Kelly Clarkson
2005
Products: Versa TUBE

For premier American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson's current Breakaway tour, production manager/FOH engineer Doug Nightwine was looking to add more modern elements to her show. Earlier this year, Clarkson had toured theatres, and her management wanted a bigger and better production for arenas. Yet at the same time, they were concerned with the new show looking too slick - they still wanted it to have a softer, organic, feminine aspect. The previous show had not included any video elements, and Nightwine felt Element Labs' Versa TUBE or TILE units would be a perfect fit.

So he called on his former Joe Satriani colleague, Chris Varrin. "He remembered how much bang-for-the-buck I got of those lighting rigs and wanted the same deal for Kelly, but that would also be unique and on the cutting edge," Varrin explains.

Varrin signed on as lighting/production designer and after a couple of weeks of discussion and budget increases (yes, increases, not decreases!), the design was fleshed out, incorporating 120 Versa TUBEs into nine panels (either 4' or 8' long by 2' high). PRG is supplying the whole lighting rig, including the Versa TUBEs. The units were positioned in a broad arc from far downstage right, across the stage, and back to far downstage left. The staggered ends make them look like a single discontinuous band of tubes.

"The unique capability of the Versa DRIVE to individually map the video content to each pixel in the system made it easy for the video to appear normal, even though all of the fixtures were randomly staggered," Varrin explains. "To supply video to the Versa TUBEs, we used Element Labs' new media server software, Versatility II."

Completely redesigned from scratch, this show marks the software's debut appearance. "It worked great," Varrin says. "It has the unique ability to use stored video clips, two internal color gradient generators, and three external video sources, so we could use custom-made video clips, interesting color and gradient patterns created live, or video from the Mbox that was being used with the high-resolution screens. That was really cool and made dealing with the TUBE's content fast and easy.

"Also, the 1,000 nit (cd/m2) output of the TUBEs was really great because this show has a lot of very fun, upbeat, bright cues, and the TUBEs were able to cut through the lighting and really pop, Varrin concludes. "Yet at the same time, they could be very soft and organic when necessary. They added a whole new layer to the show.