Posted on October 1, 2024
On December 30, 1959 travelers heading up Las Vegas Boulevard to visit one of the burgeoning city’s new resorts like The Stardust, The Dunes, or The Sands were greeted by a towering 25-foot pole sign that read “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas.”
Although those once glitzy establishments are long gone, replaced by new generations of resort casinos on The Strip, the sign, with its distinctive stretched horizontal shape and cross piece at the top, is not only still standing, it has gone on to become one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world.
Given the iconic sign’s evocative power, the scenic designers at StationSix thought it would make an ideal backdrop for another “Las Vegas institution,” The Killers, when the multi-platinum band did their three-week residency at The Coliseum at Ceasars Palace, which ended on September 1.
Steven Douglas, the band’s long-time lighting designer saw things the same way. He collaborated with the scenic designers to make the sign come to life in all its glittering glory which had a colorful and dynamic collection of lights into the set, including 2835 individually controlled bulbs, led tape and fake neon. A Key addition to helping him achieve this vision were 32 CHAUVET Professional mappable motorized tilting battens supplied by Christie Lites.
“We hung the PXL Curves so they augmented the outline of the scenic element, with all of its curves,” said Douglas. “We hid the battens, so that the source of the light wasn’t visible to most of the audience. But even though fixtures weren’t visible, the beams they projected were very impactful with a lot of movement.”
Drawing on the wide, individually controlled zoom range of the COLORado batten’s 12 moving heads, Douglas was able to produce a wide range of looks around the scenic piece that integrated it smoothly into the overall set.
“I paid a visit to Chauvet in Florida to see the fixture earlier this year and it was shown to me by Jean Lariviere. After that I knew I wanted this fixture because I needed to create a large soft sheet of light, and then, at another moment to be able to come up with nice thin beams,” said Douglas.
“The individual movement offered by this fixture was a big selling point. Our Christie account rep Martin Kelley deserves a lot of credit in helping with finding the fixtures after I made the selection. Project manager Russell Benoit, FOH tech Chris Pedersen, and crew chief Pete Siller were also big helps in this project as well as our whole lighting crew who had to get creative to make it all hang properly and neatly around the set”
In addition to the captivating sign scenic element, a Las Vegas aura was added to the production through images displayed on the venue’s 120-foot wide video wall. A large riser that was designed to look like an old school Vegas showroom bandstand also evoked classic images of the city.
The Killers’ two-hour show opened with the band playing every song from their first LP, Hot Fuss, one of the most successful debut albums of all time. For the second half of the show, they performed their other hits, as well as fan favorites, all while engaging the audience with tales about how the band started in Las Vegas and the special place the city holds in their hearts.
“All of the songs in the show are quite dynamic so they easily lent themselves to very different looks,” said Douglas. “Naturally, we tried to stay close to the Vegas aesthetic projected by the set piece and video content in terms of our lighting looks.”
Douglas often underscored those looks with powerful monochromatic color schemes and distinctive shapes and light angles that were chosen to reflect the unmistakable energy of Las Vegas, and the irrepressible band the city brought to the world.