Bon Jovi has hit the road in support of its latest release, What About Now, on a tour aptly titled Because We Can: The Tour (the album features a single of the same name). The production design by Performance Environment Design Group (PEDG) may look understated at first glance compared to former tours, but closer inspection reveals it’s no less technologically intricate.
Doug “Spike” Brant, who took the lead on this design for PEDG, notes that his team’s work on The Circle Tour, the highest grossing concert tour in the US in 2010, paved the way for what he describes as “the transformative and evolving stage show. As a starting point for our 2013 stage design concept, we looked toward new combinations of technology for motion control projection and computer processing power,” the designer says. “The goal was to deliver Bon Jovi a show unlike any other, setting a new bar in the realm of dynamic live performance.”
Brant and partner Justin Collie have collaborated with the band so many times, but that just means the bar is raised with each subsequent tour. “We really wanted to get away from LED, and with the success of The Wall tour this year and ten years of designing shows with LED for Bon Jovi, it was time,” Brant says. “Amidst the tangible arrays of lights, set structures, and video content, this year we introduce an intangible element to the stage: a story. This story brings with it a philosophy for the art of the entire tour and gives a depth of new meaning to every move.”
The design consists of 40 hexagonal towers made from polycarbonate twin wall divided into various segments and wrapped in Dazian Titanium Trapeze fabric, though, Brant says, “We would have done a custom color if we had more time.” The hexagon columns surround the stage and can move up and down to create various shapes and visuals. This requires quite a lot of motion control and 3D projection mapping to create what Brant says are “new and endless possibilities for visualization in motion,” pointing to the various telescoping high-speed lifts that use new technology from Tait, who also built the set and staging.
Check out the full gear and crew credits here.
“The latest developments in processing power and 3D mapping software combine to create dynamic projection mapping,” Brant continues. “Due to the complexity of the design and with the options available, we chose to go with [Avolites Media] Ai Infinity media servers, which also were a previz tool for video.”
The video setup includes 10 Barco HDQ-2K40 (40,000-lumens, 2K DLP) projectors in portrait mode divided into five zones that illuminate the front side of the columns, while six Barco FLM-R22+ projectors in portrait span three zones to cover the back side of the columns. PRG Nocturne supplied the projectors. “Due to budget and touring realities, the offstage faces of the hexes are not covered,” says Brant. “In the end, it didn’t matter.”
Both playback and live-generated effects play via a custom server from Control Freak Systems (CFS) dubbed “Hex Freak,” along with some I-Mag content. “The primary playback is via the Ai servers,” says Brant. Moment Factory, working in conjunction with PEDG and Jon Bon Jovi, conceived and produced more than 20 pieces for the show, all mapped on the hexagonal towers. Content was shot on Red and Phantom Cameras with some custom animation. Meteor Tower reformatted existing Bon Jovi archival content and provides ongoing content management.
In addition to mapping, movement is crucial to the production. “Everything moves,” says Brant, noting that, even after various budget cuts and weight restrictions, the tour still features 78 moving elements. “Flown columns and lighting yo-yos move up to 5' per second,” he adds. “The ground towers move at 2' per second.”
A system of 45 variable speed lifts with PRG Best Boy moving lights attached creates unique shapes and framing throughout the performance, complementing the hexagon lift system. Lighting for the tour follows PEDG’s tried and true “standard rules” of not using too many colors at once, “never more than two,” says Brant, noting that he considers this design “transformative lighting, using fewer fixtures and lightweight, expansive projection surfaces that pack small and play big. We are very proud of the lighting rig. It’s under 300 amps per leg for the whole thing.” The rig also includes GLP impression X4s and Clay Paky Sharpy units. “We needed a Swiss Army knife light, and the Best Boy is just that,” says Brant. “It is simply in a class by itself.” The entire lighting package was provided by PRG.
Brant says this is the least conventional system his team has created, especially given the challenges of combining so much motion control and video mapping. All elements are controlled via the Tait Navigator system. Control Freak Systems’ senior solutions designer Stuart White created custom software called Traffic Control to allow moving elements to be programmed and controlled by a variety of methods, including either the lighting or video consoles—both MA Lighting grandMA2 consoles—the media server via a two-channel displacement video, or the Navigator system directly. White comments that this new CFS control solution is “a program that listens to all the different DMX coming in from all of the different motion sources and identifies the source that has control over a specific column movement.” Brant adds, “The power of the GMA2 made programming much faster than using the Nav software alone.”
The Ai Infinity media servers use node-based visual programming, allowing for the creation of custom software. “The Ai media server is a really great system,” says White. “Dave Green [Immersive and Avolites Media], the creator of the program, helped really build the foundation of our project file. Then I created all of the DMX-to-column movement as well as the color conversion for column movement.” He further describes how position control was achieved through color conversion. “It has been done on other productions with a grayscale movie to offset where the image is, but that only gives you 256 steps of movement, which can look very steppy. Instead, I made 16-bit values so we used two colors, a red for course and blue for fine control. Using this level of control gave us 65,536 steps of control embedded in the content from Moment Factory.”
Beyond the core PEDG team, Brant and Collie called upon the expertise of Felix Peralta, who Brant calls “a longtime friend and favorite programmer,” to act as director of programming. “I will say that it was both a privilege and honor to be associated with this project,” says Peralta, for whom this is a second tour with Bon Jovi, having programmed The Circle Tour. “Spike and Justin always provide a relaxed environment where the creativity can really thrive. It’s all about the art, and they bring out the best in us.” Sooner Routhier is lighting director and also did some programming, and Eric Marchwinski programmed the lighting. Kirk Miller, who Brant describes as a “young, up-and-coming star” is the programmer and operator for CFS. Mike Farese did the rigging.
Previz for the arena version took place January 5 to 20, using an ESP Vision setup for lighting built by Tom Thompson from Prelite. Video previz made use of MA Lighting grandMA 3D. “Eric and Kirk pushed the limits of both MA2 and MA3D in building a dynamic previz system,” says Brant. “Due to the combination of a very short build time and motion control driving lighting and video, we didn’t have a working system until the last day of rehearsals in Hershey, PA.”
After moving to the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut for the last few days of rehearsal, the first show was canceled because of a snowstorm, so most of the programming ended up being done virtually. “Total number of days programming with a full working system was five!” says Brant. “It is amazing what was pulled off by all of the incredible team members. When you have 80 high-speed machines being designed and built with very little time, there will be bugs to work out. The design pushed the limits across the board. All equipment and staff were pushed to their limits and beyond.”
Because We Can: The Tour expands to a stadium version and runs through the summer worldwide. Stay tuned for additional coverage on the ongoing tour.