Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
The 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, hosted by Nicki Minaj, were held at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ on Sept. 12, 2023. The show’s design and production teams really created a wide variety of unique looks for this year’s edition of the MTV awards show which debuted back in 1984. PLSN spoke with both Production Designer Matt Steinbrenner and Lighting Designer Tom Sutherland about the creative and technical solutions they and their teams brought to this year’s VMAs.
Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
Matt Steinbrenner
Production Designer
Having worked on the MTV Music Awards (VMAs) since 2010, this was Steinbrenner’s first year as Production Designer for the VMAs. Starting out as an Assistant Art Director and working his way up to Supervising Art Director and now Production Designer, his experience and his wealth of creativity is evident in the stunning design of this year’s VMAs. Steinbrenner, Principal of Denver, CO-based SteinDesign spoke with PLSN about this year’s dynamic design that included two performance areas at either end of Newark, NJ’s Prudential Center arena.
There were a lot of performance components for the production design and art department to handle for a broadcast of this scale and magnitude. Steinbrenner explained his approach to the production design, saying, “Knowing that we go into these shows with a large ambition for what we want to be able to accommodate with the performances, we really focus on that in the early design phase. Making sure that the performance stages are robust in terms of how much video and lighting capability that they have. Giving them a nice scale so that we have plenty of space for scenic pieces and for the large numbers of dancers, but also having large video canvases as the backdrop. But in addition to all of that, we also think through how much backstage space we need, ramp access, etc.—what the show needs from a technical standpoint. We take all of that into account. This year that was particularly necessary because we had 16 live performances in the room. Almost all of which had special effects or some type of additional production value beyond the base VMA stage as the backdrop. Our prior planning allowed us to be able to actually facilitate all the needs of the various artists.”
Design Motif
There were a number of different visual elements in the production design to support the performances and the awards presentations throughout the evening yet maintain a coherent look to the event. “One thing that we really tried to do this year was give the entire room an aesthetic and an attitude that could translate in various ways into the set and into the lighting rig design,” explains Steinbrenner. “That spanned from the two performance stages that were anchoring the room on either end of the arena, all the way into the awards area where we had our iconic Moon Person helmet set piece. In looking at the room as a whole—we tried to create a design language that we could use to guide ourselves as we were designing the various elements in the room. So that the whole thing had a cohesive look and feel and gave us a lot of layers and texture to play with. What I did early on was think through a design motif that would allow that flexibility. It dawned on me that I could use the idea of audio waves as a very base level concept that could be translated in a number of different ways. By taking that core simple idea, it really helped to guide the whole design.”
Steinbrenner points towards the Moon Person helmet as an example. He quite successfully put his own spin on it. “That’s obviously a huge icon of the VMAs, and it’s been used many times in previous VMA designs. The challenge this year was not only including that piece of iconography, but also giving it a new attitude and a new look that was unique to this year. Going back to the idea of audio waves and how those might affect a space, the idea that I came up with was, ‘Okay, let’s take this helmet and imagine that sound waves could be so intense that they would etch into and carve out a new image on the surfaces of the Moon Person.’ That’s what really brought about all the horizontal striations that wrapped around the form and sliced through it in a kind of interesting way. Then that gave us the chance on the visor, which was all mirrored in chrome, to create banding that had open space in between. It was formed in such a way that it looked like equalizer bars, kind of harkening back to the idea of the audio waves whipping through the space. So, by just crafting those audio waves in a unique way, we were able to create a portal for all the presenters to walk out through. We backed that entire element by a very tall, inclusive LED wall in the back, which let us have imagery show through the open spaces of the visor. It was a nice way to give a bit of mystery as to ‘what is the Moon Person? What’s inside of that head?’ And it gave us a way to incorporate graphics with this interesting audio texture in front of it. That was, I think, my favorite piece in the set.”
The art department team continued the audio waves concept by tying the room together with a large header of ‘audio waves’ that were made up of different video products. That created header stretched almost 200’ across the arena floor to physically and visually link the two performance stages on either end of the arena.
Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
Balancing Video and Lighting
With so much video, and changing content, in the visual design, Steinbrenner spoke about the considerations and elements that needed to be balanced in the overall design. “We really worked hard this year to strike a unique balance. The past several years on the VMAs, we’ve had solid backing video walls and a solid video floor. Because of the nature, of the tone, of the set this year, we used it as an opportunity to reinvent that idea. We know that the artists like to have big canvases to showcase environments for their performances. So, giving them that canvas was important, but we also knew that we wanted to make sure that the stages didn’t lose the character of the rest of the set design. It needed to feel like it was a cohesive show when you bounced around the room. What we focused on with the backing walls was they had a dip to them at the top; a beautiful, scalloped shape overall. Which was a continuation of that arching audio wave header that wrapped over the Moon Person helmet. That gave it just a little bit of whimsical movement to the shape.”
