Lighting Co
Clearwing Productions
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
- Production Director: Dan Sanford
- Lighting Designer: Dan Sanford and Voyage Productions
- Lighting Programming: Devon J. Brown
- Lighting Techs: Evan Nicholes, Mindy Judson-Garcia
- Clearwing Rep: Ryan Driscoll
- Video Co: Clearwing Productions
- Video Content/Creator: Dan Sanford
- Video Tech: Matthew Ohnsman
- Tour Manager: Ryan Noel
- Production Manager: Christopher Leckrone
- Stage Manager/Playback: Otto Wieters
- Staging: Clearwing Productions
Gear
- 1 grandMA2 Full console
- 1 grandMA2 Light console
- 24 Robe Spikies
- 24 Martin MAC Axioms
- 8 Martin MAC Auras
- 70 Martin Sceptron 10
- 21 Showline Philips Nitro 510c
- 2 Reel EFX DF-50 hazers
- 2 Radiance hazers
- 114 Mega Systems/Dicolor Phantom 5.9mm panels
- 1 32’ x 20’ upstage wall with breaks
- 1 14’ x 3’ main riser video section
- 1 3’ x 3’ confidence riser video section
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings:
For Dan Sanford, the Big Wild Superdream Tour was a continuation working with the artist. Sanford says Big Wild was the first artist that he started working with five years ago while getting his start as an LD and VJ. “At the time, I was doing my own lighting and visuals in my band Head to Head and Jackson Stell (Big Wild) and I became friends after a show we played together. I was about to go back to another semester at college when I got a call from Jackson’s management out of the blue and they simply asked “do you want to go on tour?”. I couldn’t believe it and said absolutely. Since then, Jackson and I have had the pleasure of working together as friends and colleagues building and growing his live show. After my first tour I then dove back into lighting design and was able to design, program and operate all video and lighting. We are not a timecode show at this point. I have always treated running the show as a performance, you will often see me dancing and getting into the show at FOH. However, we have always had a cue dense show that gives it a tight look as well.”
Sanford notes that as the show has progressed, they have teamed up with lighting designers and their friends at Voyage Productions on the show. “We all became friends after we teamed up on a Big Wild Red Rocks show about two years ago. Since then I have truly enjoyed working with them on shows and they bring such a fresh creative energy to production. For this particular design we came to Devon J. Brown at Voyage wanting to expand off our smaller venue tour rig that they designed with me and make it feel larger with less. For example using lights in multiple creative ways to give us dynamic scenes and looks as well as expanding on video to act as our canvases and set pieces. It is amazing working with Voyage because they are always willing to try something even if right away it doesn’t seem possible. To me that’s the way I want to approach the designs as well.”
Sanford worked on the visuals and design of the show for about a month of creative and two months of pre-production. “The magic happened when programmer Devon (J. Brown) and I had about five days rehearsal/program time this past spring to program in pre production on the rig. We continued our programming three days on the rig this fall with updates and diving into the show with finer strokes of detail.
The stage production, video and lighting we have chosen for this allowed us to create so many different environments that support the performance which was a massive overarching goal we had with this show. I have been extremely happy with this production and can’t wait to keep pursuing new ideas, visuals and production design in the future. It has been an amazing experience working thus far with Big Wild and on these shows. I would like to thank PLSN for having the opportunity to talk about this show. I have followed your magazine since I began doing visuals, lighting and production. It is exciting to be on the other end of this.”
More Big Wild tour photos by Steve Jennings:
