HBC Press Relase - Rick Kay

German Cult Band Alphaville release new album.

“Strange Attractor“ Rick Kay - Alphaville´s LD talks about the Perils and Process of Designing & Producing His First Full Scale Music Video Twenty years ago while working as the lighting guy at the Berlin Metrobeat festival, I was approached by a good friend who told me that Alphaville were looking for a lighting guy. I must admit, I wasn´t even sure who Alphaville were at the time, and after 3 years of hard touring with small indie bands from Berlin, I really wanted the chance to do something Bigger. Alphaville certainly didn´t seem fit into this category and, although dubious at first ,after hearing from 3 other colleagues that they were actually a great bunch of guys, I agreed to an initial meeting with the band. Armed only with a simple graphic (made on a garden landscaping 3d program) of a stage with 2 stick men and a self made drum kit with 3 round screens as stage deco, I headed off to Marians Place. After numerous coffees and lots of laughing I agreed to a 2 week tour of really small clubs in Scandinavia. A quick call to a my best mate Martin “ a man with a van" and we were sorted..lets go!!

Little did I know that I had just made, all be it unknown to myself.. a Life changing decision.

Two weeks later after battling with snow drifts & jazz clubs, where there was hardly enough space for the band let alone stage deco & lights, We were offered the chance to stay onboard the Alphaville ship for the next leg….next stop Ukraine where we checked in and from our 14th floor hotel room found ourselves looking out over the stadium from Dynamo Kiev, wondering which band were playing the “big stadium gig“..so many trucks… so many people…such a huge stage??

20 minutes later found myself onstage surrounded by 30 roadies and a couple of exmilitary type stage managers…organizing a gig for 35,000 people…

“Martin, I think were gonna need a bigger Van……“ 20 years and 82 countries later here I am, still the Ld from Alphaville….. …….. and I have still never been to Japan.

Alphaville have made some pretty Iconic videos over the years. Collaborating with directors such as Godfrey Regio, Mao Kawaguchiso and Alexander Kaidanovsky to name but a few. So when I was approached by Alphaville last year to produce a video clip for their new single “Heart Break City“ I was naturally Elated, I had never produced a full scale Video clip before, and I was not gonna turn this opportunity down.

I was, however, being plagued by one simple but incredibly difficult Question…

“What exactly am I going to do?“ The question had nagged me for years ..and now I had to find a solution to this seemingly impossible question.

Over the past two decades I have visited tons of locations where you could make a great video, but the idea of a location video, somewhere on a beach full of bikini clad babes dancing & drinking caipirinhas just wasn´t “Cult“ enough for me.

After 25 years of video pop culture, finding something that hadn´t already been done before seemed a some what daunting task..

This is my preliminary Design Brief to myself: 1.The Video should feature all five Band Members equally A popular misconception Is that Alphaville are 3 guys with keyboards, infact there are five Permanent Band members…they are not backing band.

2. It should be a performance video They are no longer an MTV Playback band…They play live.

3. The space should be neutral.

No scenery should distract from the Band 4.It should be a single location shoot avoid any complex time consuming “Set changes“ & turn arounds and lighting re-rigs.

5.The rhythm of the video should come from the lighting.

This will make it easier during the edit—irrelevant which camera angle we take..the lights are the metronome 6. No green screening Every effect and lighting state should have an authentic feel to it. This will help the bands performance if these scenes are actually happening in reality around them. Green screen images is gonna be too polished.

7. Use one Cinematic effect as a running theme.

Black and white is the Favorite 8.“ This Video should be 90% black“ 9. Always shoot in complete single run throughs of the song.

This helps keep the band in their normal “stage Rhythm“ environment.

10 . Take some Risks.

Concept & Pre Visualisation : As an initial visualisation tool at the conceptual stage I use Bryce software, It does fantastic renderings. Its great for conceptual image Slates for the client. I used it for all the initial meetings with Marian and the Record company.

As test staging software I used Grandma 3D. Great for placing lamps and just checking proportions on stage, blocking looks, pre programming & its really useful for checking camera angles and sight lines in advance as well.

As operator and Pre-Visual guy I worked with Tom Groß from The Puhdys. I had been trying to find an appropriate project & it seemed like a great opportunity to finally do something together.

I know that he´s also a great drummer which helps a lot when timing is be critical.

Although I myself am an ardent GrandMa guy, I wanted Tom to be as comfortable as possible and he Persuaded me to let him use His Hog 4 console. We used it for all the pre visual Wysiwyg programming at Color studios in Berlin. We spent 2 days in the studio which left us with only minor tweaking to do on the gig itself. It also gave me the possibility to show actual animated previews of the song timeline to the band before we go into the shoot. We decided to block the show cue Variations so we could vary sequences from take to take & not to timecode it. This way we could remain flexible during the shoot. ..Lighting has to have room to breathe & I am a great proponent of the “spur of the moment“ Playback philosophy.

The Location We chose BlackBox Music studios in Berlin. We were looking for a “large dark space“ and had initially been looking at Industrial Locations, however the main Rehearsal Studio at Black Box was already blackened and having the complete technical services, organization & planning under one roof as well as a warehouse full of everything you could ever possibly want right next door to the studio certainly has its advantages. Janice Kluck coordinated the complete project for black box expertly as she always does and As Video Specialist we managed to get Tino Schilke on board.

I worked for BlackBox Right at the beginning of the 90´s when they were still running out of a double Garage and 3 years ago I had Designed the European leg of The Gossip tour for them.They gave me my first real break into the Industry here in Berlin. After the wall came down, and as the “symbolic English man abroad “ I was granted a rare Glimpse behind the scenes of how they do it..“East Style!“ Staging: “The biggest complement for an actor …is an empty stage“ Josef Svoboda The stage is designed “in the Round“ ...to be filmed from all angles with total 360° access around the stage for continuous panning shots.

5 riser..one for each musician..Marian centre, the band N;S;E;W around him & 4 catwalk risers. The risers themselves were not conceptually necessary and were actually only there to cover up the cabling. A lot of the footage was going to be filmed from above so I really need a cable free set.The risers were covered with anthracite “Show Folien“ projection screening, which was also hung around the perimeter of the stage.

Black projection screening is great. It allowed us to create “floating“ content in the room and all over the floor while still retaining black areas & without creating ambient flare as often happens with white screens. All the lighting could be driven full and if you don´t light it, it simply disappears, which is critical with regard to the void space I wanted to create.

I had Recently used Black screens for the Anne Clarks “wasted wonderland tour“ and realized that I will defiantly never ever use white screens again.

Lighting : Everything in this video is light .

There is no scenery as such ,only musicians in a black space.

I only needed few key lights as most of the texture effect was going to come from the Video content.

So in this Lighting Concept less is defiantly gonna be more.

Many years ago I had seen a documentary about Who wants to be a millionaire, where Lighting Designer Brian Pierce had spoken about the lighting concept which had one major difference to all other TV shows….No Generic lighting was used…only fixtures ..hmmm..I thought.

So First thing to do was cancel the entire camera “white light“ department completely. Thus avoiding making any bad decisions in an area out of my comfort zone. I stayed with what I know best, show lighting…!

The Lighting concept bases itself on 4 simple groups : 5 top lights : I wanted lots of shadow and form in the image so hitting the musicians from the top would give me that “dancers contour“ look.

Marian is very good at Playing with light and a simple static top light leaves lots of room for expression from his side. It also allowed me to light them vertically without spilling any light on the walls, a key factor that would potentially destroy the illusion of the void. I chose a simple “Ramp inv.“ effect in various configurations throughout the entire video as my main beat effect on the dimmer and zoom channels. The sharp attack and soft decay seemed to mirror the production style of the music best.

For this Fixture I wanted the best Lamp I could Get and at present, for me its Robe´s BMFL blade.

The BMFL had everything I need in a lamp. Superb output, Focus, zoom, frost, a great set of gobos both air f/x and theatrical with animation wheel & an incredibly fast blade section & when I say fast I mean strobe fast. As well as creating perfectly pure spots. I got great Foliage effects and animated roll over effects in lots of variations easily as during the second phrase of the video I wanted to create a “Forest“ with Light.

I have to say it just did everything I needed very, very well….A true Multi-function Fixture.

2 years ago I was invited to an open day / shoot out for the release of the BMFL at Black Box Music. I turned up at the Breakfast show only to find that I was the only one there. I had the Boss of Robe Lighting..an operator..the chief marketing guy and the product engineer..just for me alone….Hallelulja..!! I talked at length with the guys and their perspective of basing their product on “we wanna know what you the light guy / girl want“ philosophy instead of dictating to the market was very refreshing.

Consequently our tour rider is now based primarily on Robe Fixtures :

24 floor lights : This was a no-brainer really. I took Robe´s Pointe´s .

I wanted to create some simple static forms in mid air without illuminating the whole set….with the beam reducer possibilities it was easy to find the right radius. I prefer it to the Sharpy .. Spot and beam in one fixture please.The linear prism looked great as an arial shot and was perfect for The „Bass Break“,It has a very precise, very sharp beam. Lovely..!

The moves at the end of the video were filmed from a cable cam above so all the movement effect had to be super sharp to get the geometrics for the camera. If you run Pointie´s at 20 - 30% you can get really nice glassy beam effect. Even at full power,with a trim height to 13m, Implementing them as a vertical beam meant we were not gonna have any problems with burning holes in scenery using static beams.

Its defiantly my favorite fixture in that class at the moment.

10 “Save my ass“ lights: I decided on the GLP x4 bar 10 as a footlight for each musician.

Primarily they were there just there to cover my ass incase the camera guys needed some fill light…we shot some takes with them as fill but it just didn't look good in the edit. However as a sweep down curtain for the middle 8 section they worked great. Its a really nice fixture, has a great zoom and a tilt axis channel. Its useful as an RGBW alternative to a floor ramp but really comes into its own as a moving effect ramp.

“I wish I had have had this lamp 20 years ago when I was doing Raves in damp cellars with no head room.“

4 3watt white light lasers I placed them directly behind the four band members as far away as possible.

They produce the Transparent curtain in the initial section of the video and although they were initially supposed to Mask and reveal the musicians via a simple tilt drop. The amount of haze necessary to create an opaque surface with the lasers was so much it interfered with the projection and was consequently exchanged for a more transparent look in order to suggest a certain depth in the frame.The lasers were also responsible for the wonderful electric blue profile lighting you see on the album cover artwork.

I had worked in 1986 on David Hersey´s production of “Time“ at the Dominion in London where he had created fantastic „reveal“ effects with lasers, mirrors and actors mounted on Forklift trucks using very simple laser curtain effects, a true Genius… and that was 30 years ago.

Video Projection: The Video projection is the main Eye Candy in the video.

The entire floor and walls are a projection surface, the floor being the main surface for arial cable camera angles.

Conceptually, I decided to use only Black & white geometric images Created specifically for the project by Chris Nolle aka Tofa.This would help the Environment to remain neutral in its message , it was important that the content should not tell a story. I added some ESP Symbols in the last scenes of the video that would tie in later with the album artwork.

White images on Black backgrounds are great for Keying and layering and in conjunction with the black screens and the images really „float in mid air“, and give a fantastic transparency to the whole look.

Media Server Arkaos Grand VJ XT I have worked with Arkaos for over 15 years now & I love it. Its simple, its flexible..the mapping extension is great and super easy to use. Even at the initial meetings I could show the band exactly how it looks. I can mix all the surfaces with effects and they can see the mapping scenario in real time directly on my laptop.

You can just skip the whole media server setup stress and get on with the creative stuff.

In the past I have used Arkaos in so many different environments and projects from Architectural Mapping projects through to Raves …for 100s of Rock festivals …Industrial. presentations and Fashion Shows.

I just use it everywhere.

I was intending Initially to do a lot of layering and mixing of the content and to take it in a very psychedelic direction but unfortunately for the actually shoot days we could only get a catalyst system which took 4 hours to do the same as Arkaos Mapper did in 10 mins and it was becoming clear that I wasn't gonna have time or the right platform to make the trippy stuff happen. Luckily the content selection itself had proven to work well without any real mixing involved and looked

great in the camera, so in the end everything worked out fine.

Arkaos was in fact Present at every stage of the production. Conceptual ideas, mapping logic, Rushes. content Playback, effect generation and general creative meat of the project was all done on Arkaos Grand VJ XT.

Media servers are strange things, over the years I have come into contact with all the main high end media servers: Catalyst, Pandoras box, grandMA vpu etc. They are of course are essential for multi platform large scale productions. They are however not without sin.They can be very time consuming in the handling setup and programming and are always dependent on how good the operator is.They are great for Cue listed playback controlled by a lighting desk. If, however, you wish to actually mix video live and freestyle on the fly, this simple but extensive Grand VJ XT software is often more appropriate, much more fun & with loads of quick & easy mapping possibilities. Grand VJ on a MacBook Pro…it goes with me worldwide, its easy take it with you on the plane..and it doesn't crash in the middle of the set.

Camera & Editing : We edited with Bettina Ehrhardt, the Camera Director, at BCE films in Munich.

She filmed on multiple cameras & formats ranging from Red cam, Segway steady cam, cable cam, 360°VR and even iPhone 4. She even had a small robot cam running around all day like a stoned R2D2. We agreed Early on in the design process that we did not want to use any camera trickery or Post production effects other than the invert effect used during the break down.. Just film it raw.

We actually managed to stay true to the concept right until the last day when we were previewing the 360° VR footage…when it was flattened into a 4k format, it Just looked too good. It would be a sin not to use it.

Needless to say Bettinas Experience in her field certainly took a whole lot of weight and worry off my shoulders and her cinematographic approach really mirrored my conceptual ideas perfectly.

After many hours in the studio cutting on an Avid suite and long nights discussing cutting techniques and conceptual matters we finally had two different cuts. One was much more visually orientated and One more musician orientated.Unable to decide which one worked best I threw both versions side by side in Arkaos VJ intending to run them together and pick scene for scene which one was best . Archaos is great for just taking some footage & throwing some effects on top just to get an initial quick feel of what could work, without spending hours on Final Cut or After Effects renderings only to find out it looks crap.

It was in that moment that the split screen format idea was born that you see in the Video.

It was clear that with this format I would be loosing pixels but as I said at the start "This video should be 90% black and much more importantly… …Why settle for one perspective when you can have both ? “ Finally I would just like to mention “Rhonja“ Marian´s wonderful german shepherd dog , who escorted us through out the whole production. Her ability to slumber quietly in the corner through endless hours of conceptual discussion, occasionally lifting an eyebrow or giving a slight wag of the tail at crucial moments in the decision making process, was really quite remarkable and it seemed only fitting that she should appear at some point in some form in the finished production.

Luckily on the last day.. in the last hour..in the very last scene, motivated by huge handfuls of “Chappy“ …..……. we finally got her to walk through the Laser !

Check out the Video at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJTmQGNE1Ko&index=1&list=RDbJTmQGNE1Ko

Rick Kay is an Independant Lighting Designer Living in berlin.

His extensive 30 year career spans a huge variety of works.

Ranging from West End through to Rock & Rave, Architectural, Interior, Runway, live stage & Video Production.

His Installations with The Core Berlin have been seen at The Olympia stadium Berlin, The Microsoft Headquarters, The Hanoi Fine Arts Museum, The Saal de justice in Luxembourg The Aachener as well as Berliner Dome and the Humboldt University Clients include Alphaville, Anne Clark,The Gossip & Genesis.

Presently He is Designing a new Rock venue in Panama and is resident Production designer for The Berlin Alternative Fashion Week.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall he has been hugely influential in the shaping of the Berlin Techno scene with his 20 year Involvement with the legendary Tresor Club.

From left to right.Tom GroĂ&#x; (operator), Marian Gold (vocals), Rick Kay (creative Director) & Jakob Kiersch (drums)

Check out Rick Kay at : www.Rickkay.net www.thecoreberlin.com

Production Equipment used as Follows : 5 20 10 4 2 4 4

Robe BMFL Blade Robe Pointe GLP X4BAR10 3Watt White light dmx lasers MDG tour Haser Laserprojektor 8.000 ANSI-Lumen SD-Projektor 13.000 ANSI-Lumen

1 Catalyst Media Server 1 Arkaos Grand VJXT 1 Hog 4 Console 130 m2 Gerriets Show Folie Anthracite