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Corona: Chauvet Colorado fixtures used for Keith Urban drive-in show

Social distancing - the concept was key to everyone behind Keith Urban’s Drive-In concert on May 14, 2020, not just for the Vanderbilt University Hospital medical heroes, in whose honor the event was held, but also for the team that created the stage setting for the one-hour show on short notice.

“The paramount thing about this gig for Keith and everyone else was being socially distant and as safe as possible,” says Brent Maxon, Urban’s Lighting Director. “Our goal was to involve the fewest people possible in setup, while still putting together a quality show for this very important audience of special guests.”

Maxon and the rest of the team began working on a plan to achieve this goal five days before the surprise show was scheduled to begin. “I was contacted by Chuck Hull, our tour manager, telling me that Keith wanted to get a ‘guerilla style’ show together to honor the hospital workers,” says Maxon. “We didn’t have much time, so Randy Gardner, our stage manager, and I headed over to Premier Global Productions and talked to Geddy (Anthony Kordyjaka) about securing a flatbed trailer for our stage, a generator, and a few lights to get things going.”

The rig featured 20 Chauvet Professional Colorado 2 Zoom fixtures. “We positioned the Colorado fixtures on six and eight-foot towers behind Keith and the band,” explains Maxon. “Keith loves the lighting to set a mood for a song, so having downstage color is super important. I’ve been using a temp fader for him to creep in some white just to make him pop a bit more for video purposes, or when he is soloing. Other than that, I just tried to vary the color schemes for the drive-in show. I had some color wipes, plus a few different dimmer effects up my sleeve. I ended up having to put the Colorados on an inhibitor because they were so bright and we had a camera going to the Drive-In. So, it was nice to be able to really kick up the levels towards the end of the show when it got into more high energy second set.”

The lighting on stage was coordinated with video images on the drive-in’s screen. Video content was played back on the crew’s own GX2c media server, with images captured by one Sony HXC-100 camera and two Panasonic AW-HE130k robo cams. Camera switching was directed by Simon Roberts.

In the end, the 200 invited medical hero guests who came to the Stardust Drive-In 40 miles outside Nashville enjoyed a well-deserved break from the stressful routines they have followed since the outbreak of the pandemic. They maintained social distancing taking in the sights and sounds from their vehicles, while sitting on hoods or the open beds of pickup trucks.

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