The Tipping Point Tour 2022
Tears For Fears is on the road in support of their new album The Tipping Point, which the band play an extensive number of tracks from in the show, along with all the fans favorites and hits in which everyone sings along. PLSN spoke with the key members of the production team on the staging, lighting, and projected visuals in this show of iconic music.
Butch Allen
Production Designer
The direction of the design—with the circular rig—became clear after having a conversation with Tears For Fears members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, notes Production Designer Butch Allen. “They pointed out to me, which isn’t their job by the way, that their iconography was traditionally circular. How did I miss that? Sunflowers, the sun, mandala; obvious. Roland and Curt were incredibly gracious, helpful, and insightful with their commentary through the very quick design period.”
The projection screen was “expertly sewn” by the Sew What? team, says Allen, adding, “I double dog dare you to find the seams.” Nighthawk supplied the projectors and servers, and PRG provided the lighting package, which included trussing as well. “I still can’t believe our partners managed to pull this off given the time frame, Covid, the time frame and Covid… yeah, I said that twice.” When it came to the circular truss screen, Allen, along with Kerstin Hovland and Emery Martin, co-Founders and Principals of Electronic Countermeasures LLC, Joe Cabrera ][, CEO of Flash and Trash Works, Inc., and Production Manager Brian Southall all discussed the pros and cons of LED vs. projection. “Ultimately we chose to move away from an emissive surface to allow for a more dynamic interplay between illumination and visual art.”
Allen notes that Cabrera has worked with the band before, and his institutional knowledge was key. “I’ve never worked with Joe as the lighting designer before, he was amazing,” Allen says. “His lighting was completely and expertly composed in pre viz. This show was designed and executed in just a very narrow window of time. Kerstin and Emery built all the visuals in their studio. Kerstin referred to this show as an exercise in ‘gestural drawing.’ I love that analogy. We all worked remotely, and over two days onsite in Cincinnati we pasted all the parts together in addition to teching and rehearsing the show. The final result has a very organic, spontaneous, yet composed stance. That last line only makes sense to me, but it’s true.”
Joe Cabrera ][
Lighting Designer
Lighting Designer Joe Cabrera ][ shared emails back and forth with basic plots, renders, and video clips with Butch Allen for less than a week before getting the official green-light on the overall design. Cabrera then programmed the show over nine days before they all headed to their first load-in. “I had the pleasure of programming two previous Tears for Fears tours in 2017 and 2019. There weren’t really any official guardrails in place on this one regarding the guys’ lighting likes and dislikes, but my prior experiences with them gave me some insight into just how much fun we could have with some of the cueing,” he says. “To some extent, I had worked with all of the fixtures we ended up with. I’d had a particularly good time with the combination of Robe Spikies and Ayrton MagicBlades on another tour, so I was excited to see what kind of looks would be possible with this design. I think those two fixtures pair up nicely and play very well to each other’s strengths.”
The band wanted to use their music videos to accompany some of the newer songs off their current album, notes Cabrera. “These were great inspiration for color schemes, patterns, and movement. For the rest, content was created and programmed by Kerstin Hovland and Emery Martin of Electronic Countermeasures.”
PRG supplied the lighting gear for the tour. “Brian Southall was all over the vendor selection process. We did make a few substitutions in the interest of availability. The whole world of touring is so busy at the moment, it’s not surprising when one of your first choices is not available. PRG put together a great rig, and it was great to work with ‘Looch’ [Anthony Ciampa] again.”
Caleb Eckerman
Lighting Director
Lighting Director Caleb Eckerman is from Chroma Designs, a lighting company founded by his father, Troy Eckerman, that specializes in lighting design, programming, consulting, sales, and training. “I first started working with Joe Cabrera last year in L.A. on a festival [Head in the Clouds]. I’ve learned so many great tips and tricks from him.” This is his first time to work with Butch Allen directly. “My father has worked with Butch for many years, so I am used to hearing his name and it is an honor to work with two lighting legends!” Eckerman says. “Joe really did a phenomenal job and seeing his designs come to life is incredible.”
Most of the show is timecoded, notes Eckerman. There are 19 songs currently on the set list; however, there are a few songs that Eckerman runs manually, which he says he loves as it keeps him on his toes. “This tour has been a blast. The band is incredible. Working with Butch and Joe and getting to know the touring crew is a pleasure. Most of all, seeing the audience enjoying the show is exhilarating. To be able to take part in a production that is making thousands of people so happy each night with Tears for Fears’ classic hits and the new album makes my job a dream.”
