Canadian singer/songwriter The Weeknd is currently rocking plenty of style and
enjoying success, critical acclaim, multiple awards and several hits from his chart-
topping third studio album “Starboy’, propelling him a long way from his underground
roots and early anonymous mixtapes uploaded to You Tube in 2010.
Lighting for 2017’s “Starboy Legend of the Fall’ tour has been designed by Sooner
Routhier who picked Robe Spikie moving lights together with BMFL Spots and
WashBeams to be at the heart of the rig.
Routhier has worked with The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) since 2012. She and design
business partner Robert Long of SRae Productions were contacted by his creative
directors Lamar C Taylor and Drop last year and asked to assist with this tour, which
involved lighting an impressively beautiful flown sculpture created by production
designer, Es Devlin.
Much of the vibe of the show is dark, saturated and moody, and with projection also
being central to bringing the powerful scenic centrepiece alive, the task of show
lighting started with several brain-teasing challenges.
Nashville based Routhier – known for her fresh and inventive approach – enjoys
challenges and thinking out-of-the-box.
She worked closely with lighting director on the road/associate LD Darien Koop on
programming and evolving this one, while SRae Productions’ technical director Matt
Geasey coordinated practical and physical aspects like integrating lighting with the set
building process for a tourable solution.
The 80ft. wide by 120ft. long triangular structure constructed by TAIT is made out of
ten smaller triangles and eight trusses, all individually flown on multiple axes of
automation so that it can transform into numerous different shapes. It resembles a
huge, elegant origami-style jet-fighter and makes a massive architectural statement
that defines the performance space.
The ten moving flaps are covered in stretched projection screen material and finished
in magnetically fitted plexi-fascia panels. The nose, tail and wing sections come down
to within touching distance of the stage, which included a long runway below.
The entire lighting design is based around complimenting this aerodynamic piece of
art and the video projections applied to it via 20 projectors, which are positioned on
towers located all around the arena.
The key to producing lighting to work with the intense projector beams “was keeping
it simpler and cleaner than other tours, so it looked precise and definite in
combination with the projector beams.’
The 55 x BMFL WashBeams are divided into different groups.
Twenty-four in 12 pairs are rigged along the large double-truss central spine of the
structure, providing high impact effects lighting and highlighting the gloss-finished
runway below, which brings The Weeknd up close to his fans.
The rest of the BMFL WashBeams are on the grid flying above the structure, eight
each positioned on the two long edges, with another eight towards the back of the
grid where the triangular shape is widest. These produce colour, texture and some
incredibly cool and spacey looking atmospheric engineering from above, outlining the
structure and bringing a different dimension.
A single BMFL WashBeam sits upstage centre at the stage end of the runway and is
used as a powerful beam to silhouette the artist. The eight BMFL Spots are in four
groups of two and used as follow spots.
There are two at each end of the upstage truss above the rear 80ft. wide LED video
wall, with two more stage, left and right, on the sides of the mother grid, where
cutting in from this mid position they can light anywhere on stage or along the
catwalk. All eight of these BMFL Spot fixtures are operated using a BlackTrax remote
system, triggered via the main lighting console. “They are brilliant for this
application,” stated Sooner.
They decided on using BlackTrax due to needing unique positions every day for their
spot lights to hit The Weeknd as he moves up and down the long thrust, and to deal
with several automation presets (as the structure moves) that block the standard
arena follow spot sightline. Sooner is also not a fan of seeing people operating spots
directly above the audience – all factors which made the combination of the BMFL and
BlackTrax ideal for this scenario.
Darien added, “We’ve not had a single BMFL Spot or WashBeam go down the entire
tour during the show. Reliability is really important.’
Darien has been a big BMFL fan ever since the fixture was launched in 2014. “They
continue to outperform virtually every other fixture in this class … and some!’ he said,
explaining that they are being used in a raw and “pure’ way on this show, with
features like brightness smoothness and reliability mission critical.
“The WashBeams have been incredible’ he stated, “Each fixture performs flawlessly,
making one amazing look after the other.’
The shutters have been essential for many reasons, including framing out light from
the grid above spilling down onto the set, and for tight, focused key light onto the
band down below.
Thirty-four of the 90 x Spikies are positioned along the structure’s back truss
(traversing its full width) with the other 56 deployed on four angled internal ‘fins’.
They are a workhorse fixture for musical accents and other specials.
Sooner loves the output for the tiny size of the Spikie as well as the versatility. “You
can flood them out into a wash or tighten them up to be sharp and beamy.” She
added that with 90 of them, they can create a massive amount of dynamically
different looks throughout the show.
Darien thinks Spikies are a perfect fixture for this application due to the speed,
brightness, pan/tilt angle, zoom and prism and reports that they have been
“incredibly reliable’ as well.
The structure’s unique shape is further accented with zoned LED strobes and outlined
with LED battens. Upstage is the LED video wall and a truss full of moving lights at
the top. There are also two side LED screens for IMAG.
In addition to dealing with the projections in a finessed and practical way, the other
big lighting challenge for this tour was completing the complex and detailed
programming needed in the timeframe.
The two weeks of production rehearsals in Rock Lititz Studio in Pennsylvania were
spent intensely programming. Cues were tweaked and fine-tuned in incredible detail,
a process still ongoing for the initial shows, to ensure that the required separation
between lighting and projection lumens was achieved, and that projection wasn’t
flooded out by lighting. “It was a VERY delicate balance,” reiterated Sooner.
The programming process required so many person-hours that she and Darien worked
in split-shifts. Sooner took the daytime slot, so she could also be present when the
artist, creative directors and Es Devlin were there. After a briefing on the day’s notes,
Darien took over and blitzed-it through the night, populating the grandMA2 console
with more cues.
Darien also worked closely with d3 media server programmer Louis-Philippe Guadreau
(LP) who is stationed at FOH during the show making live adjustments to the
projection mapping masks. The positional information from the automation system is
fed into the d3 to keep the images synched to the movement, while the IMAG mix is
cut by Kevin Carswell.
During the pre-production stage, the tour’s production manager Rob DeCeglio and
TAIT were instrumental in developing safe and speedy solutions for set and lighting.
As much of the lighting as possible is installed and travelled in pre-rigged truss, with
four trucks dedicated to double-stacked rows of PRT sections, including all the Spikies
and most of the BMFL WashBeams. Stage manager Rod van Egmond oversees the
daily truck pack and makes sure the kit is transported safely from show to show.
All the lighting and video kit is being supplied in North America and Europe by
Solotech, project managed for them by Rob Kennedy.
Lighting crew chief Matt Lavallee is working alongside nine technicians, and there are
six on the video crew including engineer Serge Bergeron. Head rigger is Chris Wilson,
who supervises the 130 points needed each day to get the flown rig and the structure
spot on.
The tour is scheduled to continue for the rest of 2017.
