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grandMA and Bon Jovi Team Up Again
Once again Bon Jovi has taken grandMA on the road. The band's 2006 ‘Have A Nice Day' tour, which was the first to carry a HD video system with it for the duration of the tour, employed a grandMA for lighting and video control. Now, Bon Jovi's ‘Lost Highway' world tour is concluding with a pair of grandMAs in tow.
"The operation of the grandMA has been similar to the last tour, but we upgraded our equipment inventory with new media servers with custom software," reports lighting director and programmer Patrick Brannon. "Our video house rack remained the same."
Brannon is convinced that "we couldn't do what we do with any other console. As you learn and start adding bells and whistles on the outboard equipment you just add another parameter to the grandMA. grandMA enables you to build the system you need, because all the parameters are custom."
If the grandMA's operation recalled that of the last tour, the show's lighting design was very different, Brannon points out. "We went with a hydraulic/pneumatic stage that moved up and down. We had new Martin LED panels and V9 panels that opened and closed similar to Venetian blinds: When they're closed you have a 12 x 12 foot video surface, and when they're open you get a surface 12 x 20 feet high."
Prior to the tour Brannon and programmers Patrick Dierson and Corey Fitzgerald spent two weeks at Brannon's house using three grandMAs to get basic cueing down. "By doing that programming before the tour began we had a lot less to do when we actually got on the road," Brannon explains.
Spike Brant and JUSTIn Collie of The Performance Environment Design Group served as lighting designers, with Brannon, on the Lost Highway tour. They previously handled production design and lighting and stage design for the Have a Nice Day tour.
"Just because Pat Brannon and The PEDG team have been working with Bon Jovi forever, it never means that the show will grow stale. They always hang out on the cutting edge of technology and find a way to push the grandMA to do even more," comments A.C.T Lighting president and CEO Bob Gordon. (A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive North American distributor of the grandMA.)
Ed & Ted's Excellent Lighting Inc. delivered the lighting equipment and Nocturne Productions Inc. supplied the video equipment.
photo Steve Jennings
14th August 2008
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