Country performer, Morgan Wallen continues his meteoric rise and has scaled up his tour to a stadium filling stage with a truly massive video header. For Wallen’s One Night at a Time Tour the team from the Raw Cereal, the creative production and design studio led by Cort Lawrence and Anders Rahm, have designed a visual experience that highlights Wallen and his music harmoniously. Show Designer Lawrence, along with Screens Producer Aron Altmark and Production Manager Chad Guy spoke with PLSN as we shine the spotlight on this incredible production. We also have Vendor Views from some of the production companies supporting this tour to get a bit more insight.
CORT LAWRENCE
Show Designer / Director, Raw Cereal
Having previously worked on Wallen’s last tour, which was almost all sheds, the Raw Cereal team knew they needed to think much bigger for his One Night at a Time Tour hitting stadiums. Lawrence and Rahm conceived a visually-forward stage design that would fill the space yet keep focus on the artist. “When we started the process about a year ago, we knew we needed to create something unique and spectacular for Morgan and his audiences. We wanted to come up with something that people have never seen before,” explains Lawrence. “That’s what Raw Cereal does best; being on cutting-edge of finding something that’s new yet do-able. Because we can all think about the coolest stuff we want to see on the show, but you have to come up with something that’s going to load-in and -out easily, be friendly to the crew—both touring and local, but also give audiences something that’s just an amazing journey throughout the show. For this design, the video header is that, it is the main staple of the show; a 270° view of Morgan. That was one of the selling points of this tour, having more audience incorporated around the sides.”
In keeping with the large, wrap-around audience plan, the designers wanted to keep sight lines open through the stage house and give some large open runways. “We really needed to create a production that was open,” says Lawrence. “We had the video header above to see all the details of the stage, and then created an open floor plan to give the audiences straight site lines and not have a video wall in their way. The video header, if you were to flatten it out, is 235’ long. The main, front portion is 126’ wide by 33’-10” high, then you have the sides, each coming in at 57’ wide. The unique part of this screen is the curved corners as it wraps; we spent a lot of time engineering those corners.”
The creative team chose to go with a 5mm pixel pitch LED screen for the best possible picture. They worked closely with Nighthawk Video, who supplied their Saco A5 5mm LED video panels along with Nighthawk’s Touring Fast-Frames. “The team at Nighthawk Video has been absolutely amazing,” notes Lawrence. “We went with a higher res tile and chose their A5 product because we wanted the content to be really immersive. When people are far in the back, they’re seeing a level of detail that is just indescribable. Most of the content was created in-house, as we have a great team on staff creating 2D and 3D content. We acted as the sole creators and producers of this show from top to bottom because we could than control everything. We really wanted to have the music drive the show and not worry about how the lighting is going to mix with the video; and how’s video going to mix with the lasers. The stage looks like a giant cake because you have a video header up top, you have lights in between, and then you have the band and production down below along with further staging. We also have two B-Stages. All these layers from top to bottom add more value and more experience to the audience. Nobody gets bored during the show; it’s quite a journey.”
All in the Details
The creative and production team spent a lot of time engineering the stage and production elements to ensure safety. “The stage is holding a million other things like lights, lasers, automation, and pyro,” states Lawrence. “We built the production with the video header first and then really worked around everything else. It’s all the small details. Having a stage this big, we had to focus on the smallest inches. Everything in this design is placed specifically because we had to build with the stage in mind. We worked closely with G2 Structures on understanding their stage and really creating a new stage. That’s the beauty of G2, they have a lot of designers asking, ‘how can we orientate your stage to function with this design?’ Placing everything around the stage and having to put everything within inches, that was the most time-consuming process. However, the final product is stunning because everything has been placed perfectly, perfectly for the band, perfectly for the production elements like the lasers, and you still have the trusses moving very closely together. You have a video wall moving in and out as well. We have all these things that are within a matter of inches. We also had to be considerate of pyro regulations to make sure we comply with as well as making sure the lasers are hitting at the perfect spot.”
