Robe in the wings for Daisy Jones & The Six
- Details
A massive effort and meticulous detail went into crafting the vintage 1970s concert looks for the series by lighting director Matt Ardine, and while the hundreds of PAR cans visible at the gigs played their part in the visuality, for practicality, the band’s key lighting was achieved using Robe innovations.
The narrative follows a fictional rock band embroiled in the thrills and spills of the LA music scene, as Daisy Jones & The Six rise rapidly from obscurity to global fame and success, quitting unexpectedly at the height of their fame.
Matt was brought onboard by the series gaffer, Nicholas Kaat, and the two of them worked with cinematographer Jeff Cutter to brainstorm design ideas for the four concert sections that featured throughout the 10-episode first season.
These depicted a theatre, an arena, and a stadium show, all used for inserts as the series illustrated the band’s meteoric rise in popularity.
The ‘shows’ were filmed in four New Orleans locations - the historic Saenger Theatre, the Mahalia Jackson Theatre of the Performing Arts, Tad Gormley Stadium and the SLU (Southeastern Louisiana University) Centre Arena. Each involved a slightly different lighting design based on similar themes.
For speed, efficiency, and functionality during the filming of these scenes, up to 80 x BMFL Spots and Blade moving lights were used to cover key lighting plus other essential illumination from the top and sides, chosen for their power and versatility.
Matt undertook plenty of research before embarking on the project, studying films, videos and photos of the day, and the shows - and the series - were loosely based on Fleetwood Mac.
Matt even consulted their LD from back in the day, the legendary Curry Grant who gave them a heads up on how a light show would have been programmed and run, which would have been a very manual operation at the time. However, for the recording, this was done with a grandMA3.
Crafting a genuine looking period stage involved rigging the moving lights high up in the rig well out of shot and obscured with PAR cans arranged to allow a workable light path to the stage.
Four RoboSpot systems were made available for each of the three concerts shoots by New Orleans based lighting contractor, RZI Lighting. These were running with Robe Esprites for the theatre / arena style shows and BMFL Blades for the stadium show.
For the Daisy Jones & The Six theatre shows, the Esprite FollowSpots were located at the FOH positions, relatively close to the stage to get the optimal angle on the band.
