zactrack proves its worth with Harry Styles’ record-breaking world tour
When Harry Styles completed his run of 12 sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium for his Together, Together tour this summer, he set a Guinness World Record for the stadium’s longest residency, performing live to over one million fans in the process.
This extraordinary world tour, destined to play 67 shows in 7 cities, is a design collaboration between US-based Silent House and Earlybird – and is enhanced by the power of location tracking technology from zactrack, supplied, along with all lighting, LED, and control, by tour vendor Solotech, with TAIT responsible for the stage build.
Lighting Designer Eric Marchwinski, co-founder of Earlybird and a veteran of countless major touring productions, specified the zactrack PRO system for this tour. Eric and the Silent House team had previous experience with the product, and felt it was the perfect fit to solve many of the unique design challenges on this project.
Eric and his team gained a majority of their initial experience with the zactrack system while working on Awakening, at the Wynn, Las Vegas, which utilized up to 18 tracked performers on stage simultaneously. The show required both Silent House and Earlybird to work closely with the zactrack team and distributors ACT and Ambersphere to implement the system in a complex environment. “Our experience at the Wynn certainly shaped our understanding of using zactrack, as well as the support available,” he says, “and allowed us to develop the concepts and approach that we were able to implement here on this tour.”
No Simple Task
For Marchwinski, lighting any performance on this scale is a “welcome challenge”. As ever, the main priority when approaching a project like this is lighting the performer. In this instance, the vast stage area – with runways the length and breadth of the stadium floor – adds an extra dimension to the task. Marchwinski chose zactrack to help manage that ever-changing relationship between artist and followspot fixtures to create a consistent colour and intensity regardless of location - automatically.
“The question is,” he says, “How do you light a performer across a 60m x 45m space, in the round, with cameras from every angle? It’s a complex problem, but having the right tools on both ends of the system have resulted in what has been a dream of mine for quite some time now.”
Those tools are zactrack PRO on one hand and first-class fixtures on the other. The primary keylight fixtures are Ayrton Eagle Strikes, what Marchwinski calls “the exact right tool for the output side of the equation.” In total, 305 moving heads were calibrated within zactrack, all of which could be used for tracking at any one time.
The integration of tracking enables new creative possibilities, as Ambersphere’s Jamie Burke, who set up and supports the system on site, explains, “A great example of this is during Aperture, when the Eagle Strikes on top of the video wall run a bounce effect from left to right – and the entire time, they are tracking Harry. This effect, while simple in design, when combined with the tracking creates something that simply could not be done reliably otherwise, without forcing an artist to hit their mark every time.”
The zactrack PRO System
Of the zactrack system, Burke explains, “The system is made up of two zactrack PRO Servers – as main and backup, 24 Anchors, 15 Trackers and 4 PRO ‘Pucks’, which calibrate the lighting instruments.”
Of zactrack’s setup process, Marchwinski says, “The calibration workflow within zactrack has been developed over nearly 20 years, and has proven to be the most accurate, flexible and efficient of any world-based calibration system we have worked with.”
Although the high number of Anchors reduces the system refresh rate, the scale helps – because with tracking, one of the most impactful factors in response time is the physical movement of the fixture itself. “Very little pan or tilt movement translates into a very large change in location on stage,” explains Marchwinski. “Even though we had a little less than the highest possible refresh rate, we still had great tracking due to the long throw distances.”
This was true even with the artist’s speed of movement. “Harry has become known in the running community, tackling marathons in the recent years” Marchwinski says, “and with such a large area to play with, that ‘full-speed sprint around the entire stage’ moment was inevitable. zactrack and the fixtures do an incredible job of making those moments appear flawlessly.”
Styles wears three zactrack Trackers on a discreet belt to ensure optimum tracking and redundancy: similarly equipped are two dancers and two musicians. All Trackers can be activated and deactivated throughout the show, depending on the lighting cues for each song, from the grandMA3 console operated by Lighting Director Travis Maynard.
