Skip to content

iHeart Radio Music Awards 2024

Share this Post:

Green Day performs. Photo courtesy John Calkins & Co.

On Monday, April 1, 2024, the iHeart Radio Music Awards 2024 took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. This is the third year the awards were at the Dolby. Also returning was the design team with Lighting Designer Allen Branton, Screens Director Bianca Moncada, and Production Designer John Calkins, along with Lighting Directors Felix Peralta and Kevin Lawson. PLSN caught up with them all to discuss this year’s design and technology solutions.

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Allen Branton

Talk about how the lighting design works with the different visual elements to support the show.

We collaborate with the set designer, who’s done this show from the beginning—John Calkins. I’ve worked with him for a long time, off and on. He brings this practical approach to it. It’s typically an architectural approach. Most scenery is, of course, but it’s an architectural approach of one kind or another. We talk when he’s coming up with ideas to pitch to the producers. He’ll ask what I think, what I like, or don’t like. We learned over time that we don’t want to sell something that he can’t make for the budget, or that I can’t light. We want to show them something we can really do. I’ll have an idea at this stage of where I want to put lights. If I will be attaching lights to scenery, or if he wants to build something where lighting is internal, or physically complimentary.

So, we have a sort of skeleton, or bones of the lighting element that’s on the bottom, right on the floor, and then the verticals, stuff connected on the trusses between the screens, and some specials here and there. I have a lot of beam lights; we’re using the [Elation] Excalibur—24 of them—for the beamy rock and roll stuff. That’s a great light for that because it presents enough to compete with all the video. It’s not so long ago that you wouldn’t try to do a lot of beam graphics with that many video screens in the background. It would just disappear, but today you can do it.

Bianca [Moncada of Darmah] does a wonderful job of designing content. It looks very organic when you watch it playback and there are all these rectangles up there. It’s like a crude puzzle, but the content is designed such that you can’t discern the shapes of the screens because she never takes any content right to the edge. It’s all organic content floating around in there. It’s kind of magical. It’s a big leap from where we started when all this video screen philosophy came in as background instead of hard scenery. When it started, people would bring in a bunch of content that they built in a studio, which was really just wallpaper. Those wallpaper looks would sit there, or during music, there would be some graphic that would be animated, but you just hit play and it played. Now, the content gets programmed with the music very intricately. I’m pleased that I lived to see it. It’s quite powerful.

So, you work closely with Bianca Moncada and her content creation team from Darmah?

Yes, we do. Darmah brought in all their own programming and processing equipment as part of their package. They’re not just bringing a playback system and plugging it into the system and trying to figure out how to get it all to behave. With Bianca and her team, we don’t have to think about it in the least. She manages the intensities based on an agreed upon level. I can’t remember the last time I said to her we thought that something was too bright, or too dark. It’s beyond that even; it’s automatic. When you work together with a team a lot, you just don’t have to talk about this stuff that much. I used to be a musician, and that’s the way all that worked when you played in an ensemble. You not only play your part, but you also listen to everyone else; everybody is listening to everyone else. So, you’ve got all these brains that are all aware of this phenomenon. So, you end up with a blend. If you can’t think like that, you’re in the wrong job. That is the way it is with Bianca and her team and me and my team.

Does that apply as well with color? Can lighting take the lead, and then video can take the lead in terms of color?

Yes. In this case, Bianca brought a lot of sketches and said ‘okay, here’s what I think the beginning point is for Green Day.’ We’ll look at it and decide which way to go. There were two or three where we decided on the fly. She didn’t like that color, or the producer didn’t like that color, or whatever, and we just changed it. On Green Day, for example, we found out that Billy Joe was going to wear a pink suit, so we did this one song with all pink lighting and screen content. We wouldn’t have thought that necessarily going in. But the equipment, and technology, is so user-friendly now and so flexible. You can decide on the fly, the minute you see it. It’s like if someone is cooking spaghetti sauce. When they taste it, and say, ‘there’s not enough salt in it.’ We can say, ‘there’s not enough pink in it.’

You mentioned things need to be right at load-in, how was the support of 4Wall for this project?

These award shows move so fast, you don’t have time to solve these problems on site. You want the thing to be ready in every way when it gets there. That’s why I use 4Wall as our vendor partner. They do a professional job. Nothing broken; nothing missing. It’s perfect. I have to tell you, in my career, I’ve spent more than half my life on gigs waiting on gear to work. With 4Wall, the doctrine and method for prepping something like this is well understood, and 4Wall makes sure it comes in working and complete. Like I said, perfect.

