Britney Spears: The Circus Tour

Since she set the world alight in 1998 with her début hit, ‘Baby One More Time’, Britney Spears has been a household name. And whilst acclaim has often been punctuated by controversy, few would argue with the success of the latest chapter of her career.

    Released last December, her sixth studio album, Circus, has so far sold in excess of 3.5 million copies worldwide and inspired her most adventurous tour production.

    Show director Jamie King and his assistant Tiffany Perez along with tour producer/director Steve Dixon and production executive Mo Morrison collaborated with a team of top live industry creatives to generate an extravagant in-the-round stage show that brings to life a modern version of a circus spectacle, encompassing dance and aerial choreography, pyrotechnics and remarkable video and lighting.

    Perfectly suited to London’s O2 Arena, The Circus Starring Britney Spears — to give the tour’s official title — is a complex, multi-layered production that, in the same spirit as those by Madonna, is all about scale.

    Featuring an hydraulic revolve with an 18’ circular diameter, the Tait Towers-built set alone is reported to have cost $10 million.

    With so much rigorous, highly-choreographed activity on stage, the show requires an even greater-than-normal amount of attention from FOH sound engineer Blake Suib.

    He observed: “Today’s audiences are quite sophisticated. They have access to every aspect, such as the Internet and TV; they can see and hear everything she’s done and when they come to the show they want the same.

    “For example, they watch the video ‘Womanizer’, then when they come to the show they expect to see just that. They don’t want to see Britney in the middle of the stage standing there doing nothing but singing. They’re coming to see the whole show.”

    Suib, whose touring credits have included Madonna, Prince, Guns’n’Roses and Annie Lennox, discussed the numerous difficulties involved in perfecting the Spears in-the-round sound. “It poses a lot of challenges,” he said. “We have to cover 360° so it’s a very different scenario than having the stage at one end and a left/right PA and some subs at the front.

    “I like to call this a multi-zone PA. It’s really made up of 10 different systems that have to be tuned to sound like one. Depending on where you walk in the room, you could be listening to one of 10 clusters; they all need to be time-aligned, so you can’t tell when you’re moving from one cluster to the next.”

    Supplied along with lighting and video by Canadian production company Solotech, the touring PA is a Meyer Sound system comprising 64 Milos split four 16-box hangs, 32 Micas in two 16-box hangs, four MSL-4s and 12 M’elodies hung within the overhead circular ring, acting as a downfill for certain portions of the floor. There are also 32 700-HP subs positioned around the room.

     “Anyone that’s ever sat in the first five rows of a traditional concert knows that you get a lot more sub there than the people at the back, and if you don’t have subs turned up to a certain volume then the people at the back aren’t hearing it at all,” commented Suib.

    “Being in-the-round allows me to position my subs in different sections of the room so no one section of the audience is getting deafened, but I’m still able to fill the room.”

    Suib tunes the PA with the help of Meyer’s SIM 3 audio analyser. “Traditionally, engineers would take a piece of music they knew well and manually EQ the system by what they were hearing. They might have one microphone positioned at the console playing through an analyser, enabling them to see a curve.

    “The problem is, when you’re doing a 360°, you’ve got to cover so many different areas that have so many different characteristics that it’s hard to tune from one area and have it sound great everywhere.

    “SIM enables me to use multiple microphones, which I position in the sections of seats that the speakers are pointing at, then run cables back to the SIM machine and take actual readings.

    “I tune those speakers to a very flat response and when I put on the next cluster, I can time-align them very accurately so that when I move from one section to the next, I cannot tell which system I’m listening to. It takes an hour to tune the whole PA which is great.”

    A staunch supporter of the Meyer brand to the point of appearing in the company’s ads, Suib added: “They build the speakers, the amplifiers and the mapping software [MAPP Online Pro], which is a program that tells us accurately where to point the speakers.

    “Back in the day, we’d have to guess how we should align our PA and once we’d put it up we would walk up to the seats and look and make sure it was pointing in the right spot. Now, we have a tool where we can take a laser, take measurements of the room, load it into this program and it will tell you exactly what our angles are. That saves us a lot of time.”

    Suib runs 80 channels through his Digidesign Venue D-Show console at FOH. Monitor engineer Lawrence Mignogna uses a DiGiCo D5 whose extra outputs are essential as there are sidefills and speaker clusters to deal with as well as the musicians and dancers.

    The band use Aviom personal monitor mixers and Britney opts for sidefills and wedges, providing even coverage on stage.

    A complete absence of outboard at FOH gave some indication as to the extent of Suib’s embracing of the digital environment: “Right now there is a plug-in for every effect ever made, so instead of racks of gear that I’ve got to make work every day — and some of it’s not even roadworthy — I only use plug-ins.

