On Wednesday, November 15, The Las Vegas Grand Prix, along with presenting partner the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, hosted a first of its kind opening ceremony for the inaugural Formula 1 Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023. The dazzling opening ceremony kicked off the Grand Prix weekend with spectacular performances by a range of musical artists, including performances by Andra Day, Bishop Briggs, J Balvin, Journey, Keith Urban, Steve Aoki, Thirty Seconds to Mars, will.i.am, Tiesto, Kylie Minogue, and John Legend, plus Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil. All 20 participating F1 drivers in town for the Grand Prix were also in attendance for grand introductions.
With the starting grid transformed into an awe-inspiring visual spectacle, dancers and artists performed atop seven high-tech mobile stages covered in LED screens with built-in lifts and onboard automated lighting. The stages were all battery-powered and self-propelled. The show was also complemented by a dazzling light show with spanning the length of the starting grid with over 700 automated lights, lasers, fireworks, and a curated drone show to complement the glittering backdrop of the Las Vegas Strip and iconic skyline.
To bring the massive opening ceremony to life, the Las Vegas Grand Prix tapped entertainment visionary Brian Burke of Brian Burke Creative as Executive Producer and Show Creator, along with the award-winning design firm, STUFISH Entertainment Architects, and Emmy-nominated Lighting Designer Tom Sutherland of DX7 Design. The talented trio have been behind 20 years of groundbreaking Las Vegas spectacles, international music tours, and global television events, so it was no surprise that they were tasked with creating the dynamic state-of-the-art opening production for Formula One.
PLSN spoke with both Sutherland and Ray Winkler, CEO and Design Director of STUFISH after the event to learn more about their design work in support of this massive and unique event that truly captured the essence of ‘Only in Las Vegas.’
LIGHTING DESIGN
Tom Sutherland, Principal of DX7 Design
Tell us about the collaboration between yourself and the creative team for the Formula 1 opening ceremony. There’s never been an opening ceremony for an F1 race previously.
The Show Director / Executive Producer for the Formula 1 opening ceremony is a good friend of mine, Brian Burke. We worked together some 10 years ago after meeting on Britain’s Got Talent when we were both in London. We’ve worked closely since then on few projects. Brian is now Las Vegas-based and has done many shows on the Strip. F1 approached him to head this up and then he brought me in during the early days of putting this together. Then STUFISH started working with us on developing the Mobile Scenic Unit (MSU) trucks. From there the team grew as Brian bought on the team of producers that included [the producer duo] Nappytabs, who have done many Vegas shows, and eighteentwentysix as the production company to help pull everything together and facilitate everything. So, as the creative team, we were all tasked with everything entertainment-wise that was along the length of the paddock building and on the track.
With so many performance elements, spread out along the length of the paddock, on the track, talk about how you approached your lighting design for the opening ceremony. It must have been a bit daunting.
It was certainly one of the biggest designs I’ve ever put together; it stretched 1,000’ long. It was a tricky one at first because none of us quite knew—when we were in the initial design stages—what the show would be or what it would become. So, it just needed to be a lighting rig that I knew could cater for anything that was came our way. It also needed to be something with enough power and punch to stand up to the city of Las Vegas that was the backdrop behind it.
When we were first asked to do the job, we did a site survey in Las Vegas and looked at the paddock. We were like, ‘where will we hang our lights? There’s nothing here.’ So, they re-engineered the building and added lighting rails for us. That is how we were able to have lights along the whole length of the F1 paddock building. The paddock acted as our main backdrop for the design, the two runs of lights along the building. We also worked closely with Ray [Winkler] and the team from STUFISH, who designed the MSUs, to integrate lighting into those as well. It let us add a bit of punch coming through the video screens that were on all sides of those scenic stage units. Then, the final element was the key lights. It was a really difficult thing to key light because there’s the racetrack truss lighting, which is a specific height that’s set by the FIA, the governing body Formula One that has to have all of the track lights on it. So, we were pretty much locked into using that position for key lights, and then the building was the other lighting position. All those factors and consideration were built in as we developed the design.
What were your key equipment choices?
