This band started as collaboration between lead singer Florence Welch and keyboardist/singer Isabella “Machine” Summers when they were teens. The actual band came together in London in 2007, when they started playing their first gigs. 2015 brought around the release of their third album entitled How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful in June, and the band has been playing handfuls of dates all over the globe since. They recently embarked on some shows here in the U.S. We caught up with lighting designer Rob Sinclair and video director Mark Haney as they headed out to their first show in Nashville.
“Creative Director Willo Perron brought me into the fold last January,” states Sinclair. “He had been looking after many of the artistic details of the act’s live performances for some time and wanted a fresh person to bounce concepts off of and light the band the way he saw it. That being said, he provided a basic set idea for the round risers and had all these concepts that needed someone to bring to reality. I was fortunate that he chose me to collaborate with.”
Perron (willoperron.com) is a well-known creative force who has designed touring productions for a wide berth of respected artists, including Drake and Rihanna, as well as countless musical spectacles and single performances. Many of his clients come to him when they are scheduled to perform a single number at an awards show (the Grammys for instance) and they want a unique spectacular performance concept.
Perron dances to his own drumbeat, thinking outside the norm, which makes him a cutting edge artistic force. But at the same time, his vision and strict rules are something the LD must adhere to. Sinclair concurs, “It was an interesting show to light. At times I felt my hands were tied because of all the limitations put on what I can and cannot do with the lighting during this show. Gone were things like many of the saturated colors I normally enjoy using, for instance, but in the end, I think the show was much better for it. I had to work harder to come up with new looks that fit into Willo’s guidelines. I am quite proud of the unique looks and flow of this show actually.”
No beams, No color, No problem
One of the guidelines was indeed color selection. There was to be no purple color in the show. Barely any blue light either. The light source for the show is predominantly white. “In fact we are up to 16 specific shades of white, if you can believe that.” explains Rob. “We have the normal shades of CTO and CTB (colored gels normally reserved for changing the color temperature of a white source on camera), but we keep elaborating. We may have a song that lends itself to a rose gold or streetlight sodium color in my mind, but that quickly dissipates to a slight pink or amber hue in a white wash as the basic look.”
The show does indeed come up with strong reds, perhaps an occasional blue hue, but most of that is emitted through floor lights, which are mostly Martin MAC Vipers and Solaris Flares.
In fact, the majority of the moving lights are either MAC Viper Air FX or MAC Viper Performance fixtures. Rob is quick to point out that these are his favorite fixtures du jour. “Like everyone else, I think I find something that works for me and I keep to it for a while, until something else comes along that I really like. Then I dump it like a cheap date and never call on them anymore.” Among the other restrictions having an effect on Rob’s job was to make sure nobody ever saw the lights move. They did not wish to see single beams, either. They felt similarly about gobo patterns in the fixtures. There would be none of that. Adds Sinclair, “I really did not wish to be limited in my fixture choice to a bunch of wash lights. Of course, I get a tremendous solid wash using the Solaris Flares as side lighting. With a touch of haze I am able to keep the band in a saturated color at certain times, while making Florence stand out in a white color. But I can group a bunch of the Air FX together to make a wall of light from above or behind on the floor and that seems to work out well for this show.”
Spotlights are sparingly used for this show. They recently added two rear truss spots for the indoor shows, something that Rob has fought for since day one. But they utilize just a single front spot on Florence, and that is done sparingly. Downstage left and right are sets of custom, copper-colored ETC Source Four ellipsoidals. They cut across the stage apron, at times capturing the artist from one side or another, as she constantly roams the downstage edge.
Gone are the normal audience moles that are a prerequisite for 98 percent of the rock shows out there. “I decided I was done with slamming moles. It’s just so easy. If we were going to do something different, then it would be really different. At times there is so much ambient light coming from the floor fixtures shining through the band and bounced off the wall that she can see the crowd, but we never purposely light them,” says Rob. The same went for purposely moving the lights. “There would be a time when I would think to myself ‘This is the optimum time for that audience bally’, but then I would have to rack my brain for an alternate solution. While challenging at the time, I look back and am really proud of what we came up with as alternative looks to the norm.”
