THE CANADIAN MUSIC SCENE

An Interview With Howard Ungerleider

Howard we wanted to start off by thanking you for taking time to answer our questions and also to congratulate you on yet another amazing lighting production for RUSH’s R30 tour.

X.Spot Xtreme            Studio Beam          Cyberlight Turbo

Thirty years is a long time. You have been with RUSH since the beginning in various capacities. Going back to the beginning what was a RUSH production like? What type of lighting was used back then, special effects, and what was used for controlling them? Was there any automation back then or was everything manually controlled?

When I first started designing lighting I was about 18 years old and would always pull off school productions of various plays using an antiquated piano board lighting controller I am sure that you have seen these before, they are the size of a wall with stick handle dimmer controllers that would twist lock into position enabling you to group various lighting instruments to a larger handle so that when you lifted this many lights would come on All of the theatres around the world would use these and some places like the Michigan Palace in Detroit would require 3 or more assistants to help run all the show lighting effects. Everything was manual. Then as far as lighting went there were only conventional Lekos Fresnels and Pars along with lighting instruments like Beam projectors and carbon arc spotlights. Around 1973 I was visiting some friends in Washington DC where I visited a military lighting auction. It was there that I ran into a carton marked Marine Beacon Lights they were low voltage lamps that would have to run in a series of 8 lamps at a time purchased these lights only because I was intrigued by them since they were the same size as a par can that I always used brought the lamps back to my friends shop where I placed them inside the par can shell and wired them up filled the shop with smoke and what I saw that day changed the lighting industry forever! The long thin beams unlike anything used before would geometrically cut through the smoke defining space and creating a futuristic look that had never been seen before. Months went by as I attempted to try to patent this find only to discover that it was a public domain affair. Now that I had a signature lighting effect that was waiting for my next design I needed not only a band to use this but also a lighting controller that would be able to handle what I was about to develop. Along came Rush and then Seefactor lighting industries always wanted to individually use these Marine Beacon Lights which later were named ACL's Aircraft landing lights and with the help of Paul Edwards a Seefactor Master Technician I developed a console where you could take 10 groups of 8 ACL'S and use them as 80 individual lamps with a pin matrix that let you pick and group or chase any combination of these fixtures at any time. These indeed became the first actual special effect lights. Debued on Rush's 2112 tour they became an industry standard that to this day I am very proud of. Lighting back then was interesting but as times and technology changes so do our business. The first of the moving lighting fixtures came along with gel scrollers and then later on moved into actual intelligent lighting fixtures that ran on a new protocol called DMX512.

What do you consider to be some of the major technological changes to lighting and special effects over the years?

The use of DMX has allowed the control and manipulation of hundreds of parameters. Allowing you to take as many of their universes and extend that to the control of your desired show. DMX has 512 channels per universe so you need many of these universes to control many lighting fixtures a good example of this would be... if you are using a hard edged light that requires 30 parameters and you have 60 of these lights you would then need 1800 DMX channels when you divide 1800 by 512 you will find out that you would require 4 universes of DMX. Now you can choose your lighting console based on your DMX requirements. This is definitely a major technological change in lighting.

Let’s look at the R30 production. It looks like you use a lot of High End products. Cyberlights, Studio Beams, and x.Spot Xtremes make up the majority of the lighting. Can you enlighten our readers as to some uses for each type of lighting product listed above.

All productions are made up of different lighting instruments based on performance and what you as the designer are creating. Rush needs powerful lighting to accompany their powerful music. I chose the High End Xspot extreme for it's color and brightness it has a large variety of Gobos and the fixture moves quickly as well. The wash fixtures chosen are High End Studio Beams a very bright light source once you remove the zoom feature this gives you more power and punch when using them. Cyberlights are the 1.2K workhorse of High Ends product line and one of the oldest fixtures. I had chosen this fixture based on the fact that I needed a light that would clear the amp line, dryers and vending machines on stage that was also powerful. The Cyberlights did the job well. These lamps also contain a large amount of different Gobo patterns for you creative use.

