CAST wysiwyg tours with Wilco
- Details
Lighting designer Jeremy Roth previsualized their set list using wysiwyg Perform. The set design, conceived by Jeff Tweedy and fabricated by Valerie Light of Infinite Scenic with textiles provided by Matt Biringer of Rose Brand, executed with tour manager Eric Frankhouser allowed Roth’s lighting and scenic design to highlight the mood that the team wished to convey.
Roth describes the set: “The concept came from Jeff [Tweedy] visiting a Masonic temple in Santa Fe that has a set of scenic flats depicting an autumnal forest scene. He was inspired by the use of diminishing perspective, cut-outs, and colour to create a sense of depth and warmth. He brought the concept to me while we were on tour in Europe and we started to figure out how to turn a scenic concept from a 100+ year old temple into a tourable production design.
“With this project and most of my other projects, wysiwyg is an invaluable tool for designing and sharing concepts, renders and assessing the feasibility and constraints of a design. With the Wilco forest design, I was quickly and easily able to create mock up renders on my laptop that allowed me to show the rest of the band and management what Jeff and I had been talking about. With only a couple of hours of work I had the approvals I needed to move forward with the concept.
“As with most shows, there were certain physical constraints that needed to be worked within. For this show, all of the lighting and scenic had to fit in about 12' of truck space, be able to be setup by just me and local stagehands, and fit on to locally provided trusses. For me to meet those challenges, every light in the rig had to be there for a specific reason. There wasn't room or time to have lots of extra lighting.
“I find wysiwyg incredibly useful when I am trying to figure out how to maximize coverage and angles through placement and fixture selection. Being able to select real fixtures with proper photometrics from the Library allows me to try out different fixture types at different angles and quantities until I've found the coverage I'm looking for with fixture types that are best suited for the job.
Roth added, “The support from CAST on their programme has been invaluable over my years of using wysiwyg. I'm not afraid to make suggestions or speak up when something is missing or could be better implemented. The tech support, sales, and management departments have been very understanding and responsive to fixing and improving their product.”The European leg of the Wilco tour has attracted rave reviews and tickets to the American shows are selling fast
(Jim Evans)