Those horizontal waves of curved set and video walls were interrupted with vertical bars of ACME Pixel Line IP lighting fixtures, which were interspersed in between video panels. “We had a large central video canvas that was uninterrupted, and then as we got further offstage, we started to introduce these Pixel Line fixtures, that Tom Sutherland, the Lighting Designer, suggested. They were really effective because it carried on a vertical bar, a motif that we had started elsewhere in the set, but it also gave Tom a lot of horsepower to incorporate really punchy lighting that was integrated into the video surfaces. It felt like it was a blend of the two media.” The incorporation was very successful visually.
Having worked together on the last few VMAs, Steinbrenner and LD Sutherland have a rapport that was reflected in the cohesive design that melded all the production elements into a stunning visual performance for both the attendees in the arena and the broadcast audience. “Collaborating with Tom was great, we had so much fun,” says Steinbrenner. “Tom and I have worked together on a few different projects over the years and it is always great. Approaching this year, he really let me take the lead early on in coming up with the gestures of the set. Then we worked very closely together on making sure that the shapes of all the trusses that were outlining the set were complimentary to the shapes that were existing in the space and in the design already. He made a lot of helpful improvements, like spec’ing the Pixel Lines, for example, or other technology and particular fixtures that would give him some the tools that would be really useful as we got into the individual performances.”
Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
An LED Canvas
As a part of the base VMA production design, Steinbrenner included an LED floor, but one that was bigger than they had used in the past. The north and south LED floors consisted of ROE Visual Black Marble BM4 panels with glass tops and Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 processors. “For the LED floor, we focused on an oval shape, which gave us a nice wide performance space,” comments Steinbrenner. “One of the things that had come out of the previous year was that the shape of the stages didn’t facilitate the choreography. Especially, when there were additional scenic pieces on stage for a specific performance. So, we focused on widening and broadening the stages. Giving the dancers plenty of space to create all their different choreography moments, as well as then having space for scenic pieces. Also, this year, by not having a fully continuous LED floor that met up with the LED wall, which is what had been done in years past, we left a negative space upstage, which allowed us to work in lifts from below, special effects troughs, and various production elements that we would not have been able to accommodate if we had that solid video floor right to the wall. We found that a lot of the scenic pieces that we typically design and build for the performances usually cover the upstage portion of the floor anyhow. So, we were able to keep a nice substantial video canvas, and even got some really nice overhead shots that were almost fully video in the frame without having the full canvas of video over the whole floor. Leaving that negative space upstage worked out really well for us.”
Production Partners
To realize the design, the VMAs worked with All Access Staging & Productions to provide the staging, and additional custom elements were built by Scenic Express out of Los Angeles and Concord Creative out of Atlanta. The Moon Person helmet was built by Jet Sets in LA and Fuse Technical Group provided the video support. As well as the vendors, Steinbrenner relied on a talented team of people. “The whole team were amazing to work with; I’ve had an amazing support team that really were my backbone and support to make the show happen. Led by Kristen Merlino, the supervising art director, who is a total rockstar.” states Steinbrenner. “Truly could not have done the show without her. She really helped connect the vendors and the suppliers that we used this year. Typically, we’ve used more East Coast vendors on the show back when I was art directing it in years past. Kristen’s based in LA, so it made more sense for the art direction team to be able to go and do regular check-ins physically with the shops. Especially with the helmet, since it was such a huge endeavor.”
Steinbrenner feels that MTV and the VMA team have been huge supporters of his over the years. “They’ve been a production family over the decade plus that I’ve worked with them,” he says. “So, I personally have a very strong connection to the show. The opportunities that they have offered me have allowed me to get to this point. And, all the designers that I’ve worked with in the past, without whom I wouldn’t be where I am now. I can’t say enough how grateful I am to have had the tenure with the show that I’ve had. It’s been nothing but design forward and creative problem solving. All the things that get me excited about being a designer is what is supported by this production. It’s a real cultivator of unique and interesting design, which I really appreciate. Being the Production Designer for the first time this year was a real honor.”
Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
Tom Sutherland
Lighting Designer
This is Tom Sutherland’s fourth year as Lighting Designer for the VMAs. Sutherland, Principal of DX7 Design out of Los Angeles, upped the lighting game once again with his visually dynamic design that worked so well with all the video elements this year.
