The Controlled Chaos Of The Black Eyed Peas

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with changing venues, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Envision touring with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are no production rehearsals—ever. In fact, they never had any prior to the tour.

Ask Anthony Randall, production designer and production manager of the Peas tour how he manages that, and he replies, “With great diffi culty.” He worked previously doing tour production for a UK pop band called Big Brothers that used to rehearse all the time. The Peas disdain rehearsing. “It’s all free style. Nothing is the same every day.”

Despite the potential chaos that such a situation could create, Randall carries himself in a calm and collected manner, immune from the buzz of activity surrounding him prior to the group’s show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. This gig is different because it is one of the smallest venues on the tour (5,000 people), and two of the four circle trusses normally onstage will not be used. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

“There was a growth period over six months, from the initial concept to the fi nal production design for this tour,” recalls Randall, who designed the stage trusses with Marc Brickman. “We did the best we could, programmed it and made it work the best we could before we left. Then we got to the fi rst show, and it was what it was. There’s nothing you can change when you’re already on tour. I put the whole show together. The band has been doing this for years, so they know their thing. We have to catch up with them.”

Luckily, Randall has a crew that can keep pace with the best of them, including lighting director Daniel Boland, who has designed for Eminem and Tori Amos, and video director Joe Bonanno and his Sydneybased company Big Picture Australia, whose recent clients include Snoop Dogg, Stevie Nicks and 50 Cent, and who are providing the video for this Peas tour with support act Pussycat Dolls.

Because the show is sold-out and space is limited, Boland has been placed above one of the exit doors located between back sections of the venue. It’s a precarious perch, but he makes due. From his position, which allows him a wide view of the stage, he runs an MA Lighting grandMA console with two NSPs for all processing, and he uses the Series 400 power and data distribution from PRG.

An amusing note taped onto his console reads, “Remember the damn sign.” Boland says the Peas have their own “BEP” sign with “little twinkle lights and what not. At the end of the show it always comes in, and I always forget to turn it on. I sit there going, ‘The show’s done, I got through that. Oh wait…’ Then I remember the sign.”

The Peas’ set includes a staircase, LED wall, two side video screens, four circle trusses, and plenty of moving lights. Oh yeah; there’s a sign too. “Normally there are four truss circles — the big standing, the small standing, and two in the sky — but there are no rigging points [here] for the two in the sky,” divulges Boland. On the two vertical truss circles onstage for this particular show, the upstage one has six wash and four spots, and the larger downstage circle has 12 wash and eight spots. There are strobes on both, which Boland says are very key to the show. In total, the show on tour has 66 moving fi xtures with an assortment of Moles and Color Kinetics Color Blazes.

The LD also discloses that the large LED wall onstage was originally meant to have four screens, “so you could do IMag of each Pea and put them together, but with budget restrictions you start compromising where you can.” He says there aren’t major concerns with the LED wall being located behind the truss circles. “To be honest, it’s not my original trussing design, and the trusses are designed to open and close on Xlnt Technologies CyberHoists 3D motion control system. So for the most part if there’s video, they’re open, and Joe Bonanno and I figured out what’s less important video so that we can close the circle cuts and do different effects with it.”
 
Even though the Peas dislike rehearsing, much of the show is locked in to audio and video presentation, although drummer Keith Harris can control deviations in the show. “There are elements of the show that are not freestyle, and there are elements of the show that are freestyle, but sixty percent of the show is fixed,” reveals Randall.

While Boland has some flexibility with lighting during the less structured numbers, he says that the show is well cued, “so it’s just a matter of keeping up. There are a couple songs that they never play the same way twice, so they’re always improvising. The biggest one is ‘Let’s Get It Started,’ which ends the show and is never the same. There’s also a section of the show called ‘Freestyle,’ which is when they come out and do a freestyle rap of whatever they make up on the spot. With tempo changes, you have to decide how much strobing or color effect or ballyhoo you want to put in there, so I’m not overpowering the performer but adding enough accent that the kids are still screaming and enjoying the show.”

Video director Joe Bonanno also gets a chance to mix things up a bit. “The show is fairly freestyle, so the combination of cameras and mixer give us an opportunity to work with the freestyle nature of the show,” he explains. “Essentially we’ve got seven cameras feeding two different outputs, one being the side screens and one being the LED, in combination with a playback system, which is an automated system that is linked to the offstage audio timecode.” Over half the set is programmed and run off timecode, “which means the drummer or the MD starts a click track, and so our pre-produced visuals are locked into the time code signal.”

Bonanno’s crew has to be flexible in dealing with the varying venue sizes and locations, from indoor amphitheatres to outdoor sheds. “We don’t always have the ability to hang the side screens, which means the onstage LED screen becomes more of an IMag screen where we show even more camera images of the Peas than usual,” says Bonanno. “We try not to overpower the stage look with huge camera images, but, tastefully done, it can work out quite well.”

Tonight they can actually use all the screens, including the two house screens in 16 x 9 widescreen format. They carry a range of screen sizes on tour, depending upon the venue, and have been allowing the Pussycat Dolls to use them for their own highly visual show. Edited images, mostly stemming from the Peas’ music video “Like That,” are projected onto the screens for the main event via Barco digital SLM 12K 12,000 ANSI lumens projectors. The Lighthouse 16 mm video LED wall onstage is a LVP-1650 model which also has a 16 x 9 aspect ratio. Its base is 24 feet wide by 13 feet tall, and it is fed an SDI signal from a video switcher, a Grass Valley KayakDD.

“It’s a 2 M/E (mix/effects) switcher, which allows us to have two separate outputs that can work independently of each other,” explains Bonanno. “One output feeds the LED wall, and the other output feeds the house screens. The LED wall is fed with a combination of cameras. I can send a different camera feed to the LED than is being fed to the side screens. Various other effects and output combinations are achievable with this desk.”

On this tour, Big Picture is running four manned cameras with Fuji lenses, and three cameras on stage for the Peas show, two of which are fixed Sony Lipstick XC999 cameras on the drum kit, the third camera on stage being a remote pan-and-tilt, joystick-operated Sony BR-300. Mounted on the rear riser, it looks back over the band towards the audience, which makes sense given the audience interaction during the show. Bonanno and company use Leitch routing for signal distribution and a Mackie audio desk.

“For our video, we have edited playback clips to that particular timecode,” says Bonanno. “Whenever our machinery sees the timecode, it triggers certain images off the hard disk player, which are Doremi digital hard disk players. We set up what we call GPIs which trigger the Kayak vision mixer to output the images as programmed. When it sees that timecode it will trigger the hard disk players to send certain clips to the desk. Time code is in charge when it is running; the band, the artists, and even us in video obey our master. Over half the show is programmed in that way, and the rest is basically done freestyle.”

There is certainly plenty of audio, video and lighting integration required for a successful Black Eyed Peas show to take place. In comparing the Peas with other tours he has done, Randall looks at it as rock meets hip-hop. “The rock essence is there because it’s a live band,” he states. “There is also a lot of backside equipment involved in this gig. There’s the chaotic side to it. They’re all amazing, from the four members of the band to the four members of the Peas. Each individual member of the Peas is a massive talent. Their energy is phenomenal. It’s two hours of full-on energy.”
Randall, Boland and Bonanno know how to keep up.