The Operator View
Maynard, part of the team who implemented and operated the zactrack system during Awakening, comments, “The workflow here is very different from any other show I’ve worked on – such an extensive lighting rig and huge number of trackable fixtures. Most of the work to get the system exactly right happens during the production load-in. Once everything is aligned, calibrated, auto functioned and balanced, the show programming becomes highly automated, making my workflow during the show itself as simple and seamless as possible.”
He continues, “From my experience, system accuracy has been incredibly reliable and precise. zactrack and Ambersphere have supported us every step of the way to make sure we get the most accurate tracking possible for such a massive stage and huge production. As long it’s all properly maintained through calibration and alignment, zactrack takes care of the rest.”
Positioning of this calibre has serious potential to enhance show production, Maynard believes. “It allows designers, programmers and creative teams to approach lighting in a completely different way. Instead of being limited by traditional position presets and cueing, we can tell any fixture to follow a tracker, an XYZ position, or any of the other functions available in zactrack. It speeds up the whole process of building looks and effects and opens up a new level of creative flexibility – one that just isn’t possible with less integrated systems.”
In the Footlights
The LED footlights (ACME Pixel Line) outlining the stage reveal another tracking-based technique, with the integration of lighting and video pixel-mapping. On past shows with numerous dancers, the Earlybird team had laboured with cuing footlights to match the choreography. “Now,” says Marchwinski, “this is automated by feeding performers’ positional data from zactrack into the media server, which then pixel-maps onto the fixtures lining the stage. This gives us access to ‘active footlights’ that are always available to be cued to music or turned on at a lower level to help fill the artist’s face. No longer are we watching choreography videos and tediously cuing the footlights to follow the action - the system does this for us.”
“This was a very unique marriage of the lighting and video technology, all driven by the positional data from the zactrack system,” he adds.
Discussing the appeal of zactrack for a production of this type, Marchwinski says, “The zactrack PRO system has proven functionality at scale, and a great user interface for analysing and working with the system configuration and monitoring. Features that really stand out from other tracking systems include the ease of calibration, plus the variable freeze and auto functions. Also, the PSN output plays a very large part in our integration of locational data into the video department, for their own functional and artistic uses.”
"The Disguise media server takes smooth and accurate positional data from zactrack via PSN and uses it to create a live video mask for the content on the video floor that covers the thrust element of the stage design,” says Burke.
Keeping Track of the Vision
“I hope, and believe,” says Marchwinski, “that this project was one large push towards the eventual inclusion of locational data as a mainstay of live production. Showing what is possible when utilising this data, for the purposes of not only function, but also to open up new approaches to the art form, has been an exciting journey to be a part of.”
He concludes, “This tour, with this system, would have not been possible without a vast team of collaborators helping it come to life. Everyone involved wasn’t simply interested in selling or supporting the system – every collaborator was a part of the conversation nearly seven months ahead of the first show, and we all believed in this vision. We certainly thank everyone for their commitment and belief in the end result, and hope we have helped pushing the envelope on what is possible in a live production environment.”
Together, Together: Tour Credits
Creative Director: Molly Hawkins
Production Designers: Vincent Richards & Baz Halpin
Production Manager: Andrew Thornton
Stage Managers: Duncan Ladkin, Jack Dunnett, Rosie Lines
Lighting Designers: Eric Marchwinski & Baz Halpin
Lighting Programmer: Tyler Santangelo
Lighting Director: Travis Maynard
Lighting Crew Chief: Craig Hancock
Lighting Vendor: Solotech; Oli James, Ian 'Woody’ Woodall,
Video Vendor: Solotech; Paul ‘Macca' McCauley, Steve-O Grinceri
Video Content: Silent Partners Studio; Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, Heath Saunders, Meghan Reinhardt
Media Server Programmer: Steve Foster
Media Server Operator: Josh Key
Media Server Engineer: Ismael 'Ish' Alicea
Technical Director: Kirk J Miller
All photos © Julian Bajsel
Original article written by Lee Baldock.
