Britney Spears

Britney Spears’ live shows have entertained audiences from every corner of the globe since her first concert in 1999 and when she embarked on her latest world tour, the popstar promised to deliver hits galore once again. TPi was at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena to see the singer on the UK leg of Femme Fatale.
    Switching from the monitor position to FOH four years ago, Lawrence ‘Filet’ Mignogna is no stranger to arena tours with household name pop acts, having also been a part of Alicia Keys’ and the Eagles audio crews. Pre-production for the Femme Fatale tour took place at sunny LA’s Sony Studios for two weeks of production build, followed by another two weeks of rehearsals with the full band and dancers and Filet has also worked with Spears before, on the 2009 Circus tour.
    Back at FOH, the console provided by Clair Brothers was the renowned DiGiCo SD7. Said Filet: “This is actually my first tour with the DiGiCo SD7 and I love it! If I get to choose my rider from now on, this would be on it. I love its versatility and multi-band compressors, meaning you don’t need to EQ as much as usual.” Outboard FX were the SPX 990, an Eventide H300 and a TC D2.
    Filet likes to save a lot on scenes, and also used the console’s virtual sound check feature. Working with a total of 50 inputs, Filet also recorded the shows using Protools. “I really like the ease of use when it comes to interfacing Protools with the DiGiCo console,” he added.

ZERO ISSUES, INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
Bryan ‘Froggy’ Cross, Spears’ Monitor Engineer, acquired his nickname from a Tower of Power tour 14 years ago. Since then, Froggy has been on the road with some of America’s most sought after artists including Christina Aguilera and the Pussy Cat Dolls. Froggy also production and tour manages, making a home in monitor world for Spears. “I love these consoles because you can use all your plug-ins to get the album feel at a live show,” enthused Froggy about his Avid Profile console, which he swears by for making live pop music sound record quality good.
    For microphones, Froggy used a mixture of Shure, Crown and Sennheiser, but it was the beta testing of Shure’s Axiom that had the Monitor Engineer excited. “The Shure Axiom is absolutely amazing. You can control everything from the software back stage, making it almost seamless,” said Froggy. “The product is ‘A Plus’, it’s smaller than the previous model and has a rechargeable battery pack. Size is very important for a female artist, because it should fit nicely into the wardrobe outfits. We’ve had zero issues with the product in any of the arenas, anywhere in the world,” he assured.      
    Spears used a Crown C311 customised headset, which Froggy told us has “the best rejection and on-stage volume.” Primarily, Spears used the C-311 but switches to a Sennheiser 5200 with a 5235 capsule for a section on a swing, creating a more intimate performance for her audience.
    For IEMs, eight Sennheiser G3’s were used. A total of eight wedge mixes were generated, powered by Lab.gruppen. The wedges comprised 12 Clair 12AMs, which were grounded with four Clair R-4’s for side fill, finishing with two Clair ML-18’s for the band’s low-end accompaniment for ear mixes.
    RF and Wireless Tech, Luis Espinal, was using the Shure Axient Wireless Manager to keep the Femme Fatale tour on cue and running smoothly. Spears’ used the Shure SKM 5200 microphone with an MD 5235 capsule.
    For Systems Engineer, David Coyle, working for pop princess Britney Spears in 2011 has seen almost a decade go by since they first toured together, with the audio pro first becoming acquainted with Spears’ live sound on her North American Dream Within A Dream tour.
    Spears tours remain a Clair Brothers audio account, utilising the i3 sound system. A massive 96 boxes of i3’s are used via three hang points, on the side, main and delay areas on the stage. The i3 PA system is configured by 20 boxes on each of the main hangs, 16 flown on each side hang, complemented by 12 deep on the delay system towards the back of the arena. The subs comprise 24 Clair BT218’s (16 flown and eight ground stacked), with a further eight P2’s used for front fill.
    Said Coyle, “I’ve worked for Clair independently for 10 years, but the best thing is that it’s an international network system, so it’s easy to get support on any tour, no matter where you are in the world. 
    “The hardest part of my job,” continued Coyle, “Is making sure that the system is in one piece and fully working at each venue. And the loading in and out of small buildings!”
    A further advantage of using this PA system is that it rigs very quickly (in around three hours - about an hour once the motors are flown), before the i3’s are powered by Lab.gruppen PLM 20,000 Q amps (72 in total), processed via Dolby Lake. 

