A look at the lighting, video and pyro for The Pepsi Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show
This year’s Super Bowl was held in MetLife Stadium, located in East Rutherford, NJ. It was the first — and many on the crew hope the last — cold weather Super Bowl in a stadium without a roof. To pull off the potentially cold and snowy Pepsi Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show with Bruno Mars and his band along with special guest, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it took a lot of pre-planning. Known for high tech lighting and video, the show’s core technology is not exactly comprised of gear that loves cold temperatures, much less Arctic conditions.
Lighting designer Robert Barnhart of Los Angeles-based Full Flood, Inc. is a veteran of the NFL’s biggest Halftime shows. This was his fourth time where he’s served as lead designer and the 17th where he’s worked as part of the lighting team. And with the game set for Feb. 2, outside, in the New York area, he took the possibility of inclement weather and the limitations of the stadium into account when creating the plot.
“Way Beyond Tough”
While most worried about the game day weather, the bitter cold and snow hit during the load-in and was unrelenting until game day. Barnhart has nothing but praise for the crews. “I can’t tell you how much I felt for the crew,” the designer says. “They were loading in for 10 days, working 10-hour days in sub-freezing weather, moving around equipment that was frozen. It was -15° F. on some days, with heavy snow at times. It was impressive how they kept moving along and without complaining. Then on Sunday it was almost 50°, but when the load-out started, Monday, it dumps six inches of snow and they shut the stadium down for two days, so the crew had to wait to load-out. What those guys went through, and had to put up with, is a real testament to them.”
The conditions were not only lousy to work in, they added to the crews’ workload, because usually the gear needs more coddling in the cold, Barnhart notes. “It is asking a lot of a high technology system to survive in very brutal conditions. It just puts a lot more pressure on everybody to keep the system maintained. I can’t give the guys enough credit — the actual system on site didn’t have a problem, and it completely survived the show itself. They worked incredibly hard in just terrible conditions, and the whole time, they did it with focus and a good humor. The Super Bowl is always a tough job, but this year it was way beyond tough.”
Barnhart approached his design in a “face reality” manner, saying, “The primary objective was, ‘What could we do that will survive the worst potential weather?’ That was the first layer of thinking. Then, we went into the stadium to do a site survey — long before even Bruno Mars was selected. Looking at where can we rig, where we can put in equipment. That started to dictate our design approach. MetLife Stadium is extremely limited [in mounting positions] and not symmetrical. The club level rails could be used, but none of them matched the one above the other as to where I could put lights.”
He explains, “If you look at the rig closely, at the top rail, you will see there are several clusters of three [Clay Paky] Sharpys, because that was the only place I could rig the light. On the next lower level, I could spread out more, but there were all these speakers and wireless signal devices which weren’t symmetrically distributed. So it was tricky to create a hanging pattern that looked good across the stadium. Looking at that reality, we had a design idea. We started with the hardest one — the top with the clusters of three lights — three on each side of a speaker, and then, as I work down the rail levels, I tried to keep a pattern of threes or sixes. Then when I get down to the field, I originally had Sharpys from the 20-yard line continue right around the stage to the other 20-yard line, but again divisible by three or six. I did have to give up on a bunch of them right around the stage, just due to some scenic realities and NFL seating rules, but I was able to get the look I wanted.”
The resulting backdrop of lights behind the stage was mounted on four levels — at field level, plus three levels on the balcony rails. A total of 330 Sharpys were located on two balcony levels as well as in back of the LED panels behind the performers on stage and to the sides of the stage. The ones on the field are on a five-foot-high truss that got them to just below the eye level for the first row of fans. There were 220 Ayrton MagicPanel 602 LED luminaires, which were split evenly and located on stage left and right in tight clusters, with 12 Clay Paky B-Eye fixtures located on both sides of the performance area. Chroma-Q Color Blocks were lined around the front of the stage, as was a lot of LED tape on the set. There were 58 Solaris Flare LED strobes scattered throughout the stadium with the Sharpys. PRG supplied the lighting package.
“We had a set that was going to be up against the audience, that was running long ways,” continues Barnhart. “It is the Super Bowl Halftime show, so it has to be epic — visually large — so we wanted to take up as much linear distance as we could — and that we could afford — without thinning out our density too much. Also, with the set against the audience, we had to think, camera-wise — ‘What is going to be the background in the shots? Straight on background, cross-shot background, etc. What do we do to keep it interesting, and to contribute our part to the tempo of the music?’ That is where the club level rails came into play, and why we went so wide.”
