CREATING A SPECTACLE

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. I have two amazing guests today. I have two show producers, Dave Nuckolls and Tom Bisignano. And guys, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Les. Thank you so much. Guys, guys, I am so excited about today's show because today's show is about spectacle and these guys know spectacle. So I'm just going to give you a little bit of their bios. Between the two of them. I've got Sochi Olympics, I've got European Olympics, I've got warrior games, I've got National Day for UAE, I've got countless number of Disney projects I have. The list could go on and on about all the different things these guys have done. So when we talk to them, they know spectacle. So with the week, this week is the week of the Super Bowl and everyone's pretty excited about it. I think a lot of people are going to be watching it virtually, but they typically do spectacle at the Super Bowl. And I know, Dave, you've worked on the Super Bowl because I've seen you there. So I'm going to throw the first question to Dave Nuckolls to talk about, you know, how do you define spectacle. And I want to be clear about this. You know, we do corporate events. We do all kinds of entertainment in different shows. But spectacle is another level. So maybe you could tell the audience how you define spectacle. Well, I will try. First of all, thanks a lot for for having me on this. And there's nobody I'd rather share this podcast with than Tom. He's absolutely one of the best, and he and I have done some pretty big spectacular shows together, so it's fun to be able to to have this chat with Tom as well. And also during Super Bowl week, I've been communicating with the Super Bowl team and it will be spectacular. They're doing the best they can in the COVID environment, but I think it's going to be a really, really good show. So that that's that's exciting. I also can't go too much further without saying that. As we talk about these things, it's so important to realize that neither Tom nor I will try to take credit for being the person, or actually, we'll even diminish our credit. It's always been about the team and the people that we surround ourselves with. So if it sounds like we're bragging, if it sounds like we think that we did it all, that's just not the case. And we're we're always we always really try to point that out. Spectacle for me, is it's often defined by the audience size. It's defined by the budget. It's just it's defined by scale. When you are starting to talk about measuring the audience in thousands or hundreds or thousands or millions, or in the case of the Sochi Olympics, billions. That's spectacle. When you talk in budget terms of multiple millions, that's spectacle. So I think that it's largely scale that defines spectacle. Tom, would you like to add to the spectacle definition? I would agree with all of that. I also would include spectacles, typically move the audience, whether it's a live audience or the viewing audience, you know, to evoke some kind of emotion. At least for me, it does, you know, and they're typically designed to appeal to everyone, which many shows are not. But spectacles. Whether you're young, whether you're old, it doesn't matter your race or gender, spectacles are typically designed for the broadest audience possible. You know, when I think about spectacle, I think about shows that are so over the top that have so many elements and the variables. Or you could say points of failure. You know, spectacle is is considered to be a very big ornate show. So this questions to Dave, and Dave, what's the difference between one of those shows that you mentioned of the scale and size and then doing maybe like a standard corporate meeting, you know, is the process different other than the size or how do you approach doing a general session for 5000 people versus doing a show like you mentioned? Yeah, again, I think it goes back to scale. I think a lot of the steps are the same, but the value of getting it right, for example, sometimes is more amplified. And again, it's just the scale. So whenever we go into when we when we first start working on a show that you might define as a, as a, as a spectacle, it's just so much homework upfront, so much research, so much spending time really understanding what the goal of the of the event would be. And then, you know, kind of the definition of success. So I always ask that question. It's like after this event is done, what will we look at and say, it worked. This is this is what we were trying to do. So anytime we do a show, let's take we keep referring to Sochi, but the Sochi Olympics, it's months of time spending with people, with locals and just really understanding the culture because you really, really have to get it right. It's the same on a corporate meeting. You want to get it right then to, but the pressure and the level is not quite the same. So. So when you have scale, failure looks a lot bigger, certainly does more opportunity than than when you're in a smaller environment with a more limited audience. Yeah. And I'll tell you one thing that I like to do in all my shows, and most people do this, I know Tom does this, everybody does. This is you spend time talking about those failures and what you're going to do if something happens on the bigger shows. We'll take an entire day with department heads and we call it the oh No plan. Or sometimes we refer to it as something slightly different than that. But, you know, you always, almost always start with weather. What if the weather is bad? What are we going to do? You know what? If we have a power outage? You know what? If a key member of the cast is sick or breaks their ankle, which happened to me, or something like that, and so you really have to spend that time to, to, to understand, especially in a live show, what could go wrong and how are you going