Any fans entering a show during the stadium leg of the Bon Jovi Because We Can: The Tour knows immediately that they are about to see a stadium show, not an arena design altered for the stadium dates.
From the creative minds of Performance Environment Design Group, the two Bon Jovi tour designs are diametrically opposed, each one being perfect for the specific type of venue, yet both ideally suited to the band itself.
Performance environment designer Doug “Spike” Brant has brought a strong sculptural tone to both: the arena design was a kinetic sculpture with a lot of movement; the stadium design is a static, stage-enveloping sculpture. Having two designs for one tour is part of Brant’s design belief “that arena shows shouldn’t be put into stadiums. Of course, you can do that, but it’s usually a compromise. It is a completely different environment requiring a different type of design.”
Taking advantage of the massive scale afforded by the stadium environment, PEDG conceived of turning the entire stage into the front end of a ’59 Buick Electra. The band plays standing in front of the 130’ wide car’s grille, flanked by the four headlights that are each 10’ in diameter.
Tait realized the stage design with a mix of inflatables, hard scenery, and Tait staging along with Stageco provided staging elements. “It’s the front end of a car, so you’ve got the hood, which is a giant inflatable, and then there’s the piece of chrome trim that wraps around the hood, which acts as the rain gutter,” Brant explains. “Tait did a nice job of creating a chrome look. There were many, many prototypes and testing that we did to get that chrome to look like that. The hood is an inflatable piece. That was the thing that we were most nervous about looking right, looking good. In the end, it came out looking good.”
There is only one section of the stage that’s a complete duplicate from the arena shows: the band risers, the upstage double deck built of Tait staging. “It gives the band a comfort level as that stays the same,” Brant explains. “Also, it’s the first time we’ve not had the same curved front stage that Bon Jovi has had since ’95. I like that the set is stadium architecture. There’s a lot of video integrated into it, but it’s not just a bunch of video surfaces.” The clever integration of the video really sells the car, as Brant has found interesting ways to work in the LED video elements using products of different resolutions. This not only gives definition to the various car parts but also offers different ways of bringing imagery and lighting into the design. (For more on the scenic elements, check out Bon Jovi’s Set Turns Stadiums Into Drive-Ins.)
“Upstage, behind the car itself, is a video screen, which becomes the windscreen of the car,” comments Brant. “We put camera feeds and different content up there. Then the grille of the car is filled with [PRG Nocturne] V-9 Lite 1x2 video tiles along with [GLP] impression X4 LED lights. The turn signals are also V-9 Lite and then the headlights are made up of Chromlech Elidy-S LED product.” Brant found the low-resolution Elidy panels “pretty awesome. We’re programming them from both the lighting and the video console. There’s a lot of crossover; it’s all one big system, so there are different elements that either lighting or video can program and take control.” There are also two 27’ wide x 33’high side screens for I-Mag support on either wing using PRG Nocturne V-18 18mm LED video tiles. Since Brant doesn’t have any of the kinetic movement that there was in the arena shows, much of the visual movement comes from the kaleidoscope of video and screen interaction in the stadium shows.
Glint On The Chrome: The Lighting Design
Though different in utilization, the biggest crossover between the arena and the stadium shows is the lighting rig. “They look totally different, but there is a level of crossover with the lighting,” says Brant. “We have brought the X4s and the [PRG] Best Boys back from the arena, a light which we’re huge fans of, then we added a bunch of [PRG] Bad Boys for anything that was far away and up above the video screen. We brought [Clay Paky] Sharpys back; we’ve ganged them together in four banks. We had them in the arena on the lifts on the floor. We took that story and adapted it for this design.” PRG provided the whole lighting package for both the arena and the stadium legs of the tour.
