen starts to open, and you move from impressed to amazed. The enormous wall is actually eight individual LED video columns, each measuring 29.5 by 7.87 feet (HxW). Each of these columns can rotate independently and reposition, creating louvered effects and a variety of different openings. The columns are covered with Daktronics 10mm modules that are 10 modules high by two modules wide. The Daktronics product was supplied by Screenworks and mounted by Tait Technologies onto custom-built frames. Screenworks also provided the camera, screens, and playback packages for the I-Mag. For the outside stadium shows, the video design includes two WinVision 8.75mm LED screens measuring 49 by 20.7 feet (HxW) for I-Mag; indoor shows make use of six Barco 20K projectors for I-Mag.
Part way through the first number, the audience is again stunned by the set, when the floor begins to rise and reshape, revealing itself to actually be a complex system of 36 hydraulically-controlled cubes. The 36 cubes, when rising as a group, measure 30 by 13 feet (WxD). Each individual cube is 1-meter by 1-meter, and they are arranged four cubes deep by nine cubes wide, allowing the floor to be configured in an almost endless array of steps, shapes, platforms and scenic elements. The elevator cubes’ automation is not their only impressive feature; they’re covered in new, custom-developed LED video screen on three sides and the top. The LED and automation technology in the lift matrix cubes, as they are called, was developed by Tait Technologies, who built the entire set and engineered all of the automation on the tour.
“The lift matrix is the center portion of the stage, and each lift is covered with a 10mm LED video product on the top and three sides,” notes Tait partner Adam Davis. “The engineers in our Belgium office custom-designed the LED video product; our facility in China manufactured the video product; the engineers in our Vegas office custom-designed the lift mechanism; while the engineers here in Lititz figured how to package it all together and did the control. Then we actually built it all in a three-week period of time here in our facility in Lititz. We had people around the world designing and engineering.”
Desmedt, referred to as Smasher throughout the industry, is not only the video director for the tour, coordinating the cameras but also acted as the video technical director, laying out the video and playback control system. He believes that the video controlled cubes — yes, the cubes are actually driven by the video — is the start of something very exciting. “I think that this is the start of something big, what’s being done here. We haven’t seen where we’re going with this; it’s kinetics with video. I think the video driven automation is going to be the future. It is all video driven.”
Smasher describes how the video and automation control integration works. “I transmitted all the movement cues via grayscale movies and handed that over to the automation crew. Their system converts those grayscales into the movement of the cubes. If you send 100 percent white to a cube, that one video cube would be all the way up and when you go to black that cube goes back down level with the stage floor; depending on the grayscale of the pixel it tells the cube where to go. Then the movements and position of the cubes feeds back to me in video control, where I can see the cube movement on my 3D visualizer as well. That’s very important for the mapping of course; mapping the cubes was a big challenge, technically.” Essentially, the system is content driving the motion and, in return, the motion driving the content.
Smasher uses the d3 Technologies d3 HD media servers for content control. Montreal-based Moment Factory, under the creative direction of Sakchin Bessette, provided the content for the MDNA Tour. Swedish filmmaker and director Jonas Akerlund created additional content, as did producer/director Dago Gonzalez of Los Angeles-based Veneno.
Smasher found working on MDNA to be a unique experience, not just because of the development of the revolutionary video automation control, but also because of the unconventional collaborations. “For me, the biggest challenge was actually working to the choreography,” he states. “I come from a background where I cut to music. With any U2 or rock shows, there’s not much choreography going on; but here it was all based on the choreography. This was a theatrical show; not a rock show. I worked very closely with the choreographers on how the show evolved and all of the little details. It was an interesting experience and I think it looks really great.” Smasher also collaborated closely, as is more common, with LD Al Gurdon on balancing the lighting and video so they could both create a harmonious visual whole.
Precision Lighting
“Approaching this tour, the first thing I thought about was that Madonna has a glamour,” explains LD Gurdon, who also lit Madonna’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl. “From a lighting point of view, I was aware that I wanted to maintain that, especially in the keylighting. That said, the other force of the show is the choreography; the staging and choreography are incredibly complex and really drives much of the cueing.”
Gurdon and programmer Mike “Oz” Owen attended many of the early choreography rehearsals, taking detailed notes. “We were breaking down the music and making notes about the choreography; noting precisely what happened where in the music,” explains Gurdon. “It’s a very theatrical show, and there are a lot of lighting effects that have to be exactly timed to work right.”
To achieve many of the effects, Gurdon’s design calls for a lot of strobes, but not the more conventional style of cueing with strobes. “I use them not really as strobes; not something flashing constantly as an effect. I use them more as ways of accenting with lighting in places where I don’t really want a lighting effect per se. If you watch the show, you will see thousands of flashes. The music is very, very detailed in terms of its accents, and the lighting programming underpins and reflects all of those dynamics, in a way that I hope is unobtrusive but effective. What I mean is, for example, every time the gun fires, there are strobes to give a visual representation of the sound. In the song “Vogue” there’s the sound of a motor drive with a flash, it very effectively reflects fashion photography with a still camera. Oz is always brilliant as a programmer, and here he has done something amazing with the strobes. You are looking at a sound, which is quite extraordinary. He has a the type of brain where he can translate images into sound and then into mathematical formula and can program that in a way like no one else I know.” The lighting is programmed and controlled using a PRG V676 Control console with a PRG Series 400 Power and Data Distribution system.
