Turning the Set Upside Down and Inside Out
When Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers go out on tour, they’re typically playing to sellout crowds. With the increasing demand for tickets, production designer Jim Lenahan was given a mandate at the start of Petty’s recent tour: keep 270 degrees of viewing angle.
“I decided that the rig would sort of be the inverse of the one I designed for Petty’s Last DJ tour,” Lenahan said. “That rig spread over a quarter-circle upstage on the deck and five curved trusses rose up to a central point at about midstage center. This rig would do the opposite.”
His design included five trusses clustered in the center of the stage and branching out from there. “Sort of the Last DJ upside down and backwards,” he added.
If there are any shows any more that don’t include video, this isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s a combination of video sources and surfaces as diverse as Petty’s career. But like the truss struc-ture, the largest video surface is inverted from the last tour.
“This time around the video screen is convex instead of concave. It allows anyone to see the IMAG if they want to, but also lets them see the show without it as well. Originally I intended to hang some custom-made chandeliers but instead came up with the (Barco) MiTrix (LED) hanging cubes.”
But he didn’t stop there. In the end there were multiple screens with various resolutions, providing depth, texture, and interest.
“Nothing is quite as boring as having a rectangular video screen behind the band all night long, no matter how brilliant the content on it,” Lenahan said. “Low-resolution video made me change my mind about video in general. The main concept of this design was to use multiple resolutions of video in combination and then to reflect and complement that by using multiple qualities of light in the different instruments.”
Lately, Lenahan has been intrigued by various transparent video displays. He wanted to use them with low-resolution video in combination with automated lighting or more video in the background to stack layers of looks. That idea led him to put Vari*Lite VL3500s inside cubes made of Barco MiTrix.
“The light is able to shine right through almost unobstructed and hit people on the stage while video content is running simultaneously on the faces of the cubes,” he said. “I also filled the arch truss with an asymmetrical assemblage of Martin LC video panels and that turned out to be one of my favorite things in the show. Although the Martin panels are fairly low tech as these things go, they are some of the most stealthy. Because the tubes holding the LEDs are clear plastic, when the content has a lot of black in it, they are virtually transparent. At times it looked like video floating in mid air and not on a screen at all.”
Behind the LC panels, Lenahan hung the new XL Video Spheres from XL Video from the finger trusses they nicknamed the “thumb and pinkie.” But instead of just hanging them straight down like a beaded curtain and rolling them up and out of the way, Lenahan wanted to give them a soft-goods treatment. He brought in Megan and Adam Duckett of Sew What? Inc. to fabricate tab lines operated by a small pair of winch motors. With the tabs, they were able to swag the strings of video spheres on each side of the rig like a center-parting drape.
The tab lines “gave the video spheres a very soft and graceful shape while at the same time still allowed us to run video on it,” Lenahan said. “At certain times during the show we let the tab lines out and the spheres would fill the entire back of the stage. The walls of video show right through the Martin Panels as well as the MiTrix cubes.”
The video content is controlled and composited using three Barco Encores and Control Freak software, which was written by the man Lenahan calls a “mad genius,” Stuart White. The setup allows him to pre-program the lighting as well as the video.
“I treat video as if it were just another moving light,” he says. “This is something I have been developing for the last three Petty tours. I set up wooden cut-outs of the band with photos on them so we can tell who is who and we pre-program every camera cut and composition during lighting programming. Then the camera cuts, content and compositions change as I fire the lighting cues during the show.”
The camera cuts can be sent to any one of 13 video displays. Six High End Systems DL.3 digital lights are rear-projected onto a series of Lexan panels which wrap around the top of the stage. It’s a method Lenahan developed over several years of experimenting on sets for Petty and Sarah McLachlan. In addition, there are five MiTrix LED cubes with motion control that can raise and lower, providing several different compositions. This is all in addition to the LC panels in the arch and the XL Video Spheres.
IMAG video from operated cameras or abstract B-roll content can be sent to any or all of the video displays. By combining them in different ways and using multiple images, some-times replicating one person or graphic and sometimes using different images, they are able to present a huge variety of material.
“We outlined all the trusses with [Philips Color Kinetics] ColorBlazes and mapped them to video as well,” explained Lenahan. “I loved this look. It was so organic. Sending a video of flames or time lapse cars on a freeway at night to a bunch of strip lights gives a really different look and feel. It makes chases that no human could ever write.”
Chris Mitchell of XL Touring Video helped to design and integrate the video hardware components into a compact touring system. “I always enjoy working with Lenahan and White be-cause we always have to find new and creative ways to build systems that continually push the envelope,” Mitchell said.
