Kylie Minogue lit up the MCG with a spectacular, star-studded AFL Grand Final performance, staged and creatively designed by STUFISH, with Ray Winkler onsite for the delivery.
Kylie Minogue’s lighting designer, Rob Sinclair, provided creative direction to lighting director Matt Jones for the programming.
“I worked closely with Rob Sinclair to programme the show,” commented Matt. “Initially, I started with the previous tour’s programming as a point of reference. Having worked closely with Rob, Ali Pike, and José Lorenzo on the programming for Kylie’s last tour, this was a good starting point.”
The usual objectives had to be met: keeping the lighting programming cohesive with costumes and video content was important. However, the primary consideration was ensuring Kylie was well lit for broadcast. Because the weather was overcast, Matt had to ease in some of the inner-field floodlights to provide enough light.
“This was done on an HTP fader, meaning the effects I had programmed on these lights still had some impact,” added Matt. “There were also a couple of Ayrton Domino LTs on the field to provide a little bit of additional fill light onto the stage.
“I was happy with the outcome of the show and broadcast. As a daylight show, the programmed lighting had to serve as a visual background to the performance. The effects created had to be timed precisely to the music to ensure that we weren’t just doing lighting effects that didn’t feel cohesive with the performance, and I feel that translated well in the Stadium and on broadcast.”
Matt says that time was a challenge because they didn’t have much time with the artist and the other performers on the field. Restrictions limited how long they could keep everything set up on the field, so they had only a few opportunities to see how the pre-programming worked in the space.
“CuePilot was a great help with this,” said Matt. “The recordings of the rehearsals we did were added regularly to CuePilot, and Rob was able to show me exact moments, with the exact camera cut and the cue that I was in at that moment, when he wanted to add a flourish or make a touch-up to colour or any effects running.
“This also aided me in being able to replay the performance offline and make changes without being in the space using Depence. Most edits after rehearsals were done virtually in Depence.”
PRG was the lighting supplier, and Rob chose fixtures that would have provided visual benefit in a daylight show. The fixtures used were: 96 Chauvet Strike M, 72 ACME Pixel Lines, 54 TourPro Pro Slim LED Pars, and two Ayrton Domino LT.
“The Strike M and Pixel Lines were all in full pixel mode, allowing me a wide range of possibilities when it came to programming unique and distinct effects that tied in with the performance and music,” Matt said.
Matt also had full control of the MCG field and Tower lighting system, so he could create some interesting effects with these elements. On the Towers, for example, he mapped a heart shape for All The Lovers, a spiral effect for I’m Spinning Around, or the letters LA for Can’t Get You Outta My Head. He also mapped KM onto the Towers for moments at the beginning and end of the performance.
“I had a view of all the camera feeds in the control room I was set up in,” he continued. “I was able to work with Rob during the rehearsal times to refine and coordinate the colour palettes for lighting to work with the video content that had been created.”
The full 20 min set was timecoded with Matt having the whole track as one timecode show, but each song in the set broken into a separate TrackGroup in the grandMA3. This meant changes to song durations were easy for him to adjust, as he didn’t need to separate a song from a long track.
“I had them organised cleanly and separately so I could just shift multiple TrackGroups in one move to adjust for changes in timings,” he added. “My general philosophy for programming is to keep all my programming assets neatly organised. This makes the process of having to change a colour in one song a much easier process for me, and being able to adjust Phasers timings and arrangements was easy as I didn’t have to search through untidy blocks of presets.”
With so many pixels in use, Matt relied heavily on the grandMA3 Selection Grid. This let him easily create more complex effects or map letters or shapes onto the MCG Towers.
Matt says that everything went perfectly to plan, and the feedback after the show from the Kylie Minogue team, Rob Sinclair and the Mushroom team was very positive. The energy after the show was very much on a high as they all had a wonderful time delivering such an iconic and exciting event!
Photos: Mushroom Creative House – Brian Purnell