With a show this technically precise, it took a lot of players to make it all happen, points out Lawrence. “Of course, key is Anders Rahm, my business partner, as well as Creative and Show Director for this show. We collaborate on all our projects because our experiences are different from each other’s, and having a partner like that allows us to really put our heads together, but also lead different teams on the show. That’s what we needed. It was a dual headed snake to tackle this massive production. The Raw Cereal team also had a dozen amazing people on this project from content animators to producers to other creators to technical people to make it happen. Our technical drafting team was All Clear Visuals, led by Matthew Geasey. We worked very closely with Chad [Guy, PM] on the engineering, especially the video wall and header because there’s a lot of safety elements that went into it—wind bracing, weight and wind studies. Also, Patrick “Murph” Murphy the Technical Director; having those two guys guide us through what they needed from us, and us showing them the creative needs, really brought forth a mind-blowing show. That collaboration just worked so well.”
Layering I-Mag with Content
The video itself for the show is a mix of affected I-Mag and content. There are no separate I-Mag screens. “The big point of this screen is of course we wanted the audience to see Morgan up close,” says Lawrence, “so we spent a lot of time incorporating Morgan with the content, using background removal, using Notch effects, and using a lot of camera tricks as well. This show has an amazing amount of cameras because we wanted to capture every moment from different angles. That let us really show Morgan with the content at the same time. The screen has so many things going on at once, and we’ve created a lot of picture-in-picture moments. We’re using Notch and different effects to have I-Mag inside the content.”
Raw Cereal brought back Aron Altmark, Founder of Visual Endeavors Inc. to serve as Screens Producer, overseeing and coordinating the complicated video set up for the tour. “We worked with Aron last tour, and we wanted him to be a part of it this year as he has a great eye for technology and for visuals,” explains Lawrence. “Having him integrated into our ecosystem again, allows for more conversations upfront and more flexibility and capabilities that put together something new. Aron is the same as us, in terms of asking ‘what can we do differently? What can we do better? What can we do that’s new?’ He’s been a huge proponent of pushing technology and pushing capabilities. This system on the road is one of the most technically advanced systems out there because of the way we’re driving content, the way the cameras are integrated, and the minimal frame delay. Working closely with Aron and Nighthawk, let us foolproof the system and give the audience a show that, though they don’t know all these technicalities, when they see it, they know it’s a really well-done show.”
Flames, Lasers and Wristbands
Unlike a lot of country acts, this show had a lot of pyro and used quite a few lasers to extend the energy of this show. Raw Cereal worked closely with FFP Effects on the flames and pyro, and Strictly FX for the lasers on this show. “FFP and Strictly FX are two of the industry’s best special effects vendors,” comments Lawrence. “We wanted to boost the flames this year and put flames more out in the audience; really spread these massive 60’ tall LFG Flames around the sides and top of the stage, surrounding it. We tried to spread out every production element within the stage space and have pyro be focused around the stadium. Then we have lasers around the stadium—60W lasers out on the FOH tower shooting back at the stage, and then almost 80 of the [Kvant] Burstberry Lasers that shoot down from inside the lower lip of the video header. Those create a mask around the stage, which adds a unique look when the haze is just right. By bringing the production to the audience with these effects we gave them an immersive experience.”
For another element to immerse fans, the creative team brought in PixMob to provide LED wristbands. “I will say the biggest win for us this year has been the use of PixMob,” Lawrence says. “The wristbands have been a huge hit with the audience and a huge hit for Morgan himself and the band because they finally get to see that musicality in our programming. When they’re on stage and they’re looking out at a crowd of 60,000 and they see all those wristbands moving to their music, it’s such a feeling for them and a connection with the audience.”
ARON ALTMARK
Screens Producer, Visual Endeavors
With over 150 minutes of 12K content, and a full 4K camera system married to a massive LED video screen with a 5mm pixel pitch, you’re going to need a Screens Producer who can take a broad overview of this complex touring video system. As Lawrence said, that was Visual Endeavors’ Aron Altmark. As to his approach, Altmark explains, “We’ve been trying to bring screens producing as an art form back to the live world. I’m very much a fan of the Laura Frank school of screens producing. We’ve been working with several clients, including Raw Cereal, who want someone sitting in this role, having a 30,000’ view of the content creative process; how to cleanly integrate from content ideation to delivery and getting it on screen. Cort and Anders approached me to work on the original Morgan tour, since we were trying to do some wild stuff with Unreal Engine, BlackTrax, really cool things. This year it’s a stadium tour with a massive 12K raster, a 4K camera package, and realtime Notch effects. There’s just a lot going on and I came in to this role of looking over everything. Knowing enough of the pieces and parts of every discipline that we could help translate between Disguise and engineering and control, as well as camera shading and camera direction; things like that.”
