volume 1 issue 9 2008 - Mobile Production Pro

Jonas BrothersThe Real ThingBy Michael A. BeckWhen one looks atthe state of thetouring industry, the true icons of theculture are bands like The RollingStones or Paul McCartney who havebeen around 40 plus years with noend in sight. These guys can still sellout huge venues simply by leaking arumor of touring plans. Then thereis Madonna, U2, Janet Jackson, TinaTurner and even George Michael andSpice Girls who have shown that theystill have game and could drive massivecrowds wild under street lightson a loading dock.But the one thing that this small, and veryexclusive group of entertainers have, isthat they have been in the saddle for a verylong time. With all due respect to thosewho are on the climb today, rarely is itmore fitting to say that time will tell.That being said, there is an even moreexclusive handful of acts on the road thatare making the very low rumblings reminiscentof times gone by, times when artistdevelopment gave birth to acts that wouldbe around 30 and 40 years later. If onelistens closely, one can hear words like collegetuition, mortgage, and even retirementoff in the distance.One such act is the Jonas Brothers. At afirst glance of the Jonas Brothers televisionshow on Disney, you don’t necessarilyget the picture of what the show really isLIVE. This is a huge pop show and it’sgetting better every day. Rob Brenner isone of the main architects of the wholething and is very aware of the good thingin which he has found himself.“I’m blessed that I work for artists thathave the budget that allows us to do coolthings.” Brenner told us, “Last year whenwe were playing some pretty awful places,we walked into a convention center thathad two trusses, and maybe 20 movinglights, The guys had never seen that manymoving lights in one place. That’s when Iknew that we would be able to meet andexceed their expectations.”One such expectations was the desire tomake the opening of the show look like thescene in the Nicholas Cage movie NationalTreasure wherein the heroes find the world’sgreatest cash of hidden treasure in a hiddenroom. As the story goes, Cage lowers atorch down into a narrow trough and thatruns throughout the room and lights upthe entire space with flames.The answer came from Toronto basedPyrotek Special Effects Inc. Pyrotek hadbeen developing an effect called FireScreen for some time but it wasn’t quiteready when Rob Brenner came calling. “Ihad to bring in a whole team of people towork around the clock to make the JonasBrothers deadline,” said Pyrotek co-ownerLorenzo Cornacchia. “The show loadedinto the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto,which is what made this all possiblebecause we were doing the development ofthe product out of our Toronto office.”The effect made for a great opening to theshow during which the lads entered on amechanical bridge that flew up out of themiddle of the set and lowered them downon the downstage apron.But the aesthetic danger with pyro andlaser is that it is easy to give into temptationto over use the look. Such was not thecase in this show. Both pyro and laser wereused sparingly, allowing for more punchwhen they were used. In addition to thefire screen and laser, there was a circularpiece that hung over the center of thestage. It was a round truss with a flat metalcutout of the Jonas Brothers crest cutout of it. The piece had several propanelines running to it so that during the song“Burnin Up” while the massive amountsof video were showing flames, the crestshowed up as real flames.The piece was affectionately dubbed the“Gig Stopper 9000” by the crew becausewhile playing a show at an amphitheatrein Bethel, New York, the house forgot todeactivate the sprinkler system over theright side of the stage. When the “GigStopper 9000” fired up (as it were) the gigwas stopped by a torrential down pour.The lighting design of the show was fantastic!The primary bulk of the rig wasmade up of curved truss that played oneither side of the stage at three differenttrim heights. While it is the humbleopinion of this writer that truss toners inconcert applications rarely do anything buttake attention from the act itself, such wasnot the case in this show.In this production, the lighting system gavethe look of playing in a technological caveof spectacular color. It was an extensionof the risers and video walls as well as thepyro and laser effects. The color pallet wassensational. It’s been a long time since ashow has had this kind of cohesive amalgamationof effects.As is often the case with shed tours, onebig challenge of this show was getting it ineverywhere it went. The problem was thatit had a lot of pyro and trim height had tobe carefully considered for every load in.“I’m very proud of the fact that there werevery few shows where we didn’t get thewhole thing,” said production managerJoel Forman.The other challenge which was more formidablethan the issue of getting the wholething up every day, was getting the soundof the show over 13,000 screaming girls.12 mobile production monthly