    “It’s pretty standard stuff. I have Bomb Factory limiters on all my vocals and the bass. I’m not a big fan of gates these days because drums tend to sound a lot better nowadays. I find if you gate stuff too much, it takes away the overall tone of it. If it’s tuned properly, it doesn’t need to be gated. It’s not about making an individual drum sound great on its own, it’s about making it sound fuller, live in the mix.”

    Suib multitracks every show on a Pro Tools rig. He uses the console’s Virtual Sound Check feature, which allows him to soundcheck each show without any of the band present.

    He said: “In Virtual Sound Check mode, I can play back the show from the previous night. Every channel comes back into my console just as if the band was playing.

    “Now, when I’m tuning the low end of the PA, I can turn everything off except the drums and the bass, then I can bring in the guitars and the keyboards and the console reacts in the same way as if the band was playing. It’s a great tool because I’m actually tuning the PA to the music that I’m using during the show.”

LIGHTING
I made my way up to the top tier of the arena, where production and lighting designer Nick Whitehouse operates his two Virtuoso V676 consoles — the new generation of controller from PRG.

    Consisting largely of Vari*Lites, his rig includes 80 VL3000 spots, 80 VL3500 washes and 60 VL500 washes, plus 50 Martin Atomic Strobes with scrollers, 50 4-lite Molefays, eight Robert Juliat Ivanhoe 2.5kW truss spots, four Aramis FOH spots and 18 of PRG’s much-hailed hybrid fixtures Bad Boy fixtures.

    The brand new V676 made its touring debut on Circus and Whitehouse played a consultative role in its development. He told me: “I’d been using a different console and towards the end of last year I found I had too many fixtures for them to actually deal with everything properly. The V676s are rock solid though.

    “We talk almost daily with the development guys and receive updated software and it’s getting everything I want into the console to make it easier for me. It will do a small show brilliantly, but ultimately it’s designed for shows with hundreds, not tens, of lights.”

    There are 12 dancers, four aerialists, eight circus performers, five band members and Britney, all of whom need to be lit. And with such a lot of activity onstage, speedy lighting changes within the show are vital.

    “The 676 is a very powerful console so it’s easy to do something quickly with a lot of lights,” continued Whitehouse. “Britney is really particular about her follow spots — she likes being lit brightly and the way a spot makes her look, but she’s very particular about when they’re on and off. With other aspects of the lighting, she was happy to let me run with it.”

    Whitehouse was also instrumental in the set design and the general production of Circus along with Steve Dixon, William Baker and Bryan Leitch, who together form the new Road Rage production company.

    “We designed the overall thing — everything you see — and Britney also had a say. She liked to see what was going on, be informed and change a few things accordingly. She also had her own ideas which we included in the show.”

    The aerial choreography is by Dreya Weber (of Madonna tour fame) and technically enabled by PRG Scenic, who created the automation for Phantom Of The Opera on Broadway. After 20 years in theatre, branching out into a concert environment has been a brand new venture for the company.

    “We worked with them to make this tour-worthy,” explained Whitehouse. “They provided the winch system and the PRG Stage Command console to fly everyone.

VIDEO
There is a good working relationship between the lighting and video teams as both worked together previously on big tours by Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake.

    Backstage, Alex Barrette of Montreal-based VYV discussed the video elements. “We’re working with a 360° LED wall of Element Labs’ Stealth which totals 1,300 panels with a height of 4m and a circumference of 58m.

    “VYV provides the video technology — we use our own Photon media servers [created by Emric Epstein and Martin-Granger Piché] and we also have a 3D representation going on.

    “Our software allows for quick modification of the show without the need to re-render videos. This allowed me to quickly modify the show during rehearsals and on the road.

    “Also, Photon contains a vast list of effects that enables me to, for example, shift the hue of a video file in real-time without rendering. We use very simple technology to achieve complex things in a short period of time, which is so important in touring.”

    Alex Barrette uses a Behringer BCF2000 MIDI keyboard and a standard keyboard interface to cue content designed by Franco Dragone. He has four servers — one main for the whole wall, one back-up, one main controller and one back-up controller.

    There is one constant 360° wall and a smaller screen that comes in and out from centre stage during the show. No live video is streamed at present; this is something that may be looked at when it comes to playing stadiums.

    “It takes about 30 minutes to set up the video control and the wall takes between two and three hours, depending on the situation,” continued Barrette. “The main hub goes up first, then the lighting, so there’s a lot of stuff happening at the same time and we all need to co-ordinate, which is why it takes that long.” 

    The screen is raised and lowered with millimetre precision several times every night by an XLNT Advanced Technologies CyberHoist motion control system.

    It’s suspended from 11 CyberHoist CH1000 one-tonne intelligent variable speed motors and controlled at stage-side by programmer Arjen Hofma using XLNT’s InMotion3D software running on a CyberHoist FPS Full Production System with dual Apple MacPros.

    Said Nick Whitehouse: “The complete screen weighs about four tonnes including the rigging, the custom frame that Tait Towers built for us, and the power supplies which we had integrated into the frame. That’s picked up on the 11 CyberHoists and the shows starts with it dropped in over the main stage, followed by a big reveal.