to react. And then when something does happen and something will always happen, you've talked it through. You've got a good communication plan and you can you can navigate through and make it work. Right. I'll just tag on to that, you know, for for the Olympics in Sochi. And you might recall that there was five rings, five Olympic rings that were transformed from snowflakes, and only four of the snowflakes actually opened up. And it was at, oh, no moment where the fifth ring did not open. It remained a snowflake. But we had a plan B, you know, we had we had that contingency meeting. We actually had a plan C as well. And we put the entire show in the can. So the entire rehearsal with a full audience of 65,000 people was run the night before, and it was all in the can. And I will tell you that the only people that saw that ring not open were in the United States, because the rest of the world took the secondary feed. We just had to go from A to B, start playing the rehearsal tape and that ring open like it never happened. So you always have to have a plan B with the big spectacles and you got a billion people watching. You know, it's interesting to hear that. You know, the audience obviously on a large event, you know, you think about anything in a stadium is of of enormous scale, thousands and thousands of people. And, and how do you consider working within audience of a large scale versus a small scale? So, Dave, maybe you could opine on that question. And Tom as well, you know, what, what are your thoughts on audience size and how does that impact spectacle? Well, and Tom hit on it earlier. When you do spectacle, you do want to have a show that everybody gets. You always want to have a really good story. So people get what you're doing, you know, why are they doing this? What what's what are they trying to tell me here? And that's hard sometimes because it's such a broad age, for example, and level of intelligence and people, whether they're from the area or not. And so that's something that's very difficult. And so trying to consider who your audience is. You mentioned a convention show earlier. Oftentimes that's much, much narrower. It's a it's a smaller group. They all have the same interest. They're all the same level in a lot of cases. And so that that isn't really a component in planning for a show like that. But when you're doing something with a large audience, it's it's really trying to look at it through their eyes. When I was at Disney, one of the things I like to do is during the dress rehearsals, I would like to go up to the stage and look back at the audience and see if they were reacting when they when they were supposed to. Are they smiling when they're supposed to? Are they engaged? Are they bored? You know what is what you know, how are they reacting to what we're trying to do? And so a lot of times it's just putting yourself in those seats. And sometimes we literally do that to be sure that the viewing angles are right and all that. But it's just it's just a bigger scale. I would add in both of, you know, I would say that Dave was originally a video guy. When I first met Dave Nuckolls, he was a video guy, actually an AV guy back, back in the old days and we had slides. I do remember him in that day, just so you know, he actually had carried the slides on, on the airplane so they wouldn't get heated up and warped in the, in the truck. So Dave was a Navy guy and I know, I know, Les, you started your career in video as well. Yeah. And I would say for these big spectacles, when you're dealing with 65,000 people, you need to sort of direct their focus with the aid of video. You know, there's there's a, there's a, a scale to these productions where you really don't know where to look. So with, you know, stage pyrotechnics and special effects and video enhancements in lighting, you can direct the focus to where you want your 65,000 people to look. It's very easy for TV because the camera director and you guys both know this, because you both directed cameras, you could tell the camera to pick up the performer who's in the corner on, you know, whatever. But you know, through through that video magic, you can actually take a very large production and make it very small. So so let me ask this question to both of you, and I'll throw this today. First, is the audience part of the show always? Yeah. You always want to consider that you, as I mentioned earlier, you always want to have the audience and what they're going to be thinking and seeing. And as Tom mentioned, focused on so, so important audiences like to participate. You know, we're finding that now in this virtual environment, if people are just sitting there watching, you know, it gets kind of boring. And but if there's something for them to do, if they're engaged, if they have to know something later or pay attention. So because there's going to be a quiz, as we always say, then they're just more engaged. And I think that's something we always really, really try to do in these shows is have the audience engagement. You want to pull them in and pull them in and, and sometimes, you know, sometimes make them feel like they're part of the show. You know, you're seeing more and more of that. You know, the NFL maybe we're the pioneers in this. And Jim Steeg with you. Super Bowl weekend and fan engagement with the taste of the NFL and the NFL experience and all the things for the fans. And then they take it into the stadium. And here's all the besides football. Here's all the things we're doing for the fence. And you've seen now that it grow, it has grown to baseball and football and basketball. And does it matter what activity you're doing? The fans become part of part of the excitement. It's not just the sport anymore. It's part of the, you know, the entire 40,000 people get involved in the action. It sounds like a Broadway production is not the same without