You mentioned the Elation Excaliburs, what were some of your other key gear choices?

For our statement along the bottom of the environment was a continuous run of [Chroma-Q] Color Force strips, which look fantastic on television. It basically creates a visual anchor to the picture because you practically see them in every shot. The lights in the overhead rig, you don’t see that much. Wide shots are very infrequent, so we don’t put a lot of energy into trying to make the overhead rig look like something. We start at the ground and build it going up so that everything we’re working with is more about the camera shots. The utilitarian lights include a lot of the Elation Picasso. It’s a really good workhorse light for us in this kind of environment. It’s bright enough for these throw distances, it’s light, and it’s cost-effective. On the vertical trusses, we used a new strip light, the ACME Pixel Line IP. I was very pleasantly surprised by those, and they look really pretty.

Jelly Roll performs. Photo courtesy John Calkins & Co.

LIGHTING DIRECTORS

Kevin Lawson & Felix Peralta

Allen mentioned some key gear choices, what would you mention?

KL: The [Elation] Artiste Picasso is just a great light. I can zoom them all the way open and light a section of the audience and I’m still going to get enough level for exposure. It’s consistent across the field, which is a godsend. The biggest thing is that we’ve gotten to the point where LED fixtures are really good and are bright enough; that’s helped the whole process a lot.

FP: From a beam fixture standpoint, the Elation Excaliburs, we’ve really grown to like them. This year we replaced other beam lights and were now up to 24 of the Excaliburs. It doesn’t take a lot of them to fill the Dolby and we were able to use them with great success. It was the first time we used the ACME Pixel Lines that gave us a nice canvas to play with; we love the electronic frost. That type of fixture really starts blurring the lines between video and lighting. We were able to dance more on the video side with our friends from Darmah and at the same time create very specific lighting accents. They look great on camera, super bright, and at low levels they rendered great and really packed a punch. We also brought back some workhorses, including Chauvet’s Rogue R2X Wash and COLOR Strike Ms.

How was 4Wall’s support for your lighting team?

KL: We have an expectation with 4Wall that the gear is going to work, which you can’t expect with everybody, and we are never disappointed by 4Wall. We expect when the HUD trusses come in and get hooked up and fly as soon as they’re powered, we’re pretty damn close to 100%. That creates extra time for us to get organized and start focusing and creating, rather than waiting for troubleshooting. 4Wall has become a big part of our success on these shows.

FP: 4Wall is the gold standard for us. We’re a little spoiled, so we tend to only try to use 4Wall as often as possible. Brad Hafer, and the rest of his team, for the world of television lighting, I wouldn’t trust anybody else to do these shows.

Anything else you’d like to mention about working on the iHeart show?

KL: The good thing with repeating shows like iHeart is that a lot of the elements are pretty consistent from year to year. We’ve been in the Dolby now for three years and we’ve figured out how to light the theater. They have a lot of networking infrastructure built in, plus everybody’s super knowledgeable. The house crew at the Dolby is awesome, and the spotlight operators are exceptional. Those guys don’t always get that much of a shout out at the end of things. But they did a really good job. We are always taken good care of in that building. It’s always a good, comfortable experience. So, here’s a shout out to the Dolby crew.

FP: We worked with Justin Timberlake and his creative team from Silent House. Cory FitzGerald, the Lighting Designer for the upcoming tour, along with Baz Halpin doing the show creation. The Silent House camp was great to work with. They gave us their creative and information ahead of time. It’s always a pleasure to help them as much as possible. We also had Show Designer, Jeri Slaughter, who came in with Jennifer Hudson. We’ve had a great relationship with Jeri as well. We worked with him on that great number for Jennifer Hudson and Cher. That is an iconic moment with two icons. That is what the iHeart show is about.

Cher and Jennifer Hudson. Photo courtesy Darmah

SCREENS DIRECTOR

Bianca Moncada, Darmah

With so many performance components to it, how do you approach the screens and content design?

Usually, we work hand in hand with the producers and try to lock in the visual ID of the show style. That changes a little bit every year. It still has the style of the brand, and then it is whatever suits better the actual shape of the stage, the actual position of the cameras. I think it’s very important that the content process is customized to the set design; not just put in amazing content, filling some screens, but to actually be embellishing the set design to for the cameras to view. We try to give a lot of depth.

