Professional Lighting & Production - Summer 2018 | Page 33

carte blanche to put your experience
to work as you see fit.
The Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem Tour
They are a great bunch of guys. I think
of them all as great friends and amazing
bosses. They are a lot of fun to light and a
great band live.
It’s always been a challenge with them
because I think of them as The Tragically
Hip of the U.K., where the Stereophonics
play arenas and stadiums in the U.K. and
then go to North America and it’s clubs
and small theatres, much the same as the
Hip were in Canada and in Europe.
PL&P: Tell me a bit about your overall
design for this tour and how it came
together. Is everything “new,” or are
there some elements of the design that
build on what you’ve done for previous
tours?
BC: The overall design for the last tour was
based off of trying to do something a bit
different with video, so I came up with this
idea for an upstage video wall that could
disappear. The idea behind that was that
it can go completely horizontal and then
move into a vertical plane and can also act
like a roof. So then I came up with the idea
of two trusses upstage and down stage
of the video wall that flank, and when the
video all goes away, they become their
own scenic elements. We move them into
all sorts of crazy angles and make the show
very awesome and asymmetrical for a
bunch of songs.
Over the past while with the festivals
that we have been doing, the band has
really liked the idea of a centre thrust, so
we added in the centre thrust that’s about
10 m long that had a lift on the end so we
could lift small bits of backlight up for the
stage along with mic stands, etc., and so
I got to try and do things a bit differently.
I added in three video screens on the
downstage edge of the thrust to basically
do away with the side screens.
This was also the first tour for me to
use the Follow-Me spot system, which was
awesome. It was great to be able to just
pick any light I wanted in the rig to follow
any band member. It really freed me up
from the normal followspots. I always try
and do something new in the design and
something that I have never done before.
The basic cue structure stays the same, but
I’m always trying to come up with different
ways to light the same songs.
PL&P: Outside of the Follow-Me, are
there any fixtures or systems you’re us-
ing for the first time on this trek? If so,
how did they earn the spot in your rig?
BC: The Follow Me System has been great.
It really works quite well. Along with it I
had a bunch of [Robe] Spikies, which are
great little punchy lights I think. I also had a
bunch of Space Force lights from Chro-
ma-Q. These are on a Kinesys [automated]
system and controlled via wireless DMX
so they would come in at different points
in the show to really kind of close in the
space. We use these when the band is on
the B stage on the downstage edge of the
thrust. I was also using the Hippotizer Bo-
realis media server for the first time, which
I loved. Such a great server with so many
options. It really is a great tool.
PL&P: Your bio says you’re “always will-
ing to listen, always willing to try new
things.” That made me curious about
whether you prefer getting direction
from clients and working towards a
collaborative vision vs. being given
BC: I love doing both, but that being said,
there is something about a collaboration
which is awesome because a lot of times,
people will see things that you don’t see
or have a new idea that you never thought
of, so I really like that part of it. I always like
other people’s ideas on things. I’ve learned
so much from just listening to people
about their different ideas on how things
should be lit. The biggest influence on how
I light shows comes from Raine Maida [of
Our Lady Peace], Gord Downie [of The Trag-
ically Hip] and Kelly Jones [of Stereopho-
nics]. I always like input because I always
want to make sure that the artist feels
comfortable on stage, so even if I’m given
carte blanche, I still seek [input from] the
artist to make sure they are comfortable.
PL&P: I know it’s a wide net to cast, but
to cap us off, outside of the technolo-
gies themselves, what would you say is
the most notable difference between
the lighting industry you entered back
in the mid-‘80s compared to today’s?
BC: Back in the ‘80s, it was pretty much fly
by the seat of your pants. We had a truck,
some lights, PA, and some back line, and
we just did shows wherever we could. We
were just working on our craft and trying
to do the best job we could. We had six
moving lights, which was awesome back
then and so unheard of, and it took all day
just to set up those six, mostly. So jumping
ahead to where we have an entire rig of
moving lights that you can set up in hours
is a huge change. Also, how much LEDs
have changed our world is amazing. To go
from three 400-amp services to a 200-amp
to run 300 LED lights is just mind-boggling.
I am really looking forward to seeing where
it’s going to go in the future and I love
all these new products that are coming
out. I just find it very hard to keep up with
what’s new and exciting. That’s become
the biggest challenge. I would also say
the attitude has changed for the better.
It’s become much more of a business now
than what it was before, which is awesome.
I think it’s cool that we can still do art and
business at the same time.
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of
Professional Lighting & Production.
Summer 2018 | 33