Barnhart explains that the two large arrays of MagicPanels to either side of the performance area played a scenic role in that they helped make the stage look as large as possible. “The MagicPanels extended the stage visually. Media was run through them and, at times, we took them over as lighting instruments,” Barnhart says. “I knew there would be times that we wouldn’t want only content, but that I would want to take them over as lighting instruments, so I let all the smart guys figure that one out. We ended up sharing control between lighting and video on those. Again, the crew did just an exceptional job, starting months before being onsite.”
The Clay Paky B-Eyes provided a little eye candy for Barnhart’s design. They were placed right on the stage, left and right of center. “Just a fun, wow factor light,” he says. “I liked them and think they are an interesting light. I liked their features, and they were quite dependable. Actually, the whole rig was very dependable. Again, a lot of that goes to the crew.”
Barnhart chose to use 40 PRG Best Boy 4000 Spot luminaires on a catwalk upstage for back and audience lighting. He designed an FOH truss with another 40 Best Boy 4000s, originally planned as a backup keylight system. “I came up with a backup keylight system, which you want when you go into a show with the potential weather issues that can cause havoc with the followspots,” Barnhart comments. “I ended up using the [Best Boy] 4000s as the primary system, because I wanted a reliable light that could throw the longest distance possible that also had shutters, so I could cut it tight to the stage. I ended up with a system that I felt looked as modeled as a followspot but was, in a lot of ways, more reliable with the type of cuing we were doing. I was very happy with the truss angle for the Best Boys. In fact, the followspots were a little shallower.”
A Little Extra Drama
It was a good call on Barnhart’s part, as he ended up losing the FOH comms to the spot operators. “I lost headsets to the front of house spot operators two minutes out from going live, and we never got it back. I was calling them on cell phones as we went to black and told them to do exactly what we did at rehearsals, and they did it perfectly.” They used Brite Box followspots from Arc Lite Efx. Barnhart is a strong fan of the Brite Box, with its 1,600W ceramic Xenon lamp that equals — or beats — 3kW Xenon followspots. “The output out of the Brite Box is incredible,” says Barnhart. “You look at it and think ‘does it have a nuclear power plant in there?’ It is amazing. I can’t speak highly enough of the work that Greg Smith is doing with Xenon technology. He is really taking followspot to a new level, and he continues to improve them.”
Lighting director Pete Radice operated and controlled all the lighting using a PRG V676 control console. David Grill was also lighting director, and handled a number of logistics issues for the lighting team. “David and Pete were just invaluable,” says Barnhart. Knowing that they would need more upfront planning in case of weather-related delays, the design team brought in Prelite to handle the previsualization duties at PRG in Los Angeles. Since Prelite uses a range of software to previz lighting and media, they were able to bring in a system that included Cast Software’s wysiwyg and ESP Vision’s Vision software packages. Each program had its advantages for this design. “For this project, one software suite was not sufficient. Prelite utilizes multiple software and hardware solutions to achieve the goals of the design team in the most efficient manner,” explains Tom Thompson, Prelite president. “Wyg was much better at handling the 220 MagicPanels, and Vision handles the UVW mapping perfectly, so we built a file with all of the video elements, all the Sharpys, the Solaris Flares, and the Best Boys and ran that on Vision. Wyg had all of the lighting fixtures, right down to the LED tape on the stage, and planes that were situated as a good representation of the audience video mapping.”
Originally, the system was designed for 200 universes of data, but was reduced to 191 universes — 117 universes coming from the PRG V676 console for the lighting portion and 74 universes of video data from the Green Hippo Hippotizer HD media servers. To previz the lighting and video systems, the data distribution system with all of the nodes and switches had to be put together, so the technicians got to work on the data merge challenge early on in the process. In the end, PRG wrote new software for the data merge, as did Green Hippo, and Cast Software wrote new software for wysiwyg to be able to handle more than 100 universes. The redundant data networks were all run on gigabit Ethernet over fiber optic cables. There was well over 13,000 feet of fiber optic cabling run for the Halftime show’s data distribution.
