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PRODUCTION PROFILE
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
Stone Temple Pilots
Photos & Text by SteveJennings
A 57-foot-by-18-foot Nocturne V-Lite video wall is hung low, giving a free range of movement to guitarist Dean DeLeo, vocalist Scott Weiland and other members of the band.
By the time the Stone Temple Pilots disbanded
in 2003, they had sold close to
40 million albums worldwide, which had
produced six number one singles among the
15 songs that made the Billboard top 10. To
Alastair Bramall-Watson, the band was iconic,
particularly in the U.K., where he grew up. When
the band reunited in 2008 for a tour and to record
a new album, Bramall-Watson got the gig
as the tour lighting and video designer.
It was, he said, in a word, “awesome,” adding
that “it has allowed me to remember an earlier,
more energetic time in my life and I feel some of
that energy comes through in the show.”
Not that the band needed help with their
energy level. “The band doesn’t sit still for a second,”
he said, “so I decided that solid positional
focuses on stage was not going to cut it most of
the time. So with the exception of a few songs,
the lighting is used to paint the whole stage
and provide a picture frame for the video centerpiece
we have in the background.
“The video wall is hung low on purpose,
and with such a small backline, it has made it
possible to really achieve that lightbox look
onstage. So anything that the band does is
silhouetted beautifully; it captures their movements
and adds a masque to the video content
on the screen. The band members are basically
running around in a whole simulated world.
They can go where they want on the stage at
any given time and they are part of the whole
dynamic look.”
Going Deep
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One of Bramall-Watson’s concerns at the
start of the tour was that a huge video wall running
the width of the stage can make the presentation
look flat with no depth. So he found
or designed content with as much depth as
possible. “I wanted the back wall not to be an
end to the depth of the stage but the start of a
tunnel which pulls your eye into it,” he said.
Since he designed both the lighting and
video, he was able to tie the two together much
more easily. But with that control comes added
responsibility. “Ultimately having the control
of the whole show is obviously what anybody
would want to do,” said the designer, “especially
as over the past few years it has become a very
easy and practical solution.
“Taking on the whole design and visual
responsibility for a show is time-consuming at
first, but as the tour settles down it becomes increasingly
easy and extremely rewarding. I think
it also allows for a lot more flexibility,” he adds.
“In some songs on this tour I programmed
first with video in mind and then added lighting
to complement that. Other songs were
definitely more lighting based and either did
not have video content or video elements were
used more as lighting.”
All of the lighting and video control on the
tour is made by High End Systems. Bramall-Watson
uses a Flying Pig Systems Full Boar lighting
console with a playback wing to program and
play back the show. Two High End Systems
Axon media servers run the video content and
a Flying Pig Systems iPC console is used as a
backup for the lighting console. The Hog 3 software
runs “seamlessly” between the two desks,
he adds.
Taking Control
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But having responsibility for all of the visual
elements of the show does not mean that Bramall-Watson
doesn’t ask for input from others.
Alastair Bramall-Watson, LD for Stone Temple Pilots
He and production manager Steve Drymalski
constantly discuss ideas and tweak the show
even after four months on the road.
“One of the main benefits is that lighting
and video are programmed together, and the
execution of the cues is seamless,” Bramall-Watson
says. “Now content can be made on a good
laptop prior to the tour or even at the start of
production rehearsals, fed into a server upon
arrival, and a huge chunk of the work is already
done. Using the Axon and the Full Boar console
together makes adding or changing new
content the simplest thing. I can change out a
single piece or multiple pieces of content into
multiple queues.”
This is the first time he has used the Full
Boar console, but he has used the iPC exclusively
for the last three years. The software is
the same, but it has the added functionality of a
third touchscreen with the playback wing. That
alone, he says, makes an “already great desk
even better.
“The layout of my windows is now superb,”
he adds. “I can access all I need instantly. The
Axon media servers I have used before, but in
the guise of a DL.2,” Bramall-Watson says, referring
to the media server that is part of High End
Systems’ DL.2. “They work really well, and if you
were doing a one-off show or had no interest
in designing your own custom content, there
is more than enough stock content in them to
furnish any kind of show.”
Just Add Motion
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Bramall-Watson created the custom video
content on a Mac computer using the Apple
Studio Pro suite of software, mainly with Motion
Three and Compressor. The latter of the
two convert the content into MPEG 2 format,
which is a requirement of the Axon media servers.
The lighting is supplied by PRG, and all of
the power and data distribution is handled by
the PRG Series 400 PD system. A package of 62
1,200-watt moving lights, including Martin MAC
2000 Wash, MAC 2000 Profiles, Vari*Lite VL3000
Spots and 29 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes make
up the bulk of the lighting package.
On a show of this size, power distro is another
important consideration. “The floor package
for lighting alone runs 600 amps, so advancing
power is a definite must,” Bramall-Watson says.
The video wall, which Bramall-Watson calls
“amazing,” is a Vidicon V-Lite supplied by Nocturne.
“We used Main Light Industries’ SoftLED
2.5-inch drape on the start of this tour and it
was great. This wall, however, looks beautiful.
It’s so light; we hang a 57-foot-by-18-foot wall
and it only weighs 5,000 pounds. It has a clarity
and depth that surpasses anything else I have
seen in that resolution.”
As the tour zigzagged across North America,
Bramall-Watson kept programming the console,
tweaking the lighting and video along the
way. But even as the looks for each of the songs
become fully realized, he didn’t stop adjusting
parts of songs or changing the video content.
At times he would replace them with something
he felt was more suitable and at time he
just got tired of looking at the same scene.
“I generally try to build six new pieces of
content every day,” he says. His reasons for doing
so were twofold; in addition to perfecting
the looks on the tour, he plans to offer his custom
content for sale. “Some pieces ultimately
make their way into the songs on this tour while
other pieces are stockpiled for future use on the
market or for other tours,” he says.
CREW
Lighting Company: PRG (John Lee,
account rep)
Lighting & Video Designer/Director/
Programmer: Alastair Bramall-Watson
Lighting Crew Chief: Jim Petrusson
Lighting Dimmer Tech: Joe Huq
Lighting Tech: Johnathan Fuller
Video Company: Nocturne (Bob Brigham,
account rep)
Video Tech, Soft LED system: Bobby Cox
Video Tech, V-Lite system: Angelo
Bartolome
Production Manager: Steve Drymalski
Tour Manager: Tim “Gooch” Lougee
Stage Manager: Colin West
Gear
Lighting consoles: 1 Flying Pig Systems
Full Boar consoles, 1 Flying Pig Systems iPC
console (for back up)
20 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles
25 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
17 Vari-Lite VL3000 Spots
29 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes with
Atomic Colors
10 Mole Richardson 8-Lite Blinders
2 Short Nose PAR64s
1 High End Systems Axon media
server
57’x18’ Nocturne V-Lite video wall
1 load of smoke machines
22 PLSN NOVEMBER 2008