The [GLP] JDC1 strobes were the units that I knew would give us the punch we needed and help show off the geography of the building. They could compete with the millions of lights going on in the city behind us. Then we had [Claypaky] Mythos 2 that ran the length of the building. Then the [Vari-Lite] VL3600s provided the gobo texture that did all the track. The VL3600s also double up as our key lights and backlights as well. On the top of the MSUs we put Solaris Flare LRs and Mythos 2s, which created all the tower beams that rose up. Inside the MSUs, we had more VL3600s that could shoot through the blow through video panels. We ran everything on [MA Lighting] grandMA consoles.
Talk about the details of some of the challenges of the design, and how did you solve them?
Working outdoors and generally dealing with the elements was certainly a challenge. We had to figure out how we could make haze and smoke work along a stretch of 1,000’ of track that’s in a wind tunnel, basically. It took quite a few days of tactical hazing in rehearsals to make sure that we had the 40 haze machines in the right positions and covered ourselves for different wind directions. That was a big challenge we overcame.
There was also the challenge of the racetrack lighting positions that I mentioned are regulated. However, they blocked the best key light angles. In television, as a rule, you try to get a key light of 22°, but the racetrack truss blocked anything from that angle. So, we had to figure out how we would get key light in at different angles for all of the action happening on the MSUs and on the track. We had two runs of GLP X4s—about 130—that were placed out along the length of the track. Those lights had to be collected in every night because there were cars testing and race practices happening. There were many elements, all developed as we were going along, and challenges that we addressed and solved as we found them out, this being the first time for all of this being done.
How was the support of the lighting and scenic vendor, PRG?
It was good that PRG was the vendor because they are just down the road in Vegas, so everything was built there. All of the MSU trucks were assembled there, and we had about two weeks of rehearsals at PRG Las Vegas with all the trucks. It let us check out things, figure out the lift timings in the MSUs. Then, since they’re all battery-powered and self-propelled, we had a big old truck parade proceeding across the city to get them on site. The PRG Account Executive was Travis Snyder headed up everything and was great in working with us as we figured it all out. [Gaffer] Alen Sisul, was my Crew Chief who came in and worked closely with PRG. He knows the lay of the land there very well, which made things easier. There were so many elements within this whole project, that it was handy having a company like PRG who could pull all of those elements together.
Who were some of your key lighting personnel for this project?
As I said, Alen Sisul was my Crew Chief. Then there were three Lighting Directors/Programmers on the team—Brian Jenkins looked after all of the effects lighting; Bobby Grey took control of all of the trucks, and everything inside them, and all of the LED tape that ran in them; and Ryan Tanker looked after the key lights. From my DX7 team, Associate Lighting Designer / Lighting Director James Coldicott helped me pull it all together. And I had Jasmine Lesane, Hunter Selby, and Nate Files. Harry Foster was a Lighting Director for the project.
How does it feel to be the Lighting Designer for the first opening ceremony for Formula 1?
It’s pretty great. When the call came in, we had F1 asking us to do a show that would not only showcase Formula 1 and the F1 drivers, but also the city of Las Vegas. It would be 1,000’ long and the glittering city was to be our backdrop for the Ceremony. It was one of those things where you go, ‘this is pretty cool!’ I think that just the sheer scale of it was something that I hadn’t really done before and to be a part of that team was pretty incredible.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Ray Winkler, STUFISH Entertainment Architects
Tell us about the design work STUFISH brought to the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix wanted to stage something that they’ve never done before, an opening ceremony. Brian Burke, the Creative Director, with whom I’ve worked on a number of projects, asked me to join a meeting about the project. The more I listened, the more I was very intrigued and attracted to the challenges. It reminded me a little bit of the Super Bowl Halftime Show challenges that we’ve faced, where you basically have an incredibly tight time slot and a really, really strict field of play, in which you try to cram in as much as you possibly you can, and then get the hell out of there as quickly as we can without damaging the surface or else all hell will break out. So, we came on board and had a great time working with the creative team and the production team coming up with crazy ideas that were fit for a Las Vegas opening ceremony.
