Redemption Manchester

A total turn around, I have to say. I was really considering a career change after our first Manchester show. After 2 production (lighting only) days, weeks of discussion and hours upon hours of programming, the show was total crap. Last night was spectacular in comparison. Although average, but a decent start, it was the show we needed to have. Following the first show the band's major concern was a set of four Mac 250 wash lights that were placed on either side of the stage, 2 downstage and two midstage. These provided mostly a good cross-wash for the band, and as there are ten on stage on an amalgamation of risers key light is pretty important to pick out individuals instead of just a mass of heads and instruments. The problem was the nightmare the band is currently having with the sound on stage. As I've mentioned, it's no treat to mix a band of that size with the number of bizarre instruments that anyone can pick up at random. That coupled with the fact that 5,000 or so capacity theatres are pretty new to them (as is their monitor engineer) and they are suddenly reliant on a set of monitors to hear someone even standing next to them on stage. They are getting there (bar the fact that the singer asked for more xylophone in his monitor for some reason, and the drummer asked for more viola...not sure why), but it's a process. The four side wash lights effectively blinded the band from the sides so they had difficulty seeing and communicating with their monitor engineer on stage left. There is an intricate set of hand signals that crop up from sing to song, and not having a visual confirmation that someone understood their request for more cowbell freaked them a little. I had a very similar thing happen when I was working with Wilco a few years back. I got brought on to do some smaller shows on the East Coast that ended with a pair of shows at Radio City in New York. They had never traveled with a lighting designer and had actually gotten an old theatre-stlye lighting plot from some old lighting design book and were passing it around as their preferred lighting rig in most rooms. When I started advancing the Radio City shows I realized that they had asked for about 10 lekos gelled in various shades of brown. On a stage of that size you would find it difficult to light a puppet show with that amount of lighting, so I added a few movers to their plot, a number of which were on the floor along either side of the stage, and so it comes back around. The look was completely new to the band and they found it difficult to see eachother and anticipate changes in the songs. As Nels, their guitar player said: "I've gotta see my boys." Same thing this time around. So I scrapped the lights and hung them from the downstage truss, providing a bit more traditional front light, and added that into cues for each song. I also cut back on a hazer which is essential to using moving lights to really see the beam, but it was starting to look like an enchanted forest on stage the first night. The Apollo is a strickly non-smoking venue, but as it's in England everyone smokes, so there was little need for haze on stage. I also tossed in a lot more audience looks as there is quite a bit of band-crowd interaction that the band seems to feed off of. Those little things, and taking a different approach to the songs that were really reliant in video helped a lot. Speaking of, we actually got it up and going partially. Enough, at least, to make a difference. There were some really great moments. During the song 'rebellion' the band was lit almost entirely by a projected video of a fire from front of house. It looked really great. During 'ocean of noise' there is a video of synchronized swimmers projected onto the backdrop and these silver reflective skirts for the risers that we are carrying. All is all it was a winner. Everyone was very happy. Next we are off to Glasgow at the legendary Barrowlands. I've done some really amazing shows there in spite of a notoriously difficult load-in and low head height and stage space. There are no points to hang a midstage truss either, so everything on it will have to move to the upstage. All of that, and a lot more, aside, the shows tend to be really electric. I'll spend my day reprogramming a bit to accomidate the shifting positions of lights. We have a second video tech coming out to lend a hand, which will be a good thing although it means we need aother bus equipped with more bunks as we have all 12 filled on the present one. Maybe someone can help our production manager hang a 7' tall, 300 pound pipe organ facade from the roof as well. I can't wait to see how that turns out.