12K Video Raster
Morgan Wallen is a big, A-list country star now playing big stadium shows, with very large audiences and Altmark knows that when an artist plays stadiums, the audience still wants to see the artist, “to have an intimate experience with the artist,” points out Altmark. “I think I-Mag does that for a lot of people on this show but we’re really trying to find ways to do I-Mag in different ways. We found some fun ways to embed it in different mortises and arrangements as well as come up with some clever Notch treatments and integrate those also. One of my biggest focuses was that we are running 5mm LED on a stadium tour, with a total raster of 12K x 2K for just the header, not including the other LED screens and LED risers. Also, we had 4K cameras from Nighthawk on this job. As soon as I learned that there were 4K cameras, I told Cort we should run them at full 4K; ‘it’ll look great’. He wanted to know if we had the performance for it, which I didn’t know at first, but knew we could always go backwards.”
Altmark interfaced with the Nighthawk team, especially on the engineering side, to see what was possible. “We did a fair bit of science projecting with Iain Donham [Lead System Engineer] from Nighthawk, who is an amazing engineer. We talked through the whole thing. A lot about delay and making sure we weren’t introducing latency with the creative choices we were making. I think using a 4K camera chain native and using cameras going through Disguise media servers straight to the LED is beautiful. I have not seen sharp I-Mag like that in a while. It’s really nice. The Disguise GX 3s were beastly, but they took it well. We were trying to do a lot. Most camera chains are still HD, since for most concerts there’s no reason to do a 4K camera chain; it’s expensive on the engineering side. Nighthawk does have a really nice setup though.”
On that point about vendor support, Altmark comments that, “Nighthawk was great. They were really a pleasure to work with. Iain was great and he really tied into the idea of let’s make this look as good as we can; let’s spend the time to figure out all the bits and bobs, and the ins and outs. Part of what I do a lot in screens producing, and Notch technical producing role, is I come in and put up a chart and sit there with everybody just looking at latency and at color; really trying to make the I-Mag look smooth in person. Nighthawk was totally down for doing that, which is really nice. We were all looking into the Disguise side and trying to figure out what other handles we could push and pull to get things looking better and better.’”
Distributed Render Farm
The video team for this tour did run into some technical challenges. One of the biggest was trying to render a show with 150 minutes of content at 12K. “It was no small feat,” says Altmark. “A lot of people are starting to run into things like The Sphere, so we were asked to figure out how to render all this content. My colleague, Scott Millar, who has a company MDLR Technologies, came up with basically a distributed render farm solution across the country. We used some Pixel Cannons that my company VE builds and then other machines that we connected over the Internet. Raw Cereal had animators all working over a distributed cloud solution to work on source files. Then we were rendering all that, getting it sucked down and putting it into servers; a pretty beastly endeavor.”
If Altmark were speaking with another screens producer, someone who really understands this level of video, he would tell them to “pay attention to how crisp everything looks. If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll really appreciate how good it looks. We did some tests because we knew it was going to take a long time to render content, so we rendered the tests at 6K. We accidentally rendered something at 12K and put it up there and we were like, ‘Holy crap, now we have to render everything at 12K because it looks so good’. The 4K cameras really just showed. I said, ‘well, is the juice worth the squeeze?’ We all agreed that it was absolutely worth the squeeze. It really shows what you can do with an involved team where everyone knows the what the tools can do and what they’re capable of. From the Nighthawk team to our media server programmer and tech, everyone was able to just really ring everything out and squeeze every absolute last good-looking pixel out of it.”
CHAD GUY
Production Manager
Production Manager, Chad Guy has been working for the Morgan Wallen camp since June of 2022 and has seen the meteoric rise of Wallen. “Everything has happened so fast for Morgan,” Guy says. “Some call it an overnight success, even though he’s been at it for years, but we literally went from sheds the first summer to stadiums the next. The biggest challenge overall, I think, was really just having to scale up production appropriately with the pace of his career. It’s been an absolute rocket ship; a fun and creative challenge for sure. It’s a big show, this tour, with so many different and interesting production elements. Morgan is not just a country artist, which I think is one of the most interesting parts—we’re not tied to one genre. He crosses genres and we’re able to do different things. To me, this is a big rock tour more than anything when it comes to production. Bringing in the automation elements, really leaning into special effects—pyro and lasers, and all that kind of stuff has been a lot of fun and really plays so well into his music and his live show as a whole.”