The USITT (U.S. Institute of Theatre Technology) implemented a special protocol called DMX512. This protocol has been refined over the years but seems to be the industry standard for communicating between lighting products and lighting consoles. DMX Channels allow one to control all of the functions on a lighting product. Some of the functions include the movement, pan, tilt of the light, colour selection, effects selection, brightness, and focus control to mention a few. I do believe you use the Wholehog II controller from Flying Pigs. Does someone have to enter the functions for each light, for each song in a RUSH production. How long does a process like this take? Once a song has been programmed in the console, what triggers it? Is it manual, automated, if automated what is used to trigger the program?

See the answer to the second question... When creating a Rush tour I use a professional programmer who can quickly take my ideas and put them in my console quickly find that if I start to program myself the flow of continuity bogs down the creative process. most of all my programming is done from 8pm until 9am every day for 10 days until the first dress rehearsal. During this time period I try to get through 4 songs per night. The next day we wake up after sleeping for 5 hours and go to the venue to watch the band run through their set. This gives us a chance to run through the cues we programmed the night before (In the evening we are programming to a live soundtrack that the band provides to us) I am running 2 whole hog two consoles since I need 7 universes of DMX they are slaved to accommodate this. When programming songs I use the computer to store verse, chorus, bridge cues along with an expansion wing where I put together a series of color cues chase cues and movement cues that I can trigger manually as I continue to change my master cue list. Controlling the show this way lets me keep the manual human element alive.

When you are designing a production such as the R30 tour what are your considerations for different vantage points? The reason I ask is that I am usually spoiled at RUSH concerts, either right up front or first row on either side. However one concert in the UK I ended up in the very back but in the centre. At first I was pissed but have to admit it was the first time in many years I really saw the full effect of the lighting production, it was really quite enjoyable. So getting back to my question, when designing the show do you look at it from the side, right up front, from your vantage point back a ways in the middle?

When I am designing a show I like to put myself in all of the seats so that there are different looks for different places. When I do this people like yourself can enjoy a different perspective of the show so that each time you see it you can see something completely unique from the time before!

The stage and equipment looked the same in the UK as it was in North America. What steps are required to ensure that everything will work properly from country to country considering the differences in electrical standards? What is used to make sure that there are no power spikes, surges, and so on? You had a relatively short time between the last North American show in Toronto and the first UK show in Wembley. How was the equipment shipped over, by boat or plane? The lighting alone must require quite a few trucks, what is the size of the convoy for the entire R30 production, including people transportation? How many people are involved on a daily basis and what time frame is required to setup and tear down the production?

Rush wants to keep integrity in their show so we ship over most of our equiptment. This takes about 10 days. All our electronics are converted to Euro power requirements through transformers and other bits of equipment have switchable ballast's that allow for acceptance of all power changes. It takes 8 trucks to transport the show. We send our head electricians to the UK ahead of us so that they can sort out any other issues there may be so that we are ready for anything.

At the Manchester show I was talking with one of the spotlight operators, he was hired for that show. In general do you hire spotlight operators per show? How do you ensure that the right spotlight, colour and such gets to the right location on stage?

In the USA all of the spotlight operators (10) are union provided so each night they are different. I call a spot meeting each day 1/2-hour before the group hits the stage to tell the operators what they are about to do for the next 3 hours and 20 minutes. In the UK and EU I use my truck drivers so that each night I have the same people running spots. That is much better!

Derivative supplies great animated video. Many of the background images where excellent, especially those for the Feedback songs. It must be very important to match the lighting to whatever is displaying on the screens behind the stage. How much input do you have on the video end of the show? I understand that the screen and LED design was based on a set of wind chimes.

What is really great is that Geddy myself and Greg Hermanovic from Derivative along with Alan Weinrib and Norm Stangl create a brain storming session where all of us put forth ideas until we actually capture what we need then I can sit down with Derivative to coordinate color and actual placement in the songs where these effects will live and Alan can produce the other segments which I will place in at a later time. So that the end result is a seamless integration of effects that I can control through a media server called Catalyst by High End Systems. This allows me to actually be the gate keeper through my lighting consoles of the coming and going of all visual effects. When it came to the video configuration I had imagined wind chimes and proceeded to have Screenworks in LA do a test for me to see if it would work, I think it did!