the audience. You have to have the audience for everything to kind of click and to work. Okay, I'm going to throw this question to Tom. Different question. Can you maybe describe what a team looks like when you put together an Olympics or a Super Bowl or some large production? Give me like the scale of the team. Are we talking 50 people, 500 people, 5000 people? Give me an idea. So the audience understand. So I will say that it's really unimaginable how big it gets. So in a word, large, huge. For instance, Sochi. Dave was head of production. I was the producer. And we ran our our manpower plan of paid employees was about 700 individuals, from technical to costuming. And then you have thousands of volunteers that are helping those 700. So the scale of a production could be 6000 people working on an opening ceremony. It's really hard to fathom. It's definitely hard to put your arms around that just I mean, you know, trying to figure out I would think authority and responsibility would be very important to make sure. So people could wrangle their however many hundreds of people they're responsible for. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll add to that as well, that it really comes down to getting great people from the top down. You know, we've worked with a gentleman by the name of Scott Gibbons at Five Currents, and Tom and I both have been fortunate to be on his teams multiple times. And leadership starts from the top. And then we always look at the department heads, you know, who's the best lighting person for this? Who's the best audio person for this. And then we sometimes lean on them to bring in the components of their team because it's people that they're familiar with. And so it cascades down in the leadership at that point. But it gets very cumbersome. Communication really becomes key, and it can just go crazy if if you're not communicating well and if everybody's not getting the same message and we talked about that oh no plan earlier, every single person has to be aware of what that plan is. So if something happens everybody reacts and you know the way they should to keep the show on the on the track, keep the train on the tracks, I guess. So, so so Tom, what is the most fun you have in this business? What do you enjoy the most? You know, when you think about shows big and small in the scale, what makes what jazz is you the most? I love the wow factor. I love the fact that, you know, when you're playing in these really gigantic playgrounds and with gigantic budgets, you can do the impossible. And I love the fact when you do something that's never been done before and, you know, there's there's been there, done that, been there, done that, seen that, done that, you know, there's so much of that. But every now and then in this business, you can do something that's never been done. And Dave and I both worked in Baku, Azerbaijan, and a program called the. It was the European Games and the opening ceremonies for the European Games. Need to Google this one and take a look at the stage. Because the stage was amazing. The entire stage caught on fire. The entire stage was cracker. The stage had 100 traps. The stage had a mountain grow out of it. There was a lake. There was, you know, gigantic cauldron at the end. And then it revolved. The entire stage revolved. So it's it's things like that. You just sit the control booth and go, wow, this is cool. So, so bigger than life. Things that actually have their life of their own. So Dave, same question. You know, it's funny, my wife and I talk about this all the time. She says that, you know, as a show approaches, I just get so excited. My adrenaline goes up and I talk faster and I just get really excited about shows I love. The bigger the better, the more complex, the better. The more wild things that could happen, the better. When it's emotional, I get it just it makes me emotional when we do shows. Tom and I did the Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, and there were several times during the show that there were tears in her eyes because just to see the face of the audience and to see what was happening and when the flyover happened and that sort of thing. So big shows are there's there's big dividends, there's there's big results at the end and that that is really, really exciting and very fun. And then, of course, you know, when the client's happy, when the client says, yep, you did it. That's what we were looking for, that that adds to the fun factor as well. Sounds like big risk equals big reward. Absolutely. And you know, it's interesting when I when I'm so jazzed about this business, when I start to tell someone about what I do, my eyes get all lit up and my wife tells me that I, I, I'm burning with excitement. And it's interesting. It sounds like you share that same feeling. So. So this is to Tom. Tom, what's the greatest challenge in a production of this scale? And with spectacle, what do you see the greatest challenge? Well, I think Dave said it right at the beginning of this conversation. That bleep happens in this business. You know the the challenges are you got tight timeframes tight budgets. You've got limited time to get plan A you know put together. But you also have to make time for plan B because it's going to something's going to happen. And Dave just mentioned the warrior games. And there was a moment in the warrior games. We were at the Air Force Academy. So we were in Colorado Springs. We had set up this jet fly by. Jeff Markowitz was our was our stage manager Dave chuckling over there. And it was at sunset. And there was some parameters about the jet flyby and flying into the sun. And it was the national anthem. It was the end of the national anthem. And it was supposed to be the Jets coming over in about 30s before the end of the national anthem. We get the call. Jets aren't going to make it. So, Dave, you know, we're