Since it is a big production there’s a production day built in before the first show of each stop, but they are show-ready in about eight hours. “We always get the band in for a soundcheck the night of that production day to get it up and out of the way,” explains Guy. “We’ve got an incredible team of vendors this year, and our staff is just second to none. I’m so proud of the team that we’ve built and there’s so many different layers to the onion. Our Technical Director, Patrick Murphy and our Stage Manager, Donnie Floyd, are incredible about coordinating the ‘dance’, as we call it. There’s seven different layers that have to all lay on top of each other and flow into sections. And the vendor teams and our crew overall has just been so great at coordinating all that; making it as smooth as can be for 30 trucks. We have 10 steel trucks from G2 Structures and 30 production trucks. I don’t think we’re doing anything groundbreaking in terms of what’s available, but people are certainly taken aback by what we’ve been able to build and accomplish within 30 trucks; effectively move that around the country, and around the world. The conversations that I have with other production managers, just more than anything, are about the team and what we’ve built in terms of the synergy and the collaboration that we have within that team and the vendors themselves.”
Vendor Support
Speaking of vendors, for Guy much of it goes back to long-term relationships he’s built up over the course of his career. “We lean heavily into the video obviously on this one,” comments Guy. “Nighthawk is a long-term relationship for me, going back to KISS and other acts. We know we can really lean into their service; they always look after us. The video header is the largest and most impressive piece of the production itself, and we went heavy on the camera package to support that. We’ve had a great Video Director in Adam Cline with Nighthawk. Again, that’s a long-term relationship with him and I’m absolutely thrilled to have Nighthawk on board this year. They really brought their A team to the table, and we couldn’t do this one without them.”
TAIT is another big contributor to this year’s Morgan Wallen tour, and Guy is pleased with their work as well. “TAIT has supplied us with all of the set and automation for this tour, including: all automated lighting trusses in the rig; a custom band riser that includes three lifts; a custom breakaway door that lives under the drum lift for our show intro; two elevated B-Stage performance areas (SL & SR) on the main stage, with our tech bunkers built in underneath. We created very specific vignette performance moments for each B-Stage area. On Stage Right we have a custom-built “Mamaw’s House” set piece, that is a recreation of Morgan’s Mamaw’s actual home. Mamaw’s house set was built by Gallager Staging. On Stage Left, we’ve created a baseball theme, with custom stadium bleachers and stadium lights to pay homage to his love of baseball. There’s a C-Stage performance deck and piano lift that we use at the back of the stadium floor, to bring Morgan right out to his fans at the back of the venue for a four song set. TAIT also supplied a 3D Nav Cam system for our video team to capture incredible camera angles around our custom “MW” video thrust.”
G2 Structures, which did one stadium show at the ballpark in Arlington, TX last year with one of their standard K2 stages for Wallen, is back for the stadium tour. Guy states, “We had such a great experience with those guys and a great working relationship right off the bat that when I knew we were going into stadiums for this year, they were the first call that I made. More than anything, it’s just the ease that that system goes together. We are using a custom K2i system this year. This is complete and custom for our show, and they dove in right away. There were certainly engineering concerns with 97,000 lbs. of video in the air with that massive header, but their engineering team is second to none. They’re never about what they can’t do, but always what’s possible, which I really appreciate. They came to the table with some great solutions for us to pull this off, where we didn’t need a steel structure that takes days of crane time. Our cranes are in the room for only three hours on this build. The speed at which this system comes together has really been cost effective and has allowed us to streamline things overall. It also helps that Guardian Barriers is part of the one big family. It just streamlines things for us top to bottom in terms of the logistics of moving gear around. They look after us as one big package.” When it came to lasers, Guy called on Strictly FX. “Strictly is a new vendor for us this year. I’m a good friend of Chris Roberts, who has been doing some work with Strictly FX, and we decided to make the move for lasers with them this year. They have such a long history of great work, and it is no different on this one. They’ve done an incredible job for us this year.”
