Mapping 3D Video Projection in Another Dimension
It started innocently enough. In 2006, the wild idea to use fluorescent lighting for a live music production flashed in the mind of lighting designer Jeff Lavallee, of 44 Production Designs. But for nearly a year and a half, Lavallee couldn’t find the missing piece of his concept: the right band with which to match it.
After being invited to see the New Orleans-based modern rock group, MuteMath, in Nashville, Lavallee felt compelled to approach their manager, Kevin Kookogey, to pitch his fluorescent design concept. “They didn’t have an LD at the time, and I was completely blown away by their presence and how they captured the audience,” says Lavallee. “I showed them renderings and plugged in a fluorescent light I bought from Home Depot for about $12, and said that I wanted about 100 of these on stage.”
When Kookogey said, “Keep talking,” Lavallee knew he had the manager’s — and the band’s — attention. “Then I said, ‘At the end of the show, you can break these lights.’ That’s when I started to see the wheels turning …”
The MuteMath camp green-lighted the idea and, before long, three pods measuring four-and-a-half feet high by six-feet wide, each holding 25 fluorescent lights, were being periodically smashed on stage, often by lead singer/keyboardist Paul Meany. “The lights were in clear casings, so when they would break, all of the mercury and the glass would be contained in that sleeve,” says Lavallee.
The look was so successful that it accomplished nothing short of branding MuteMath and strengthening the relationship between 44 Production Designs and the band.
Some time after conceptualizing a video arch for a tour in support of the band’s 2009 Armistice album, Lavallee was struck by another vision, this time with the idea of using 3D video projection mapping in a club setting for the band’s latest tour in support of their 2011 studio record, Odd Soul, the title referencing the band members’ sense of isolation brought on by their religious upbringing.
MuteMath loved the premise of video accompaniment, and why not? Their diverse music explodes with textures and moods ranging from organ-based psychedelic soul, funk and punk to experimental rock, Krautrock minimalism and electronica. In addition, although MuteMath shed its “Christian music” label years ago and, despite the source of inspiration for Odd Soul, the band’s live shows are akin to congregational spiritual experiences. In other words, prime candidates for the types of altered states 3D video enhancement sometimes induces.
Still, unlike in the past, Lavallee wouldn’t be afforded a year and a half to let his idea brew. Lavallee had only a matter of months to realize and synthesize elements of this groundbreaking and ambitious production design. “I knew not many rock bands, at the theater level, were doing this,” says Lavallee. “The challenge was, ‘How do you do it?’”
Hangin’ In There
What, or more precisely who, provided Lavallee with the “how” were handpicked companies, such as the Nashville-based design, projection mapping, and production and post-production services firm Rabbit Hole Creative and Clay Christian’s rigging, electric and scenic design and production company, Christian Scenic, which fashioned one of the most vital elements of the tour: a custom-designed video wall.
The wall, which is referred to as the structure, weighs 800 pounds and measures 14 by 24 feet. It is composed of an aluminum frame and a dozen four-foot plastic projection surface flats that fan out, accordion style. The structure, painted with High Contrast Screen Goo to combat unwanted reflections, is collapsible and can be packed away for easy storage. (As of this writing, the MuteMath camp was deciding to build a new travel-worthy structure for their tour of Australia in May 2012.)
Although the band isn’t always able to present its full production in every venue, their show approaches near visual overload on a nightly basis. “If [the structure] … looks larger than the room will allow, that’s what we’re going for,” says MuteMath drummer Darren King.
Every section of the structure is secured with aircraft cabling attached to turnbuckles and a 12-inch SpanSet secured to a support truss. Two Genie ST-25 Super Towers help hang three Tomcat 10-foot Medium Duty 12” box trusses, off of which lighting fixtures and the structure hang. “Gravity is your friend in this case,” says Christian. “This way the structure won’t fall over, and it eliminates certain safety issues.”
A single downstage Genie lifts a Tomcat 10-foot Heavy Duty 12” truss, which secures two Barco 14K HDX-W14 projectors. One Barco unit beams images onto the structure and the other, acting like an elaborate gobo, projects visuals onto the band. Each projector throws 14,000 lumens, outputting images at 1920 by 1200 resolution. “Due to the technology,” says lighting director and production manager, Darien Koop, “the Barcos seem to outshine 15,000-lumen projectors.”
Working in 3D
Different designers, including New York artist Dev Harlan and MuteMath’s King, provided video content that was relevant to certain songs or conceptually based. “Darren was a big part of this whole process,” says Jake Jorgovan, co-founder of Rabbit Hole Creative, of the band’s drummer. “Darren and Paul [Meany] had a really clear vision of what they were looking for and what they wanted this show to be.”
After gathering content, Amanda Scott, Rabbit Hole’s video animator, created a digital model of the structure, viewed from the audience’s perspective, in Cinema 4D modeling/animation/rendering software from Maxon. “The nice thing about Cinema 4D is that I can use lighting effects in the program,” says Scott. “When you shine a light on an object, it casts shadows on the digital model of the structure, so it appears to be coming off the structure.”
A working template (a UV map), or a graphic grid, maps the digital version of the structure and helps warp video content (via the Pandoras Box media server) to fit the dimensions of the physical wall.
Because the position of the projectors changes every night, a standard grid was necessary for easy warping. “MuteMath doesn’t tour with a video tech,” says Rabbit Hole’s Kevin Fulda, who handled technical integration and media server programming for the tour. “So, Darien needs to get a rough warp going from front of house quickly.”
