Live Design Online: The Super Bowl LIX halftime show showcased one of the largest set footprints in its history, spanning nearly the entire length of the Caesars Superdome field. All Access delivered an array of custom set pieces, including four key elements—the square stage, triangle stage, circle stage, and the X—alongside eight aerialist lamp posts and a massive ground cloth. This ambitious undertaking was a seamless collaboration with Bruce Rodgers from Tribe, Inc., and Mike Carson from Kendrick Lamar’s pgLang creative team.
5 comments:
This was super interesting to read about. I like hearing about these huge, nationally significant performances/events and all the work that had to go into it before hand. In some fashion, I feel like an insider who gets to learn and understand more about the process than the common person because I am learning how to get to that point. When I watched the halftimeshow I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the visual, but hearing the process of making each of the stages makes me appreciate the technical aspect even more. As a technician I should understand more that often simple designs can have the most complicated build and backstage action. Each stage presented its own challenge along with being huge and hard to set up in a short amount of time. I praise the build and management team for excellent execution and construction to make it look so seamless and set up so quickly for something that had a lot of moving parts.
It’s insane the amount of effort from many disciplines goes into a performance like the halftime show. The lighting and audio systems alone are hard to imagine not to mention the amount of staging. I wonder how long the preparation for this event took. By far the most impressive part of the halftime show is the speed at which the stage is assembled. I wonder if the designers have to limit themselves by what can reasonably be accomplished during the commercial break. I think that we will continue to see a scaling up of this legendary performance, but I wonder when the ambitions of designers will become greater than what can reasonably be produced within the timeframe given. I hope that technology will be pushed to the limits and continue to be improved in the areas of efficiency allowing for more shows to have a speedy turnover like the halftime show.
The Super Bowl is always a spectacle and this year that was no less true. It always awes me the amount of work and hands that go into staging a production like this. Similarly to touring, concerts have just become bigger and bigger in scale. I wonder who the set designer was for Kendrick and what their reasoning behind all of this was. There has also been some controversy with Kendrick being the Halftime Show because they didn’t think it was a good enough show but I think people are not paying attention to the message that is right in front of their face. Kendrick is not really a big flashy show person but the message behind everything he does from the stage to the lyrics to the dancers all means something and I think right now, that is incredibly important. This was a super interesting article to read because I’ve always wondered about what goes on behind the scenes.
I love watching and learning about how big events like this are set up. Something I find the most fascinating is all of the rigging. It's super cool, but I would be so nervous if I was a rigger. What if something happens and something falls? I worry about the safety of people around me, and also the liability of something like that happening. This reminds me of a video I watched where a NHL hockey rink was turned into a NBA court in just a day or so. The way that everything is so streamlined is truly admirable, and a testament to how people can get things done very efficiently. Anyways, I loved the details in this article about how the NFL halftime show was set up and organized and planned for. I would love to learn more about this industry, and branch out from just theater. I am very passionate about theater, but I also would like to dip into other industries such as the huge live event industry.
As always, the Superbowl halftime show is definitely a highlight of the entire event. It is so much fun to observe the show and the technology and engineering that goes into making the show happen as efficiently as possible. I really enjoyed how this article went through every component that made up the halftime show’s set and explained what it was and a bit about the behind the scenes logic of why it was developed and constructed the way it was. Sometimes, I find “behind the scenes” articles like this don’t really give me a good picture of what is going on, but just say “there was a lot of cool stuff happening!” which is just obvious. So, I really appreciated how clear this article was in explaining what every piece of the puzzle was. One part of the article that really stood out to me was the description of the ground cloth, because I can only imagine how complex dealing with over 8000 square feet of material was.
Post a Comment