Creative / Production Collaboration
Guy particularly appreciates having a great working relationship with both Lawrence and Rahm. “It is a real collaborative effort,” says Guy. “We spent the better part of six months on multiple Zoom calls a week and really diving into Morgan’s creative vision and what he wanted to see. I think it’s a great partnership. The communication’s incredible, and we really work well with each other and support each other’s ideas. They’re incredibly talented young guys and we couldn’t be happier with how it’s all come together. They truly understand not only Morgan’s vision, but they’re great about working with us to really make it streamlined and as easy as possible on the logistics side. They’ve done some remarkable work, and it is no surprise that their client list is growing by the day. The entire Raw Cereal team did an absolutely great job representing Morgan and his diverse catalog of music. Their content and visual representations of his music are stunning. They truly capture him, and his music beautifully. I think the scale of what we’ve built video-wise, and the overall production is breathtaking. It certainly puts people back on their heels a little bit when they first see it. We’re all super proud of how it all came together and the team it took to do it.”
THE VENDOR VIEWS
NIGHTHAWK VIDEO
Bryan Venhorst, Director of Engineering & Todd LePere, Sales Director
On the solutions Nighthawk Video supplied
We pushed the envelope in visual effects and scale by utilizing multiple UHD/4K canvases, leveraging the power of Disguise and Notch effects. This combination allowed us to display a visually stunning show that seamlessly blended high-resolution imagery with dynamic, real-time graphics. By artistically integrating our Grass Valley cameras, Cobalt/AJA color management and the Disguise GX3 Media Servers, we created a mesmerizing visual experience that set a new standard in the industry, showcasing unparalleled clarity and creativity. Our Touring Fast Frame System and brand-new custom wind-bracing solution really help simplify and streamline our LED build and integration with G2 Structures. We also designed a matching custom curved corner frame that allows us to seamlessly round the downstage corners.
On why Nighthawk Video was the right vendor
Our incredibly skilled crew have proven to be the best qualified to execute a show of this size. Also our teams prior experience with stadium level productions was a big reason Production Manager Chad Guy trusted us to provide the best solution for the massive LED header using our new Saco A5 5mm LED utilizing our Touring Fast Frame system. It allows us to load-in and load-out quickly and efficiently every day. I also want to say that we love working with Cort Lawrence and the team at Raw Cereal, they are always looking to push the creative and technical boundaries with video and design, and we love helping them execute their visions.
STRICTLY FX
Shane Davis, Laser Crew Chief / Operator
On the solutions Strictly FX provided
The biggest challenge with this show, from a laser standpoint, is the size and scale of it. We’re independently controlling a total of 77 laser fixtures, which requires an enormous amount of data. It requires us to operate from multiple computers across a few different VLANs. For a laser rig, that’s uncommon, and there aren’t a lot of programmers or operators who know how to do it. I knew going into this tour that we were going to have to approach it with a different mindset. This isn’t a throw-and-go setup with a dozen or so lasers. It required a lot more forethought and planning. We spent several weeks mapping out diagrams and network schedules, and I’ve done everything I can to make sure that things stay in the correct place and order. Getting 77 lasers loaded in and out each day is rather cumbersome, because lasers are usually treated like stand-alone fixtures. We knew that if we approached this with that mentality, it would take forever to load in and out, and time would be an issue, not only for us, but for the rest of the production. We settled on adopting a similar technique to what lighting companies do. The lasers are affixed, three each to 10’ pipes. At the end of the night, instead of disassembling the rig and stowing each fixture in its case, production helped us build a set of meat-rack style set carts that the laser pipe assemblies can ride in safely, fully assembled. This significantly cuts down on our load in time.
On supporting the team for this tour
Both creative and production were adamant about one thing when we began designing: “This isn’t an EDM show”, and we knew exactly what they meant. With lasers, it’s a tough balance. Lasers, by design, are bright, visible, and striking. If they weren’t, you’d just use regular lights instead. The trouble is that you can start to make them look artificial and obtrusive if you’re not careful. For a loud, upbeat EDM festival, striking and obtrusive is perfect, but for a country ballad, it feels out of place and detracts from the show. Cort and Anders used the same word again and again throughout rehearsals: “cohesive”. Our Programmer, Doug Cenko, was really presented with a challenging task. How do we make the lasers visually stand out, but simultaneously make them feel like they blend in? Through the use of complex fades and brightness effects, I think Doug did a phenomenal job of finding that balance.