The pre-planning and previsualization paid off for the lighting and video teams as the weather did delay the load-in process and cut into time on the field. “Our getting on the rig was delayed because of the weather but that wasn’t a big issue because we had prevized it,” says Barnhart. Radice and Barnhart also took advantage of the Prelite previz system on site that they brought to MetLife. “That was a great thing because we could go in and keep working on the time code alignment and that kind of stuff when we couldn’t get on to the actual rig. Also the week in LA, wringing out the whole lighting system layout that was extremely useful. That is where we found the network delays and saw the new software we needed to have the manufacturers write. That week was really about how do we get 150+ universes all working together without delays, without communication breakdowns.”
A Stadium Full of Pixels
For this year’s Halftime show, video wasn’t just onstage, but it spilled out onto the field and up into the stands, washing over the audience in the stadium. At the start of the Halftime show, moving images of the Pepsi logo were projected across the spectators. As a part of the show, more than 80,000 spectators and 500 on-field performers became animated pixels via LED video technology from PixMob/ESKI. The new PixMob Video system created a human-video canvas for the Halftime show.
Custom hats equipped with LED lights were handed to every spectator upon entry to the stadium, while field performers held PixMob Video LED panels. PixMob’s technology used infrared outputs to control the wearable LED devices, producing video effects that could by synched with content from the design team. PixMob Video, the newest version, allows designers to create live video effects. This patented technique allows for real-time transmission of color information onto any number of mobile pixels at hundreds of thousands of individual locations up to 1,000 feet away, without the need for geo-location. A video server sends a video feed to transmitters, which then send instructions to the pixels over wireless infrared in realtime. The individual hats and panels acted as pixels, transforming the crowd into a huge display screen.
Feeding content to the PixMob wireless LED system were five outputs from four Green Hippo Hippotizer HD genlock machines. With the data merge that was created in the PRG Series 400 system, the Hippos were also able to output to the 220 MagicPanels on the stage. The MagicPanels were fed video content by video director Jason Rudolph, while Radice handled the pan and tilt controls of the lights. While PixMob used their own simulator for the video, Rudolph ran that content through wysiwyg while controlling video from the Hippo with an MA Lighting grandMA console.
“The biggest challenge of the show was handling 74 universes of DMX,” says Rudolph. “But everything went according to plan. We chose the Hippotizer HDs with genlock because of their pixel-mapping capabilities, as well as their live inputs, and broadcast compatibility. TMB and Green Hippo are always a big help with their 24/7 tech support.” Along with PixMob/ESKI, VER also provided video gear, including VER RS5 5mm LED tiles for the stage ribbon, and VER FM50 50mm Pixel Curtains to cover the field benches on the sidelines.
Light Up the Sky
If you have an open-roof stadium for a Halftime show, you know your going to need fireworks and pyrotechnics. If you’re the Super Bowl, you know they need to be big. And big was just what Chicago-based Strictly FX provided. The special effects provider, Strictly FX set off 3,000 pieces of pyrotechnics for the show. “The pyrotechnic extravaganza during the final moments of ‘Just The Way You Are’ really put the finishing touch on the entire event, and certainly added to the overall sense of scale in the production,” notes production designer Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc.
The special effects team had pyro positions in a variety of locations in the stadium. “There were 58 positions on the rooftop for pyro; on the field, it changed constantly from rehearsal to rehearsal to what was actually done on game day” says special effects designer and Strictly FX partner Mark Grega. There were also pyro positions on the audio carts, thanks to audio vendor ATK.
The finale, an artistically programmed pyro-infused show that exploded high over MetLife Stadium, included 400-foot red comets, 400-foot silver wave chrysanthemums with tails, 275-foot white crackle comets with tails, and 200-foot blue mines with tails. “The whole show was based upon the finale,” notes Grega.
The opening moments of the Halftime spectacular looked pretty amazing as well with pyro in the form of 100’ snowball mines, 140’ silver comets as well as 138 total ultra bright tracer comets. “The snowball mines are a new product from our manufacturer Ultratec, and they’re very impressive,” comments Grega.
Pyro was also used for Mars’ hit, ‘Locked Out of Heaven.’ Grega explains, “We had some silver comets with tails into the first chorus located upstage of the band, as well as green and yellow mines on the roof. For ‘Treasure,’ the rooftop had a number of big gold and silver glitter mines, and gold glitter comets.”