    “It’s critical that it moves; if that ever broke it would be a showstopper, so CyberHoist was the obvious choice. We had to have a really reliable product up there with a reliable control system that also gives the operator plenty of feedback, so if we know we’ve got a problem we can deal with it before it affects the show.”

    Tour production manager Jason Danter commented: “The CyberHoist system just seems to be a lot more exact than other chain systems. It’s a lot smoother looking and when you’re moving screens, certainly on this show where there’s a lot of Broadway-style automation with winches, the slickness of the screen movement just adds to the whole production.

    “It also kind of lent itself more to what we wanted to do during the show, including bringing it in and taking it out quicker and being able to leave the screen down as long as possible before flying it out. We also get great back-up from the company; they’re good people to talk to, good people to work with.”

PYRO
After contributing to a series of appearances to promote the Circus album, Lorenzo Cornacchia, the VP of Pyrotek Special Effects, was commissioned to design an expanded pyro production for the main tour.

    “We were approached initially to create an eight foot diameter vertical ring of fire for Britney’s promo tour,” explained Cornacchia. “On cue, a flash paper wall would ignite leaving an outlined ring of fire for her to strut through. The idea was to take that ring idea and implement it into the stage on a larger scale.”

    Cornacchia and his team, including Bob Ross and Kevin Hughes, built a customised gas flame effect that is embedded into the outer edge of the circular revolve. The ring was built into a total of eight sections with a control system that allows the ring to create a lazy flame setting that can ignite a flame up to one foot in height and also shoot high flames that create an intensified flame look upwards to six feet tall for the song ‘Slave’.

    At the show intro, the stage area is engulfed with a low-lying atmospheric fog effect prior to the star’s entrance. The opening sequence ends with a massive cryogenic effect that fills the outer edges of the stages. A total of 52 heads were designed into the stage deck; 28 are located on the main stage and 12 on each of the B stages.

    While working with Nick Whitehouse, the Pyrotek team added a further accent to the cryo by embedding lighting fixtures that are situated parallel to each cryo jet head to wash the cryo looks with a variety of colour sequences when they are cued. Cornacchia and his touring team — Robert Liscio, Hans Lundberg and Ray Seymour — integrated the effects into the show during the three weeks of rehearsals.

    All customized gas systems, pyrotechnics and CO2 cryogenic systems were designed and located under the stage set to reveal the massive effects displayed on deck.

    Working alongside Tait Towers and reviewing numerous AutoCAD renderings, they put together one of the cleanest, flush-looking special effect designs integrated into the stage set which could not be noticed unless it was pointed out.

    Additionally, the act includes a number of pyrotechnics throughout the show. For the ‘Ooh Ooh Baby’/‘Hot As Ice’ sequence, a prop was built with 1 x 25’ gerbs that are detonated on cue to mask the star’s disappearance from the prop piece as she relocates on the alternate B-stage and continues her act.

    The finale, ‘Womanizer’, exhibits a remarkable circular waterfall effect. The waterfall is situated at the centre of the main stage and consists of 66 20 x 20 second silver gerbs that cascade around Britney and her dancers. The effect leaves audiences with that ‘wow’ factor as one of the spectacular elements of the show, capped by a barrage of confetti.

BACK AT MIX POSITION
I sat with Blake Suib at FOH position for the entire show. Ciara opened up with an energetic set including her hit ‘Love Sex Magic’ to a clearly excited crowd — a perfect warm-up for what was to come.

    After the Big Apple Circus had further entertained the now-packed arena, the main curtain lifted and Britney appeared as if by magic at centre stage. The venue erupted.

    She opened with ‘Circus’ and went on to deliver an energetic 90-minute set including the hits ‘Boys’, ‘Slave 4 U’, ‘Toxic’ and the slightly risqué ‘If U Seek Amy... not forgetting an alternative, dynamic rendition of ‘Baby One More Time’, the song that made her an instant global phenomenon back in 1998.

    The sound throughout the show was tremendous; the powerful 700-HPs oozed clarity and the top end sparkled. The live band under Simon Ellis’ direction was also superb. Despite numerous set and costume changes, the show ran smoothly with the innovative video and lighting designs making each song seem like a whole new production in itself.

    In the middle of the set, Britney slowed down the pace and ditched her custom Crown 311 headset mic for a handheld wireless to perform the pretty ballad ‘Everytime’, whilst she was slowly winched up to the top of the arena for the next set change — a graceful contrast to the rest of the show.

    After excitedly saying goodnight to London, Britney ran off backstage-right towards her security team just as I was making my way through the stage left barrier.

    Passing the troupe of circus performers and dancers, I spotted the star following closely behind and was able to congratulate her on a fantastic performance.

    Her gracious appreciation was a very satisfying end to a great night of entertainment.
TPi