Louisa Smurthwaite, longtime lighting director for Rob Sinclair, is once again behind the Jands Vista L5 console, running the show. Rob will show up for rehearsals and certain shows to make sure the strict design concepts are adhered to, but he trusts his director completely to run a great show. “When you find someone who truly thinks and operates a show in the same manner as yourself, you have to grab on to that person,” Rob says. “Keep them busy so they are available for your next project. Louisa has proven to be invaluable to me.”
The Set, and the Obstacles
Willo had two big ideas — the circular-shaped risers, on which the band plays on, and the “Kinetic Wall.” The rust covered risers complemented the colors of the copper light fixtures and their poles as well as all the red soft goods masking the stage to create a theatrical look. As far as the Kinetic Wall, think of a giant mirror ball behind a band, but it doesn’t rotate. It does shimmer and maintain a degree of movement that is variable, however. “Willo had come up with this grand idea of a mirrored panel wall upstage of the act. But of course it was dropped in our hands to figure out how we were going to build it in a reasonable timeline and, more importantly, how to light it properly.” The tour’s production manager, Narci Martinez had worked hand-in-hand with Sinclair on the physical production of the show, and he located a guy in Texas.
Jeff Wickley from Wickley Worldwide located down in San Antonio, TX (wickleyinteractive.com) specializes in building unique, hard-to-make products. According to Rob, “he’s a genius.” We let Jeff explain exactly what he came up with.
“The original concept was to have this mirrored wall be able to have light shine through it, and they needed a way to engineer this wall so that could happen. That put a few restrictions on how we could build it with the least amount of hardware behind it blocking the light beams that would come through,” explains Wickley. Plus, it needed a way to collapse directly into road cases for transport and not get scratches on the mirrors. “I came up with a dozen four-foot-wide set carts that we could use to accordion the pieces in and out of for setup.”
The mirrors are three-foot squares each, separated by a .2-inch space. Each mirror can bend by itself, and they were attached via standoff pipes to some hard panels measuring three by four feet (HxW). The panels each had a special hinge made to allow for them to move in waves, top to bottom, but connect on the sides to form a seamless wall. “I think we had to machine drill some 40,000-plus holes to attach the mirrors perfectly symmetrical,” says the manufacturer.
Sinclair lined the top of the truss and the bottom of the wall with DMX controlled high speed fans from TMB. This allowed him to ripple the wall slightly or move it radically, depending on the mood of each song.
The band is made up of 12 players. This includes an all female (Icelandic) horn section and a harpist. There are five reddish brown circular risers located upstage for the musicians with large instruments. The guitar, bass and backing vocalists work the floor in front of them. Each custom riser has a line of recessed light bulbs built into it. Sinclair really wanted to use incandescent bulbs to achieve a warm color temperature. More practical minds on the crew knew that this would be a constant problem with traveling the world and breakage in handling. They insisted LED was the answer. “We were searching for that 60’s retro look in the risers. Of course, that required circular bulbs, illuminated dots of some sort. Finally we came across these fixtures from TMB called Fireflies. They look incandescent and are pretty unbreakable. I love them.”
Behind the risers, the LD has placed 36 individual Par 64 fixtures on copper-colored pipes to accent the set. They are in groups of six fixtures that stagger in height like the risers themselves. The stage is surrounded with floor lights, as Sinclair makes great use of lighting from all angles. Shadow play through various silhouettes and one-sided lighting can often be seen. “We let Florence roam the stage for the majority of the show, but she indeed knows when she should be in the right place for a few select moments during the show,” Rob adds. “For instance, we have a 5K Fresnel built into the drum riser that silhouettes her at a certain time. She understands the theatrical impact of being on her mark for this moment.”
The biggest feat Sinclair had at first was properly lighting the Kinetic Wall itself. He had planned on using floor fixtures. Then perhaps hitting it from the rear trusses or sides. He explains, “After three days I was becoming a bit frightened. The wall wasn’t coming alive as I had envisioned it and I was in trouble. Finally I had to just address the physics of the whole thing. If I expected the audience to even see it sparkle I would need to light it head on. Hence we have two front trusses now. One to light the band and another to light the kinetic wall.”
