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L Jackson to play along as Uncle Sam and having his backup dancers form an American flag split down the middle. He also performed the Drake-targeting diss track Not Like Us – which had won five Grammys the week prior – amid legal drama with their record label. He also brought out Serena Williams (Drake’s ex), who also grew up in Compton, and SZA, who he’ll be touring with later this year. On the whole, Lamar’s Super Bowl performance suggested that Black folks have largely created – and dominated – American culture, despite all kinds of governmental efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And yes, President Donald Trump was in attendance at the show. During a press conference hosted by halftime show sponsor Apple Music, Lamar promised ‘storytelling’ within his performance, and – thanks to his creative and technical partners – that’s exactly what he brought. AUDIO OBSTACLES There are certain limitations unique to the Super Bowl halftime show that production teams would not ordinarily face. The main difficulty is that the stage must be built and disassembled in seven and six minutes respectively, without damaging the playing field before the second half of the game. This can be especially tough depending on the venue’s access points, as well as each particular artist’s creative requirements, which have only increased in complexity. This year, Kendrick Lamar pushed that lever even further, commissioning four mini stages – each shaped like one of the buttons on a Playstation control – and a black Buick GNX. Fresh off an Emmy for her work on Rihanna’s halftime show, art director Shelley Rodgers and her husband Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc handled Lamar’s aesthetic vision. Erik Eastland, president of manufacturing and design at All Access Staging and Productions, and his team created the stages and sourced the vintage muscle car. The company also built custom-made streetlights to adorn the spaces in between the stages. In total, it took over 15,000 man-hours to turn all of Lamar’s ideas into reality. Tribe and All Access have been collaborating on Super Bowl halftime shows since 1991, with Kirk Powell, senior design engineer at ATK Audiotek, joining the ranks in 2003. “We’ve been around for a while,” admits Powell. “It’s about making it as simple as we can – simple being a relative term because there’s nothing simple about it.” From wrestling with the arena’s acoustics and existing in-house technology to considering how the halftime shows will fit into the wider Super Bowl puzzle (ATK handles the pre-game and in-game audio as well), Powell has been faced with his fair share of obstacles over 23 years. For Super Bowl LIX, “the venue was the biggest challenge,” he shares. Home to the New Orleans Saints, the Caesars Superdome opened in 1975 and has
All Access designed stages for Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show inspired by Playstation controls
Getting all set elements on and off the playing field is a major challenge the show faces
A black Buick GNX was one of the props requested by Lamar and his team, sourced by All Access and Tribe Inc
because it’s very fast. There’s obviously no time for any wobbles,” he stresses. “Having a flying PA has made the set- up going into halftime a lot easier. Not having to roll out carts and getting set up and aimed correctly in just a couple minutes – at that point it’s just a concert.” Yet, unlike a concert, the Super Bowl halftime show is also a live television broadcast. “That’s the big conundrum; you can’t just turn it up as loud as you want,” Powell explains. “You have to make sure it’s not spilling back into the mics and coming out on the air. It will always happen a little bit, but you don’t
since hosted eight Super Bowls, which includes the one just completed. “It’s very reverberant, so keeping that under control was a challenge. Newer stadiums have fibre infrastructure we can share and use, so we don’t have to run as much cable. This building doesn’t have that. It’s an old-school stadium, which makes it a little more challenging.” The sonic set-up ultimately featured an L-Acoustics PA system, designed by systems engineer Johnny Keirle, Digico consoles (Quantum 338s at FOH and a pair of SD5s for monitors) and Focusrite Rednet components. “It’s a hard show
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