As the lights go up on stage in the Atlantis Resort’s expansive, Imperial Ballroom, 51 teenage girls dressed in matching cobalt blue dresses are waiting nervously in the wings. Only one of them is going to get exactly what she wants tonight; the title of Miss Teen USA 2009. The crew, in contrast, is feeling fine. The stage looks great, the girls look great, and after the show is done, there’s load-out, and then, well, then there’s the Bahamas and the lazy river ride. But more on that later.
The Set and Lighting Design
First, flash back two months earlier, when planning began for the lighting of the 2009 Miss Teen USA pageant presented by The Miss Universe Organization (a joint venture between NBC Universal and Donald Trump). Emmy Award-winning producer/choreographer Kent Parham began talking with the LD for the event, Shawn Seithel.
Seithel, who is based out of Orlando, Fla., has been one of Atlantis’ two main LDs for the past three years, working on a freelance basis with artists as diverse as Stevie Wonder, Fergie and Kelly Clarkson. Parham and Seithel had worked together on Miss Teen USA 2008, also held at the Atlantis. As expected, their collaboration went smoothly, benefitting from their previous work experience together. Parham is considered to be talented and clear and decisive when he needs to be, but his laid-back, down-to-earth style left Seithel free to add design elements of his own.
“The biggest change in the way things went this year,” says Seithel, “was the fact that Kent and I had worked together before. I knew what he was looking for, and he trusted me to spec the right gear and add elements to the overall feel of the stage. He handed me a drawing and said, ‘Here’s what it’s going to look like. There’s going to be truss here and here and here.’ Originally, I was thinking I’d like to put (Martin) LC LED panels all over that truss, so I said, ‘Great, can I cover the truss?’ And he said ‘No.’ See, Kent’s of the mind that, ‘if it’s on the stage, it’s mine.’ He uses every bit of real estate he can get, even if it’s a piece of truss, he’ll stick a girl on top of it. That’s why he’s as good as he is, and the show is so exciting, but it presents some challenges for me to keep the set interesting when the girls aren’t on it.”
Seithel looked instead to the area behind the hosts of the evening, Seth Goldman and former Miss USA, Crystle Stewart. There he added two 12-foot sticks of 12-inch truss and 34 Element Labs Versa Tubes. He then used 56 more Versa Tubes to delineate the edges of the stage and runway and ran content to all of them from his Mac Book Pro.
Adding Visual Interest
“I went to PRG, and at first, I was thinking 140 (Philips Color Kinetics) i-White Color Blasts, because I thought I would get an effective fill from them as well as light to keep the girls from walking off the edge of the stage,” says Seithel. “Then I realized that I didn’t need the fill, and I started looking around for something else. I had seen the Versa Tubes on a lot of shows, and I wanted to try them out. I figured they’d be an excellent way to get some stuff going on visually in those moments when the girls or the bands weren’t out doing their thing. They (the Versa Tubes) turned out great. It was very effective for what it needed to do, and now there’s talk about maybe using them again on the Texas show.”
Indeed, Parham liked the Versa Tubes so much he was overheard telling Seithel he’d like to see them all over the stage next year. Parham himself had earlier requested the addition of the 48-foot-by-20-foot fiber-optic drape and the four Martin QFXs, which, together with the Versa Tubes, created a defining look for the show.
"Clunky" but "Awesome"
Seithel also specified six Vari-Lite VL3500s, 14 VL1000s and 24 VL5s. Seithel has been using Vari-Lites since the early days of his career when he ran a rig full of the old VL2Cs and VL4s in the now defunct Mannequins Dance Palace on Disney’s Pleasure Island.
“They were old, they were clunky, but they were awesome,” he says, remembering the 2Cs. “They made life fun. I saw then that if you wanted the best colors and beam patterns, Vari-Lites were the way to go. Now I use Vari-Lite gear on corporate gigs a lot. Their gobos are great, but what really sells me on the 3000s and 3500s is the depth of field on their focus. You can have a really uneven backdrop, drapery or whatever, and the gobos will be in perfect focus from the front to the back over the entire plane.” The VL 1000s, he explains, were a must because of their shutter feature, which allowed him to use them as an addition to his ETC Source Fours. The 1000s could then easily be used for a more rock ‘n’ roll look when the two musical guests of the evening, Leah Renee, and Jonas Brothers’ opening band, Honor Society, hit the stage.
