A Full-Scale Tour
“It’s definitely the biggest tour I’ve been asked to do,” says lighting designer and director Dan Hadley, who has also worked with Sonic Youth, Tenacious D, Queens of the Stone Age, Death Cab For Cutie, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Devo and Them Crooked Vultures (with Foo’s Dave Grohl).
The Wasting Light tour included dates in the U.S., Europe and Australia and brought in a reported $20 million in ticket sales, putting it at #43 on Pollstar’s Top Tours list for 2011.
“I usually tour by myself or maybe one or two techs,” Hadley notes. “I’ve always worked with small budgets and would rather have more gear than help. We all agreed that this one should come out of the gate strong, so there were a lot more resources made available.”
In terms of design challenges, Hadley says the biggest was “the fact that many of the shows were sold 360º, so the show couldn’t be set or backdrop based. I usually tend toward a more theatrical than technical approach but had to change gears pretty drastically. It was important to me that the show was there for every seat in the house, thus the three-sided pods.”
A Love for the Show
“There were various companies that were asked to bid on the tour, and I was very happy with the ones that we agreed to use,” Hadley continues. “I have had a long relationship with Epic Productions, having worked with, around, and for Ted Fowler in many capacities. He has a love for the show that creates a good energy down the line to the touring crew, and Kevin Forster handled the account and made our lives very easy on that front.
“Chaos Visual had quite a task to wrap the pods with video panels and pulled off the perfect solution with the WinVision,” Hadley adds. “The video floor was the result of a great collaboration between SGPS and Chaos and added an element to the show that really helped give the people in the high seats a good looking show regardless of proximity.”
Lighting
The lighting rig included an ample supply of Martin MAC 301 LED moving heads, Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures, Vari*Lite VL3500 Profiles and Syncrolite MX4s, along with beam projectors and nook lights.
“It’s my first time using the Sharpys from Clay Paky, and they’ve been a delight to play with,” Hadley says. “They hang next to the Syncrolite MX4 and stand up to that huge beam with no problem. The 301s provide a great wash array and are a great workhorse in the rig and are nicely quick and responsive,” he adds. “I also had to have some sort of warm tungsten, and I loved the look that the beam projectors provided, especially since I can get different focuses by moving the pods on which they’re mounted. I’ve never used the Syncrolites either, and I was very pleased with the color and beams — there are a couple of great split color looks in the show that really stand out.”
Video
Among the signature looks for this tour were the three-sided video pods moving into different formations above the band. Chaos Visual Productions provided the high-resolution WinVision 8 used for the pods, with WinVision 9 used for the 360° shows’ I-Mag screens and WinVision 18 incorporated into the stage surfaces.
The video, Hadley says, looked “amazing, indoors and out” — and not just in darkness. “Even in the bright Scandinavian summer nights, we never cranked the pods up to full,” he notes.
“Control Freak Systems supplied their custom software applications, which enabled me to seamlessly control all of the video and visual aspects of the show,” Hadley continues. “This included everything from the video floor, I-Mag screens, the WinVision pods and four Mbox EXtreme media servers. The CFS software is really powerful. I was able to trigger every visual element of the show in synchronized unison from the grandMA console.”
Staging
“SGPS built the pods, stage, lift, and pantographs,” Hadley says. “With that much weight flying up and down and around the guys I really wanted it to be an all-inclusive package from one extremely competent company to ensure we avoided any complications.
“The band liked the initial concept that I offered, so we took it into an arena and taped out the stage and looked at a bunch of different options, coming to agreements quite easily,” Hadley says. “They’re a joy to work with. As long as there’s was an element of a big Queen-type show in there somewhere, as Taylor (Hawkins on drums) and Dave (Grohl) are huge Queen fans, so yeah, they were happy.
Programming
“I programmed with Breck Haggerty as I usually do. Our brains work well together, he gets all my quirks, and he has a very creative vision. This was incredibly important when developing the control system, since we were dealing with 36 moving, rotating video surfaces in the air, the video floor and effects for the five I-Mag screens.
“Stuart White from Control Freak Systems was in the Northwest and Breck and I were in LA, so I was able to have the creative conversations with Breck, and he and Stuart would go back and forth to hammer out the technical side to provide the control I was looking for. I’ve only programmed one other tour with media servers, so I had a big learning curve to wrangle with in this system, and Breck’s style and patience were invaluable. Of course, I didn’t master it all, and when the tour started, Greg Garrison stepped into the role of teacher and head figurer-outer.”
On the Fly
With a band like Foo Fighters, of course, change is constant. “The show had to be programmed with a lot of leeway built in, as the band can and does change things up on the fly. I rarely program fully-cued songs anyway, as I enjoy a lot of manual operation, and I feel that the show flows a lot better, sometimes through happy accidents. This was a little harder to set up for the video, but the Surface Freak system from CFS helped me out on that, and it also provided some great audio-reactive video content.”
Teamwork and Support
“For a tour of this size it’s truly remarkable the quality of crew that was built,” Hadley adds. “Technical gremlins will always arise, but I never have to worry that it’s due to a lack of focus, effort, or interest in the show. It’s been humbling to have the support of this remarkable team every day.”
Foo Fighters Wasting Light Tour
Crew
Lighting Designer/Director: Dan Hadley
Lighting Techs: Mat Burden (Crew Chief),
Whitney Hoversten, James Jones III, Pete Nieto, Joey Fairchild
Video Control: Greg Garrison, Stuart White,
George Toledo
Pre-Vis/Video Control Design: Breck Haggerty/
Diagonal Research
Video Techs: Robert “Bo” Crowell (Crew Chief),
Dustin King, Sean Harper, L. Sidney Ptah
Video Content Creator: Robb Wagner/Stimulated Inc.
Video Director: Josh Adams
Video Engineer: Seth Sharpless
Motion Control: Brian Lolly (Programmer), Jeremiah Anderson (Crew Chief), Alex Dew, Len Perciful, Chris Kunkle, Samantha Wunder
Production Manager: Joe Beebe
Tour Manager: Gus Brandt
Stage Manager: Andy Pollard
Production Assistants: Jane Donald, Stephanie Thompson, Rich Creason
Carpenters: Dave Boyd, Chad Brouilette,
Rommel Martinez
Rigger: Jim Allison
Lighting Company: Epic Production Technologies
Motion Control/Rigging/Staging: SGPS
Video Company: Chaos Visual Productions
Video Control: Control Freak Systems
Gear
2 grandMA consoles
4 Mbox XTreme media servers
4 Encore media servers
55 Martin 301 LED moving heads
24 Clay Paky Sharpies
21 Vari*Lite 3500 Profiles
38 Martin Atomics w/ Scrollers
16 Molefay 8-Lites
8 Syncrolite MX4 on Pantographs
16 Beam Projector 12 on Pods
18 Nook Lights
4 DF-50 Hazers
12 Video pods with WinVision 8
1 Video Stage with WinVision 18
5 I-Mag screens with WinVision 9 (360º shows)
{mosapa album=”foo”}