In line with big design for the scale of a stadium, Brant is using the Bad Boys from the upper truss above the video windshield. “The Bad Boys can’t even hit the stage because the car is in the way,” explains Brant. “They’re just framing the picture. They are the right tool for the job; we need a big gun for outdoors. We use lights to create a big arch around the whole car. The Bad Boys are combined with [Martin Professional] Atomic strobes and more X4s, which I love. They’re the best light in that range for sure. No one else has got that nice field like they do and they’re bright as hell. Then we have the Sharpys on the verticals.” Up on either side of the outer trusses are two banks of Expolite TourLED PARs. “They’re basically used as blinders,” Brant comments. “There are 125 on each side of the stage in five high banks so they look like big stadium light arrays.” Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast TRX LED units are used to uplight the bumper of the car.
For washing the car and to get the color to pop, Brant is using the X4 impressions as well as a couple of Best Boys from the barricade of the B-Stage to help fill in the front. He has also created a pair of side torm positions, 70’ in the air that allows him to cross light the front of the car. He has Best Boys up under the hood for backlighting the band along with X4 impressions under the front of the hood for keylighting the band. For his followspots, Brant is using two Brite Box 1.6kW Flame followspots for sidelight, and using the Robert Juliat long throw Lancelot 4kW followspots.
“The thing that we struggled with the most was placing the lights and feeling like we had enough in the right layout,” says Brant. “I really didn’t want to sort of strap lights all over the car. I wanted to let it be a piece of large-scale sculpture. Really, I wanted to respect that and let it be this cool piece of art. It was definitely something that we struggled with--getting just the right amount, how many, and where can you put the lights and not break the lines or just be inappropriate.” (For more on the lighting, read The Role Of Director Of Programming For Bon Jovi’s Because We Can Tour.)
In The Headlights: The Video Design
During the kinetic arena show, if there was no video, the design team could completely get rid of the video screen surfaces. On this show, the video surfaces are so integral to the car design that they are always in use, showing more I-Mag, more created content, and a lot more integration moving between the two. “Moment Factory re-worked all of the arena content, and then they did some new content as well,” notes Brant. “And then we had Ryan Mast out from Meteor Tower, and they did some additional bits as well as reworking previous content for our screens design.”
Control Freak Systems (CFS) is back for this leg of the tour also, but with a completely different set of tools for control of the video elements in the stadium design. “For the arenas, we were using the [Avolites] Ai Media servers and [PRG Nocturne] 40K projectors; for the stadiums, we started over from scratch,” Brant explains. “This video control system is more traditional; it’s built around [Barco] Encores and then for playback we have [PRG] Mboxes, and the [CFS] ADAMS and Multi Tap servers.” The CFS ADAMS server stands for Audio Driven Awesome Media Server and creates generative content from an interface with the bands musical instruments. A favorite feature of the four Mbox Extreme media servers used is its MultiScreen Gobo feature allowing CFS to map content to the grille wall. The Multi Tap server allowed for the designers to get picture-in-picture (PIPs) where they can put up hundreds of a camera image on one screen for a video mosaic effect. PRG Nocturne still provides and operates the camera system for the I-Mag as well as providing the V-18 screens and the V-9 Lite modules. (For more on the video control system, check out In Control For Bon Jovi’s Because We Can: The Tour and A Video Windshield for Bon Jovi’s Tour.)
While it’s not typical for there to be two very different designs for one tour, it is not surprising of Bon Jovi. “They really make an effort for their fans,” says Brant, “They always have. It is about the fan experience.” Asking the designer which design he likes better is like asking a parent which child they like better. “I like them both,” states Brant. “They’re both completely different, and they are both right for the tour. I really like the fact that they are more than just screens in both instances. I would say that the stadium look is not typical of what people might think of as the PEDG aesthetic, but we really like doing strong scenic stuff actually. At PEDG, our approach is always about pushing the boundaries of whatever we’re doing, on this tour both designs visually and technically do that in different ways. Our goal is always to do what is appropriate for the show, whether it’s a lot or a little. We are pleased that people have reacted so positively to both designs.”