Pyrotechnics is used for “One Little Victory”, the height of the stage varies from location to location. At some of the venues it sure looked like the flames were scorching the back rows of lights, I hope this was just an illusion. In Glasgow, the SECC seemed to be a lot wider than deep. What are some of the unique places you have been at, do any stand out as the best in layout, sound?

Yes indeed it was an illusion the flames never touched the lights we make sure of that! Manchester had great sound along with places like Rotterdam and Milan.

Your company, Production Design International has worked with quite a few other artists. Do you have any highlights from these productions, any artists in particular that you enjoyed working with? PDI also works on films, theatre productions, corporate shows, sporting events to name a few. Any highlights from these venues?

Production Design International has worked with many artists and events such as Queensryche on the Empire tour, Van Halen on 3 world tour, Bon Jovi's Last tour and Brittany Spears Dream within a dream tour as well as Linkin Park and Moby in Area 1 and Area 2 which I designed. The opening game of the Toronto Blue Jays 2004 and General Motors are among our clients as well as many of the NHL teams when they are playing. There are to many wonderful experiences to write about but great opportunities are always part of our shows, I guess a golf lesson from Tiger Woods on the Van Halen 3 tour was a fun highlight.

You and PDI are considered to be among the best in the industry. Do you have any advice for young artists starting up? What are good resources for learning the tricks of the trade, technical resources to learn about lighting technology, are there special schools, courses? What magazines do you recommend?

In order for one to start out now the best advice would be to be very computer literate and learn as much about 3D programs and music editing programs as you can. Working at a lighting company as an intern always can help... keep in mind your computer skills are a plus. Light America, Plsn and Lighting Dimensions are great magazines to read. Professional Sound and Light also should be read.

Second last question, in Manchester the PA went dead for a few seconds during I believe Earthshine. When I saw you in Glasgow you told me that someone had tripped on the main PA power cord and unplugged it. Can you enlighten our RUSH viewers with some funny escapades you have had with the guys over the years?

One of the funniest things on the R30 tour was Jack Black's appearance on the Rush stage during 2112 when he took off all his clothes and put them in the dryers and then jumped up onto the dryers assuming the man in the star pose for 3 minutes then jumping back onto the stage to hang out in his underwear with Geddy as the band played on. On many occasions Randy Johnson would appear wanting to play catch? No thanks!

As mentioned above I met you in Glasgow, that was at a curry house called, Crème de la Crème. You have had the opportunity to travel the world, can we have, “Howard Ungerleider’s top ten restaurants” list.

Toronto Spadina Garden for spicy Chinese Omi Sushi Harbour Sixty Steak House La Bruschetta Italian (Home made food) Kansas City Gates and Sons Barbeque (The best in the World) Tampa Bay Berns Steakhouse Los Angeles-Kitana Japanese Steak House Sushi Mon Spago (If you can get in) Pink's Hot Dog's (The best!) San Francisco Aqua Seattle El Gaucho restaurant NYC Peter Lugers Providence Rhode Island Hemminways Seafood Baltimore Any fresh Crabhouse Chicago Wildfire Grill Unos Pizza Weisbaden Germany Shalimar Indian Milano (2 hrs South Ceasarina), Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen Blue Elephant Thai food

Plug time, any projects you are currently or going to be working on?

We are presently working on a show that will last for 5 years lighting up and projecting the story of Canada's History on the Parliament building in Ottawa We are also continuing to light up the General Motors exhibit at the International Auto Show in Toronto. We also just finished providing 5 laser systems to YANNI for his dvd shoot at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. We are also the distributors of BigLite 4.5 Canada a new product to hit the market in March see biglitescanada.com.

Production Design International is based out of Markham, Ontario. For more information on PDI you can visit their website: http://www.pdifx.com or contact them at 905-479-4070 or toll-free at 800-307-9125 or via email at pdiinc@bellnet.ca.

Photo Credits: Tim Grivas/High End Systems  High End Systems