Creative director Michael Schwandt has had an extensive career covering a lot of bases, from concerts and TV spectaculars to circus and theatre. On a recent project for Bush, Schwandt spent four months working on a design with his team from 4Wall, only to have to scrap it one week before rehearsals began.
Live Design: What attracted you to this project and when did you get involved?
Michael Schwandt: This is the second tour for Bush I’ve worked on, the first was in support of The Art of Survival album last year. Gavin Rossdale and I had talked about working together for a few years and that was our first attempt. In that version we stripped everything back to a very simple lighting look to really create a nice palette for the band to performer in front of. When this tour came around they reached out to me to pitch and ultimately liked the approach I presented so I’ve been involved from the beginning.
LD: What was your involvement?
MS: My scope of work was to conceptualize & direct all creative elements of the show - overall production design (working with 4Wall on that - Todd Koval helped translate my creative pitch & the best of the elements I wanted into a design that fit within the band’s budget), video content for all 20+ songs, musical intros/interludes (some already existed, some we added or extended), setlist arrangement with Gavin and to oversee all the lighting design with the show’s lighting designer/programmer, which I also did last time.
LD: Do you think your background in choreography gives you a unique viewpoint when you visualize a production or tour? A real physical understanding of space, probably, but what else?
MS: That’s a great question, I actually have been trying to distance myself from my choreography background for the last 15 years purposefully taking on projects that have nothing to do with that world - projects that are either purely technical or at least allow me to prove that choreography is not a “crutch” or requirement in any of my work. All of that said, it absolutely has helped me in creating a lot of my projects because I do understand the spatial relationship between live performers and technical or design elements. I have very clear ideas about all the creative aspects of a live show - production design and set design. I pencil sketch most things and work with the set or production designer to pinpoint exactly what I’m looking for and to make sure it supports live performance. I will often sit with the lighting designer and programmers I bring on to go through the show cue by cue. Lighting design is basically choreography of another kind. I give the creative direction for all video content and typically timecode out exactly what I want to happen beat by beat. Similarly I typically know how I want things to sound and work with my musical directors, producers, etc. whether we are creating from scratch, supporting existing music, or transitional elements. In terms of costumes, hair, and makeup I have very clear ideas on the design language for looks, style, and color palette. There are many live show makers that are fixated on fewer aspects—often skewing toward a heavy emphasis on their backgrounds but may not always touching the other facets. I really try to take a step back and look at the global view. I think it’s also why my work covers such a broad spectrum of formats and media and I strive to make each project feel vastly different from anything I’ve done before, which is no easy task.
LD: What was your original vision for the Bush tour?
MS: I wanted to really leverage video content as a true storytelling vehicle for the band, given that this was a greatest hits tour. The video content they had been using previously was great, but it was older and had been through several tours. We stripped all that away with the previous tour so my plan with this one was to reintroduce it in a very new, narrative way. Part of that plan was to reimagine existing archived music video and live show footage, create entirely new custom pieces of video content that were either in the world of some of the originals or basically visuals/iconography that Gavin just really loves, and to use Notch effects to create really dynamic live moments for some numbers. We even 3D scanned all the band members' heads so we could create a series of avatar/likenesses of them to re-appear throughout the show. All of this was to be broken into four acts that had distinct visual content languages but were connected to one another through an analog TV and MTV/music video generation of the 90’s aesthetic as a thread. This was all to be done on a see-through LED wall with some massive lighting towers upstage. The concept was to really play with depth perception, 3D content and the juxtaposition of negative/dark space with the lighting. Additionally, the live Notch effects were going to be something totally new for the band, coupled with the live VJing effects we were planning to do over much of the pre-designed content so it felt live and raw in some moments. All in all, this was going to be a totally new look for the band and one that I thought offered a lot of versatility for its catalog of music spanning three decades.
LD: Once the LED wall was cut from the production, did you have to reimagine the aesthetic or were you able to salvage the original inspiration?
MS: We really had to let go of the original concept because video was a driving factor. The video was cut just one week prior to load out and the start of rehearsals so unfortunately all of our lighting pre-vis work had to be scrapped and all 20+ pieces of video content or workflow for Notch also went with it. Some moments in the show were purely content-based, retrospective band moments or concerning a social/political messages the band wanted to highlight, so all of that was, of course, gone. The lighting towers behind the LED wall were never meant to be seen but there was only so much that could be done so a reallocation of fixtures needed to occur to give those towers more functionality. Unfortunately, that meant losing fixtures from the overhead trusses and some of our side lighting - basically these lighting towers were now the focal point behind the band and that became the focus of our efforts in the show. Lighting designer, Carrie Heisler from 4Wall, started pre-vis from scratch again trying to rough in a lot of looks and we had a great session prior to leaving but pre-vis only gets you so far. It’s a great starting place but you really need to see it in the space.