Kerstin L. Hovland
Screens Producer & Video Designer
Kerstin Hovland had worked with Butch Allen many times, so she was happy when approached to work with him again for this tour. “I grew up listening to Tears for Fears, I have vivid memories of looking out the back window of my Mom’s Plymouth Horizon while ‘Seeds of Love’ played on the cassette deck. It’s an amazing opportunity to work with a band that provided a large part of the soundtrack to your childhood, so for me a lot of the visual decisions were instinctive, tonal, and emotional. Roland and Curt are incredible lyricists and storytellers, so we wanted to create a visual landscape that acted as an emotional amplifier to the story they are already telling. Everyone who knows Tears for Fears knows the imagery of the sun, the sunflower, the celestial iconography, and collage work of their album covers. We often work with physical elements and practical effects, which made us a good fit for their established design ethos.”
The first piece they suggested was building a replica of their golden “Man in the Sun” and filming it with light playing over its surface. “We found an incredible sculptor who built it in clay. I gilded it, matching the weathered texture of the original as close as possible, and Emery [Martin] programmed passes of moving lights to create different moods and surface effects.”
For the animated collages for the song, “Seeds of Love,” Hovland’s mother Annette, a collage artist herself, was free to come work with her on this piece. “There was something beautifully circular about animating my mother’s artwork for a band she played for me. The reason I love the work we do and can’t imagine doing any other work is the feeling you get when you’re watching the audience at a show, that all the elements have combined perfectly and there’s this magic of an entire arena full of people having nearly the same emotional experience at the same time. It gives me goose bumps. This show was full of that magic, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.”
Emery Martin
Video Designer/disguise Programmer
“It was great to be approached by our longtime friend and collaborator Butch Allen at the outset when he was beginning the design process for the circular projection screen,” notes Emery Martin. “That turned into trying to figure out screen angle, projector positions, what servers/hardware, and of course what is going to be appropriate for the screen surface and the music of Tears For Fears. As far as the imagery, we knew from the outset there were two iconic elements from their early album art that we wanted to reference, the sun and sunflowers along with the collage aesthetic for the latter.”
Martin didn’t have a locked-in set list, so they had to think more in terms of imagery that was evocative to set a mood and atmosphere rather than be overly illustrative or narrative. “Having listened through the discography and contemplated the tilted circle screen, we came to the decision to do a combination of abstract live-action using some methods we hadn’t tested before, 2D animation, and return to some older live-action footage from the studios’ archive. Some of the highlights included the live-action tunnel of gel that was created for ‘Head Over Heels/Broken’ with a combination of handheld lighting performances by me and repeatable movements with a trio of GLP FR1s controlled by an MA2 command wing. The celestial star maps and clock for ‘Long, Long, Long Time’ brought delicate and intricate line work that allowed for contrast between the more amorphous abstract moments. Of course, some of my favorites are the gilded sun that was sculpted by Christy Heyob, gilded by Kerstin Hovland, and lit and shot by me for ‘Secret World.’”
“We had a really compressed tech rehearsal period as well so they had to work very quickly and economically to program the show and work with the Nighthawk team to get the screen surface calibrated. Thanks to disguise for making our lives easier on the projection calibration side of things.”
Tears for Fears
The Tipping Point Tour 2022
Production Team
- Production Designer: Butch Allen
- Lighting Designer & Programmer: Joe Cabrera ][
- Lighting Director: Caleb Eckerman
- Tour Manager: Bret Alexander
- Production Manager: Brian Southall
- Lighting Crew Chief: Leith Duvall
- Lighting Techs: John Colligan, Robbie Winfree Jr.
- Screens Producer & Video Designer: Kerstin L. Hovland
- Video Designer / disguise Programmer: Emery Martin
- Additional Animators: Meejin Hong, Annette Hovland
- Video Director: Santiago Torress
- Stage Manager: Alex Grieco
- Production Coordinator: Katie Moran
- Rigger: Ben Bickel
Vendors
- Lighting: PRG
- Video: Nighthawk
- Projection Screen: Sew What Inc.
- Video Content Creation: Electronic Countermeasures
Gear
Lighting:
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA2 Lighting Console
- 48 Ayrton MagicBlade-R
- 12 Chroma-Q Color Force II 12
- 28 Claypaky Mythos 2
- 18 Claypaky Scenius Unico
- 48 Robe Spikie
- 12 TMB Solaris Flare
- 2 PRG GroundControl Best Boy HP
- 4 MDG Atmosphere APS Hazer
Video:
- Barco UDX-4K40 FLEX
- disguise gx 2c Media Server
More Tears for Fears The Tipping Point 2022 tour photos by Steve Jennings:
