Zara Larsson Poster Girl Tour | visualized with Depence

Zara Larsson Poster Girl Tour | visualized with Depence

After a long hiatus of larger shows or tours in Sweden, pop artist Zara Larsson went on tour promoting her latest album called Poster Girl. The stage lighting team all around director and designer Anders Heberling as well as programmer/operator and previz engineer Isak Gabre used Depence to previsualize and plan all things stage lighting for the extensive tour.

Using Depence, Heberling was able to create detailed renderings following the design drawing process. The previz setup covered the lighting setup as well as all video surfaces and automation as the show was fed by media servers and had moving trusses in it. In this way the team was able to make out what was working for the show and what did not. The video design was made by content artist Eddie Mandell, Heberling and content house Greenwall Designs. The video programmer and show operator was Ishai Mika, who put together all loose ends and, by relying on Depence, made sure the LD had a full and realistic overview of the show during all preparations. Meanwhile creative director Sacha Jean-Baptiste made sure all areas, the band as well as the dancers were blend. Depence gave the opportunity to send updates and samples of the show and was the foundation for discussions and feedback within the creative process here too.

Although Depence comes with many extensive features to directly export magnificent high-quality renderings, the lighting team of Zara Larsson decided to capture the not less impressive real time rendering capabilities of the software. With quality tuned to the max, the captured output was directly sent to a cloud system, which allowed the creatives to immediately work on changes for the show. Greenwall Designs were running some heavy hardware machines in their previz studios, which in addition allowed them to render different parts of the rig besides the captured material.

Early in the process Gabre rendered 360° panorama material from different positions in the virtual venue. In this way he was able to get his head around potential issues and future challenges during the production period. The whole project had an interesting twist to it though, all because the lighting designer is living in Chicago, USA. Using Depence was a perfect way to present the stage and lighting design to him from within the virtual venue on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The design team was able to visualize the show from the audience’s perspective which was another great advantage.

“I have been using the software for about 18 months by now and rendered some really impressive results as well as running extremely heavy projects with 200+ universes and I think that the software is one of a kind but more importantly it is really easy to learn.” – Isak Gabre, 2022

The possibility to import all kinds of project data such as DMX patching, unit number data as well as different kinds of animated objects, moving people and Sketchup files into Depence also helped Gabre in his job as a previz engineer.

“For example, the venue was recently laser scanned by 3d-magician Edvard Hansson and the implementation of those very high detailed models was just too easy. I was afraid that this would slow down the Depence project file too much, but we didn't even notice a change in either quality or fps.”

Working on a lot of theater projects Gabre mainly uses Depence to share information in the creation process of renderings and planning. With Depence he can identify and highlight problems within the design but at the same time can come up with possibilities early in the creation process.

"Looking ahead, I don't think anyone can afford not to use software like Depence to get an early head start and refine the quality of production rehearsals and expensive real stage time. I would say that regardless of the type of project, there are real benefits to being as prepared as possible, avoiding as many unpleasant surprises as possible, and diving right into creativity."

 

Credits

Anders Heberling - Director & Designer

Isak Gabre - Programmer/Operator & Pre-viz Engineer

Eddie Mandell, Anders Heberling, Greenwall Designs - Video Content Design

Ishai Mika - Video Programmer & Show Operator | Live Footage Recordings

Sacha Jean-Baptiste - Creative Director

Edvard Hansson - Venue Scanning

Andre Jofre - Content for "Never Forget You"