Professional Lighting & Production - Spring 2018 | Page 21

“You can play anything from smaller shows to massive festivals with these guys, so
I’ve always had to keep [the touring rig] workable for many different occasions and
venues”
-LD Alex Jeffrey
Connolly took the time to weigh in on the video design
on the day of the band’s Portland show.
Some songs were obviously calling for video enhance-
ment, but with others, Connolly tells Professional Lighting
& Production, it wasn’t immediately clear what they should
do. “So we just did some graphics, but overall, it really
opened up the possibilities for the show. I can stand at the
microphone with a guitar or sit at the piano or whatnot, and
the show is still exciting because it has that added visual
element, so it takes us to the next level.”
Everything a band deploys for production is, ultimately,
an expression of their artistic vision as both an extension of
their musical output and part of a live performance. In Theo-
ry’s case, that extends to being a reflection of their ongoing
evolution: “We’re really progressing on our sound now,”
Connolly says. “Our new record is a lot different than our
last one, and we wanted the live show to reflect that.”
Down the line, Connolly says, they’ll likely use video
more extensively – taking into account the amount of time
that the crowd spends in a venue prior to and after the band
is on stage – and set the tone of their shows from the time
the audience enters until they leave. “I think we can actually
start putting in some more personal touches,” he adds. “We
knew when we put the video on we were
going to start somewhere and keep building
on the content and maybe building on the
size of the screens, so there are a lot of
possibilities.”
Granted, those possibilities change from night to night as
far as the overall lighting scenario goes, depending on what
the venue provides to augment the band’s floor package
and video and vice versa.
While it was early into the tour when Jeffrey spoke to
PL&P, it’d been a smooth and seamless experience. “At this
point, working with these guys for as long as I have, it takes
a lot to catch me off guard. The one thing I’m noticing, how-
ever, and I ran into it the other day, is that because you can
get a lot of fixtures cheaper now, as far as moving lights and
LEDs are concerned, some of the stuff provided isn’t your
standard brands or, say, really well-known fixtures.”
That can result in some hiccups. “Some knock-off fixtures
don’t line up properly, so the other day, my entire colour
palette was wrong because something between the fixture
and the console didn’t communicate properly, so if I hit red,
it was coming up blue and so that was an extra hour-and-a-
half of programming.”
Then again, Jeffrey says with a chuckle: “It’s always been
an interesting ride with these guys.”
Kevin Young is a Toronto-based musician and
freelance writer.
Spring 2018 | 21