The challenge for Patrick Woodroffe in designing The Police Reunion Tour this summer was to reference the band's past, without sinking into nostalgia. “The tour was about the reality of them standing on the same stage together after all these years,” he says. Woodroffe purposely mimicked the simplicity of the band's early shows, explaining, “We used a lot of white light to suggest those PAR can rigs of the 70s and 80s,” but opted for saturated, bold colors to create the simple and energetic esthetic the band asked for. “It used to be that there was just one kind of moving light or fixture, nowadays, designers are spoiled for choice,” says Woodroffe, whose equipment list includes Coemar Infinity Wash, Robe Color Spot 2500s, Martin Mac Wash, Profiles and strobes, and Little-Big 3.5s.

For The Police Reunion Tour, the video system is high definition to accommodate the filming of a live DVD of the tour, and give fans a close look at the band after all these years. Though Velo Virkhaus created some custom content for the production, much of the video is a live feed

The stage, custom built by Tait Towers, is an oval shape, with Mac 250s around the front to both reflect a VersaTube® mock “proscenium” and provide some audience lighting, with the lighting truss mirroring the oval, “To make the whole thing look bespoke,” says Woodroffe.

The lighting vendor is Upstaging, and they also provided technical and logistics support, including trucking, networking and designing the 70'×40' oval truss fabricated by Tomcat. Woodroffe and lighting director Danny Nolan also used Upstaging's new 140,000-sq-ft facility for preproduction programming.

The stage design incorporates five giant video screens, six Zip lifts from Tait Towers and a “fringe” above the stage of 250 2m Element Labs VersaTubes ringing the front half of the truss and defining the shape of the oval. Dubbed the “Versa truss,” at various times paint strokes and digital symbols from Police album artwork, a water ripple effect, and individual bars or groups of bars are illuminated to emphasize drum or bass riffs. Woodroffe says, “That's what made the set modern. It gave it a very contemporary feel, which was important.”

For indoor shows the video screens float above the stage, outside two of them drop down to act as a backdrop, showing live video of the band run by Screenworks' video director Kevin Williams, and images created Jim Gable, founder of Graying and Balding, and Vello Virkhaus, CEO of V Squared Labs, Inc. Woodroffe says, “I didn't want a video show — it can be distracting — but people are many yards from the stage and they want to see what the band looks like now. I think we got the balance right.” Williams agrees, “We tried to keep a club feel, with not too many visual distractions. It is all about the band.” Williams captures live video using seven Sony HDC 1000 high definition cameras, and three robotic cameras, and depending on the musical cues or band position he can show individual band members on different screens or a “blended” shot of the whole band. Danny O'Bryan, vice president of Screenworks, designed the video system and specified slightly upgraded, high definition, cameras for the show knowing that Jim Gable and Ann Kim of Graying and Balding would be making a DVD of the show later on in the tour.

Patrick Woodroffe wanted to reference the simplicity of the early 80s without being nostalgic on the tour, so he employed a lot of white light but also included bold saturated colors.

Gable says this was a much better choice than bringing in new people to shoot live footage who have never seen the show before, or having the existing crew switch to high definition cameras they were unfamiliar with to shoot the footage. The video element is introduced during the second song of the set, “Synchronicity,” when vibrant paint strokes created by Vello Virkhaus and inspired by the album cover play over the VersaTubes and then live images of the band appear. Gable says, “The goal was to just tease the audience with these iconic images from Police history without taking away from the live show.”