American pop-rock band Train have recently wrapped up their major North American summer tour, Drops of Jupiter: 25 Years in the Atmosphere, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the band’s 2001 breakout album and was supported by Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson. Across 40 shows, the advanced performer tracking system Follow-Me 3D kept the band consistently and correctly lit, giving the production team the freedom to change their minds at any moment and keep every member illuminated.
Lighting Designer and Director Joel Wojcik, who has worked with Train for eight years, specified the Follow-Me system which was supplied by LMG, along with 40 iFORTE fixtures for the tour. With no fixed set list in the early stages of the tour, just a broad ballpark of what could happen on any given night, Wojcik chose to use all the fixtures in the rig rather than adding dedicated wash lighting, relying on Follow-Me to put every one of them to work.
Wojcik describes the show as a rock show built around the fans, giving the audience something they do not have to think about, much like a night at a disco. The production includes video screens and IMAG content with effects, many of which depend on the band members being lit in exactly the right way, and it is here that Follow-Me made a significant difference.
The ability for Wojcik to change his mind at any point, or take over any other light at any given moment, has proved particularly useful when band members miss their marks or wander out of bounds, a situation that would once have meant scrambling to correct the problem. “Follow-Me has helped me hugely, allowing me to just swap the lights instantly, and everyone’s fully lit again,” he says.
That flexibility has been especially valuable with Train’s current guitarist, whom Wojcik describes as a “wild card”, free to run anywhere on stage at any moment during his solos. Wojcik can grab all the lights, or any portion of them, and follow him around the stage, combining lighting effects that spin around the guitarist while still tracking him consistently. The system also allows whole groups of fixtures to be used in different patterns and colours in new creative ways.
Compared with traditional follow spots, where the number of positions at front of house is fixed and the quality of the light is limited, Wojcik points out that Follow-Me lets him stack lights on top of one another, and move straight to a different fixture if a better angle is available. Coming from a theatre and television background, he likes people to be lit from as many angles as possible, which gives the video content more depth.
Setup and calibration have been equally smooth. Most venues on the tour were roughly the same size, so little needed to change from day to day, though in a few cases the downstage truss had to sit closer to the audience. Even then, Wojcik reports, calibration was seamless, and the production experienced zero issues with the system throughout.
Wojcik also praised the support he received from Follow-Me throughout the tour, noting that a simple question tends to bring back several different routes to a solution. Chris Lose, Designer Relations USA at Follow-Me, has encouraged him to dig deeper into the system, and Wojcik plans to incorporate some of its newer features in the future. Marguerite Laforce was the Follow-Me tech on the road with the production, and he calls her “super diligent”.
“When I’m doing other projects now, I always spec Follow-Me because the simplicity of it and the way that you can just add fixtures and so on is amazing,” Wojcik says.
“Joel’s experience with Train shows what Follow-Me can do on a fast-moving rock show, where the priority is simply to make sure the band is lit and the fans are having fun,” concludes Lose. “Being able to swap lights instantly, stack fixtures for better angles and follow a performer anywhere on stage lets designers stay creative and focus on the show. Joel and Marguerite have done a fantastic job, and it’s been a pleasure to support them on the road.”
Image: @maggielndnphoto
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