LD Jakob Larsson brings power and subtlety to catwalk and stage at the Tele2
Ant Wan, one of Sweden’s largest hip-hop artists, broke the attendance record at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena recently, when a sell-out crowd of 40,899 fans gathered to see the concert. What is more remarkable is that not only did he steal the previous house record from Madonna, but it was only the artist’s second ever live concert (after selling out the Avicii Arena last year).
Such an auspicious occasion warranted a top lighting designer – both to fill the arena with light, and to sensitively interact with the concrete-based stage design and scenography created by visual artist Alexander Wessely, who doubled as show director. He brought in Jakob Larsson (of Light it Production), with whom he has worked in the past – notably with acts such as the Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia – and the LD was soon integrating a familiar family of hybrid products: GLP’s JDC1 and JDC Lines.
Having turned to this combination many times in the past, he says when it comes to a combined powerful strobe–washlight hybrid, “these are the ultimate fixtures”.
Larsson has been specifying JDC1 “almost since day one” and later urged investment in the JDC Lines from Sweden’s leading rental houses. This time the inventory was provided by Soundforce and comprised around 84 JDC Line (a combination of the 1000 and 500 strips) and 40 JDC1. The JDC Lines were predominantly used to edge the catwalks and the satellite ‘B’ stage, with the JDC1s mainly serving as main stage cross lights and sidelights, spaced one metre apart.
But their role was more nuanced than that, as they also needed to promote Alexander Wessely’s stage architecture, based around a large LED screen, nine pillars and a throne-cum-altar as a centrepiece. Concealment of the light source became a priority, but so was ensuring the JDCs would hold their own in a show dominated by lasers and pyro.
“With such a really big concrete statement, I wanted to hide lights in the scenic design and keep it really clear and clean,” he says of the scenography.
The LD tilted the JDC Lines at 45° along the catwalk as the artist promenaded down towards B stage, as he explains: “We used them in full pixel mode when he was walking, lighting him one on one, as we needed a big personality. But we knew it could also light up the whole arena on the opposite side, which worked really nicely.We also mounted the JDC1000 behind all the pillars, so that when we highlighted them it was like nine really big shadows onstage.”
As for the JDC1, some were also deployed on the edge of main stage “to push a lot of colour back into the scenic design.”
Larsson was fortunate to have as his programmer Nikolaj Brink, who is also an accomplished LD. “We pre-vised everything in Depence and then we had two days prep at the Arena. The whole show was run on timecode, overseen by Nikolaj,” he continues. “I was running the follow spots and smoke machines and calling all the Kinesys automation.” When the Kinesys dropped the overhead rig in some songs the JDCs on the floor would fire upwards to meet the movers, creating a dynamic effect.
As for programming, the JDC Lines were run in Mode 3 SPix (68 DMX channels). “This was because we are really into pixel mapping now,” Larsson explains. “The JDC1 we ran in normal 23-channel mode.”
He commends the ease of programming of the JDCs, with their two distinct wash and strobe modes: “I really like running the JDC1 in normal mode, because with the macros, and all the effects that come with the 23-channel mode, you can use almost everything.”
In summary, he says that having a really sophisticated washlight combined with a “heavy, heavy strobe that blinds everything out” has served him well during the recent summer season. “if you are performing at, say, 8pm when it’s still almost light, I found that the JDC Line was capable of knocking out the sun, even if it was glaring right onto the stage. It’s really f***ing bright!”