The music of the band definitely tells a story but without the video we had to let that go and focus on really great lighting that accentuated the songs. Gavin is great at connecting with the audience, really letting them in & making his fans know that he’s there to be with them for the duration of the show so that absolutely helps.
LD: Were you able to get additional lighting fixtures for the rig after the loss of the screens?
MS: No, we were really just re-allocating. Todd Koval at 4Wall really was my Fairy Godfather on this project, pivoting with me at every turn, but we had to work with what we had. We basically started from scratch on site. We had three rehearsal days at the opening venue which not only an outdoor amphitheater, but it had no back wall. We had to wait till sundown and then work all night till sunrise. Carrie had worked with Rob Thomas, our video lead, for weeks prior to this, so even though she hadn’t yet worked with the band, she knew the music backwards and forwards. She came in with a bank of pre-vis but we literally went song by song, verse by verse, chorus by chorus and just re-designed every number from the ground up. We absolutely used some of what she had created, but added or subtracted, simplified or made more complex and really honed in color palettes. The hard part was, we were doing all of this under the ticking clock of opening night just a few days away.
LD: What was the most useful thing that helped you pivot?
MS: Honestly, I’ve been in many sticky or time-compressed situations before, but I typically have a larger team to help. This was a bit harder because it really fell on just a few of us—myself, my assistant director Jill Hillier, our lighting designer Carrie Heisler, and our production team from 4Wall. I respect every one of those people and that mutual respect and support for one another is really what helped us succeed. We were tired, we were limited by not being in a controlled environment, and this was not, for all intents and purposes the show I planned for several months to make, but it’s where we were. Honestly I could not have done it without Carrie, Todd and the team from 4Wall.
I’ve never been deterred by doing something for the first time, in fact, I tend to welcome those challenges."
LD: Rather than focusing in one area of your career you seem to have done a wide variety of shows, from TV spectaculars to circus and music residencies. Are you consciously focusing more on touring productions now?
MS: I really make a conscious choice not to fall into any one category that defines my work, I’ve always wanted to take on a variety of challenges, formats & mediums for several reasons: one, it keeps me thinking, nimble, and makes me a better problem solver. Two, I like to work with different toolkits, some projects rely more on video content, some lighting, some music, some movement or the live performance component, some are purely technical and some are more about the user experience. Then, of course, there are the various locations from theater, concert venue, TV studio, stadium, immersive experience, cruise ship, etc. All of this keeps it exciting and makes me better adept at managing very different projects. I’ve never been deterred by doing something for the first time, in fact, I tend to welcome those challenges. I do work with a lot of recording artists but it tends to take a variety of formats—live TV specials or appearances, corporate or sponsored events and special events in general—those are great but they’re very limiting as you can only get so much across in one 3-4 min song. I do like working with an artists’ full catalog of music, I just find so much more opportunity there to create something more meaningful, particularly when you’re dealing with loyal fans—they pick up on and appreciate all the nods and creative references more than a general audience. I wouldn’t say I’m focusing solely more on touring shows but definitely welcome more of them.
LD: I see you worked on a project with Gavin Rossdale in 2019, was that previous experience helpful working with Bush on this production?
MS: I actually worked with Gavin Rossdale in 2018/19 when I was creating and directing R.U.N, the live action stunt thriller for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. This was a live graphic novel written by Robert Rodriguez and we brought in Tyler Bates, the amazing film composer and rock guitar player to help us craft the sound of the show. On that project we had a lot of musical explorations and recognizable songs but I wanted to mash it up to appeal to different age groups so we used a Twenty One Pilots song for the opening of the show but I didn’t want to simply use it as is. Tyler was actually writing Bullet Holes with Gavin Rossdale at the same time, which was the theme song for John Wick, and instantly I knew that was it. We asked Gavin Rossdale to sing a Twenty One Pilots song and that set the tone for all of the music collaborations throughout the rest of the show. After [Rossdale] saw how that song was integrated into the show—it was a heavy video mapping moment projected on a massive set wrapping 270 degrees around the audience—we started talking about working with him on a Bush tour. Then covid hit!
LD: Other than losing the LED element, what was the biggest challenge with the final look? How did you address it?
MS: I think the biggest challenge was just to find a nice variety of looks. The lighting towers were never meant to carry the show from an identifiable visual design, otherwise we would have approached this differently from the beginning of course. The challenge was really to make those towers as versatile as possible, I think we did that in terms of the programming, the color palettes, the choice to selectively use or not use certain fixtures for entire songs or several songs to help us create different looks—that truly was the challenge.
LD: What is your favorite part of the design?
That’s a tricky question but I do really like the pixel lines LED diffused bars (there are two parallel to one another on the sides of each tower). Those fixtures were originally a halo box that floated above the stage and in the pivot were reallocated to frame these towers and help give us something of scale to look at when activated. It basically gives you the scale or frame that the LED wall would have given, so it gives a hard edged and defined look when in use.
