Lighting Co
Neg Earth
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
Production Designer: Mark Cunniffe
Lighting Director: Paul Smith/Edge of Blue Ltd.
Lighting/d3 Programmers: Paul Smith, Jonathan Rouse
Lighting Crew Chief: John Shelly Smith
Lighting Tech: David Cox
Production Manager: Chris Marsh
Tour Manager: Mark Friend
Stage Manager: Matthew Caley
Video Co: Colonel Tom Touring
Video Content: Damian Hale/Treatment
Video Directors: Lindsey Haney, Phil Mead
Demolition Software Designer: Matt Swoboda
Rigger: Omar Franchi
Trucking: KB Events
Gear
1 grandMA2 console
1 grandMA2 Lite console
36 Clay Paky B-Eye K20s
36 Clay Paky Sharpys
16 Martin MAC Viper AirFX
4 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots
1 Robert Juliat Lancelot (4000 HTI) followspot
2 MDG The One hazers
Tour Notes
Ed Sheeran’s X tour, in support of his June 2014 album release, X (pronounced “Multiply”), launched with a few shows in Japan and Europe last fall before a long string of dates in North America and Europe from August through November. The X tour’s 2015 legs include Europe, Asia, Australia and South America before returning to London in July.
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings
Mark Cunniffe
Production Designer
“The real challenge with Ed Sheeran’s show is that it is essentially one man and his guitar and the difficulty is turning the visual performance into the kind of show that is suited to some of the worlds largest arenas.
“Production wise, one of my biggest problems was how to achieve that without completely dwarfing the performer visually. That was my big conundrum and Chris Marsh and I spent the best part of six months trying to do exactly that. For me the best way to do that was get rid of the traditional left/right I-Mag screens. We wanted to still make it a creative show, but decided to keep all of that creative inside the PA hangs, to keep it as compact and intimate as possible. We’re treating all of the screens using an amazing piece of Software called Demolition, and on top of that we have some bespoke content, a lot of which is hand drawn.
“A lot of the creative visual is based around the mood, the melody or the lyric. I think Ed is a true poet, and I felt a lot of the hand drawn content, which we then digitized, gave it a real, organic feel in keeping with his performance. One of the clips for the track ‘One’ features over 2000 hand drawings from a talented guy called Mushtashrik. I think there is something really personal about that kind of approach, very much in keeping with the approach of the artist.
“I went through about 6 different designs before settling on the current approach. I use Cinema 4d to visualize my designs and that helped me to determine the screen layout that could be huge when we needed it to be and small and intimate for other sections of the show. The program allows me to project show content onto the panel design and view it at true scale and from different camera angles. An essential tool for this kind of project.
“The beauty of the software Demolition, which was developed by a great technical talent named Matt Swoboda, is that you can take the artistic approach that we are using for the content and then treat live images of Ed with it as well. So if the content has a watercolor approach, we can treat the images of Ed to look like watercolor and in real time. It really is a very creative tool, perfect for working with this artist. It means we don’t have such clear lines between creative content and I-Mag, it’s all treated as one canvas. It was a great marriage of low tech and high tech really, I mean some of the artwork looked like a Cezanne painting or an impressionist’s watercolor… a really unique look and perfect for Ed’s live performance style.
“We pulled the content together over a period of two months and the Demolition software was very much a Beta program in development well into the first month of shows. We had great support from d3 and Matt Swoboda.
“For me, this has been one of the most successful collaboration I have been involved in. The whole production is driven by the artist and his music, and that’s how it should be. We’re all support acts for Ed, but this tour as an overall project, is a fantastic collaboration between sound, lighting, creative content, video content, and Demolition. I think it has produced a really seamless visual and aural experience, in support of a very, very talented singer-songwriter.”
Paul Smith
Lighting Director & Programmer
“We’ve got about 18 songs in the console that came together over two days at the Bridgestone Arena production rehearsals in Nashville and the subsequent production day. The quantity of songs in the console has remained more or less the same however we are able to re-purpose a few of the tracks depending on what Ed opts to play on the night, usually with no notice! There’s a section of the show called “Ed’s Choice” and that’s a song or two of Ed’s choosing on the spur of the moment. He’s got a talent for feeling the room and obviously the choice is something he can only really make there and then.
“In general, the programming has been modified and refined over the course of the tour so far and it’s an ongoing process with Ed’s show. He modifies the songs throughout the tour and you often find that certain stabs need to be added or removed, or a previously quite frenetic build begins to mellow. On the days that he decides to make changes to the track for the first time in a while, you need to be on your toes and know what’s in the Cue Stack so you have somewhere to go if he changes things drastically.
“It’s always fun to work with Mark (Cunniffe), we’ve put a few tours together now and so we’re definitely understanding of each-others creative language fairly well now. Mark has a very clear vision of what he wants and how the show is to be; however he’s also happy to give me the brief and let me run with it on the programming front until he feels it necessary to reign me in! With this show, as a result of the Demolition Software, the lighting has been incredibly critical. The software is essentially looking for contrast ratios or color content, and so there’s a fine, fine balance between over and under-lighting the tracks. When it’s being treated, a slight modification of the focus can be enough to change the look of the treated IMag completely.
“To that end, the essential base look of much of the show has remained throughout, however we had lots of time in Dublin at the beginning of the European leg of the tour to really re-visit a lot of the parts that we didn’t like and either tidy up, or just generally improve the coherence of the tracks.
“We’ve been working with Dave Ridgeway and Caroline Beverly at Neg Earth Lights. Outstanding on every front. The support has been great, the equipment superb, and the crew excellent. We couldn’t ask for more.
“I’m of the opinion that each job should get the equipment that’s right for it, and so everything that’s up in the rig is there on it’s own merits and it’s suitability for the looks that Mark wanted. The Clay Paky B-Eye’s we saw at PLASA and as with everyone else that saw them, we knew that they were something we wanted and could do something interesting with. The Sharpy’s are possibly a bit of a staple, but we really only use them twice in the whole show. So much so that I’ve had a couple of well respected LD’s ask what we have hidden out on the back truss!
“It’s a show that we are all very proud of. I think it took some balls for Mark to do away with side-screen IMag and that’s definitely a move that has paid off. The blurring of the lines between content and IMag really drives a strong organic feel and really does support rather than overwhelm the artist. Ed likes to foster a strong ‘family’ vibe on the road and it’s a move that pays off as we’re a very coherent group of people that tour in support of a remarkably talented artist. That inner harmony really does spread out to create a harmonious vibe across all of the technical aspects.”
For more Ed Sheeran tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to
http://www.prolightingspace.com/photo/albums/ed-sheeran-extra-pics-by-steve-jennings