Stan Green programmed the show, including all the lights, LEDs, video switching, routing, compositing, media servers, robotic cameras, and the DL.3s. Lenahan plays back the whole show on a Jands ESP II console. Though there is plenty of video, moving lights are an important part of the design and provide yet another aspect of the layering concept.
To add to the diversity of the lighting, Green asked Lenahan if he would be interested in using some Telescans, which are automated moving mirror fixtures that were popular in the 1980s. Le-nahan added seven of them to the plot along with Martin MAC 700s and MAC 2000 XB Wash fixtures. Lenahan liked the MAC 700s “for their small size to hang in tight places on the set as well as their speed and ‘Scene Machine’ capability.” The MAC 2000 XBs, he added, are “the real workhorses of the rig,” calling them “amazingly powerful, almost too bright. We often ran them at lower per-centages to keep them from washing out the rear projected video.”
Of the VL 3500 Spots, Lenahan said they are “great instruments, but you have to stay on the ball keeping them clean.” He also put in some High End Systems Showguns “to get more of the fat beams even though they are much slower moving than the Telescans.” But, he said, they have a very different quality of light “and that was what we were after.” He also used some Vari*Lite VL 1000 Tungstens for front specials.
With so much interconnectivity, Green had to deal with an extra layer of complication. “On the networking and software end of things there is always a certain amount of adjusting,” he said. “This is the third time we have controlled all the video and lights from the lighting console. It has gotten pretty smooth, actually.”
Stuart White of Control Freak Software provided support with software and networking issues. That makes it easier to deal with the curve balls, like the times that things are added during preproduction.
“Jim will say, ‘Is there any way to…?,’” said Green. “And Stuart or I will start thinking, and then, boom! There’s another Mac Mini at front of house.”
On this occasion they added a Mac Mini processor, which would “highjack” one channel of ArtNet to scrub a video on one of the servers, back and forth along with a VU meter fed from the “noise boys,” as Green affectionately calls the audio crew. The VU effect server is a Pixelmad feeding video to 60 72" ColorBlazes which lined the trusses. “It’s really impressive looking,” Green said.
Green programmed using an MA Lighting grandMA Full Size console with five NSPs. The ESP II console that Lenahan uses to play back the show triggers cues on the grandMA console. There are two Catalyst media servers as well; one is used as a Pixelmad server and the other feeds all the other video displays and the eight DL.3s. The Control Freak Software is used to interface video with the console via ArtNet and a Mac Mini.
“Besides the lights, media servers, and DL.3s, we are controlling two Encores, a 32×32 SDI router, four Sony BRC robotic cameras and one lipstick camera,” Green explained. “We also had four Sony DXC D50 operated cameras with long lenses. All this gives us about 20 sources and about 15 video display surfaces.
And it all fits within the 270 degree viewing angle.
CREW
Lighting Company: Epic Productions Technologies
Video Company: XL Touring Video
DL.3s and Showguns: CWP
Software Consultant: Stuart White, Control Freak Software
Account Reps: Kevin Forester, Epic Production Technologies; Marty Wickman, CWP; Stuart White, Control Freak; John Wiseman, XL Touring Video
Lighting/Video Designer/Director: Jim Lenahan
Lighting/Video Programmer: Stan Green
Lighting Crew Chief: J.T. McDonald
Telescan Tech: Shawn Welch
Auto Tech: Russell Halbech
Dimmer Tech: Armando “Mondo” Figueroa
DL.3, LC Panel Tech: Jason Taylor
Production Manager: Chris Adamson
Tour Manager: Richard Fernandez
Stage Manager: Larry Yeager
Set/Staging: Jack Deitering, Jerry Summer
Video Engineer: Randy Schafer
LED Tech: Robert “Bo” Crowell
Cameras: Phil Nudelman
Head Rigger: Willam “Tell” Agerter
Rigger: Roland Castillo
GEAR
7 Telescans
5 High End Systems Showguns
52 Martin MAC 700s
51 Martin MAC 2000 XB wash fixtures
21 Vari*Lite VL3500 Spots
47 Martin Stage Bars
60 72” Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlazes
10 Vari*Lite VL1000 tungstens
8 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
8 High End Systems DL.3 digital luminaires
2 Catalyst media servers
28 Martin LC Panels
360 Barco MiTrix LED panels
2200 XL Touring Video XL Spheres
4 Sony DXC D50 operated cameras
4 Sony BRC 300 robotic cameras
1 lipstick camera
2 MA Lighting grandMA consoles
5 MA Lighting NSPs
1 Jands ESP II console
Control Freak software with hardware