As a helpful guide, Rabbit Hole crafted an eight-inch high foam-board scale model of the structure, upon which one-second test clips were projected. “I needed to see how my ideas translated to a physical structure,” says Scott.
During the show, outlines of the structure appear (or disappear) and textured cubic and geometric shapes occupy the space “inside” the digital model of the structure, making it appear see-through. Scott accomplished these visuals sequences by adjusting “layers” of content in Adobe After Effects, changing the opacity of the imagery. Scott also designed, in Cinema 4D, a spherical object using the program’s cloner function, which duplicates the sphere and creates a grid of cubes around it. During King’s drum outro in “Quarantine,” these cubes are transformed into protruding polygons that jut out and recede back into the sphere, which seems to hover in mid-air.
“I also put the audio of the drum solo inside the Sound Effector tool, so that the track controls the movement of the polygons,” says Scott. “Then, I can manipulate the severity of the polygon extrusion.”
Integration and Programming
When all the 3D animation was complete, the band spent a week and a half in rehearsals in Nashville in January 2012. “We then had to figure out how to get everybody’s world talking,” says Rabbit Hole’s Fulda. “We decided to have SMPTE timecode control all the video.”
Video clips and a concert click track were synched with Logic’s SMPTE timecode, operated from bass player Roy Mitchell-Cardenas’ onstage laptop. When the click track starts, so does the video. Mitchell-Cardenas can even set up a loop, if a song runs long, and the video will loop as well. (At any time Koop can take over via Art-Net from his Jands Vista T2 console to execute a master blackout command.)
Four GoPro HERO2 cameras, with HDMI outputs (going into Blackmagic Design’s HDMI-to-SDI converters) surround the front of the stage for added visual effect. Fulda built a custom interface application using Widget Designer in Pandoras Box that allows Koop to operate onscreen functions to create custom effects. “Darien’s now able to do live effects and shading on all of the cameras,” says Fulda.
Koop’s lighting rig, which consists of eight Martin MAC 301s, a dozen MAC 101s, 11 MAC 250s and four Atomic 3000 strobes, works in service to the structure. (There are nearly 1,000 lighting cues for the show, but, says Koop, there’s “a ton of manual hits.”) Elaborate lighting looks occur only when there’s very little activity on the video wall. To wit: the most effective use of lighting involves six 4-lite Moles, which are perched alongside each graduated plateau of the structure.
In darkness, when the Moles are blasted, blinding the audience, one gets the impression that the wall — and the hall — is much larger than it appears. “I patched each lamp of the Moles separately, so that I can bring them up individually,” says Koop. “At one point in the song ‘One More,’ Todd Gummerman plays a guitar solo, and I match every note with the Mole lamps. I thought, ‘They’re Moles and they won’t react as quickly as they need to.’ But it was one of those crazy ideas that ended up working.”
You’re Surrounded!
MuteMath leads a congregation of true believers who drink in a production that’s equal parts art installation, underground rave and communal service. One method by which MuteMath interacts with their audiences is through elaborate props. At the start of each performance, the quartet passes right through the crowd, walking under an LED-lit canopy. Things get even more up close and personal from there. “It was Paul’s idea to ‘fly’ over the audience, as he put it,” says Lavallee. “Paul came up with the concept of using an air mattress. I said, ‘Let’s light it.’”
Lavallee went to a local Nashville distributor and bought nearly four-dozen LED police-car roof lights, which are powered by three rechargeable RC car batteries. Clay Christian rewired them for durability and created a hand switch mechanism (i.e., a re-purposed cigarette lighter switch activated by the stage manager, Nate Lampa). The LEDs were then sewn into custom cloth fabric that drapes the inflatable stage. When Meany leaps from his keyboard station onto the air mattress, he puts his trust in audience members, who pass him through the crowd. “I think in Austin, Paul went 100 feet from the stage,” says Lavallee.
Adding further fan involvement, Paul and Darren, the latter with a kick drum and snare, perform separately on a two-foot-by-four-foot mobile platform that’s rolled out into the audience, as confetti canons shoot paper flakes into the crowd. “The crowd gets surrounded by this show, and they’re included in it,” says King.
With innovative production designs and 3D video projection mapping, these odd souls are standing apart from the crowd, again. “You need to try crazy ideas, because maybe it spawns another idea you can use later,” says Lavallee. “If you have a hunch and you believe in yourself, you can’t lose.”
2012 MuteMath Odd Soul Tour
Lighting Gear
1 Jands Vista T2 lighting console running v2 Byron software
2 Chauvet Data Stream 4 DMX optical splitters
12 Martin MAC 101 Wash fixtures
8 Martin MAC 301 Wash fixtures
11 Martin MAC 250 Spot fixtures
4 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
6 James Thomas Engineering 4-Lite Moles
2 Genie ST-25 Super Tower lifts
3 10’ sections Tomcat 12” medium duty box truss
1 10’ section Tomcat 12” heavy duty box truss
Video Gear
1 coolux Pandoras Box Version 5 media and show control
1 Blackmagic Design HDMI-to-SDI converter (8 input)
4 GoPro HD HERO2 cameras
2 Barco HDX-W14 14K projectors
For more photos, go to Pro Lighting Space (www.prolightingspace.com).
PLS members can link directly to that page via www.plsn.me/MUTEMATHextras.
