Roland Greil (Woodroffe Bassett Design) and Eoghan Tansey (Neg Earth Lights)

Rammstein European Stadium Tour 2019, started with a bang in Gelsenkirchen on 27 May 2019. The six-man line-up has since performed their spectacular show in more than 25 major arena’s in Europe and Russia. When we were told in April 2019 that Follow-Me was going to play a role in following this epic band, we felt proud and couldn’t wait to get involved to start preparations with Neg Earth Lights. Since then we have been in close contact with Eoghan Tansey (Neg Earth Lights) and Roland Greil (Woodroffe Bassett Design) to support and fine-tune the Follow-Me set-up for this tour and were lucky to see the show in Rotterdam – De Kuip on 25 June.

So asking Roland Greil (Lighting Designer – Woodroffe Bassett Design) what made them choose Follow-Me for the Rammstein tour and what the experience has been from a designer perspective:

“…We were looking for a versatile and reliable automated follow spot system, which allows us to use any fixture and related quantity that we want. Furthermore, another very important point was the reliability, especially for a show of that caliber. It gave us all the needed versatility combined with reliability and a second to none support from the Follow Me team. Furthermore, it is an easy to use system for the crew out there, which helps immensely.  It has been an absolute pleasure to create and design this show together with the band, their management, and the whole creative team. The whole design process has been a collaborative effort with all involved from day one, which created the perfect breeding ground for this extraordinary show.”

As Eoghan Tansey (Follow-Me technician & overall systems technician – Neg Earth Lights) explains, the following fixtures were used as follow-spots controlled by Follow-Me: 44x BMFL Wash/Beam (key light from the upstage central tower), 14x Clay Paky Unico (stage left and right PA towers as side spots), 12x BMFL LT’s (FOH spots located at delay towers). In total 6 targets (each member of the band) are followed.

We asked Eoghan how long it takes to set-up Follow-Me for this show and what the pro’s and cons has been so far.

“…About 20 minutes for the camera installation, simply due to the cameras location and the time it takes to reach trim, while also depending on local conditions, sunset, movement of the delay towers etc, roughly 30-45 minutes for any adjustments. Follow-Me is relatively quick and easy to understand and set up for the show, the camera picture quality or better said camera view does sometimes suffer due to the amount of pyro being used throughout the performance, but this is generally only a small problem which is mostly caused by the local weather conditions, something of course which nobody can control. All the support from everybody at Follow Me has been first class,  if any software issues or uncertainties have appeared, Gerwald, Erik and Gary have been super quick to respond and supply the necessary solutions, extremely quickly and professionally…”

So Eoghan, what has been the response and experience of the operators about Follow-Me?

“…In general positive, it gives another level of freedom for the FOH crew. We are currently using the system to where the FM operators are only controlling Pan/Tilt movement, the FOH operators have programmed all the required fixture parameters into the show cues, this eliminates any misunderstandings between spot caller and FM operator during the show, allowing all required dimmer, color or zoom/iris calls for the show to come directly from the console, while still giving the ops the chance to change or jump in during the performance. The system has itself been rock solid for every show of this leg, any mistakes or difficulties which have occurred have been more from the human side of system :)…”

A big thank you to Rammstein production, Roland Greil and Woodroffe Bassett Design, Eoghan Tansey and Neg Earth Lights for supporting Follow-Me.

Credits:

* Showdesign: Woodroffe Bassett Design, * Lighting Design: Roland Greil & Patrick Woodroffe * Production Design: Florian Wieder, * Set Design: Cuno Hahn * LX Programmer: Marc Brunkhardt * Video Programmer: Tim Hornung * Lighting Director: Faren Matern & Marc Brunkhardt * Camera Director: Sven Offen * Live Visuals: Haegar De & David Gesellbauer * LX Crew Chief: Nick Barton * Production Director: Nicolai Sabottka * Lighting Vendor: Neg Earth Lights * Technical Consultant: Jeremy Lloyd – Wonderworks * Video: Solotech