For Gurdon, his overall design evolved as the show developed. “I don’t try to create a statement with the lighting that is independent of everything else,” he says. “I don’t go in with a set concept; I evaluate the needs of the show and the design evolves from that. I hope that the lighting does have visual impact, moments of subtly, moments of drama, and everything else but that all arises from the lighting working with and being driven by the music primarily and also by what is happening on the stage — the staging; the choreography; and the performer. In this show I wanted to balance lighting all the performers in a dramatic way for the wide stage view but I still wanted to maintain a glamorous lighting on Madonna in the close-ups shots on the screens. Those things can at times be at odds with each other; the different perspective of the close-up and the wider perspective of the stage.”
Gurdon used different lights for different purposes to achieve a balance in his looks. “I think that one of the things about the show for me was that it needed to be very precise,” he says. “The rig has different functions. I am not a big fan of lighting technology for its own sake. It isn’t about showing what a light can do but about choosing the light, which will do what you need it to do. For lighting groups of people and controlling the shape of the beam so that it can be contained precisely to those people and not have it spilling, I chose the [PRG] Best Boy. I chose it because it has precise shuttering; it’s very controllable; it’s fast; and has a good, flat even field of light within that shuttering system, so it was a very good keylight for me.”
A fair amount of action during the show is out in the middle of the audience on the runway and the B-stage so Gurdon had to make sure his rig extended out far into the audience. “I did have to rig quite a substantial number of lights out over the FOH area to key the runways and the B-stage. It was not the kind of thing that could be covered with followspots. I used Best Boys for the keying out over the runway; I also have some VL3500 Spots.”
For the onstage portions of the show, Gurdon was able to do a lot of keylighting with followspots but it requires careful control and attention to the cueing for the operators. “It isn’t a case of someone following a person around all night,” he explains. “It is about consistency and repeatability. We have very specific theatrical cues. The key spot operators tour with the show because it is very complex and took a lot of rehearsal and work to perfect.”
Gurdon used a number of Clay Paky Sharpys for strong visual beam effects. He describes his choice by noting, “Their extremely efficient size to intensity ratio gives you some very useful, interesting effects from very small units; their great asset is their sheer intensity of the beam. I am using them positioned tightly together, grouping units together and using them like one light source. I am using groups of Sharpys to do things like create shafts of sunlight through church windows.” PRG provided the entire lighting package. “PRG was great to work with, just as they always are,” says Gurdon. “They have been very supportive.”
Gurdon has four pods built with a grid of Sharpys and Atomic strobes with Atomic Colors. “The pods are hung upstage left and right both high and low,” he describes, “I use them a lot in the show because they can give me a strong accent. They give us richness of color and lighting dynamics, which can hold its own on this set that is effectively three-quarters LED video screens. I worked closely with Smasher when deciding what would need to be lit where and selecting the best luminaires for that moment so they would read and work with the very dynamic video that is in the show.”
In the end, the success of the tour design hinged in large part on the close collaboration of the creative and production teams; the integration and innovation of the technology employed; and the vision of Madonna herself.
Visit ProLightingSpace.com to see behind-the-scenes photos and additional online extras from the Madonna MDNA Tour.
MDNA Tour
Creative Producer: Jamie King
Show Director: Michel Laprise
Show Architect: Mark Fisher
Lighting Designer: Al Gurdon
Video Director: Stefaan “Smasher” Desmedt
Video Content: Sakchin Bessette, Johanna Marsal, Moment Factory;
Dago Gonzalez, Veneno; Jonas Akerlund
Production Director: Jake Berry
Lighting Programmer: Mike “Oz” Owen
Lighting Directors: Mark Cunniffe, Kathy Beers
Head Lighting: Ron Beal
Head Carpenter: Flory Turner
Theatrical Stage Manager: Mike Morobitto
Stage Manager: Ian Kinnersley
Automation: Raff Buono, Jack Richard
Head Rigger: Todd Mauger
Set Construction/Automation: Tait Technologies, James Erwin
LED Fixture Design: Tait Technologies, Frederic Opsomer
Staging: Stageco USA, Mary Lou Figley
Lighting: PRG, Tim Murch
Video: Screenworks, Danny O’Bryen
Gear
3 PRG V676 consoles
1 PRG V476 console
11 PRG Virtuoso Node Plus
3 City Theatrical SHoW DMX
11 PRG Series 400 distro racks
92 PRG Best Boy 4000 Spots
3 PRG Bad Boy CMY fixtures
156 Clay Paky Sharpys
20 Philips Vari*Lite VL3500 Spots
38 Philips Vari*Lite VL3500 Washes
5 GLP Impression 120 RZ LEDs
28 Robe Robin 1200 LED Washes
9 Robe Robin 600 LED Washes
4 Lycian M2 followspots
6 Strong Lighting Gladiator III followspots
3 Brite Box followspots
5 Hungaroflash T-Light 88 strobes
100 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
12 Reel EFX DF-50 Diffusion hazers
3 Martin Jem ZR33 Hi-Mass atmosphere generators
1 Ultratec Special Effects LSX-II fog chiller
5 Le Maitre stadium hazers
16 Martin Jem AF-1 fans
3 d3 Technologies HD media servers
6 Barco 20K projectors
8 Daktronics HD 10mm LED modules (9m x 2.4m)
2 WinVision 8.75mm LED screens (15m x 6m)
