“Justin’s the perfect act for this because we honestly could just put the camera on him for 12 minutes and no one would care,” Ricky Kirshner, who has executive produced the halftime show since 2007, told Pollstar. “But you know, it’s the Super Bowl so we feel like we have to make it a little bigger.”
Of course, Kirshner and his wildly talented team will do a lot more than a close-up of JT, being responsible for everything from scenery to lighting to audio to screens.
6 comments:
This is a really interesting article talking about the dynamics of the super bowl half time show. I for one am a person who has watched the super bowl every year for as long as I can remember and have watched numerous half time shows but could barely tell you who preformed in them. Part of this I think is the pure size of the star I end up expecting a memorable half time show and look for things that I haven't ever seen before but that doesn't always happen with the stars constantly delivering and the natural limitations of having so little time to set up and take down. What I do remember though are the mistakes and the failures. Like the shark in Katy Perry's and the meme from Beyoncé's. That being said I find it really interesting that the article brings up that artists use the super bowl as a way to step up their game from amazing act to world class and helping them boost their tours and album sales. I think this will be especially true for Justin Timberlake with his new album that he announced today
I always find the super bowl halftime show to be an interesting spectacle, whether its good or not. I feel like in today's highly technological and spectacle driven music scene, it can really reveal how well a singer can carry a live performance. Having seen Justin Timberlake's great performance at the CMA last year I am pretty confident in his upcoming performance. In terms of past performances, I thought some standouts were Bruno Mars and Bruce Springsteen, who emphasized their live instruments and singing above technologically processed music and wild spectacle. Some of the worse ones were the black eyed peas and Madonna, which had egregious lip syncing and over the top spectacles. That being said, I felt the Bruno Mars show did a good job of balancing the music with the technical elements to elevate both aspects. I hope that JT does well, and I'm pretty confident that he will.
This article shows that the world of theatrical performance stretches far and wide outside of the walls of a theater. Creatives with the same skills as theatrical designers and managers are used all over the entertainment industry, and it often slips my mind, but sports is also a form of entertainment for many peoples. In the theater world we make a joke about sports. This stereotype of how theater people aren’t athletic or do sports is drilled and perpetuated at all levels of theater in all driplines from performers to designers and manager. But to see how creatives are working in the sports industry is so cool. It makes me realize that nothing is off limits to theater. It is these creatives job to design and produce an amazing show on the biggest of scales. The Super bowl half time show puts theatrical and musical entertainment onto the screen of viewers that might not experience live musical entertainment often. It is a time where the sports world and the theater world mix.
Half-time shows are really interesting in that they work to expose sports fans to something they may not ordinarily see. I think that it’s very similar to what we are doing with the athletes right now where we go to a basketball game and they come to see The Drowsy Chaperone. It really helps to open our horizons. I would love to work on the Super Bowl Halftime show some year. I’ve heard that Tait has been pretty influential in the past, and it would be super cool to be able to work on a show that is viewed by so many people. In addition to that it would be very interesting to see how the planning of six months boils down to a single event, with no retakes, to be viewed live. Between the halftime show and commercials, that is the only way I think that I will ever be involved in the Super Bowl. Go Patriots!
The Super Bowl is HUGE in entertainment. The documentary “GAGA: Five Foot Two,” follows Lady Gaga throughout the development of her latest album, “Joanne,” and her Super Bowl performance of 2017. I have never been a sports person at all, but after taking a class in high school about business and marketing and then seeing this documentary, I realize just how gigantic the Super Bowl is. My teacher told us how crazy expensive it is to get a commercial during the Super Bowl, and Lady Gaga talked about how much she was wishing she and her team would get the performance. In the moments leading up to the halftime show, she kept talking about how there was no performance or stage bigger than this one. She felt as though this performance was so monumental that she could not rise above that status. Someone on her team reminded her that she would be playing stadiums this size for the rest of her life, and she realized that was true, but just the fact that Lady Gaga thought the Super Bowl could be the climax of her career shows how influential this show can be to a performer’s life and career.
The Super Bowl Halftime show is possibly one of the greatest American spectacles of the year. It is one of the most wildly coordinated technical ventures, and it is in an extremely high stakes, live situation. It was really interesting to hear how Kirshner evaluates the major challenges that the technical team faces by examining the challenges of the program. It is also really interesting to hear how quickly it comes together, and truly the major cuts coming from budget, time, and logistics. I am really curious to hear how the design process is carried out, considering, in terms of budget, the sky is pretty much the limit, and it is really a challenge to create something that can be loaded in in 8 minutes and struck in 7 minutes is an incredible challenge to consider, and there is a lot of variables changing in the hands available to put things together and the complexity with which they connect.
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