Syncrolite News : Shania Twain CBS Special

The ever traveling George Travis who oversees production for Bruce Springsteen and Shania Twain called Syncrolite’s Jack Calmes in September to discuss a possible live/tape concert for Shania at Texas Stadium. The event was to air on Thanksgiving during sweeps for CBS and George came up with the concept of Shania taping a concert immediately after the Dallas Cowboys vs. Greenbay Packers football game two weeks beforehand. He knew that Syncrolite has produced the live half-time show every year for the Salvation Army kickoff drive which is a near Superbowl level production, but how to do a live concert after the game and hold the audience in place long enough to get set up? Jacksuggested a show in the round using 100 Syncrolite 7K and 3K Xenon lights and the Syncrolite rolling stage adapted for Shania. George and Shania’s LD, Jeff Ravitz, conferred and the project was off and running. After several site surveys, the grand plan was conceived. Jeff Ravitz designed a massive lighting rig starting with a dead-hang hexagonal truss composed of six 80’ spans of 20" truss flown off long chains that had to live at 145’ trim during the game. This 500’ truss system had to be lowered to 80’ trim for the concert and was filled with:

20 – ST7K Static Heads for audience pool lighting
18 – SX3K Skylights for stage and audience pool lighting
..8 – Cyberlights
60 – Data Flash Strobes

All these Syncrolites were at least 100-150’ from the stage and performing area. Shania’s touring system was Morpheus gear flown off six scissor lifts and one 80’ upstage truss which was trimmed at 60’. This rig consisted of approximately 120 Panaspots and PanaBeams with 10 of the Morpheus Brite Bursts with Color Faders. There’s more….

In addition to augmenting the basic stage and audience looks with huge color and beam composition:

24 SS7K Skylights were put in the upper deck on platforms
16 SS7K/SX7K Skylights were on top of the press box and
20 SS7K Skylights were on rolling platforms on the field

All this combined to make a truly awesome spectacle and a new look that had never been seen before either on television or in a live concert. The audience pool lighting was greatly simplified with the use of a few color changing programmable Xenon fixtures that replaced several hundred small format automated lights.

Sounds pretty innovative except all this mountain of staging, sound system & lighting equipment including the 7K’s in the stands and on the field - had to be put in place, powered, patched and fully working within one hour after the televised football game. It was a huge challenge. Imagine 15 400A breakouts, 20,000’ feeder, 60 rolling platforms with sound equipment, lighting, staging and 300 stagehands. The job took two weeks of placement, programming and pre-production working around a difficult schedule of local playoff games, Cowboy Cheerleader rehearsals, & other special events. With a great production team, the entire rig was 100% operational 51 minutes after the Dallas-Greenbay game ended and Shania taped a great show. We thank George Travis, Ken Erhlich, Jeff Ravitz, Simon Myles, Troy Eckerman, Morpheus, Audio Analysts, Production Rigging and our crew for a great job.