With so many performance elements, Sutherland speaks about how he and his team approached the lighting design for the VMAs. “Really, it begins with the production design,” says Sutherland. “There was a new production designer this year with Matt Steinbrenner, who’s previously been an art director on the show for many years, so he knew the lay of the land and how it worked. Matt designed basically something that was based on sound wave forms and big curves that framed this ginormous metallic Moon Person structure in the middle. So, once Matt got all of his ideas down on paper, I sat with him, and then we worked on a lighting rig that would basically help frame everything that he designed. It was a bit of a joint effort to get that there.”
With the two performance stages at either end of the arena as well as the host stage, and a lot of visual elements, there was a lot of real estate to cover from a lighting perspective. “It’s always important to me to follow the shape of the set design,” comments Sutherland. “If the set design is curved, the lighting rig has to be curved. It all has to flow into one another, and all the elements have to blend and merge. Matt had two curved stages that I followed with curved trusses from above. The screen had an arch in it, so we arched all the trusses just to blend all of that. Then we added lighting towers that were left and right of both the north and south stages, to frame them and just give us a bit more oomph of lighting power to match the video, which really worked.”
Sutherland’s design used the new ACME Pixel Line IP products, “which I was very impressed with,” he says. “We ran video through them and lighting. They were really great. Then for the host stage, we had this ginormous curved, what I was calling the ‘rollercoaster truss’, because it basically just looked like a rollercoaster. It was a bit of a feat of engineering to make that work. But we framed the entire top of the set with [Robe] MegaPointes that just followed that huge curve so we could get the geography of the shape of that curved truss.”
The lighting equipment was supplied by Solotech, and it was “mainly a Robe rig,” says Sutherland, with iFORTE and MegaPointes as my two moving light workhorses. The iFORTE was our major source of key light for everything. Then the MegaPointes lined a lot of the trusses above the stage, including the arch that framed the Moon Person and then lots of strobe fixtures, which were the CHAUVET Color STRIKE Ms, which framed and followed the curves of all the air rig of the stages. We had 26 followspots in total with five of them manual ones; the rest were Robe RoboSpots. There’s nowhere to put manual spots, because you’d have to have people directly above the crowd at both ends. With how this big, curved truss worked, there was no way we could shoot through it from spots out in the audience. So literally, we could only have manual spots on one side of the arena, and then we had to use RoboSpots. I don’t know, without the RoboSpots, how we would’ve achieved it 10 years ago. There’s no way that we could have designed a stage like this when we couldn’t get followspots where we needed them.”
Photo taken by Justin Schmalholz @lakejustin for The VMA’s and SteinDesign on 9/12/23
Balancing Lighting and Video
With so much video in the production design, Sutherland talks about the considerations from his lighting perspective of merging the two together. “Early in the process, it’s always figuring out that balance,” he explains, “so getting the video screen at the right intensity, working with the Vision controller, the shader to ensure that screens are balanced correctly, cameras are in the right settings, and we’ve got cameras where we want them so that I can have enough lighting level. It’s getting that balance first of all, which is one of the first things that we do before we start any of the music numbers or any of the performances, because we just have to get that right before we go into the fun and games of everything.”
In addition to the VMAs for the past few years, Sutherland and Steinbrenner have worked together on a number of projects. “We’ve worked together on many occasions,” says Sutherland, “so Matt and I have a good short-form language. It’s just a very collaborative process, from Matt being an art director and me being a programmer back in the day, and now he’s the production designer and I’m an LD; we’re two people who’ve grown up knowing how the process works and observing how LDs and set designers have got there. We are two very respectful people of that process, so it’s just easy. We know how everything goes together. Matt’s a pure joy to work with.”
Solutions and Support
One of the big challenges for the whole design team was the weight limits in the Prudential Center arena. “Everything is just designed in that arena to be at one end,” says Sutherland. “But when you’re at both ends—and in the middle—you’re really pushing the weight capacity of it. So, that took a lot of back and forth with the Head Rigger, Brian Lolly from Kish Rigging. We had to figure out what could be ground-supported. We had to figure out how we’d get around all those elements so that I had enough for the lighting rig. Matt had enough for the set design; then we kept enough in the bank as well for all of the scenic adds for the performances that arrive literally a month before the show. So, we have to guesstimate what band adds are going to be and what acts are going to want to fly and rig, and all of that kind of thing.”
At this year’s VMAs there were 16 performances, most of which are only booked close to the show, so it’s a race for the design teams to deal with requests from the band’s creative teams. Sutherland speaks about collaborating with those outside creative teams to support the various performers. “It’s all very last minute,” he says. “By the time we find out who’s booked, it’s about a month beforehand. We get the main design done in advance. We were done by May then had a bit of a lull until we found out who all of the acts were. We then get 16 different creative teams, 16 different creatives, all to manage and draw up their plots, design their set pieces, figure out how we’re going to fly them, how we’re going to store them, how we’re going to get on and off on stage, how we’re going to budget them. All these things happen for 16 acts in the space of a month. That’s the tough part.”