You also do a fair bit of playing with content onsite. Is that correct?

Yeah. We do bring designers on site, and we have a workflow that allows us to have some of these elements being in separate layers so we can adjust on the spot. We are always ready to adjust, maybe we have a layer or a little smoke or something. Maybe it wasn’t what was in the initial plan, but we’re able to have certain things on the spot that we know to have; an extra folder with assets that we know always work as a layer, as a feeling, as a little corner something for camera. Through the years we know that those elements are always very helpful to solve things or to create simple things that are always going to give us something nice, some depth for the camera.

Also, it is better for us to create all the content for the award show from scratch, that way we can have things that we can edit on the spot and create something that works best for the cameras; not be trying to adapt something someone has on their tour. We work for the lens of the camera. What’s the trick about that? Knowing you are creating a three-dimensional element, but you have to understand who’s reading it, what’s the angle of the camera that is reading that, so that way it doesn’t look flat because at the end of the day, you are putting a three-dimensional element within a flat screen. So it’s understanding camera angles and the light that it’s inside of that digital world. Lighting the digital world is very key to creating these elements that look very realistic on the stage, but it also calls for good lighting. You can have all these elements and everything very good in the content world, but if actual lighting is washing everything and just making everything super bright on the surface of the screens, it just takes the trick away. So it is great having expert programmers like Kevin and Felix doing the lighting with Allen, creating the environment, properly lighting the stage so that those content tricks can be pursued.

We all work a lot on the technical part, for the camera. We balance out the fact that video is not complete, it is a layer that’s going to play with lighting at the same time. We try to balance it out and handcraft our video work together with the lighting to be able to have the best results. It is a very different language when you’re doing television than when you’re doing a tour. For television you have got to understand the lens and the camera shot. It’s creating an entire picture, a canvas that is being composed with all of those layers. The scenic, the lighting, and the video. Our communication with the lighting team and with Allen and John [Calkins] is key. Together we understand the composition is what’s best for the show. That way we bring the best out of the show.

Ludacris performs. Photo courtesy Darmah

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

John Calkins, John Calkins & Co.

Tell us about the different visual elements you’ve put in your production design.

As far as visuals, I layer the set elements with a purpose. My objectivity is always, to give for that head to toe and that closeup shot, you want to give a visualization of as much depth to the background as possible, and hence the phrase layering with a purpose. You want that depth of field, negative space is your friend, lighting is your friend, and you just build layer upon layer to get as much depth of field as you can for those particular shots. Like the LED tape outlining the stage added a layer on the wide shots. It gives a little bit more depth.

That layering is seen with the combining the video and scenery.

I like the combination of scenery built with video built into it. It’s my favorite thing to do because the video has such versatility and such depth anymore and that is because of the high resolution of the screens and the high resolution of the actual video itself. It is incredible he realism of the look of the content on the LED screens, it offers so much versatility. For instance, Jelly Roll’s performance—originally in the conversations, the management team wanted to do something with real water onstage, like it would rain onstage. Which you can do, but after Jelly Roll there are two more acts, so how do you clean up the water in two-three minutes? How do you keep the water within a confined area and make that all work? So I pitched a candle idea. What if we just did five, six hundred candles on stage, and then Darmah builds some kind of content that is a cathedral-esque backdrop and give it that look and feel of grandeur, almost a reference to that song. So, we ended up having about 900 candles on stage. They were, I think two thirds remote, and about a third of them had to be hand turned on, each one of ‘em. They were on rolling wagons. We had people scrambling backstage, but we rolled everything on and it was all lit up. He sang his song. It was fabulous and grand. It just looked so good with all the candles and that screen element. It was a layering of scenery and screens, which worked beautifully.

How is the collaboration with Darmah and Allen Branton?

It’s fantastic. It’s a great collaboration because we all want to be on the same page with what the others are doing. We want to make sure that the basic set and the set elements reflect a design that works for Allen and a design that works for Darmah. And, they do a wonderful job with textures and images and characterizations. The layering of the screens is so important because it adds more dimension to the set, and even a bit of negative space between the screens is a good thing, and even different resolutions sometimes is a good thing. Changing resolutions, it all has to work in symphony with what the director’s doing and the distances he has with the camera. His performers stand away from the screens. You get them too close, you see the pixelation, you keep them far enough away and it looks fabulous. It all goes back to layering and together, the entire team, we create a great visual for the show and the performances.