A SOLID LIGHTING VISION
Collaboration between multiple members of the production crew was instrumental in the successful development of Femme Fatale’s visual concepts. When Marty Postma became Lighting Director on Spears’ touring team, he worked closely with Lighting Designer Tom Beck and Lighting Programmer Dan Boland during the rehearsal period at Sony Studios, Los Angeles.
    “The design was completed by Tom and then my role was to run lighting on a day-to-day basis and implement his vision. Before we came to Europe, we scaled the tour back somewhat. In the US, the show featured a long runway thrust on the secondary B stage and a whole other lighting system went along with that,” explained Postma.
    “Tom didn’t want anything to overstep what was happening on stage. There had to be a solid lighting presence, but not something that was going to distract attention away. We also worked with the video team to pick colours that balanced so the show looked more unified.”
    Discussions also took place between the lighting and laser team early on in the rehearsal stage to ensure lighting was pulled back at appropriate times to allow the lasers to become more visible.
    MA Lighting’s grandMA 1 was the preferred console for the show, fitting in perfectly with the way in the lighting crew work. The desk was a natural choice for Programmer Boland, who uses it regularly and finds it easiest to build cues with. According to Postma, the grandMA, which ran 20 Universes of DMX during the show, was a solid platform throughout the US and European legs of the tour.
    PRG Nocturne was vendor for both lighting and video on the tour, supplying an extensive list of lighting equipment including the company’s 30-inch tall BAT truss. “The whole lighting system is fairly straightforward - it snaps together really fast because everything is in the pre-rig truss. This means the lights live in the truss so they don’t have to come on and off and you don’t need a lot of truck space for them,” said Postma.
    A total of 40 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 Washes were spread out evenly through the rig, along with 40 VL3000 Spots and 16 VL2500 Washes. This was complemented by 14 PRG Bad Boy units, which were selected due to the hard-edged spot fixture’s brightness. A further 28 Martin Professional Atomic strobes with colour scrollers featured in the lighting set-up, alongside 168 Chroma-Q Colour Force LEDs, which were positioned overhead and built into some of the props. These painted the venue with a variety of colours, whilst being much softer and subtler than the larger moving lights in the rig.
    A solid portion of the show was made up by LED, with the crew making use of bitmap effects to create organic-looking patterns and a unified look across the entire rig of fixtures. “Rather than programme units independently to make up a larger picture, first you create the larger picture and then apply it to a system of fixtures.  We used these effects in both the normal LED rig as well with some scenic elements.  The Femme Fatale sign for example had 3 full DMX Universes of LEDs built in to it,” Postma explained.
    He continued: “Tom also chose Martin MAC 301 moving LED heads on the front of the stage - these are really small and fast units. We only have 10 on the floor and the front edge of the stage at this point, but we started off the US leg of the tour with 60, which ran along the entire runway and the secondary stage.”
    On the Femme Fatale tour, lighting was used in a practical form by being built into props and scenery to illuminate them. A combination of wireless and LED technology featured heavily, as the predominantly LED fixtures making up the set-up were often operated using a wireless signal. One element of the set, which the crew referred to as the ‘transmission towers’ either side of the stage, included flexible LED tape that was dotted with full red, green and blue LEDs and could be bent into a variety of shapes.
    “The additional wireless lighting in props and scenery meant there was a whole other set of things we needed to make work on a daily basis. This is especially important when you’re working on a tour spanning multiple continents. These props and scenic pieces need to move around and you don’t want to have to drag cables all over the stage,” explained Postma.
    “We need to consider wireless frequencies and have a dedicated member of the team, Luis Espinal, who deals with this for the entire tour. We work closely with him to make sure we’re running on legal frequencies that aren’t going to get a lot of interference and make props do strange things when somebody answers their phone in the audience, for example.”
 
