Lighting Designer and Director Andrew Goedde chose Robe moving lights as the principal fixtures and worked closely on developing his design with Lighting Programmer Technical Director Tony Caporale for band Goose’s festive shows.
The band and their creative director Will Thresher moved away from traditional Christmas themes to embrace “Goosemas in Space” for this year’s show.
“We took this idea very seriously when imagining and programming the lighting,” stated Goedde.
The intergalactic journey took a direction that dovetailed with one of the visual concepts already bouncing around in Goedde’s head and the aesthetic developed from there with the lighting rig based around six flown mini diamond-shaped ‘pods’.
With no video playback or IMAG onstage or indeed in the venue, lighting and scenics were the main visual tools for getting the energy off the stage and into the audience, so Goedde and Caporale set to work to produce something memorable with the assistance of 42 Robe FORTES, 32 MegaPointes, 46 Tarrantulas, 60 TetraX’s and 16 LEDBeam 350s.
Each pod was constructed from 4 x 5ft GP truss sections plus corner blocks, so the sides were nearly 10ft long when completed. They were flown at different heights and depths in a symmetrical pattern which resembled large UFOs descending from space.
Every part of the stage was able to be hit by a light with these positions making it “massively flexible, having this much coverage really gave us all the options,” noted Caporale.
Each pod was loaded with six FORTES which were the main profile and effects lights. Six Tarrantulas per pod constituted the base wash lights, and the front two truss sections of each pod were outlined with 10 x TetraXs. Beneath these was a line of pixel strip.
Out in the audience and around the periphery of the spherical shaped arena were four ‘finger’ trusses each rigged with four MegaPointes.
Caporale and Goedde commented that it was the first time they had relied completely on FORTES for key lighting and specials for a Goose show, “The brightness is phenomenal even from the longest throws above the audience,” observed Goedde.
The LEDBeam 350s were not originally on the plot but were added to illuminate the assorted set elements produced by the scenic team led by Will (Thresher) and Sonny Flemming. “Andrew, Will, Sonny and I collaborated closely to ensure this all happened seamlessly on site,” commented Tony. The six FORTES on the ends of the six fingers were in ideal positions to highlight the band.
The 2023 touring rig had also featured FORTES, Tarrantulas and TetraX luminaires, and both use Robe products regularly in their work.
Also new to Goosemas this year were timecoded audio and lighting show opener intros for each of the four concerts, all slightly different in keeping with the ‘featured planet’ of the evening, which ramped up the atmos as the Goose spaceship ‘crash landed’ in different parts of the universe.
After prepping the rig at lighting vendor Gateway Studios & Production Services’ (GSPS) St. Louis facility, it was slickly project managed by Conway McDonald-O’Lear.
While there were two load in / rehearsal days at the venue, there was no time to fly the pods beforehand, so getting these lined up and floating quickly, efficiently and in the right positions was a challenge with several unknowns.
Caporale and Goedde did a full week of Depence 3 pre-viz at Gateway Studios ahead of the shows which were programmed on grandMA3 consoles. Lighting control was run over a Cat5 network via sACN with network switches on the pods, so not a single DMX cable was involved, and each fixture was controlled via its own IP address.
Caporale and Goedde highlighted how working with a “great team” made it efficient and seamless, especially the rigging crew led by head rigger, Eric Keeble. Keeping everyone and everything coordinated was lighting crew chief Sandy Paul, working alongside Peter Spadaro, the Lighting Tech and Floor Lighting Crew Chief, Lighting Techs Danny McDonald and Martin Nguyen, with Scott Smith looking after dimmers.
FOH sound engineer Eric Loomis was also Production Manager, assisted by Gillian Pelkonen, and Sam King was the tour manager. Stage manager Pat Dickinson kept everything moving and grooving in the performance space, Bubba W.G. Bulifant oversaw pyro working with Jordan Burkholder on SFX and pyro.
