volume 1 issue 9 2008 - Mobile Production Pro

“Sparkles”Def leppardon Tour with VLiteby Chris CogswellIn 2008, a successful Def Leppardtour might seem an impossibility.Not only is this band touringbehind a new record in 2008, butthe tour is hugely successful for aband whose “best days” are supposedlybehind them.We all know how the business model fora touring band has changed over thelast few years. Bands today tour to makemoney, not necessarily to promote analbum. With record sales way down, formost, touring is the only way to recoupand then make money. (Or simply breakeven,as many working bands hope to do).mPm was given access to the second legof Lep’s U.S. summer tour. After a briefconversation with production mangerRocko Reedy, it was clear that he wasvery familiar with this new businessmodel.“The few current rock bands that sellmillions of records these days, can’t sellout arenas,” says Reedy. “While DefLeppard no longer sells millions of theirnew releases, they continue to play hugeshows and sell out the majority of them,anywhere in the world. This band stillhas legs.” Without naming names, it wasunderstood of who Reedy spoke. Thereare so many bands that get more airplayand sell more recordings (includingdownloads, mind you) than The Leps,however, these bands’ tours don’t draw‘em like Def Leppard. There is a bit ofnostalga involved, no doubt. But howmany bands have this kind of shelf life?Not many.The production was neat and clean, asthere was little to get in the way of theband’s performance. Aside from the“ego ramp” so prevelant in rock n’ rolltoday, the production highlights belongedto the wonderfully choreographed videopresentation and the VLite LED Screenprovided by Nocturne Productions.Nocturne’s C0-CEO Bob Brighamexplains how this tour came together.“Back in late January, we were workingwith Dan Braun on his design forMetallica’s upcoming Summer EuropeanStadium Tour. Dan’s design called for amedium resolution LED screen that was25’ x 75’. He then said, “That’s the easypart. Here is what the screen needs tobe able to do. It must be extremely light,able to build and dismantle quickly andthe complete video system has to fit inone 45’ Euro truck trailer.”Brigham continued, “So while wewere at Tait Towers in early February,Ron Proesel from Nocturne/Vidicon,designed what we now call VLite, drivenby a vista systems spyder processor.”Proesel collaborated with LSI-Saco inMontreal for all LED components, andwith Tait Towers on the frames. Brighamsaid,“We couldn’t be more pleased withthe performance of VLite. The imagelooks amazing. On top of that, we builda 25’ x 75’ show ready in 45 minutes andcan be taken down in under 30 minutes.”Nocturne’s Jon Beswick, who produced/directed the video montages for the tour,commented on the ease of VLite’s operation.“The VLite is incredibly versatile. A lotof thought and time went into buildingsomething isthat totally rock ‘n’ rollfriendly,” says Beswick. “For example, ifthere is a problem with one of the LED’s,they are interchangeable. Just pop thestrip out and replace it and it’s done! Thestrips are held in place with magnets sothere are no clips whatsoever. On otherproducts, if you lose LED’s, you have totake out the entire panel.”Nocturne also provided two 15’ X 20’projection screens stage left and rightwith I-MAG running on these screensduring the entire show. The VLite wall isused for full screen playback of content.As for the video content itself, Bewicknoted, “For the Def Leppard tour, thereis a lot of animated content in the show.Most of that content has a bit of tonguein-cheekhumor to it. The band are verylight hearted guys, and they are a lot offun to be around and good guys to workfor. They take their music seriously andthey are great players, but as far as thecontent goes, everything that we havedone doesn’t really have a serious noteto it. It’s more about kind of having fun,and rock n’ roll and taking the piss out ofyourself, if you want to use the Englishway of saying it! There is a lot of thiskind of Monty Python-ish humor withcontinued on 42Crew photos o p p o s i t e pa g e (l to r) t o p to b o t t o m) Steve Davis - Crew Chief Engineer; MalvinMortimer - Tour Manager; Ken Mitchell - Head Rigger; Thomas Braislin - Camera and LED Walltech; Seth Conlin - Lighting Crew Chief, (left) Ted Bible - Systems Engineer, (middle) JonathanBeswick - Video Director, (right) Ronan McHugh - FOH; Chuck Beckler – Stage Manager;Rocko Reedy - Production Manager; (left) Caitlin Phaneuf - Production Coordinator CaitlinPhaneuf & (right) Lesley Mortimer Wallace standing38 mobile production monthly