The Rolling Stones

Upstaging had a unique challenge working with The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger covers a huge amount of real estate working the main stage, which has very wide wings and a long thrust. They needed custom lighting that reacted to proximity, and custom paneling in their LED walls for a moving light.

To track the Stones frontman in action, Follow-Me Operator Grant Hickey and Follow-Me Specialist John Weston came up with a brilliant setup, linking two systems together for the operators to see all the stage surfaces and track a very mobile band.

Mick Jagger requested the footlights on the thrust to fade up on him when he is near them and to fade out when he walks away from them. Designer Terry Cook specified Chauvet PXL Bar 16 to line the thrust. They were able to utilize a new feature in Follow-Me called “Proximity” that told the PXL Bars when they needed to bring up their intensity when Mick was tracked out on the thrust by the Follow-Me operator backstage using the target on his screen. It was amazingly easy to set up and has worked flawlessly.

We also collaborated with Nighthawk Video on a custom panel that fits in with the tiles at the top of the LED walls for a moving light to poke out. It had double DWE blinders on either side of the mover. The custom panel stays inside a cluster of the LED tiles for travel on the carts. At load-in, once the cluster of tiles is hanging like a normal LED wall load-in, the crew comes along and releases a small arm that folds down for the moving light to attach to. It is secured with a latch and then the arm folds up, locking the fixture in a 90° position. It was some very sexy CNC work that came together nicely for fast touring.

Terry Cook was receptive to new products that we thought would be amazing assets in a designer’s toolbox—one of those being the new ACME Super Dotline. Terry filled the open space above the stage with the Super Dotline. After one revision from the first design pass, things were off and running. Then for pre-viz programming in Chicago, Terry and Patrick were flying in and out, taking shifts with Lighting Director Ethan Weber as they had other projects around the globe going on at the same time. Upstaging helped arrange a quiet place downtown with a compliment of the tour’s lighting fixtures before they moved to the facility for live programming with the full rig hanging in the rehearsal space.

We pride ourselves on being able to see a design and figure out all the nuances to make loading in every day as efficient as possible. Having an in-house fabrication shop that can whip out any solution at a moment’s notice—whether making a fixture hang better or building a cart to get components around more safely—is a big asset in bringing these dynamic designs to life.