USA - More than a few people sitting close to the stage during Beartooth’s recently concluded 40-city North American tour, reportedly felt they were in an arena once the band’s 75-minute show started, even though they were actually at 1,000 or 2,000 capacity club venues.
Early in the planning stages of the tour, Caleb Shomo, frontman and founder of the metal band, told Victor Zeiser, head of Squeek Lights, that he wanted to hit the road with “an arena level production that works in clubs.” Zeiser and lighting designer-programmer Ben Jarrett duly delivered.
With its centre stage video wall displaying a seemingly endless stream of multi-layered images from Luke Shomo, the show created an arena-like vibe at every club, regardless of its size. This feeling was amplified by pyro effects and confetti cannons evoking powerful moods, laser patterns filling the air, and intense flashes of bold light from Chauvet Professional Maverick Storm and PXL fixtures transforming the stage.
“We had many ‘moving parts’ in this production,” said Jarrett. “We had to handle load in, lighting, lasers, the video wall, follow spots, cameras, cryo jets and confetti blasters. Our venue size would change from 850 capacity to 3000 capacity, so we rarely had the same load from one show to the next. Our team, Mel Lopez, the V2 tech-follow spot operator, and Gabe Osborn, L2 tech and special FX tech, deserve a lot of credit.”
Among the challenges that Jarrett and the team had to master as they navigated their way through this varied tour was figuring out how to retain the essence of their show while adapting their rig to different stages. “Learning what aspects of the show were most important, and what would give us the most bang for our buck, was critical,” he said. “The six side towers with three Maverick Storm 2 BeamWashes and Maverick Storm 1 Hybrid on top were ‘high value,’ so we made sure to make it fit each day.”
In addition to its 18 Maverick Storm 2 BeamWashes, the tour rig had six Maverick Storm 4 Profile fixtures, six Storm 4 Hybrids and six COLORado PXL Bar 16 motorized battens, arranged on the deck in line with the downstage edge of the drum riser.
Speaking of the fixtures in his rig, Jarrett noted: “The Storm 4 Profiles were instrumental in delivering the ‘arena level production’ Caleb was asking for. “As for the Storm 2 BeamWashes, they were a lot of fun to programme. The individual pixel control is everything I expect from a wash light, but more. They opened up a lot of split colour looks and eye candy opportunities for me. We really loved making effects on these fixtures.”
Jarrett used colour to define moments based on the music during the show. “Beartooth has always had very solid colours define their album art, so that helped drive the overall ‘pink hue’ of the show,” he explained.
