Matchbox Twenty is treating audiences to a unique emotional musical experience with their Slow Dream tour. Co-Production Designers, Sooner Routhier and Curtis Adams, Matchbox Twenty’s guitarist/Creative Director, Paul Doucette and many of the production team talk about creating a visual experience.
The iconic, hard-rocking Metallica is back with an enormous stadium tour that has been called by some reviewers “cozy.” With a 120’ diameter ring-shaped stage that surrounds the famous Snake Pit of fans, the production team has created eight 100’ tall ground-supported towers that circle the stage with video, lighting, and audio to give every fan a rich Metallica experience.
Designed by John McGuire, bLinK-182 have returned to the stage and hit the road with a massive world tour that is wowing audiences. A bit of a departure for the band, they are filling arenas with production values that include a floating ambulance and elevating drumset. PLSN hears from McGuire, Eric Gorleski and Griffin Dennen about working on the tour.
Janet Jackson’s ‘Together Again’ tour is her 10th outing. For the ‘five act’ retrospective of her 50-year career, Eric Wade, Principal of Crossfade Design served as Production Designer as well as Tour Director. Troy Eckerman was Associate Lighting Designer/Lead Lighting Programmer. Both speak with PLSN about the production solutions supporting this dynamic artist’s tour.
The Canadian heavy metal band Spiritbox recently finished their first headlining tour of North America, ‘The Eternal Blue Tour.’ Co-Creative Directors Lenny Sasso (also handling lighting design) and Drew Mercadante (who is also screens producer) fill us in on how the visuals came together for the well-received tour.
The metal bands Gojira and Mastodon are out in 2023 on their co-headlining Mega-Monsters Tour. Lighting Designer Pete Cary has been with Grammy Award-nominated Gojira for six-and-a-half years, while Lighting Designer Eric Price has been lighting the Grammy Award-winning Mastodon for just over a year. They spoke with us about their collaboration on the tour design and the support of Chicago-based JRLX Lighting.
Electronic music with live music from drumline and horn sections produces a unique acoustic and visually arresting live musical experience for ODESZA’s audiences. Co-Creative Directors Luke Tanaka and Sean Kusanagi along with Lighting Designer Kyle Kegan have been working with the band and PM Shane Crowl to ensure the visual design reinforces the dynamic performance on tour and at festivals during “The Last Goodbye Tour.”
Having sold-out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, Jelly Roll has become a sensation in the country music scene, though it was a long road to get to stepping onto that stage. His journey was the inspiration for the lighting and video design from LD Bobby Grey of Notan Creative and Creative Director, David Pawsey of Lüz Studios.
The Lumineers’ “Brightside” tour brings a production family back together with Tour Director Sara Full, Designers Sooner Routhier and Robert Long of SRae Productions and Lighting Director Ian Haslauer. The show is triumph of lighting, video, and automation.
New Kids On The Block’s The MixTape Tour 2022 harkens back to a time when people created mixtapes on cassettes to personalize their own playlist of songs. With special guests En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa, and Rick Astley, NKOTB are back with Production Designer Butch Allen, Lighting Designer/Programmer Cat West and Lighting Director Emily Bornt. Jeff Boguski is the Production Manager.
Coldplay wanted to find a way to tour in an environmentally green way and they may have found it. With the “Music of the Spheres” tour out on the road, PLSN checks in with the creative team to learn how the tour is disrupting and redesigning the normal process of concert touring and production.
Lighting and Video Mapping the Upside Down on the Empire State Building
On an “ominously” cloudy May 26 evening in NYC the world turned upside down as a rift opened on the south side of the Empire State Building. This traffic stopping event was part of NETFLIX’s visually spectacular activation for the debut of Stranger Things 4, Vol. 1 that consisted of a light show and projection mapped ‘opening of rifts’ on 15 landmarks in 14 countries around the world. The rift projection and lighting presentation on the iconic Empire State Building (ESB) was actually a 15-minute show that looped for two hours. The effort to realize this event on the ESB epitomizes the saying ‘The devil is in the details.’ To learn more about those production details PLSN spoke with two of the companies that provided the lighting design and projection mapping solutions—Tactical Manoeuvre, LLC and PRG. They gave us some insight on the technology that captivated fans streaming around the world and New Yorkers who clogged streets and rooftops to glimpse the Upside Down.Read More »‘Stranger Things’: A Rift Appears in NYC