STORYTELLING THROUGH VIDEO
Visual elements of the production helped make a real impact on the audience, with all video equipment supplied by PRG Nocturne. Video Director, Kevin Carswell, who has been working for the company for five years, was asked to come on board as vision mixer for the European dates of the tour. Nashville-based Carswell, has worked in concert video for almost 19 years and directed visuals for a range of artists, from Metallica through to Michael Buble.
    “We are running content behind Miss Spears for 95% of the show and we only have live IMAG on the screen in the centre of the stage for two songs. However, IMAG is being displayed on the outside projection wings for the entire production,” said Carswell.
    “The video footage forms a kind of storyboard in between songs - Britney will sing four or five numbers in chunks and then we run a piece of content for a few minutes. The show is broken down into different segments and each one ties into the next piece of content, so there is a visual story for the entire gig. For example, when we move from a spy scene to an Egyptian scene, both the set and video content reflect this.”
    Vidicon V9 9mm pixel pitch LED display wall was placed upstage centre to run the main content during the show. Further V18 screens measuring 40ft by 7ft making up part of the set were also used to display visuals, alongside two centre 8ft high V9 surfaces that made up stage doors. Left and right IMAG, which was filmed using four Ikegami HL 65 cameras, was also projected onto 22ft by 41ft Vidicon screens by a pair of Barco 20k projectors.
    Said Video Crew Chief, Adam Dragonsin: “The 40ft of V9 screen in the centre is broken up into pieces. In addition to this, there are five other small screens that move up and down, which we call the finger screens. The LED display wall is PRG Nocturne’s own LED product. It looks fantastic, which makes our lives easier. It’s fast to build and easy to maintain and having gear that can take a beating and still work means a lot when you’re on tour.”
    The content displayed on the centre screen comprised a selection of stylish and abstract graphics created by Los Angeles firm Veneno. “The content and overall video concept hasn’t changed since rehearsal,” continued Dragonsin, who produced the template for the graphics that was then handed over to the content creation team at Veneno. “We needed to make sure a 1080 screen raster was created and there was the right number of pixels per screen. I created an outline in the form of a bright rectangle and Veneno took their content and put it over the top. If they didn’t have the size of the screens before they started building and rendering everything then they would have to re-do it all when it gets to rehearsal stage,” added Dragonsin.
    A Grass Valley Kayak DD acted as the control system through which all cameras and playback sources were run, allowing the director to cut for side screens, centre screens and to record for archive purposes. “These production switchers are industry standard and they travel well, which is important when we’re moving to a different place every other day. It is so easy to route and to move between different functions when needed,” said Carswell.
    Backline Tech, John Chidley, used timecode to trigger the visuals featuring in the show. The video team also made use of a CCU rack including a Grass Valley Turbo used for playback purposes, which was triggered by a Medialon control system.
    Video Engineer, Jason Lipton explained: “Those outputs are run into a Barco Folsom Encore that spits out an HD raster (1920 by 1080) to the LED walls, which are taking in HD input. The live footage we are running for the entire show on the outside projection screens is also coming from timecode.”

