Tait built the stage and set for U2’s iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour, with Aaron Siebert as its project manager, based on the joint set designs of Es Devlin and Ric Lipson of Stufish Entertainment Architects, with the overall vision of creative director of Willie Williams.
The team at Tait did a comprehensive weight study of the show as it was drawn at the end of 2014 and had to cut a significant amount of weight to be able to hang it in most buildings. “You wouldn’t know it, but cable management is one of the most important things we sorted out for the tour and weight,” says Siebert. “We spent a couple hours during the big meeting at Tait talking through cable paths and coordinating all departments to run on the same cable bridges to save weight.” The designers sought the lightest and most transparent solutions possible everywhere in the billboard part of the set to save weight, and ultimately, the show came in a little under the final weight estimate.
Another crucial player on the team was Stan Strayer, Tait project designer. “Stan has been my right hand for a few years now and he digs into the nuts and bolts of all our projects in AutoCAD,” says Siebert. “All of the studies, weight estimates, pulling in other vendors’ drawings is really from Stan, and he and I then look through things, discuss with Jake, and put out drawings for everyone to review.” Others members of the Tait team include principles Adam Davis and James “Winky” Fairorth.
For the technical drawings, the Tait team does its primary work in AutoCAD 3D with some support work done in Maxon Cinema 4D for animations or renderings. They share PDFs from CAD with the entire production, particularly with Lipson and his team at Stufish.
Siebert and his team at Tait work closely with all departments early to ensure seamless integration when it comes time to build. Siebert provides the billboard set piece as an example. “Steel Five Points motors hold up the custom spanner trusses we made to distribute the load into the buildings and span under scoreboards,” he says. “Installed in these spanner trusses are 3-ton motors Tait provided to lift the billboard. They pick up the header truss, which we also designed and built to work with the PRG Nocturne V-Thru tile pitch and hold lighting fixtures and some of the internal automation. The video all hangs from the header truss, and we built brackets to hang 96 fixtures from the back of the video without causing problems with the video pitch or obstructing the blow-through nature. On the ends of the billboard, there is fascia cut to match the pitch of the video tiles as well. Behind the bottom row of video tiles hangs the custom fabricated catwalk, which, again, incorporates lighting fixtures and also hangs automation below.”
Time presented itself as one of the main challenges to the setup. The team had five weeks from the approved design and scope to the start of rehearsals to build eight trucks of gear. “Fortunately,” Siebert says, “rehearsals began in Rock Lititz, and we were able to incorporate gear as it was completed into the show.” Rehearsals with the band saw some minor changes for function, but not a lot was changed in the overall aesthetic of the show.
69 Active Axes Of Motion
Tait’s Navigator control system runs all automation on the show. There are 69 active axes of motion on the show, including:
- piano flip
- piano trap
- camera track
- camera arm
- lightbulb winch
- 18 500kg Navigator hoists for lighting trusses
- 20 winches for grid subway lights
- 8 3,000kg Navigator hoists for the billboard
- 2 500kg Navigator hoists for billboard cable management
- billboard stairs winch
- billboard lift hoist
- billboard door hoist
- billboard slip stage
- 8 billboard subway light winches
- 4 mirror ball winches (2 axes each)
As a final reflection, Siebert shares his feelings about those who worked on the show: “I have to say what an honor and pleasure it has been to work with so many A players on this show, not just the design team, but all of the department heads and touring crew who have taken this show from a bunch of gear and made it their own,” he says. “The hundreds of people who worked on this show from all over the world who will never see it, not just from Tait, but every vendor has a group of dedicated individuals who work nonstop to help make a production of this scale and complexity get into rehearsals.”
Check out our full coverage, sponsored by SHS Global at our Project In Focus on U2's iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour here, and check back often for continuing updates.