Pyrotechnics weren’t the only special effects in the Halftime production. There were also eight Strictly FX Venom MK2 flame cannons on the field. “During ‘Runaway Baby,’ we used our proprietary flame cannons as accents. The audience really seemed to enjoy the effect, although the television viewers only saw them for a few seconds,” Grega remarks.
Like the other disciplines, weather was one of the primary challenges for Grega and his team of pyro technicians. “There was a side of the stadium that did not get the sunlight — we called it the dark side. There was a 15-degree temperature change, so when it was 16° on one side, it was 0° on the other. So, when you started to go and work on something, your hands hurt instantly,” Grega notes. Although the weather was fine for the game and the halftime, there was a variety of winter weather during the rehearsals. “Even in the most difficult of conditions, the Strictly FX team was always professional, and always had a positive attitude,” notes Rodgers. “All of our crew endured exceptionally bad weather on site, yet managed to pull off a flawless show; I am so proud of each and every one on them.”
That’s a sentiment that Barnhart agrees with wholeheartedly. The Halftime show was indeed a big success that wowed the crowd and the viewing audience around the world. However, many who only saw the clear 50? weather on game day will never appreciate the Arctic trek that it took to realize the show. Barnhart concludes, “I am very happy the show was received well. We went in with a good plan, and the plan worked. It was an unforgettable experience for sure this year, and I don’t have the words for what the crew did there. Obviously you can never do a successful show without the crew, but on this one they really went above and beyond, they all did such a solid job in conditions no one can really understand if you weren’t there. Truly this year’s success was to the crew’s credit.”
» Crew
Executive Producer: Ricky Kirshner
Director: Hamish Hamilton
Production Designer: Bruce Rodgers, Tribe Inc.
Lighting Designer: Bob Barnhart, Full Flood, Inc.
Creative Consultant: Jamie King
Bruno Mars Production/Lighting Designer: LeRoy Bennett
Pyrotechnics Designer: Mark Grega, Strictly FX
Lighting Directors: Dave Grill, Pete Radice
Video Programmer: Jason Rudolph
Staging Supervisors: Tony Hauser, Cap Spence
Rigging Coordinator: Steve Thomas
Production Supervisors: Brad Duns, Jenny Stanley
PRG Lighting Crew: Tony Ward, Brian McKinnon, David Seralles, Paul Bell Jr., Keith Berk, Robb Minnotte, Matt Geneczko, Jeff Anderson, Chris Conti, Trevor Gooch, Bruce Horner
Prelite Pre-viz Crew: Tom Thompson, Mike Robertson, Adam Rechner
VER Video Crew: Michael Spencer, Luke Pilato, Rod Silhanek, David Imlau
PixMob/ESKI Crew: Vincent Leclerc, Vadim Kravtchenko, Donald Cantin, Sophie Blondeau, David Lemieux, Véronique Allard, Etienne de Rancourt, Yannick Lalonde, Vincent Pasquier
Strictly FX Crew: Adam Biscow, Ron Bleggi, John Lyons, Grant Sellers, Reid Nofsinger
Set Construction: All Access Staging
Followspots: Arc Lite Efx
» Lighting Gear
2 PRG V676 Lighting Consoles (main & backup)
1 PRG Series 400 power and data distribution system
80 PRG Best Boy 4000 Spots
330 Clay Paky Sharpys
12 Clay Paky B-Eye K20s
220 Ayrton Magic Panel 602s
58 Solaris Flare LED strobes
6 Pathway Connectivity Via12 Gigabit Ethernet switches
10 110V UPS
13,170’ Fiber optic data cable
17 Brite Box Flame followspots (medium & long throw)
Chroma-Q Color Blocks on set
LED Tape on set
» Video Gear
2 grandMA2 Lite consoles (main and backup)
5 Green Hippo Hippotizer HD media servers
193 VER RS5 5mm LED Tiles (for stage ribbon)
2 VER FM50 50mm Pixel Curtains (for field bench covers)
» Pre-viz Gear
1 Prelite ESP Vision system
1 Prelite wysiwyg 100000 system
2 47” LG LCD monitors
1 Avitech Multiviewer
