"The audience paid money to come hear music that they like. The artist knew what they were thinking about when they wrote it. If you can capture that visually, you win," explains lighting director Martin Thomas in the moments before Fantasia Barrino hits the stage. Fantasia's set for her Back to Me tour is comprised of four separate "period pieces" – four separate sets of music from different eras of soul music. Each period piece has a distinct wardrobe, for Fantasia as well as the band, as well as a distinct lighting design.
Thomas and Fantasia collaborated on the visual design, with Thomas' feel for the timing of the music also playing a key role.
Synchronicity
Collaborations between lighting designers and artists vary as much as the LDs and artists themselves – and the ability of the artist to articulate his or her vision. Thomas notes that Fantasia had a clear vision for the show – "a theatrical look and feel from the start" – explaining her vision in a way that almost read like an informal script, complete with blocking and stage exit/entrance instructions for the background vocalists and basic set diagrams illustrating their positions as the show progresses from one period piece to the next.
Thomas used these notes and information culled from his meetings with Fantasia to flesh the show out in preproduction, but he designed the major pieces of the show well before preproduction, or even his first meeting with Fantasia, based on a previous band incarnation.
That initial design, based primarily on his impressions from listening to Fantasia's music, needed only minor tweaks to accommodate small changes in heights or set locations.
Thomas did decide to omit some of his preliminary design, though. He initially designed the set to be more dynamic, with trusses moving during and between songs, but after he saw the show in pre-production, he decided that Fantasia carried the show on her own without all the dynamics. He did decide, however, to fly the upstage truss down below the screen during the last song to bring the show to more of a visual climax.
For any collaboration to be effective, Thomas notes, "you have to be organized and have a great crew, but mostly you have to listen to the artist, and be able to make changes as you're talking to them, to get to the place where you've done something exactly as they've envisioned it."
He adds that it is essential to be able to call up looks immediately during conversations with the artist and tweak the looks while you talk with them. This, he says, is one of the most direct means to achieving synchronicity between artist and LD.
Need for Speed
Thomas knew that he would want a console that would enable him to use lots of automation but also enable him to get as detailed as possible with only a second's notice. He chose the Martin Maxxyz Compact console with the playback submaster wing. He doesn't use the Maxxyz for every tour, but for Back to Me, it helped him rely heavily on stacked cues while still enabling him to touch any instrument at any time.
This immediate access to every aspect of the rig was invaluable when discussing looks with Fantasia, allowing him to drill down to any fixture very quickly and tweak the look while they were discussing it. This level of control also gave Thomas the ability to ensure that his cues moved and breathed with the tempo and rhythm of the music as the band plays – what Thomas refers to as "the fourth dimension" of lighting the show.
On tour, Thomas is running his accent cues "live" in conjunction with a timed, but manually triggered, cue stack. This way, he can be sure to fire the cues in time with the band, in synch with the emotion of the music. "Cues that glide a look into position with the exact moment a musician is performing it is the ‘fourth dimension' aspect of my designs – light where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. Not before, not later. Height, depth, width and time."
Creative Stage Lighting sent the console to Thomas's house so he could program the show in advance – there would only be one day for programming during preproduction. Thomas is also running the Martin M1 console synced to the Maxxyz Compact as a fulltime redundant backup, and lighting the stage with six JB Lighting VaryScan 7 1200 Profile Spots, 12 JB Lighting LED A7 Zoom Wash fixtures, six Coemar Infinity ACL "S" Beam Projectors, four High End Systems Color Pro FX fixtures, 18 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash, 12 VL3000 Profile Spots and one Barco/HES DL.3 digital light projector for flexible video projection.
Dramatic Touches
One of the first things the trained eye notices when walking into the room is the lack of a front of house truss. Thomas omitted any trusses or lighting instruments except for what he could fly over the stage to simplify his rigging plan, but it wasn't a major sacrifice for this show. Only Fantasia requires key light, and she is easily covered by a pair of spotlights in the stands behind front of house.
The lack of a front of house truss also meant that Thomas had to rely exclusively on downlight and sidelight from the trusses over stage to light the band and background vocalists, resulting in dramatic shadow effects on the faces of the band and vocalists. The dramatic angles employed to light the background vocalists underscores the mood for the 1960s "Movement" period in particular – a very stark look that Thomas had recalled from earlier in his career.
A short video vignette introduces each period piece, to give the audience a little back-story on the period coming up. This provides the crew with some time to set the stage and also gives Fantasia and the band time for wardrobe changes. Cab Calloway, the great jazz singer who led the house band at the Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s, is referenced in the first period piece. Fantasia wanted something spectacular to start the show; the goals for the first set were big, bright, striking looks.
Fantasia segues to a 1950s doo-wop feel for the second period, and the goal for this period was minimalism to match the vibe of the limited production from that period.
Thomas found that he could use modern equipment to recreate some vintage looks. The zoom capabilities on the VL3500 Wash, for example, enable him to zoom all the way in for a soft old-school beam projector look, or zoom out for a 6-inch or 8-inch Fresnel look. Overall, the 1950s period piece is based on solid, monochromatic looks with no movement.
The third period piece focuses on the turbulent 1960s and the Black Panther movement. For this period, the screen remains down, displaying video from 1960s civil rights events and key African American figures from the 1960s. As mentioned, the look was "stark," sharpening the importance of focus and impact timing, with white light focused on the individual performers.
In the fourth period piece, Fantasia moves to a 1970s Diana Ross vibe, "complete with Bob Mackie wardrobe stylings." Fantasia wanted the 1970s portion to be very psychedelic, with lots of movement and bold, striking colors including saturated greens and lavenders.
Thomas says he "had a ball with the tour, it was great to be on a structured tour like that. A lot of it had to do with the artist, to get that from the artist, and not have it tossed at you last minute but to work with and artist who can think about it in advance."
Achieving the Vision
Perhaps the best metric to assess the success of the synchronicity between Thomas and Fantasia is the opinion of the show by those closest to Fantasia. Thomas confided that one of the best compliments he'd received on the Back to Me tour came after the show played near her hometown in North Carolina. Fantasia's parents were in the house, and Thomas heard that the show was "exactly how they wanted their daughter to look."
Crew
Lighting Designer, Programmer, Operator: Martin Thomas
Master Electrician: Josh Gezzi
Crew Chief: Paul Mundrick
Gear
1 Martin Maxxyz Compact console with Playback sub master wing
1 Martin M1 Console
18 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures
12 Vari*Lite VL3000 Profile Spots
12 JB Lighting LED A7 Zoom Wash
6 JB Lighting VaryScan 7 1200W Profile Spots
6 Coemar Infinity ACL "S" Beam projectors
4 High End Systems Color Pro FX
1 Barco/HES DL.3 digital light projector
2 Martin K1 hazers
21 CM Lodestar hoists
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