Professional Lighting & Production - Fall 2018 | Page 21

BOARDING HOUSE REACH CREWMEMBERS: (L-R) JONAS LIBON; FRANCIS LAPORTE; DAVID RONDEAU;
ROB MCSHANE; MATTHIEU LARIVÉE; MICHELLE SARRAT; & SEBASTIEN TILLY
Ultimately, both Sarrat and Larivée share the perspective
that the strictly-blue mandate made for an interesting
challenge and, more importantly, winning results.
“When you take away colour combinations and colour changes, you
have to find other ways of communicating the feeling of the songs and
enhancing them,” Sarrat asserts. “We use subtle shifts in brightness and
dimmer movement instead, and lots of different positions to change the
look from song to song. Jack really wants every show to be unique and
different, so we’re constantly changing things and trying different moves
all of the time.”
A parallel could be drawn between that and White’s general ap-
proach to music and performance. This is an artist whose entire career is
rooted in the simplicity and purity of rock and roll, and getting the most
from the simplest of elements – cheap Sears catalog guitars to home-
made or hand-modded effects to minimal studio trickery or digital tools
on recordings.
This tour in particular finds White leaving the theremins and pedal
steels from past tours in their cases in favour of just a four-piece backing
band: a drummer, bassist, and two keyboard players making music
organically in real time.
“It’s the kind of show that’s all about the music,” Larivée says in
summary. “These are great musicians, and they don’t need the bells and
whistles. It’s a simple set with a few basic elements and a talented crew,
but the heart of the experience is what’s happening between the artists
onstage.”
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of Professional Lighting & Production.
“The festivals weren’t really a challenge because we were
always headlining, so the only thing we had to worry about was
the big riser, but then everything is pre-loaded in there,” shares
Larivée, referring to the Saber strips and other components – like
the monitor wedges – that are built into the set. “So the rest was
being able to adapt from an arena to a theatre or club.”
For the smaller venues, they may pare down tiles from the
three video screens and forgo the rotation. After all, video isn’t
as integral to the experience in smaller settings – especially
with an act this notoriously engaging. “So that’s where it’s cool,
because the video director can say, ‘We don’t need a giant face in
a theatre, so let’s stick with the virtual images or even just keep it
to lighting,’” says Larivée. “That’s really part of the fun.”
As mentioned, Boarding House Reach is the first Jack White
tour to incorporate a video element, and they don’t waste any
time putting it to use.
Before White and the band even hit the stage, the audience
sees a clock that’s initially on a 10-minute countdown. Every
so often, there’s footage of White coming into the frame and
changing the time, so it might go from six minutes down to one
minute, eliciting loud cheers, and then he’d come back and pull
it back a few minutes to audible moans. The footage is controlled
through Notch and reactive to volume, so the louder the audi-
ence, the brighter and more dynamic the content.
Even that sequence changes from night to night, meaning right
from the beginning, no two audiences ever see the same show.
In fact, even people trying to get a taste for what they’re in for
via YouTube are largely out of luck, as concertgoers are asked to put
their phones into locked pouches that they keep on their person
during the show and are then unsealed as they leave the venue.
During the actual performance, Sarrat says that when White
and the band inevitably start to veer into uncharted territory,
she and McShane have a few tricks up their sleeve. They make as
much use of the screen rotators – manufactured by ARS Enter-
tainment Rigging – as they can, so if they’ve been heavy on video
for a few songs in a row, they know to freshen it up by going
exclusively with lights and vice versa, but together, they try and
use as much of the custom-created video as possible.
On that note, having put so much work into the content
creation and virtual sets, Larivée admits that it can be hard that,
depending on what happens onstage, some may not even be
seen on a given date. “So I keep referring to the prison,
but there are other virtual sets like that, and say the band
jumps quickly into a song where the prison theme might
fit, if the video screens are flipped [to the lighting sides] at
that point, we may not get to use that content that night.”
Sarrat also has a variety of busking bump button banks
and position stacks at the ready on her grandMA 2 so she
can be as dynamic as possible on-the-fly, going strong or
subtle in response to what’s happening onstage.
While she’s ready for any of the 70+ songs that could
possibly find their way into the setlist, she admits she has
a few favourites from the heavier end of the spectrum. “I
really like when he does ‘Icky Thump,’ ‘Battle Cry,’ ‘High Ball
Stepper,’ ‘Black Math,’ and ‘I Cut like a Buffalo’ – those are all
particularly fun for me to punch buttons to.”
Fall 2018 | 21