"A Night to Make It Right" was a fundraiser gala which raised $5 million for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. The starstudded event brought 1,200 supporters to the New Orleans Hyatt Regency to aide MIR's goal of building 150 affordable, durable, and sustainable homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.
The production design featured an amberwashed façade, sky tracking lights, and largescale projection of "A Night To Make It Right" across the Hyatt, where guest were greeted by a brass band. After entering the hotel, guest walked the red carpet lined with MIR home models leading to the grand staircase where they were met by Dr. John playing piano. It was important to create a signature design for the event hosted by both Brad Pitt and Ellen DeGeneres. The event required two stages to accommodate performers, Sheryl Crow and Rihanna for the Gala, and Kanye West and Snoop Dogg for the after party.
The event's gala stage was designed as a fusion between the angular, overlapping lines that characterize the architecture of the MIR houses and the culturally significant aspect of the "front porch" with the stage deck stepping towards the audience. The design had to tie together the three major staging areas that the event required: musical performances, the filming of Ellen's interviews with Pitt, as well as a stage for the gala host. The stage needed to work like a TV set, awards show, and concert stage all in one.
The final result used a 15mm LED video wall as the farthest upstage layer, masked by physical set pieces, built to reference MIR architecture, that framed the LED wall and created the first and second upstage layers. These upstage walls created two entrance and exit points to the stage as well as a projection surface for video mapping content. Video mapping allowed for different aesthetics and looks to be achieved during the event including the process of building MIR homes, New Orleans city skyline and the performers graphics. Suspended lighting rigs were introduced to reference the architectural concept of Post and Beam.
The afterparty stage design began by taking a simple line drawing of an MIR house and abstracting the form of its gable. Truss was used to create a free standing structure to hang lights and introduce the floating gables concept with suspended truss and linear LED fixtures to achieve the signature MIR look. The upstage LED wall made with 30mm tiles, hung from and divided by vertical truss emphasized verticality in this low ceiling interior flanked by two IMAG projection screens also hung vertically. The 30'x60' stage deck was angled into the audience to create a triangular thrust that allowed people to wrap around the stage for an intimate viewing and reinforced the shape of the flying gable. The use of architectural elements translated into the tools of live design reinforced the mission of Make It Right and created a clublike atmosphere in the darkened room for the performances of Soul Rebels, Seal, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West, who brought up Rihanna to close the night out.
GEAR:
- (4) Barco FLM HD20
- LED SGLED
- S15 (72 tiles), Celestin LED SGLED
- M30 (27 tiles)
- Media Server Martin
- MAXEDIA Pro
- PROJECTORS: Barco 20K by VLR
LIGHTING
- 50 GLP Volkslicht
- 16 MAC 700
- 6 mac 2000
- 14 MAC 250 Beams
- 16 Automatic 3000 strobes
- 12 Lekos
- Bright Stripes
VIDEO
- 60 SGLED
- M Series 30mm
- 1 SGLED
- M30 Processor
- 6 SGLED
- M30 Single Rigging Adapter
- 1 Martin MAXEDIA Compact Media Server
- 1FSR
- Indie400 Universal Scaler
Design Team:
- PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Stefan Beese, RE:BE Design
- PRODUCTION COMPANY: Rehage Entertainment
- VIDEO and LIGHTING: The Solomon Group
- VIDEO ENGINEER: Jonathan Foucheaux & Scott Bufford
- CAMERA OPERATORS: YES Productions
- AUDIO and IMAG SCREENS: Swank Audio & VER Audio
- LIGHTING DIRECTOR: Jonathan Foucheaux & See Hear Productions, Patrick Theriot
- SET BUILDER: John Himmaugh and Co
- RIGGING: Corporate Lighting and Audio
- STAGE: Freeman