Elite Multimedia on Cole Swindell arena tour
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“We have done headlining tours before, but nothing on this scale with our own opening acts for an extended arena tour run,” began production designer James ‘Mo’ Butts. “As an artist, Cole will give us broad stroke ideas, but then will leave a lot of the technical aspects up to us to sculpt into the final design. Going into this tour design, we really wanted to showcase Cole’s evolution as an artist, from playing cover songs at a college bar at Georgia Southern University, to headlining in arena’s, so we knew video would be a key element in helping us tell the story.”
Aptly named the Reason to Drink, the design would serve as the backbone of the rig and would accommodate support acts Chris Janson and Lauren Alaina. As the headlining artist, Swindell now had the full stage all to himself.
“Cole really likes video, but in our production, we don’t use side screens,” explained Butts. “To do this successfully, we strategically deploy the IMAG using seven different cameras, and then work with our video content creator Andy Reuter, who is excellent at what he does. We now have a large 48-foot wide and 20-foot tall LED video wall that can create one large look, or we can create up to six different areas of content to really make each song stand on its own and have a unique feel.
“Looking at the lighting rig, the majority of our horse power is all brand-new fixtures that Elite Multimedia purchased for the tour,” explained Butts. “We now have new Claypaky Scenius Unico and Elation Platinum SEVEN luminaires, along with our core Elation ACL 360i fixtures. We also very fortunate to have lighting programmer Andre Petrus on our team who has toured with Cole for many years. Through this relationship, Andre has a great sense of what Cole likes to see as an artist, and he absolutely killed it once again for this tour.”
(Jim Evans)