While it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint a favorite performance, Sutherland does have three satisfying moments from this year’s VMAs. “I think Doja Cat’s performance was incredibly theatrical; very simple, but very stunning, from our point of view,” says the designer. “I think Nicki Minaj’s was very lighting and smoke-based, that turned out very well. And then Shakira’s Vanguard Award performance I really loved as well. That was striking; 10-minutes showcasing her career across all three stages. It just turned out really well.”
Sutherland enjoys working on the VMAs and hope that people notice the structure of his design. Also, he looks forward to what’s next. “I always like to think our designs are very clean,” he comments. “I like to layer rather than just having everything on and things attacking. I like structure. So, I like to hope that people notice that about our work, that there’s a lot of thought that goes into it, and a lot of structure and a lot of storytelling. It’s the one show that every year gets bigger and bigger. MTV is the one network that always lets you push the boundaries slightly more than any other of the award shows. So, who knows what we’ll get up to next year!”
PRODUCTION TEAM
- Production Designer: Matt Steinbrenner/SteinDesign
- Lighting Designer: Tom Sutherland/DX7 Design
- Supervising Art Director: Kristen Merlino
- Performance Art Directors: John Zuiker, Ellen Jaworski
- Assistant Art Director: Lex Gernon
- Art Director: Gloria Lamb
- Lighting Directors: Hunter Selby, James Coldicott, Jasmine Lesane, Jay Koch
- Lighting Programmers: Brian Jenkins, Eric Marchwinski, Tom Young
- Gaffer: Alen Sisul
- System Tech: John Cox
- Lead Best Boys: Dennis Sisul, Chris Moeller
- Best Boys: Damon Isaacks, Bobby Tacoma, Eric Greenlund, Keith Meola
- Lighting Techs: Oscar Quintero, Nicolas Tanguay, Gerardo Vizcarra
- Lighting Project Managers: Harry Forster, Dave Evans
- Lead LED Engineer: Michael Moxon
- LED Engineers: Tom Armbruster, Jhon Cardona, Russell Eia, Chad McClymonds, Wyatt Oosterhof, Rod Silhanek
- Video Project Manager: Chris Peterson
- PixMob Programmer: Stefan Zubovic
- PixMob Project Managers: Shannel Côté-Sickman, Stéphanie Morin-Leblanc, Hila Aviran
- Laser Programmers: Colin Clarke, Garrett Gosting
- Laser Tech: Nathaniel Aldana
- Laser Project Manager: Katy Brickman
VENDORS
- Lighting: Solotech/Harry Forster
- Video: Fuse Technical Group/Chris Peterson
- LED Wristbands: Pixmob
- Lasers: ER Productions
GEAR
Lighting
- 202 Robe MegaPointe
- 151 Robe iFORTE
- 70 Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash
- 68 Claypaky Mythos 2
- 4 Claypaky Sharpy Wash 330
- 220 ACME Pixel Line IP
- 84 CHAUVET Color STRIKE M
- 159 CHAUVET STRIKE Array 2
- 9 CHAUVET Ovation E-910FC IP 26°
- 58 Solaris Flare Q+
- 28 Elation SixBar 1000 IP
- 6 Elation SixBar 500
- 12 Robe BMFL FollowSpot
- 6 Robe BMFL FollowSpot LT
- 5 Strong Gladiator IV Followspots
Video
- 672 ROE Visual CB3 LED Tile
- 34 ROE Visual CB3 LED Half Tile
- 71 ROE Visual Linx 9mm LED Tile
- 32 ROE Visual Vanish 8 T LED Tile
- 2 ROE Visual Evision HD102 LED Processor
- 632 ROE Visual BM4 Floor with Glass Top
- 440 Fuse Strip P10.4mm LED Strip, 1m
- 39 Fuse Strip P10.4mm LED Strip, 0.5m
- 29 Fuse Strip Round Dark Diffuser .5M
- 40 Fuse Strip Small Round Dark Diffuser 1M
- 10 Fuse Strip Small Round Dark Diffuser .5M
- 26 Brompton Tessera SX40 Processor
- 40 Brompton XD 10G Fiber Data Distribution Unit
- 134 Martin Fatron 20 1000
- 124 Martin Fatron 20 Narrow Lens Array
- 6 Martin P3 PowerPort 1500
- 2 Martin P3-150 Controller