It eventually gelled down to a very strong idea that responded primarily to this ridiculously long but narrow field of play; create multiple stages that could spread out very efficiently over the immense distance. You basically have four football pitches wide of a performance area, but it’s only like 40’ deep, which is difficult from a live audience perspective as well as a TV perspective. It’s incredibly strung out and we couldn’t build one big, colossal stage, which we would never get in and out in time anyway. We ended up with the seven stages that had LED panels clad all around each, and Tom’s beautiful lighting integrated within the volume of the cube itself as well as outside on top. Plus there was the long backdrop of the paddock and pit area. By and large, I think we nailed the concept pretty early on and just rolled with it.
What were some of the production needs the stages needed to address?
Turnaround speed was probably the most pressing one. The thing to keep in mind is that we also were using it for the closing ceremony. Whereas the opening ceremony was conveniently put days before the actual race, we were using three of the seven stage units for the closing ceremony as well, basically for the trophies. We had only 14 minutes to get from our parking lot, which was off site, onto the track and into position, and everything working for the closing. When you have those sorts of constraints, you really have to focus your attention.
The creative ambitions and the practical realization need to really tightly overlap, or else you’ll have disaster on both ends, meaning the creative will suffer or the practical implementation will be impossible. That’s what we all stayed focused on. That was really the challenge—how to make this look big and exciting and worthy of the artists that we had for the opening, and also worthy of the winners of the race for the closing ceremony, but still be able to get out of there really quickly.
Tell us a bit more about the design of the Mobile Stage Units (MSUs)?
The MSU was all battery-powered, and self-propelled. Frederic Opsomer and John Saltonstall of PRG were amazing in implementing our vision into something that in the end was foolproof. I had made the statement from the very onset that I thought it was the moral ambition of trying to do something as green as possible, and therefore, the use of batteries was high up on my agenda. We had talked about different vehicles that could be retrofitted to make it work, but in the end, the idea of having a battery-operated system had great advantages and it was quiet. It wasn’t polluting, for the environment, but also for the people inside the units, and the technology has advanced to the point where it’s actually very reliable. We did design in a tow hitch if everything fails and we have to tow it off the track, but we never had to do that. With the engineering prowess that PRG brought to the table, we managed to converge exactly those practical considerations and overlap it very tightly with the creative decisions. It’s a really good team at PRG.
Space was a major challenge, and weight. You have to run a certain amount of redundancy in the batteries, which means the batteries need to take up a certain volume. On top of that, they have to power the video, lights, and lifts, as well as propel the units. So, once you put all of that in there, there was no room really to swing the proverbial cat. It was really tight. We had four units that had two lifts built-in and three units that had one lift each. And of course, what we all know, and everybody always strives towards, is to make them as safe as possible. In an environment in which so many things overlap you have to think about the safety of everyone inside and on top. We are all remarkably proud of the mobile stages. The greatest part of the whole thing was the parade of the seven self-propelled MSUs driving from the PRG shop to the track through the Las Vegas traffic, it was great fun!
Talk about working with LD Tom Sutherland on incorporating lighting into the MSUs and using the INFiLED Titan-X blow through LED panels to let his lights shine through at times.
I think Tom was very instrumental in defining the parameters that he needed to really make these things come alive. There can be a lazy tendency to rely heavily on video these days, but the real skill that Tom brings into the mix is balancing the screen content with the lighting needs, so that you can have powerful moments in which there is no screen content, but we’re still in the absence of complete bland darkness. With the lights pumping through, or the strobes pulsating, he created that excitement. It visually worked really well. Having the set and lighting be in perfect harmony is the marriage made in heaven. I think in the end it was a great result.
I am sure many people at STUFISH were involved in this project, any other key people you would like to mention?
Yes, a lot of people with STUFISH worked very hard on this, and they were all great. Also a big shout-out to the Stage Management team and to Michael Anderson, who was the Technical Director, and to Michael Curry, because without them, this wouldn’t have happened. You can have the greatest creative idea in the world but we can only be as good as the people around us and the entire team on this project let us create an amazing result.
How would you sum up working on the opening ceremony for the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix?
It was a perfect storm of teamwork of like-minded creatives that all carried their weight. We all had an ambition, and a vision, to deliver the best thing that we could for this show, and I think we achieved that. It was a great testimony to how joyful it is to work with people that you can trust, who are creative, and who are problem-solvers. In the end, teamwork trumps everything and hopefully, we can come back and do something even greater next year. It was a real honor for us at STUFISH to be even a small part of this unique sporting event.