On why Strictly FX was the right vendor
This was a complex one. I honestly don’t know that any one of us could have done it by ourselves. Between prepping the gear, building the control racks, networking and configuring the rig, programming, advancing, permitting, and actually running the show, we all play critical roles. Strictly has given me the support system I need, and we’re such a diverse group of people from different backgrounds and with different skillsets, that I know, together, we can do anything. We’re special effects for a reason. When something seems unorthodox or hasn’t been tried before, we have the ambition and the audacity to make it happen.
G2 STRUCTURES
Greg Hareld, Managing Director; Cliff Ward, GM; and Josh Bashaw, Project Lead
On the solutions G2 Structures provided
Production Manager Chad Guy and the creative team at Raw Cereal, led by Cort Lawrence, expressed a desire for a stage design that would stand out from traditional configurations. He wanted to focus on a visually impactful set yet maintain an intimate and personal atmosphere. We were confident in our ability to deliver a design that would honor the vision, collaborating closely with Brock Mearig at TAIT for the design and fabrication of the set. Additionally, Matt Geasey of All Clear Visuals played a pivotal role in coordinating all the elements from the assorted vendors into a unified CAD design. One of the key challenges we initially encountered was meeting the logistical demands. A significant aspect of this production was the massive video wall supplied by Nighthawk Video. Leveraging the modular design of our K2i system, we collaborated with Clark Reder Engineering to create a customized stage that could support the scale of the tour. Through the addition of four towers plus an additional five feet of trim height to the standard K2i system, we were able to deliver a stage that met the specific requirements.
On supporting the team for this tour
During the production rehearsals conducted at Rock Lititz, an obstacle arose regarding the proper bracing for the video wall on the stage. While the indoor rehearsals progressed smoothly, there was concern about the upcoming outdoor shows, just one month away. To address this issue promptly, a team comprising of Ben Bickel, the tour’s Head Rigger; Patrick Murphy, Morgan Wallen’s Technical Director; Leon Roll from Nighthawk Video; and ourselves from G2 Structures, collaborated to find a suitable and safe solution that met the needs of all departments involved. Chad Guy meticulously worked with all departments to refine the show over several months. Weekly Zoom meetings were held to ensure seamless collaboration with careful attention to detail. The teamwork and unity among colleagues to create a cohesive and enjoyable work environment was a delightful experience.
GUARDIAN BARRIER SERVICES
Pat Cordova, Driver/Tech
On the challenges Guardian solved
The first challenge was logistical in nature. Given the high costs associated with freight, we needed to identify a cost-efficient method for transporting barrier and cable ramps, along with a technician, to multiple cities. Guardian’s solution to send a technician, who is also a truck driver, was beneficial because it ensured a consistent point of contact for each show stop, effectively merging logistics with production. The second challenge was implementing the barrier layout to safely accommodate the 120’ thrust while adding a section for seating and a general admission pit. The barrier needed to split in three different directions, could not have any pinch points, and required sufficient blowouts for egress. Our solution utilized Guardian’s specialty barrier pieces, including vario, fixed, and flexible corner pieces, to create angles as needed. Additionally, we installed gates of various sizes to effectively manage patron flow and cable access. Pinch points are always a big concern with barrier builds. Guardian alleviates hard negative angles on the barrier line by using the specialty corner pieces to smooth out angles, making them gradual and safe. The Morgan Wallen camp has been nothing but stellar. At times, barrier techs are overlooked, but the Morgan Wallen camp assures they are supported in every way.
On why Guardian was the right vendor
This tour necessitated a complex barrier construction with highly specific requirements. Guardian Barrier Services successfully met these requirements by utilizing our extensive inventory of specialty pieces, while ensuring that the barrier construction was both visually appealing and compliant with safety standards. Guardian has created a strong internal network to make touring possible. A well-equipped warehouse staff, planning manager, logistics team, and upper management at the headquarters in Mount Joy, PA assure that each Driver/Tech is supported through every step, and every tour stop.
PIXMOB
Hila Aviran, Director of Tours & Entertainment
On the solutions PixMob supplied
One of the big focuses was how to make this stadium tour feel like a massive stadium show, to achieve that we brought in the PixMob Infrared Moving head system to paint moving effects on the crowd that sync to the rest of the show. PixMob wearables are dynamic in how flexible they are in terms of effects and reaction times, but the “MH” as we call them, bring dimension and depth to the visuals in the audience in a way that extends the creative from the stage onto 50,000 people in a split second.