In addition to the Vari-Lites and Versa Tubes, which shipped from PRG in Orlando, Seithel used moving fixtures and conventional lights owned by Zamar, the in-house production company for Atlantis. Zamar’s 24 High End Studio Spots and 22 Studio Colors added texture and depth to the stage while 98 in-house ETC Source four Lekos, 72 PAR 64s, 22 Strand 2K Fresnels, 22 Strand 1K Fresnels, and four Strong Super Trouper spotlights worked in conjunction with the VL wash fixtures to provide the majority of the stage wash. Using Zamar’s gear allowed Seithel more room in his budget for the fun stuff.
“Obviously, it brings the costs down if you don’t have to pay for the shipping and the rental,” says Seithel, “plus you have a plan B if the stuff coming from Orlando gets held up in customs. It’s very rare, but it’s been known to happen. Actually, things mostly go pretty smoothly here. I think in three years and 30-odd gigs I’ve only been really nervous twice. Of course it’s always at the back of your mind; ‘What am I going to do if the gear doesn’t show up?’ I knew we were covered for this one, though. We’d make it work no matter what.”
Tungsten Works for Webcast
Another part of the challenge to this year’s pageant was that it was Webcast by You Stream with an estimated 43,000 viewers by the end of the show. Seithel was new to lighting for Webcast, and admits to having some apprehension at the beginning of production.
“I’d never done Webcast before,” he says, “so I was concerned that they’d be asking for a lot of different things. But they never once asked for anything; they just kept turning around and going, ‘Oh, it was awesome!’ So I was thinking, ‘Well that’s a good sign.’ Webcast was a lot of fun actually. I had the rig all set for tungsten. Everything was matching, except for the fixtures I wanted to pull some beam and sparkle out of. I’ve done shows before where the entire rig is corrected to the same thing and it looks nice. You get some sparkle, but you don’t get a lot, and you don’t get that nice halo effect on the girls that I was going for. We achieved that, and I was really pleased with how this looked on camera and in the audience.”
On the last night of the pageant, 51 girls waited nervously in spangley four-inch heels. Judging by the audience’s enthusiastic applause, Seithel wasn’t the only one that was pleased with the way the show turned out. Every single one of the girls hit the stage looking beautiful and confident, whether they were in evening gowns or swimsuits. In fact, it might have been only the judges who were frowning at that point, as they had a really tough job ahead of them. The crew was certainly happy, planning some well-deserved R and R after the show, either out on the town of Nassau or floating along the Atlantis’ mile-long lazy river ride. It’s the Bahamas after all; beautiful women, beautiful beaches, outside the ballroom it’s another perfect day. For sure, there are worse gigs.
CREW
Production Manager: Ed James
Lighting Designer: Shawn Seithel
Production Electrician: Morgan Loven
Crew Lead: Brian Davis
Lighting Assistants/Spot Operators: Adrian Dean, Lubin Bernadin, John Evans, Glen Bethel
Video Switcher: Luke Williams
Tape Operator: Eugene Joyce
Camera Shader: Bently Jones
Cameras: Keno Thurston, Amaliko Carol, Kenvado Pratt, Ebony Mackie
Video Assistant: Antone Braynen
Camera Assistant: Nikko Storr
A-1: Tom Jones
A-2: Chris Meyer
A-3: Michael McFarlane
Back line: Glen Clarke
Lead Rigger: Glen Bethel
Rigger: Ken Rose
GEAR
Lighting Consoles: 1 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog2, 1 Flying Pig Systems Wholehog iPC
108 ETC Source Fours
79 1K PAR 64s w/ medium flood lamp
24 Strand 7” Bambino 2K Fresnel
22 Strand 1K Bambino w/ barndoors
4 Martin QFX 150 Fiber Optic Illuminators
7 Vari-Lite VL3500 spots
15 Vari-Lite VL 1000AS fixtures
24 Vari-Lite VL5 wash fixtures
26 High End Systems Studio Spot CMY Zooms
24 High End Systems Studio Color 575s
88 Element Labs Versa Tubes
2 fiber optics drapes
4 Strong Super Trouper followspots
2 Le Maitre Radiance haze machine
1 ETC 24x2K Sensor dimmer rack
4 CM 1-ton chain motors
51 CM ½-ton chain motors
18 12” truss corner blocks
1091’ 12” box truss
270’ 20.5” box truss
21 large truss base plates
