Dutch producer/electronic musician San Holo’s Existential Dance Music tour is in support of the eclectic artist’s third album of the same name. Existential Dance Music, his biggest tour to date, began in Spokane, WA and has included performances at LA’s KIA Forum, San Jose’s Civic Center, and the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado along the way as it continues into 2024. The creative team for the tour, which contains “a mix of new music and re-imagined San Holo classics—a journey through the lows and highs of life,” includes Tour & Production Manager, as well as VJ, Jeff Meuzelaar; Lighting and Set Designer Kyle Kegan; and Visual Effects Specialist and Notch Programmer Drew Mercadante.
Kegan, who worked very closely with the artist from the beginning of this project notes, “This allowed us to create the concept that was driven by San’s new album, Existential Dance Music, a play on the EDM acronym. As San is forging his own path in the electronic music industry, we wanted to try something new, and this collaboration really helped to drive the overall creative development.” He adds, “We always start with the artist’s vision no matter how big or small. Finding inspiration in every little detail they are willing to share. In this case, San, and his Creative Director Thorwald van den Akker, had a basic concept of how they wanted things to look and feel. We collaborated with them to refine that vision and make it a reality.”
The Design
Meuzelaar, Partner and VP of Pinnacle Productions, also the production vendor for the tour, says, “San absolutely did give his input into what he wanted, but also entrusted the show design team to deliver. The main elements San requested were fabric usage, projection, nice riser/stands, and an overall white aesthetic.” Continuing, he explains, “Kyle and his team presented a design that had multiple projection surfaces that come in and out during the show at different times. This definitely created some challenges to work through, especially considering the range of venues we have on this tour. Some venues had rigging, some had line sets, and a lot of the venues had no rigging at all. Upon seeing the design, we ordered several fabric samples from Rose Brand for R&D. We also began experimenting with different ways to deploy the fabrics consistently across all venues.”
Kegan points out, “We worked to develop something that could scale up, and down, to fit the different sized venues and festivals into 2024. The choice for our screens and projection scrims was to create something that blended the projection and LED mediums. The use of different surfaces allowed us to create a unique softer look to the visuals that could unfold throughout the show.”
In terms of the soft goods that Kegan used in his design, the downstage Kabuki drape, measuring 40’ W x 15’ H of white Rose Brand SoftScreen material, is used for front projection. It was rigged with pulleys from downstage lighting towers that allowed it to raise it up on stage for the top of the show and then dramatically re-raised later in the set. This was used as a video surface for the intro at the top of the set. Then, for the midstage ‘sails’, Kegan used 21.5’ W x 15’ H white Rose Brand Sharkstooth scrim to catch the front projection, but also allow transparency for lighting and LED screen visuals to shine through. They were also attached to pulleys on the lighting towers as well with a solenoid Kabuki release that allowed the sails to be pulled off the stage from the side. Lastly, there was an upstage curtain made of multiple panels of Rose Brand’s crushed Voile panels that measured 10’ W x 20’ H. These were sheer curtain panels in front of the LED screen to diffuse it. Also, the crushed Voile material had a high gain to work well with the front projection.
“As we developed the visual concepts,” recalls Kegan. “We knew we wanted to push some of the creative content through a Notch workflow. Developing a unique set of visual parameters that could help set San apart from what you typically see at an electronic show. Drew [Mercadante of Supervoid] and his team were up for the challenge, and we built a great Notch workflow through all the departments to build out the visuals for this tour.”
As Kegan stated, for the Notch programming, they brought in Visual Effects Specialist Mercadante to provide the needed video integration. As a team they masterfully took NVIDIA graphics technology and real-time graphics tool, Notch to a new level for this tour. The results from the work of Mercadante, coupled with Kegan’s lighting and set design, created the right environment the artist and creative team were trying to realize. “The overall effect is almost 3D!” enthuses Mercadante. “There is an amazing amount of imagery from just two front projectors and the LED wall. It seems like a whole lot more. That’s all due to the way Kyle designed the fabric used.”
Background Replacement
Mercadante works with NVIDIA software and Notch to deal specifically with background removal, expanding on the premise of green screen chroma key technology. “Now,” describes Mercadante, “we can aim a camera at somebody and have the NVIDIA software cut the background out. For instance, San is on stage, and in the background are a bunch of lights or the LED wall. The camera frame sees all those elements. We can cut that background out of the incoming feeds. It’s a neat ‘trick,’ but the reason this is so important for what we do is it opens up an infinite number of new possibilities to manipulate content and data.”
As a further advantage the software can selectively isolate and eliminate portions or sections of the background. “Notch, as we know, is a program for creating video effects based on input imagery,” continues Mercadante. “We are applying filters to the artist or only portions of the image. From there we create compositing effects and that is where it gets really fun.”
Having the multiple layers of scrim fabric used as video surfaces worked well with the overall design as well. One layer serves as a diffusing fabric for the upstage LED wall, which consists of 162 Yes Tech 4.8mm LED panels. “This creates an illusory look and then drops about halfway through the show which makes the video wall seem a lot brighter, and more intense and direct,” notes Mercadante, and then saying, “But Notch is only half the story. Kyle, and Blake Addington, his Assistant Designer and Programmer from Voyage are really pushing the envelope. They’re definitely operating on a whole other level.”
All in the Timing
With this much information processing and handling, the show had to be run on timecode. The grandMA3 console triggers all Resolume media server cues and Notch looks via Art-Net. “A Lot of our style comes through the timecoded programming and execution,” says Kegan. “We spent a lot of time ahead of this show creating a very in-depth artistic vision to tie all the elements together; from the visual content creation to the I-Mag direction, lighting programming, and special effects.” They used Obsidian Control Systems’ Netron and Luminex GigaCore networking products for the lighting network.