On supporting the team for this tour
Our first contact was with the very talented creative director, Anders Rahm, from Raw Cereal. Anders is a flawless communicator and can paint the picture of an artist’s vision in a way that you can quickly envision and start building around. Communication is always key, but on stadium tours where there’s just more of everything – gear, people, visuals – then great communication is the magic ingredient that makes for delivering a seamless stadium tour. Both the creative and production teams were pros at being quick, responsive, and fully focused on delivering the biggest show possible.
On why PixMob was the right vendor
Anybody can turn on a wearable LED and flash it on and off, but with generic wearable LEDs you tend to get generic shows. Because we have a team of engineers that builds technology that can be morphed and customized to individual artists, we’re able to go beyond lighting up an LED and flashing it on and off. Our goal is to make every show unique to its artist and in order to do that, we constantly push our effect capabilities. When you go to a Morgan Wallen show and sit in the crowd, you’ll see Morgan Wallen visuals on the stage and everywhere around you. You become the shapes, waves, chases, that sync perfectly to every song. Generic is the thief of creativity, and we steer away from it every time we program a tour. I think our robust technology and stadium experienced team is why we were the right vendor for this tour.
PRODUCTION TEAM
- Production Manager: Chad Guy
- Technical Director: Patrick “Murph” Murphy
- Stage Manager: Donnie Floyd
- Show Director & Creative Director: Anders Rahm
- Show Designer, Show Director, Creative Director: Cort Lawrence
- Screens Producer: Aron Altmark
- Lighting Operator: Zac Coren
- Lighting Programmer: Tyler Santangelo
- Content Creative Director: Natalie Hall
- Content Producers: Liv Krusinski, Vanessa Johnson
- Content Technical Director: Scott Millar
- Video Director: Adam Cline
- Video Crew Chief: Michael Sienkiewicz
- Lead System Engineer/ Shader #1: Iain Donham
- Engineer/ Shader #2: Fred Fournier
- Engineering Assistant/ Robo Op: Santi Torres
- Disguise Programmer/ Operator: Jonathan Laosy
- Lead LED Technician: David Klann
- LED Assist/ Climbers: John Dolderer, Kenny Ramseur, Jabari Bolden, Rob Brewer
- LED Floor Technician: Bryan Keyes
- LED Assist/ Long Lens Camera Ops: Don McKim, Gabe Vomfell
- LED Assist/ Handheld Camera Ops: Mike Walker, Cody Moore
- Furio Camera Op: Elliott Roll
- Steadicam Op: Andrew Cora
- Steadicam Assist: Travis Krajewski
- Nighthawk Technical Director: Leon Roll
- Nighthawk Director of Engineering: Bryan Venhorst
- Laser Crew Chief / Operator: Shane Davis
- Laser Tech: James Irby, Trae Howard
- Laser Programmer: Doug Cenko
VENDORS
- Video: Nighthawk Video
- Content: Hidden Road, Raw Cereal
- Lighting: Christie Lites
- Lasers: Strictly FX
- Flames/Pyro: FFP Effects
- Staging: G2 Structures
- Automation: TAIT
- Scenic: Gallagher Staging, TAIT
- Barriers: Guardian Barrier Services
- LED Wristbands: PixMob
- Technical Direction: Clear All Visuals
- Trucking: Averitt/On Tour Logistics
GEAR
Video
- 4,280 Modules of SACO A5 5mm LED Saco Nano 4K Processing
- Disguise GX 3 Media Servers
- Nighthawk Video Touring Fast-Frames
- Nighthawk 4K UHD HDR Grass Valley Flypack System
- 1 Grass Valley 4K Korona 2ME+ Switcher
- Ross Ultrix Routing and Terminal Gear
- 10 4K Grass Valley LDX150 Camera
- 3 4K Grass Valley 4K LDX135C Camera
- 13 Fujinon Lenses
- 6 Panasonic 4K PTZ Robotic Camera
- 2 4K DreamChip 16 Mini Cameras
- 1 Furio Robotic Tracking Dolly System
- 1 SteadiCam GPI Rig
Lasers
- 71 Kvant Burstberry RGB Laser
- 6 Kolo 60W Lasers
- 2 Strictly FX Custom-Built Tube Hazer
- 3 hazebase Touring Stadium Hazer
PixMob LED Wristbands
- 2 PixMob MVT
- 8 PixMob Moving Head
- 36 PixMob Wash
