Maroon 5 is tearing up the pop music and concert scene, now with a fourth studio album, Overexposed, and an arena tour designed by production designer and creative director Demfis Fyssicopulos to support that effort. Check out the full image gallery here.
Fyssicopulos notes that his driving force in designing new projects it to always try to be innovative and progressive. “I am very much antiestablishment,” he says. “I believe in forward-thinking. The currently used standards are boring, old, and anyone can do them. This band is fresh, innovative, and red hot, and the goal was to provide them with a production that had the same qualities.”
With that in mind, Fyssicopulos went for clean lines and what he refers to as “architectural Zen,” noting that every element in the design has a specific purpose. “There are no elements that were just thrown into the mix without a reason,” he says. “No elements in the show are a salesperson’s agenda or copied and pasted from another show. [Lead singer] Adam Levine and I bounce ideas off of each other almost daily. It has been such a rewarding experience seeing everything come to life.”
The production is based around two stages, built by Tait: an A stage that is shaped in an M, the band’s logo, and a 16'x16' B stage that sits 38' away. The main deck for the A stage is 5' high, while the V section of the M logo is an apron at 4' high. “Drums and keyboards sit on a two-level band riser that fits in between the two peaks of the M,” says Fyssicopulos, adding that the stage is surfaced with high-gloss Harlequin flooring. “For the M, we used white, and for the negative spaces we used black. This not only gives it an ultra-sleek look, but also what I needed for the floor projection-mapping. The entire outline of the M is traced with LED ‘pucks’ [Galaxia Electronics A-Deco 9dots] that are then tied into Control Freak Systems servers. The band riser fascia is covered in VER 10mm LED wallpaper.”
Upstage of the A stage are three LED WinVision walls that make one larger screen. The center screen is approximately 32'x30', and each wing is 24'x30'. Each of the screens is then made of 8'x30' columns that track and rotate individually to create various configurations. Behind the screens is a wall of 144 Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures that Fyssicopulos says can be “revealed in sections or in all its glory, depending on the rotation of the panels. To reveal the band, there is a double sniffer and kabuki holding two white silk panels. During the intro of the show, we project content onto it that then transforms into the content on the screen as the silks are being whisked away.” The B stage is accessed via a 45' bridge, also built by Tait, that Fyssicopulos calls “a magnificent architectural piece,” that flies in during the third section of the show via Tait’s Navigator Control System. All staging features Tait’s patented MAG Deck system.
Fyssicopulos describes his design process, noting that “once the theme of each song is decided, we choose the color scheme of the video, which then dictates the lighting and laser colors,” he says. “Video is a very complex element of the show, and we have a plethora of surfaces.”
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n addition to the main LED screen, LED pucks, and the band riser fascia, these surfaces extend to include using the floor and soft goods for projection mapping, additional VER 10mm LED wallpaper on the drum kit and keyboards, as well as a custom-designed LED mic stand for Levine and LED guitar for James Valentine, both created by VER. “These elements were very important to the groundbreaking philosophy of the show,” Fyssicopulos notes. “The VER team was invaluable for the production.”
Content is played back via Green Hippo Hippotizer HD dual output servers, with signal routing, Barco Encore control, and audio reactive content done by Control Freak Systems. Control Freak Systems’ team for the production—“the geniuses behind the mammoth video system,” as Fyssicopulos calls Ryan Middlemiss, George Toledo, and Stuart White—developed audio reactive servers and custom solutions for LED surface management, essential since the show has songs that are entirely driven by that setup.
Chaos Visual Productions provided a video crew and equipment, including the two WinVision 9mm LED screens and the center screen of WinVision 12mm tiles, as well as the custom Galaxia LEDs that surround the stage. The company also supplied a Grass Valley Kayak 1.5 ME video switcher, four Sony HD Camera HXC 100 HD PPUs, four Green Hippo HD media servers, 10 Barco FLM-R22+ projectors, and eight Folsom Image Pro units. Infect Productions’ Roger Staub created the video content, with the video programming done by Kevin Cauley. Fyssicopulos calls the team at Chaos “one of the best video crews I have ever worked with.”
Fyssicopulos’ lighting rig includes three types of fixtures. “All hard-edge units are Martin Vipers, and all washes are [Philips Vari-Lite] VL3500 FX,” the designer says. “The wall of 144 Sharpys sits upstage of the rotating LED screens. VER was very kind and lent us some Solaris Flare LED strobes to test, which I have fallen in love with.” Upstaging supplied the lighting system, which Fyssicopulos calls “flawless.” Brian Jenkins is the tour’s lighting director and lighting programmer. “During the shows, Brian also runs all the video from the lighting console and calls all of the automation cues, confetti, and followspots,” says Fyssicopulos. “Brian is a key element to the production.”
Overall control is via two MA Lighting grandMA 2 consoles, with one for backup, with lighting and video controlled from the lighting console. “We did a week of preprogramming at A.C.T Lighting in Los Angeles,” says Fyssicopulos. “During preprogramming, we used Control Freak Systems’ Freakulizer to visualize the video in all of the surfaces. The product is incredible. Stuart built the model from my Vectorworks drawings and applied all of the LED and projection surfaces. We were then able to preprogram the video realtime.”
MA Lighting grandMA 3D was used for lighting previsualization. “We also did some preprogramming of lasers with the help of the great people at Pyrotek, who provided state-of-the-art lasers along with the confetti cannons,” says Fyssicopulos. “Eric Taylor worked very hard programming the lasers as I had intended. He understood the school of ‘everything has a purpose, and all elements must have a reason to exist’ from the very beginning. He color-corrected every single laser in every song to match lighting and video perfectly. For the end of the show, Eric was able to achieve gold lasers! His programming and execution was impeccable.”
Motion control for the tour is required for several elements, including the video screen rotators and the bridge, handled via Tait’s Navigator Control System. In addition to building the set and staging, Tait also created a custom bike-rail style barricade, custom bumpers and side alignment brackets for alignment of the screen elements, and the Navigator-controlled Kabuki and sniffers. Mirror balls of various sizes, from 2' to 7' diameter, run on Upstaging Speedwire. “The product that Tait built was simply perfect, and I don't use that word very often,” says the designer.
Brian Levine, senior project manager from Tait, worked on the build for Fyssicopulos’ design. “The bridge was designed to span over the audience to take the performer to the B stage,” Levine says. “It was built with operational savings in mind; it packs into three small carts, and it has removable sections to change the length for different venues. It’s hung from our variable speed chain hoists run from Navigator. The trolleys and rotators for the screens give the show a unique look utilizing stock components. Demfis is able to create many different looks with the ability to track and rotate all 10 columns of video individually driven from the Navigator automation system.”
In the end, the many, many stage elements for Maroon 5 aim to become a cohesive whole. “There are songs where lighting complements the video, songs where lighting supports the lasers, songs where lighting is the driving force, and songs where the lasers are the feature,” says Fyssicopulos. “The one rule is to keep it sexy.”
The Overexposed Tour plays throughout North America until April and heads to Europe in June. Alan Hornal is the tour’s production manger.