DESIGNED FOR SPEED
With a history of bringing a production together on the tours of female pop icons Lady Gaga and Rihanna, Bill Rengstl was a logical choice for the role of Head Rigger on Femme Fatale. On average, a local rigging team of 16 was used on the tour’s European leg, comprising 12 crew up in the air and four on the floor. Rengstl also worked alongside touring riggers Ricky Acebo and Jeff Adkisson on the US leg of the tour.
    As the tour moved on from the US, the design of the show changed and the runway and B stage were removed for European performances. “It started out as a 22-truck tour and I had 115 lighting, sound and video rigging points out over the audience supporting 120,000lbs of kit due to the secondary stage. It’s still a big production, but we now need 87 rigging points and 100,000lbs of equipment,” added Rengstl.
    Some venues Femme Fatale visited presented the rigging team with different production scenarios to Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena - the venue at which TPi covered the show. For example, Rengstl needed to rig out of cherry pickers instead of climbing the roof at the LG Arena in Birmingham, requiring fewer riggers.
    Said Rengstl: “Overall, this show is pretty straightforward and it was built for easy load-ins and load-outs. As it’s designed for speed, we don’t have to start rigging at 6am, as is common on some other tours. A typical day would start with me marking the floor at 9am, the riggers would begin at 10am and everything would be rigged by 1.30pm.”

SETTING OFF THE STAGE DESIGN WITH SPECIAL EFFECTS
A combination of incredible special effects and lasers helped to bring the stage spectacle to life. Pyrotek Special Effects, who provided an array of pyro and smoke effects on Spears’ Circus tour, was commissioned once again to ensure Femme Fatale went off with a bang. Lorenzo Cornacchia, VP of the award-winning special effects company, played a key role in collaborating with Producer, Jamie King, and Executive Producer, Tiffany Olson, and designing the overall show from a laser and pyrotechnics standpoint.
    Commented Cornacchia: “I love working with Jamie, Tiffany and the artist because they allow me to be as creative as the budget will allow.”
    Pyro Crew Chief, Hans Lundberg, was familiar with the style of Spears’ shows, having been a part of the production crew for Circus. With a CV that features Kiss and The Jonas Brothers, Lundberg is familiar with creating special effects for a number of different genres of production.
    He said: “Even though some of the songs are the same as the Circus tour, there are different ideas in terms of the sets so you have to choose pyrotechnics that fit in best with that. The effects always have to complement the stage design. During the song Gimme More we created a vision of comets and mines, which were 30ft chasing from out to in.
    “The end cue created the illusion of grandeur when the stage mines that were shooting vertcially fired in unison with the comets and mines from the upstage right and left towers creating a ceiling of sparks and red orbs.”
    Some extra bang and flash was added to the production during the song S&M. A series of Spark Producing Devices (SPDs), silver gerbs and concussive flash was used to create the simulation that the towers were blowing up during Till The World Ends. “This was the finale number where Britney emerged from the destructing towers attached to white wings. The waterfall engulfed the entire stage creating an illusion of Britney in her Angelic form, emerging from the world as it’s utter destruction and finality was near,” added Cornacchia.
    Four Low Smoke Generators (LSGs) enabled a blanket of smoke to be created on the deck for a number of Spears’ hits. Cryo jets, which are always a favorite effect of the artist, were utilised in Hold it Against Me, Piece of Me and Womanizer.
    Laser effects to complement the pyro element of the show were put in the capable hands of Pyrotek Special Effects’ sister company, Laser Design Productions. Chris Blair, who has toured with Metallica, Justin Timberlake and Backstreet Boys throughout his career, was responsible for operating the lasers for the trio of songs they were a part of.
    Most of the seven lasers featuring in the production were multi-coloured; ranging from 5W up to 15W. The reliability, brightness and easy maintenance of full colour OPS laser systems made them an obvious choice for Blair.
    “Britney likes pink and purple so those colours of laser were used a lot. Compared to other shows I’ve worked on, the number of lasers in Femme Fatale is quite high. It all depends on the requirements of the designer and the look they want to create,” the Laser Operator explained.
    “The lighting crew for the show were very accommodating to us using lasers and designed the lighting around them to achieve the best possible look. There were a fair few late night programming sessions back in May, during which I would work on a part of a song so the LDs would know when to dip the lights so they don’t conflict. It’s an effect after all, so you want to be able to see it.”
    With safety being of great importance in any laser show, time needed to be spent thoroughly planning the use of the special effects in Femme Fatale. Said Blair: “You can’t audience scan and there are certain limitations every laser operator needs to be aware of. We made sure we set up our different zones above and to the side of the crowd so they weren’t hit at all.”
 
