Rock gets wired

Anthony Bongiovi, younger brother of the group8217;s lead singer, Jon Bon Jovi, was manning mission control, switching eight video cameras and nine pre-taped music videos in time to the music and barking cues while bouncing to the beat in his seat.

8220;Everything is happening at the same time, between moving between screens, running the videos, shooting what8217;s going on live and playing it back at the same time, in time to the music,8221; said Bongiovi, who also directed the videos through his TBJ Entertainment, housed at Interlock Studios in Hollywood.

8220;There are so many variables that might happen in a show. Jon might change the set in the middle of the show and not tell anybody. So we8217;re constantly adapting,8221; he explained.

This was not your parents8217; rock concert. Since the 8217;70s, when Genesis funded the development of computerised arena lighting, through the pyrotechnics of the heavy metal era and into the digital age, when equipment became smaller, more transportable and cheaper, rock concerts have experimented with feats of mechanical engineering to push the hi-tech envelope.

8220;Audiences expect it now as an addition to the experience and reflection of the rise in ticket costs,8221; said film director Rick Schmidlin, a former lighting designer for punk band X.

8220;The technological elements of rock concerts have changed more dramatically than any other art form, to where it almost outrides everything else in the stage show,8221; Schmidlin said.

Broadway director Robert Roth, who directed Alice Cooper8217;s Brutal Planet world tour this year, envisions next a fine-tuning of rock8217;s techno-revolution. 8220;Technology in rock shows has been the norm for the past 10 to 15 years, but designers are always trying to find ways to refine existing elements,8221; he said.

8220;The grand-daddy of rock shows is Pink Floyd. Its 1994, The Division Bell tour had more lighting than I8217;ve ever seen. It had movie projections, quadraphonic sound, state-of-the-art visual displays and short films commissioned from artists. The entire industry acknowledges that they win,8221; Roth said.

8220;But the Rolling Stones8217; Bridges to Babylon tour had a bridge that jetted out from the stage over the audience without suspension wires. It was a technological marvel. I have no idea how it stayed there,8221; he added.

8220;The Backstreet Boys will probably come up with something big for their Black and Blue tour, which starts in January. Last year, they had a stage-in-the-round that used the entire arena for lighting. It was the first time I8217;d seen that. They flew in on skateboards over the audience.8221;

Bon Jovi upped the ante on its tour with a projection screen so wide that Bongiovi had to shoot the footage in a special extra-wide format, then seamlessly project it in two halves to create an image that filled the entire screen.

He intercut live footage with that from nine concert music videos and montages that he and Blum shot in digital video, 16-mm, 35-mm time-lapse and Hi-Definition Video, edited on the new AVID Symphony 3.0 during the course of a sleepless six weeks.

8220;We own stock in Starbucksat this point,8221; Blum said, laughing.

Bon Jovi plans to keep the spirit of envelope-pushing in an international stadium tour to start in Australia on March 28. At that time 8212; digital gods and sponsors willing 8212; Bongiovi hopes to set up live streaming on Web site bonjovi.com.

Rather than being a one-time event, it will stream songs live from each concert through a camera offering a 360-degree view of the stadium, plus live backstage footage and daily down-loadable clips of the band 8212; an extension of the Crush

recording sessions that Bongiovi streamed on the site this year under the heading of Bon Jovi TV8217;.

8220;A lot of other bands are getting into similar types of technology, but the way we8217;ve been able to integrate all these different types of media is unusual,8221; Blum said. 8220;The technology can get so exciting it8217;s easy to forget that it8217;s really about the music too.8221;