Behind the Extravagant Stages of Beyoncé, Skrillex, Bruno Mars and Nine Inch Nails
Seven Design Works creates elaborate performance spectacles for your favorite music stars
The Los Angeles-based Seven Design Works is the brainchild of three of the music industry’s leading creative designers, LeRoy “Roy” Bennett, Tobias Rylander and Cory FitzGerald. The company was founded in 2012 and has been behind some of the most well-known concert and performance stages in recent memory, including the lighting design for Justin Bieber’s most recent Purpose World Tour, as well as The Weeknd’s 50 Shades of Grey-themed 2016 Academy Awards performance.
The trio designs elaborate, visually striking, outside-the-box tour stages for many of the industry’s top artists including Lady Gaga, Nine Inch Nails, Paul McCartney, Deadmau5, Joy Williams, Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, Mark Ronson, Janet Jackson, OK Go, Calvin Harris, Miike Snow, and the 1975, to name a few. Cuepoint spoke to Bennet, Rylander and FitzGerald about the creation of some of their favorite masterpieces of color, light and sound.
Lady Gaga Artrave, The Artpop Ball Tour, 2014
“The concept for Gaga’s ArtRave show was to enable her to travel throughout the audience on an imaginary journey. The challenge was to do this without killing seats and sight lines. On the arena floor, the audience was able to walk around freely and follow Gaga as she passed overhead on the plexiglass walkway. It really gave the whole event a more immersive feeling.” ~LeRoy Bennett
Skrillex, Mothership Tour, 2014
“This was one of my favorite looks from the Coachella show we did, which was basically the first stop on the 2014 Mothership Tour. Several teams came together to create media content for the show, and this piece was great, as we had been trying to really use the video wall as more of a 3D piece. We created a wall of lights behind a very transparent video wall called ‘V Thru.’ By using media content of the spaceship on the video wall and integrating the beams from lighting fixtures, we combined the two worlds of lighting and video to create an interactive environment for the audience.”~Cory FitzGerald
Nine Inch Nails, Tension Tour, 2013–14
“This design was an extension of the “Lights in the Sky” tour as far as the concept. The biggest difference came from the advancement in technology. The addition of Ayrton Magic Panels in the overhead pods and the Nocturne V-Thru screen (which was developed specifically for this tour), took the show to a much higher level. The V-Thru screen was developed for its incredible transparency and high resolution. In this picture you can see the layers of images on all the layers of screens.” ~LeRoy Bennett
Beyoncé and Jay Z, On The Run Tour, 2014
“The approach to this tour was to create big, bold looks. More iconic and less bitty and busy as far the overall lighting scenes and placement of the lights.” ~LeRoy Bennett
Bruno Mars, Moonshine Jungle Tour, 2014
“This was a point in the show during the song ‘Grenade.’ The entire song is an asymmetrical, tight beam look that’s constantly moving around and changing the shape of the space. For this one moment in the show, we pull all the lights down to him for a slow guitar solo, and slowly take every beam of light and aim them all at him. It’s a look that I love, and I try to recreate a version of this idea for each performance and tour that we do.” ~Cory FitzGerald
Ok Go, Spring 2015 Tour
“This show incorporated a lot of technology, custom video screens, and media content, in addition to pushing the limits of what they had done with lighting in the past. They are a very colorful band and we found new ways to highlight that through this technology, without overwhelming the stage. For instance, we used a lot of RGBW LED fixtures and controlled each individual pixel, which offered a lot of versatility and punch. The band also loves confetti, which was used at several points during each show.” ~Cory FitzGerald
The 1975, World Tour, 2014
“This shot was taken at one of the Royal Albert Hall concerts. The design for the 1975 was my first one using almost solely video content and aerial projections as lighting for a show. No actual lights are used in this photo, only five projectors behind the band, projecting out from the stage over the audience and into the venue. All visual effects were created using very graphic video images and moving content to create the light scapes and shapes on stage. The only actual lights I used during the show were strobes and key lighting.” ~Tobias Rylander
The xx, Park Avenue Armory, 2014
“This scene is from the show/ installation I did with The xx at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC during the weeks of March 2014. Again, I utilized projections as the main source of light. The photo highlights the final scene in which the projection screen walls of the performance space had fallen to the ground, exposing the 55000 sq. ft. venue to the audience for the first time. The colored side lights here are actually 4x 40K projectors and 8x 26K projectors that functioned as wall projections for the four sides of the cube-like performance. In this moment after we dropped the walls, all the projectors worked to create aerial projections of original content shot by the band for their Coexist album artwork.” ~Tobias Rylander
Balenciaga Spring/Summer Fashion Show, 2015
“This photo is a detail shot from my first ever light and conceptual design for a fashion show, Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2014. It was a collaboration of designer Alexander Wang, Balenciaga, OBO (the production company), and myself. Alexander and Balenciaga wanted a design that tied to, and reminded the viewer of the Balenciaga brand stores. These stores often have unique and beautiful octagonal tile flooring, so we used this as a visual concept. By working with depth and perspective, we created a glass floor out of tiles in the center of the fountain outside of the museum Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The location and depth of the fountain, along with the use of light and smoke allowed us to create a great illusion of depth under the glass floor. When the audience entered the space, no light or smoke filled the floor making it look like an ordinary black glass floor. The show began in total darkness, and the floor slowly filled with dry ice smoke creating cloud like waves just as the lights came on.” ~Tobias Rylander
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