Justin Volpe and Harrison Coons have fun with eight giant aerial fat beams
One of the production features of Ice Cube’s recent “Truth to Power: 4 Decades of Attitude” tour was the appearance of eight GLP MAD MAXX LED fat beams hung above the stage of each of the 22 arenas visited. Although these giant pieces of real estate weigh over 200 kg — and were designed to emulate the classic 7K xenon searchlights of old — they were purpose engineered to be flown. And this was one of the biggest deployments so far for the relatively new fixture.
Celebrating the artist’s 40 years in music, the production team responsible for this inventive approach — with one block of four MAXXes hung upstage, the other downstage — included designer / VJ, Justin ‘Jesus’ Volpe (of Amperage Productions), LD / lighting operator Harrison Coons and tour manager Chad Fuller.
“Those fixtures looked awesome up in the air, although it was not something I ever expected to do,” admits Volpe. “It was amazing that it all came together the way it did and it required a lot of collaboration.”
The idea of flying these fixtures, with their massive 750mm beam, may not have been part of the original design, but it was certainly inspired (since space to accommodate the heads was available on the rig).
The design team had been introduced to MAD MAXX by vendors Gateway Productions. “While we were over at the shop, we were discussing one song in particular, ‘Ghetto Bird’,” said Volpe. “The idea was to build this immersive scene of Ice being chased by cops. We had this big helicopter visual and had the idea of using the fixtures as an actual searchlight. Gateway’s owner [Alex Sommerfeld] said ‘Do you think we can make this work?’” And so the idea was born.
Striving for extra efficiency, Gateway were seeking to avoid having to store eight supersized flight cases as the show toured, let alone get them in and out on a daily basis. And so Senior VP (and tour manager) Chad Fuller custom built a set cart which would enable the fixtures to stay mounted on the Tyler GT truss “without it hitting the ground and rolling the truss”.
Noted Fuller, “MAD MAXX have a lot of gyro motion, so it had to be engineered properly to transport out of cases on ‘Omega’ style mounts with ½” Cheeseborough [clamps] — and it turned out beautifully.”
Justin Volpe takes up the story. “MAD MAXX was definitely a big part of the 40-year story, right from the beginning. All you saw pre-show was a projected logo onto a white kabuki, but then the four MAXXes on the downstage truss spelt out the word ‘Cube’. So the fixtures were already prevalent as people were walking into the show.
“Aside from the searchlight effect, which is what they are designed for, with their big super-duper beams, we pixel-mapped them as well in Resolume,” he added. “There is a well-known song called Good Day in which he references the Goodyear blimp, with the lighting stating ‘Ice Cube’s a pimp’. So on the downstage MAD MAXXes we wrote ‘Cube’ and on the upstage ones, ‘Pimp’.”
In addition, the set featured 42 JDC Line 1000 and 12 impression X4 Bar 20 battens — which again emphasised the importance of previz in creating a scalable and effective setup. The two creatives had also collaborated closely on the rig design phase, using Vectorworks and Depence.
“JDC Line 1000 was actually a major part of my design,” continued Volpe, “while the X4 Bar 20s we had on the downstage edge as a kind of kicker light, and a nice eye candy front row wash type thing.”
Seven of the JDC Lines were mounted on each of six 30ft torms — truss towers, set either side of the stage. “Those JDCs are so much fun to play with, and super reliable,” he said. “Harrison used them a lot for wipe and delay chases that were really cool. I pixel mapped them in Resolume and fired ArtNet into them as well, so there was a lot of versatility. Since most of the rig was running over sACN, we had everything in high channel modes, giving us plenty of parameters to play with.”
Volpe and Coons worked their respective grandMA3 (Full-size) consoles like a tag team, playfully enjoying the pixel-mapped effects. “We were very connected,” stated the former. “There were times where I was just choosing colours and he was doing dimming; at other times I would take over completely, which was fun. I have toured with JDC Lines a couple of times previously and I’ve never had problems.”
Finally, Justin Volpe praised the reliability of the GLP products across the 22 dates and reflected with satisfaction on the success of his first major production design, which had certainly honoured the artist’s career-spanning shows.
