Sometimes, one design changes a genre. This is the case for production designer Andy Walmsley's design for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. It is one of the most instantly recognizable sets on television today, and has been replicated more than 100 times as the show spread around the world to every major broadcaster. It is the design which changed the quiz show format forever.
Born in Britain, Walmsley is now based in the US and is the go-to designer to create iconic environments for broadcast events. His work includes American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Got Talent, live for broadcast events watched by millions, and many Las Vegas stage shows. Below he shares about one of his latest projects, this year's The American Music Awards.
When Did You Start Working on The American Music Awards?
Andy Walmsley: I started five months ago. Initially, I was designing a much larger set for an arena and was pretty much complete with the design process and about to start drafting when the venue completely changed to the Fontainebleau Hotel Theater in Las Vegas. The first few months you're working essentially part time, juggling other projects, but this show is so intense that the final six weeks I was full-time seven days a week and the final two weeks I did 12 hour days every day with no days off… It was a lot.
What was the brief for this project?
AW: The brief is essentially a cookie cutter brief for all these music performance-based award shows. You must have an ultra-flexible performance stage area that can serve in the case of the AMA’s 11 performances sometimes its one person singing an intimate ballad and in other cases its a rock band with all the musical equipment that comes with that and theres always some bombastic performances with dozens of back up dancers, pyro, smoke, specials, giraffes , OK I joked about giraffes but you'd be amazed what these performers pitch to me. So the performances are about two-thirds of the show with the other third, of course, being the actual award ceremony so its crucial to design an acceptance stage so the speeches take place while the band looks are being struck and the next ones set… Oh, and it has to look super contemporary and cool because its the pop/rock industry.
What is the process with performers asks?
AW: Lots of zooms, lots and lots of zooms, mostly with the creative directors for each artist, sometimes the management and even record labels and sometimes even with the actual artist. Some just want a grand piano and a bedazzled mic stand but others ask for some pretty crazy stuff that I know we can't deliver, partially because of finances but mostly due to the insane time we get to strike one band and set the next so there's a delicate dance of being very accommodating and me creating renderings then getting everything costed up but then disappointing them with budget issues. It's then several rounds of revisions until we hit a reasonable budget but then sometimes the artist isn't happy that their vision has been watered down and has had a fantastic new idea in the shower and I have to start from scratch... It's very intense and most of these band look conversations are happening one or two weeks before load in. When everyone signs off the next issue is finding a scenic shop willing to build it in the three or four days. It's a ton of pressure for me and the art dept.
What is your design process?
AW: I always start with a Sketchup model and then renderings and fly thrus in Unreal Engine and after everything is approved I hand off to my art directors, Patrick Adair who is a brilliant lightning fast drafter, and Chris Goumas, who deals with a lot of the logistics.
What were some of the other challenges?
AW: Time, money and space.
Time: although the process started five months ago a lot of the important decisions and all the performances all happen in the last four or five weeks.
Money: It is, of course, always an issue and there's never enough money to do what we all dream up. That's just showbiz right?
Space: Doing a large-scale performance award show like this 100% live to air and you need a lot of backstage space. Unfortunately, once the decision was made not to do the show in an arena but to move to a Vegas Theater, I had a lot of challenges to deal with. Firstly, the Fontainebleau Theater is a decent-sized stage but there's very little wing space and almost no upstage space. We ended up with over 70 band carts, lots of props and scenic pieces, floor lights, special effects items like low fog machines, pyro etc. Each performance uses perhaps four or five band carts and 20 floor lights etc so we have to be able to store all this backstage for 11 performances. I had no choice but to move the upstage of our set downstage quite a bit to create 16 feet upstage, and then to keep the stage space large for dance acts etc I had to extend the front of the stage way into the house, which in turn makes the seating capacity smaller when we need to accommodate all the nominees and their record labels/managers etc.
By far the biggest challenge is that the Fontainebleau Theater is on the 2nd floor and there's only one 10' x 20' freight elevator up to stage level. With over 70 band carts we had no choice but to use that elevator to shuffle things up to stage and down again in the middle of a live show. We had engineers from the elevator company riding in the elevators up and down during show just in case of a mechanical failure.
What was the most fun performance to design?
AW: Oh, thats easy, Gwen Stefani! Her aesthetic is always fun, very Pop Art, and she wanted all sorts of things including a field of wheat. We had Green Set make us a lot of wheat and then she wanted a striped glitter stage surface so we had rolls of Lino glittered and there were giant candy hand props and a big Vegas-style staircase with lightbulbs. All this was backed with a sun burst scenic piece with more glitter and lightbulbs. It looked great and she was very happy and told me it looked so pretty. That's always satisfying when the person at the top of the entourage is really happy with the work.
Did you also design the red carpet?
AW: Yes, all 120 feet of it. Walls, scenery, step and repeats, sponsor branding, LED screens, the works. Why not pile more pressure onto myself on this job, lol!
Where you happy with the finished product?
AW: This was really a very, very challenging show. One of the most challenging I have done for so many reasons, but at the end of the day there's hundreds of people working for months and millions of dollars being spent and five months stress all leading to a live two hour TV show. Not only did it go without a hitch, but it looked pretty impressive if I say so myself. Because we where live at 5pm on the East Coast I was getting lovely texts from friends in New York and Miami in the middle of the show which makes it all worth while, to know that not only are millions of people watching but your buddies, too.
CREDITS
Production Designer Andy Walmsley of Andy Walmsley Entertainment
Art Director Patrick Adair
Assistant Art Director Chris Goumas
Lighting Director Tom Sutherland
Video Content Michael Zinman
Scenic Shops: Center Line Scenery, Goodnight and Co, Blue Line.
Rigging Michael Stokely Kish Rigging