Indeed, the designer hung a truss full of MAC Viper Air FX fixtures to shine directly on the shimmering backdrop. Rob often refers to the drop as “the cloud” since, at times, it looks just like that when the wall is only slightly rippling. Sometimes the whole wall will strobe blindingly; at other times, it looks like a giant pyro effect. For one song, it appears like six large candles are flickering in place behind the band. It’s simply brilliant and original.
One of the physical obstacles of the show came when the decision was made to have a small LED screen make an appearance by flying into place from a hidden slot upstage of the Kinetic wall. The wall splits in two and travels off stage, just wide enough for a 12-foot-wide circular screen to lift into place and travel downstage, where it resides over the drummer’s head on a pair of wires. Some well-thought-out ideas as well as some great gear from Atlanta Rigging Systems made the move possible.
Premier Global Productions won the lighting bid for the tour last spring. According to account rep James Vollhoffer, “we were invited to the competitive bid process on the project. A sharp pencil, and desire to do the gig, got the job done. We started with the first gig at Coachella and have been covering their lighting needs on both sides of the pond.”
With a new 55,000 square foot facility in Nashville, Premier Global has just grown even larger and entered a new era. They are open 24 hours per day and offer a great pre-viz suite as well as the ability to hang systems up to 30,000 pounds for tech-ing systems and programming. They have recently set aside $5 million to purchase new gear for the next year.
The Video Aspects:
“We don’t want any normal I-Mag imagery on this show. What we are looking for is a 70’s soft porn feel.” That’s how it was explained to video director Mark Haney. Indeed, Sinclair actually sat down with Haney and showed him pics from the infamous Emmanuelle movies of the 70’s. Haney, along with partner Van Jarvis, are the driving forces behind Colonel Tom Touring (cttouring.com),the video vendor for this production.
Haney explains, “Rob and I have are good friends and have worked closely together in the past. He called me prior to the band’s show at Coachella last spring. He explained that he needed a director who could come in to a large festival and somehow get the look they were after on the outboard screens. A soft look, kind of like a candlelit scene, was what they were after, as opposed to crisp images that depicted every detail. There are a few ways to achieve this look, including camera filters and the old trick of stretching panty hose over the lens, but we opted to do it this way. We like the idea of feeding our engineer the best clean signal, then have him alter the images before they get to my switcher.”
That engineer turned out to be an old cohort of Mark’s named Dan Skalzo. “He was the guy who helped us get the look we were after,” Haney says, adding that “the stage has a good deal of red and brown hues to it, plus the singer is a redhead. Combine that with a good deal of haze, and we were able to get a good starting point, but getting the correct skin tones in this fashion was really difficult.” In the end, Skalzo got the look he was after by setting the cameras to a PSF (Progressive Segment Frame) of 23.98. This gave the cameras more of a “film” look for the output. “Getting that particular look at festivals, where we did not carry our own cameraman, was a challenge. It was more important that I spend time talking to the local video engineers than concerning myself with camera pickups at the exact times.”
After getting a very positive review from the Coachella shows, Sinclair urged Haney to come on board to direct more shows. Haney has pretty much hung up his touring shoes for the last couple of years to concentrate on building up Colonel Tom Touring with Jarvis. But the two of them got together and worked out some details. “It was important to us as a company to provide the best service we could to the Florence camp,” Jarvis says. “We are a boutique company who never strives to be the biggest, just the best. At this point, the best solution was to figure out a way that we can still maintain a good service to our other clients, yet keep this group happy.”
“It’s helpful that this tour does not book long straight segments of time on the road,” adds Haney. “I had to think hard about doing a recent three-week long run in the U.K. Fortunately, my wife gave me a yard pass to go run these shows. I really enjoyed getting to do these shows.” Now that the group has come back to tour the U.S. for a few weeks Mark has gotten a reprieve, as the band has tagged Charles Woods to direct this American run.
