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Sarah Landau chooses Robe for Puscifer concert in Arcosanti

Lighting designer Sarah Landau was asked to light a Puscifer concert livestream in the experimental town of Arcosanti. She added Robe MegaPointes and PixelPATTs to her lighting design for this performance movie.

The “Existential Reckoning” video shoot was directed by Adam Rothlein of Ghost Atomic Pictures together with the band’s manager Dino Paredes, and took place in three different locations around Arcosanti - the central amphitheater; the vaults (two large barrel-shaped structures above ground) and in the middle of a patch of desert just outside the main development.

The set was designed by Mat Mitchell who also mixed audio for the stream. The scaffolding and trussing set structures also provided anchor points and positions for both lighting and video elements. A key to the show’s ambiance was the visual and sonic flow from one location to the next, ending with a sunrise. The different positions of the vocalists and evolution of camera shots was also fundamental to the narrative, which started with close-ups and lots of shadows and visual trickery, gradually revealing more of the landscape, location, architecture, context, and ambiance as the album progressed.

Lighting was left entirely up to Sarah Landau’s vision and interpretation, and the six cameras then had their shots adapted and positioned according to her lighting layout. A week of band rehearsals in Burbank allowed Landau to pre-vis, which was followed by five days of technical rehearsals - with the full rig set up - at the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center in Prescott, Arizona, where they finessed the interplay between lighting and playback video.

For sites one and two, the desert and the barrel vaults, an industrial scaffolding tower in the center of the action with 12 ft wide by 8 ft high video panels emanating from the four corners, splitting the playing area into quadrants, each of which was completed with a stand-alone vertical trussing tower several meters further back. Lights were rigged on the center scaffolding, on the four trussing towers and at the ends of the video panels with additional fixtures on the floor. For site three, the amphitheater, sections of video screen were deployed in the tiered seating and acted as a backdrop while the band faced upstage.

At site one, four MegaPointes were positioned at the edges of the performance space at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock and four feet back from these were another four, one on top of each of the trussing towers. In the barrel vaults, only the MegaPointes on the truss towers were used, while in the amphitheater location, all eight MegaPointes were sat on flightcases behind the band in the venue’s pit area, in front of what would normally be the downstage edge of the stage.

Four of the eight PixelPATTs in sites one and two were also rigged on the vertical truss towers, with the other four on the center scaffolding structure facing into the four quadrants where the band members were playing. The PixelPATTS were suggested by Ryan Knutson at Thornton, Colorado-based Brown Note Productions, who delivered sound, lighting, and video.

In addition to the MegaPointes and PixelPATTs on this concert video shoot, Landau had several other lights on the rig including LED washes and profiles, sky panels, LED tubes and LED PARs, all controlled off a GrandMA full size console. The lighting cues were initially programmed and timecode recorded by Joe Watrach in Burbank. Landau who took over for the updates during the Arizona production rehearsals and also operated herself during the filming.

They also had to ensure the site was operated as Covid-safe, with regular temperature checks, sanitizing, social distancing and masking.

(Photos: Mitra Mehvar)

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