When it comes to lighting, set, and projection design for concerts, there are a lot of technological firsts that happen on the road in our industry. While using hundreds of PARs for concerts used to be the latest and greatest in concert design, we've come a long way, from the introduction of moving-mirrors, to moving yoke lights, to the integration of video via media servers and LEDs.

Mark Fisher designed the set, and Patrick Woodroffe the lighting, for the recent Genesis Turn It On Again tour.

UK-based architect and production designer Mark Fisher notes the biggest change in technology right now is the rise of LEDs and their lower price, allowing increase of use in more applications, “undoubtedly to be followed by three dimensional options or non-planar shapes is a better way of saying it,” says the longtime production designer for The Rolling Stones, as well as the designer for Pink Floyd's The Wall arena tour in 1980, among others.

“These things always appear in the entertainment business first because we have such an appetite for novelty,” Fisher continues. “When we opened U2's POP Mart tour, it was the largest touring LED screen in the world. Only a band like U2 could command something of that scale, but now, it's commonplace. If you think back to things like the Pepper's Ghost effect, we all exploit technology, and that tradition will continue.”

Justin Collie is principal performance environmental designer at Artfag, which has also just announced a partnership with Stuart White to form Control Freak Systems. The point of the new company is to develop Artfag's design philosophy into custom control solutions, including both hardware and software. These designers are designing not only shows, but also how they control their own shows. “Production design is in a constant state of flux, what with the rapid pace of technology and the innate desire for the new and unseen,” says Collie, who has designed recent tours for Bon Jovi, Beyoncé, and Mariah Carey, to name just a few. “I guess at this time, we see the merging of design disciplines with LED becoming part video, part lighting, part set,” he adds.

Lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, who often collaborates with Fisher on tours for The Rolling Stones, recently designed lighting for the London leg of Live Earth, the 24-hour, seven-continent concert series that took place on July 7 and aimed at promoting a greener world, both in everyday life and in production. He notes that we all see that the lines between video and lighting are blurring, but that LEDs are really now a third element altogether. “The boundaries between these three disciplines continue to blur,” he says, “probably tending to favor LED, but only when the new products actually deliver the promise in terms of brightness and clarity.”

Justin Collie was the performance environment designer for Mariah Carey’s 2006 The Adventures of Mimi tour, on which the lighting and video system was by Control Freak Systems

Fisher's biggest concern is not the technology, but the policies. He notes that in Europe, changes happening in health and safety restrictions, combined with concern for the environment, are changing the face of production, the scale of shows, and how they're toured, from how he once knew it. “There are both creative and administrative changes in this,” he says. “Safety will force a degree of planning which will be a huge change for many in the business — as well as a degree of providing much more information in advance. What seems to happen with a lot of businesses is that the cost of entry slowly goes up, because even though, for technical reasons, it becomes easier, it ends up becoming more expensive. This is going to make it more difficult for unqualified people to get started in the business. More qualifications require more certifications even at the ground level.”

Fisher envisions more rigorous certifications for actual hardware for safety purposes such as rigging, which he notes he would never contest, but there is another change that doesn't sit so well with the designer. “The idea of a 16-year-old with some problems who leaves home and finds his place in a lighting company, only later to become a great designer — that part will change, and it's a shame,” he says. “Most of the people I've worked with through the years — well, we were all absolutely unemployable in our teens!” He adds that the industry doesn't seem like it's as welcoming to those who aren't academically backed or certified in some way. “I already see it being eroded, which is a shame,” he says. “It's becoming homogenized and made like it's all going into banking. What we do is simple. It shouldn't be made to be difficult to get into.”