Ant Wan broke the attendance record at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena recently, when a sell-out crowd of 40,899 fans gathered to see the concert. The concrete-based stage design and scenography was created by visual artist Alexander Wessely, who doubled as show director. He brought in Jakob Larsson (of Light it Production), and the LD was soon integrating a familiar family of hybrid products: GLP’s JDC1 and JDC Lines.
Larsson has been specifying JDC1 “almost since day one” and later urged investment in the JDC Lines from Sweden’s leading rental houses. This time the inventory was provided by Soundforce and comprised around 84 JDC Line (a combination of the 1000 and 500 strips) and 40 JDC1. The JDC Lines were predominantly used to edge the catwalks and the satellite ‘B’ stage, with the JDC1s mainly serving as main stage cross lights and sidelights, spaced one metre apart.
But their role was more nuanced than that, as they also needed to promote Alexander Wessely’s stage architecture, based around a large LED screen, nine pillars and a throne-cum-altar as a centrepiece. Concealment of the light source became a priority, but so was ensuring the JDCs would hold their own in a show dominated by lasers and pyro.
“With such a really big concrete statement, I wanted to hide lights in the scenic design and keep it really clear and clean,” he said of the scenography.
The LD tilted the JDC Lines at 45° along the catwalk as the artist promenaded down towards B stage, as he explained: “We used them in full pixel mode when he was walking, lighting him one on one, as we needed a big personality. But we knew it could also light up the whole arena on the opposite side, which worked really nicely. We also mounted the JDC1000 behind all the pillars, so that when we highlighted them it was like nine really big shadows onstage.”
Larsson was fortunate to have as his programmer Nikolaj Brink, who is also an accomplished LD. “We pre-vised everything in Depence and then we had two days prep at the Arena. The whole show was run on timecode, overseen by Nikolaj,” he continued. “I was running the follow spots and smoke machines and calling all the Kinesys automation.” When the Kinesys dropped the overhead rig in some songs the JDCs on the floor would fire upwards to meet the movers, creating a dynamic effect.”
As for programming, the JDC Lines were run in Mode 3 SPix (68 DMX channels). “This was because we are really into pixel mapping now,” Larsson explains. “The JDC1 we ran in normal 23-channel mode.”
He commended the ease of programming of the JDCs: “I really like running the JDC1 in normal mode, because with the macros, and all the effects that come with the 23-channel mode, you can use almost everything.”
In summary, he said that having a really sophisticated washlight combined with a “heavy, heavy strobe that blinds everything out” has served him well during the recent summer season. “if you are performing at, say, 8pm when it’s still almost light, I found that the JDC Line was capable of knocking out the sun, even if it was glaring right onto the stage. It’s really bright!”