SMOOTH AUTOMATION
Upon finding her way into the touring world, Automation Engineer, Bianca Beauregard, tried her hand at carpentry and rigging before deciding automation was her calling. “I got into the industry by accident. I was doing an advertising degree and needed a job to fit in with my school schedule. A friend was working at an arena and said to me “If you show up at 10 o’clock, you can earn $50 helping them load out.”
    “One thing led to another and the longer I was in the industry, I knew automation was the area I was the most interested in. It’s much more fascinating than working in an office! It’s nothing to do with what I went to school for and I tried to work in my field but I was bored out of my mind. I called up an old boss and got back into live production.”
    Most recently, Beauregard has been on tour with Disney favourtives The Jonas Brothers before spending 14 months travelling with swing charmer Michael Buble, she exclusively used Tait and FTSI kit. For Britney Spears, Beauregard operated the parting video wall that moves the lifts in which Britney and her 16 dancers enter the stage. The lift was an air over oil hydraulic tension lift with a single piston, which moved up to the second level, placing the entertainers in full view of the audience.
    Mid stage were five Tait Flaggavators, named after its designer, Kevin Flagg, who originally created them for Tait Towers. On the Femme Fatale tour, the flaggavators moved 4ft above and below the main stage deck, and were used constantly throughout the show. In front of the flaggavators were three prop lifts (72 by 72 inches), which all the major props move up and down on. As the lifts are integrated within the set, the carpenters built the components into the stage, which Beauregard then cabled, and transferred all the data and power to make all the lifts work safely and in time with the show. 

Beauregard also programmed and operated Britney’s fly gag, an FTSI t-winch, which lifted and traveled 56’ out into the audience over the B-stage in America, but just lifted in the Europe / UK / Asia / South America version of the show. Said Beauregard: “The wear and tear during travel is a big challenge, just keeping it in working order with the amount of cabling we have is important.” The Automation Engineer is working on a Fisher Navigator System from FTSI (which is also vital to the TPi covered Batman Live tour), after years working with the navigator; it has become Beauregard’s system of choice for its reliability.
    Beauregard is an independent engineer but exclusively uses Tait Towers and Fisher products. With so many dancers on stage, the health and safety issues for the automation dept are at the forefront of the backstage cues. Under the stage and at the cue callers HQ, all safety precautions are in place and spot-checked, continually ensuring that no one is in danger. Beauregard also has overhead cameras on the lifts, allowing all safety angles to be covered.
    Working closely to Beauregard was CyberHoist Technician, Mike Rock, who worked with CyberHoists provided by PRG. Rock supervised 14 half tonne / 20m per minute hoists which wre controlled by a G4 Mac with dual displays. A staple of Rock’s kit is PRG’s back truss which the CyberHoists sit in to save daily load in / loud out times. “PRG are actually manufacturing their own brackets for their inverted motors, allowing us to get more headroom because these hoists are on the truss higher than we’d usually be able to hang them,” explained Rock.
    The automation and CyberHoist elements to the Femme Fatale tour were very important to the smooth running of the show, the gear chosen and used around the world had to have a good track record. Said Rock: “This CyberHoist is a lot better than other motion systems I’ve used; it can even reach down to a 1000th of a mm.”
    The health and safety procedures for the hoist department include three emergency stops located upstage right, upstage left and in the operation position. Rock concluded, “If one of the dimmer techs or myself has an issue, we can use the E stops instantly, removing power from the hoists and stopping motion instantaneously. Other than that, it’s about being a conscious operator and making sure that all of the
parameters are acceptable.”
TPi

www.britneyspears.com

Photos by Roderick Trestrail II