Musically, San Holo triggers everything so basically everything follows him. It is electronic music after all, so he’s always performing a number of different parts of the song where he is jumping around from piano to guitar.
Key Gear Choices
San Holo’s team purchased a large amount of lighting fixtures that are used for the ground package: 24 Claypaky Mythos 2, 16 Elation Dartz 360, and 18 Elation Chorus Line 16. “We knew the layout of the fixtures we needed for this show,” comments Kegan, “to be high impact and versatile. The choice of an RGB strobe that could serve not only as a strobe but as a visual element was important. A hybrid fixture that could give us wide gobo textures and sharp hot beams. And a pixel fixture that could serve for dynamic pixel effects. In the end we worked closely with Pinnacle Productions to fine tune our design to their inventory.”
The tour’s flown US truss consisted of Robe ESPRITE and CHAUVET Rogue R2X Wash units. There are also Robe LED Beam 150s in the rig. Kegan was flexible on fixtures simply requesting spots and washes, which the folks at Pinnacle were able to source in the South Dakota market from Light This Productions. Pinnacle provided ADJ Jolt Bar FX LED pixel batten fixtures to frame out the stage with custom black diffusion acrylic to soften the overall look of the fixture. “We found this unit to hold up well in terms of performance and durability to its counterparts,” says Meuzelaar. “Kyle also wanted to make the artist’s riser very impactful and filled with lights,” he adds. “The ADJ Jolt 300 strobe has a really small form factor, and we were able to utilize 18 of these in a small but powerful footprint in the riser. We also utilized four of the larger ADJ Jolt FX Panel for lighting the artist from below via the blow through riser grate.” The entire design has 108 lighting fixtures just in the floor package, and another 25 fixtures in the flown US truss. For the larger Los Angeles show, Brown Note Productions provided additional gear.
Creative Collaboration
As Tour & Production Manager, Meuzelaar appreciated working with both Kegan and Mercadante, stating, “As a touring camp, it was an honor to have Kyle Kegan on our team. I started collaborating with Kyle from the start to help him understand San’s nuances, our team’s current history and capabilities, production budget, and gear lists that we owned or could easily source. After the initial stage designs were approved, it now became my team at Pinnacle’s job to get the gear (or substitutes) that would fit within budget. Very minor modifications were needed to the overall design concept which speaks volumes to Kyle’s experience with creating scalable designs that fit within budget.”
“I began collaborating with Drew much later in the process,” continues Meuzelaar. “He worked closely with the show design team during the pre-production of content, and during rehearsals began handing the reins over to me for operating on the road. Drew is a Swiss army knife for visual design—he rendered out 3D content, built all the Notch looks, and then jumped on the MA3 to trigger everything. He’s another guy I look up to in the industry and am grateful that I was able to learn from him on this tour.”
Though Mercadante has been steeped in the technology for some time now, the wow factor has not worn off. He and the design team got a vicarious dose of that feeling during prep rehearsals at the Pinnacle facility in Sioux Falls SD. “The craziness of the fact is that we can do this kind of work live now,” concludes Mercadante. “It’s one thing to talk about it and it seems pretty simple, but the building process, and then seeing it live is, I think, incredible!”
PRODUCTION TEAM
- TM/PM/VJ: Jeff Meuzelaar, Pinnacle Productions
- Production & Lighting Designer: Kyle Kegan, Voyage Productions
- LD, Programmer & Operator: Blake Addington
- Visual Effects Specialist/Notch Programmer: Drew Mercadante, Supervoid
- Laser Programmer: Bill Loftus
- L2: Martin Nguyen
- V2: JD Vanderwiel
- Stage Manager: Chris Bullock
- Additional Crew: Jorge Lobo, Kevin Rodriguez, Joseph Hoyla, Caden Higgens, Matt Mercadoe, Arvol Dingess, Garrett Williams
VENDORS
- Lighting & Video: Pinnacle Productions
- Lasers: Laser Monkey
- Soft Goods: Rose Brand
- Additional Equipment: Dark Moon Designs, Brown Note Productions, Light This Productions, Rock The House, Fire Up Video, Sew What?
GEAR
Lighting
- 16 Claypaky Mythos 2
- 16 Elation Dartz 360
- 18 Elation Chorus Line 16
- 9 Robe ESPRITE
- 4 Robe LED Beam 150
- 8 CHAUVET Rogue R2X Wash
- 29 ADJ Jolt Bar FX
- 8 ADJ Jolt Panel FX
- 18 ADJ Jolt 300
- 2 grandMA3 light
- 4 Obsidian Netron EN12
- 2 Luminex GigaCore 12
Video
- 162 Yes Tech 4.8mm LED Tiles
- 2 Panasonic PT-DZ21K2U Projector
- 1 BirdDog P240 PTZ Camera
- 2 BirdDog P120 PTZ Camera
- 1 Sony a7 IV Camera
Additional Gear from Brown Note Productions:
Lighting
- 20 Robe iFORTE
- 20 Robe MegaPointe
- 30 ACME Pixel Line IP
- 16 CHAUVET COLORado PXL Bar 16
Video
- 90 ROE Visual Vanish V8T LED Panel
- 2 Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 LED Processor
- 2 Brompton Technology XD 10G Data Distribution Unit
- 2 Panasonic PT-RZ31K 31K Projector