“We play all I-Mag on the outside 12mm walls,” Haney notes. “Onstage, we use a 7mm product for the circular screen. Of course nobody makes a perfect circular screen yet, and we rely on a beveled surround to outline this tracking piece to mask it. All of our LED product is the Kindwin Viper series of tiles, rated for outdoor use and flat black in color,” he adds. “The management made the decision to use this set piece sparingly and to just feature content, as opposed to image magnification of the artist.” Images are played back via a Catalyst media server that Colonel Tom provides; they are triggered by the lighting console at FOH. The image of a sun plays predominant during a song and, at some point, dissolves into a moon. Sinclair purposely mounted six additional MAC Viper Air FX fixtures directly to the back frame of the tiles to give the sun the appearance of an eclipse at one point. The effect worked rather well.
“We utilize portrait-style I-Mag imagery on the sides,” explains Haney. “We wanted to use a lot of dissolves with the cameras. The camera operators will allow Florence to run out of a shot while she runs into the view of another waiting camera.”
I asked Van Jarvis how Colonel Tom got involved with Florence. “I had also met Rob years ago, when we were both involved with a Miley Cyrus tour,” he told me. “But for this particular artist, we got the gig through Narci Martinez, the production manager. I cannot say enough good things about Narci. We met years ago on another production. For a young production manager, he is all over his gig and covers every base meticulously. I was out doing some work with Usher while Narci was looking after an up and coming act named Akon. He needed a favor, as most opening acts do. He came to me and said “Look man, I can’t afford to pay you guys for your help right now, but we really need to use some video. If you sort me out for this act I promise I will never forget and will pay you back in the future.’ Come this year, he not only gave us the video contract for Florence, he gave us some work on Josh Groban! I tell you what, this guy is a man of his word!”
Good advice, it seems. Van allowing Mark Haney to personally look after the production’s needs was a sound investment. Colonel Tom also invested in a great flypack system. Haney himself works on the Grass Valley 2.5 M/E Kayak switcher. He utilizes four camera operators — two with long lenses on tripods out at FOH and two with handhelds in the pit, all with Sony 1500 cameras. Mark also utilizes a couple of BRC 700 robocams.
“Surrounding yourself with good people who you have worked with before makes for a comfortable job,” says Haney. “And what better people to work with than this production team. Everyone is a pro and just cares about each other. As Rob Sinclair so often says — and I agree with this sentiment — ‘It’s nice to be important. But it’s important to be nice.’”
Crew
Creative Director: Willo Perron
Lighting Designer: Rob Sinclair
Production Manager: Narci Martinez
Production Coordinator: Luke Bell, Paul Hinojos
Stage Manager: Philip Danneman
Head Rigger: Gabe Wood
Automated Rigger: Daniel Kirby
Lighting Director: Louisa Smurthwaite
Lighting Co: Premier Global Productions
Lighting Crew Chief: Jason Henry
Light Techs: Michael Sims, Greg Nunz, Max Ferreyra, Mark Liatos, Peter Schofield, Mark Thornton, Colt Lawrence
Video Co: Colonel Tom Touring/Van Jarvis, Mark Haney
Video Directors: Mark Haney, Charles Woods
Video Engineers: Dan Skalzo, Robert Larkin
Video Techs: Nicholas Weldon, Bruce Ramos, Robin Toye,
Jacob Hogenson
Staging Elements: Atlanta Rigging Systems
Kinetic Wall: Jeff Wickley/Wickley Worldwide
Carpenters: Scott Badeau, Olu Kiarra, Mathew “Skippy” Medina
Gear
Lighting:
2 Jands Vista L5 consoles
94 Martin MAC Viper AirFX fixtures
43 Martin MAC Auras w/ top hats
10 Martin MAC Viper Performances
36 Copper colored Par 64s
20 Copper colored ETC Source Four ellipsoidals
12 Copper colored ground row cycs
1 5KW Fresnel
42 TMB Solaris Flares
22 TMB DMX-able fans
6 Look Solutions Viper NT fog machines
6 DF-50 hazers
2 Truss spots and top mount chairs
Video:
1 Grass Valley 2.5 M/E Kayak switcher
1 Catalyst media server
4 Sony 1500 cameras
2 Long lenses on tripods (at FOH)
2 Sony BRC 700 robocams
Kindwin Viper 7mm tiles (Circular onstage screen)
Kindwin Viper 12mm tiles (Outside walls)
For more Florence and the Machine tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to: http://www.prolightingspace.com/photo/albums/florence-and-the-machine-gallery