all in the booth saying, okay, what are we going to do with these jets in the air and on the fly? You have to go to a plan B, and the plan B was, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the athletes of the Warrior Games. And the Jets flew over right on cue like nothing ever happened. So nobody knew. Nobody knew. No. And the generals actually said afterwards that was the most perfect timing. Who ever thought of that? Timing is a genius and all that. Little did they know that it was absolutely a plan B. So, so so you guys are describing luck. You just described luck. No, it's terrible planning. It's a strategic planning and having a good plan B. So so so Dave, this question is to you right now, what are you most proud of in the shows that you've done and participate in? Like if there's one thing that stands out in your career, that was a show. I know we've done a lot of shows together and you're way back past in your Disney history, but but what show would stand out to you as the one that either was the most meaningful or you felt like, you know, you contributed or I brought you the most joy and happiness? I really struggle with that. I don't know, I guess Sochi, I'd have to put that at the top of the list, because at the time it was the most expensive production on the planet. And that record still holds at the moment. So that certainly when you talk about scale, as we have been, that that is always going to be a highlight in something you can have. I mean, it was two years of our lives. Tom was over there more time than I was. And so, you know, there's a piece of us that that remains in Russia. So certainly that one. I also, you know, when you look back at the best for me, a lot of it's working with the best people. You know, we pull in the best lighting guys, the best audio guys, the best costume designers. And to have a relationship with some of those people who, you know, now, they work on the Oscars and they work on the Emmys, and they work on all the other biggest shows. To have those connections in that Rolodex where you can always give them a phone call or pull them in on a project or something. To me, that makes me very proud is when you're all talking after a big show and they're they're willing to take your call and even to work with you in the future. Super, Tom. Same question. What show are you most proud of? Well, it's it's it's always you know, I asked my wife last night, so what am I most proud of? You know, and she said to see said, you know, it's like your kids. You can't say that you're most proud of one kid or the other kid. That's not going to, you know, that's not going to go over very well. I you know, I think it's the body of work for me. I've been lucky to work on a lot of different programs. I mean, literally hundreds of big events with great, as Dave said, with great teams, you know, great creative. And, you know, at the at the end of the day, it's about those relationships. It's about meeting, you know, the James Lee, our technical director of Sochi, who did. So it's such an amazing job that things that have never been done, there was an aerial system in Sochi, nine tracks that traveled across the entire stadium. By the way, the stadium didn't have a roof, so we had to build a roof to put these tracks to, to move scenery the size of city busses and, you know, to meet a guy that can figure that out and, you know, consider him a friend and, you know, have a have a beer afterwards and say, hey, if the only thing that you know didn't go right in that show was one ring didn't open, but 10,000 things went right and one thing went wrong, that's pretty cool. Got it. So. So back back to you, Tom. Just to continue, what do you miss most about working at this level while we're in a COVID environment? And obviously a lot of the shows have either been put on hold or postponed. You know, what do you miss the most? Or the adrenaline rush or the you know what, what what is it? I got to be honest with you, I am so damn busy right now. So. So I am currently working on a great program. It's for the Special Olympics. We've got the USA games coming here to Orlando in 2022, so we're about a year and a half away, and it takes a year and a half to to do the productions that we're doing for the USA games. We've got opening ceremony, closing ceremonies, a fan zone. We've got, you know, all these different special events, 22 special events and all. So I'm in that process of planning and scoping and budgeting and, you know, beginning the creative process. So I'm really busy. So I don't really miss, you know, the day to day what I do miss as an audience member, going to a Broadway show, going to a concert, going to a festival. I love what we do, but I also love being an audience member, actually enjoying, you know, a concert at Amway. So. So not only can you, not only can you put on a big show, you can enjoy a show, and it's kind of like going to a wedding. If you're not in the wedding, you can really enjoy the wedding. That's right. So same question, Dave, what do you miss the most? It's interesting, Tom, as an audience member, we talk about this all the time. If Tom tells me that he went and saw a show and it was one of the top five shows you that ever seen, I will do anything I can to go see that show, because I know Tom knows shows and that's how we get better. At what we do is to see what other people do. And there have been a couple of times Tom's made that recommendation, and I have have absolutely made sure that I'd see whatever he recommended. COVID-19. I'm over it. Everyone's over it. But everything is everything we've been talking about. That's what I miss. I love the high fives and the hugs. I love the when the cast all gets together. You know, so many of the productions we've done have had what we call mass cats, where it's just thousands of people and dealing with all the costumes and all the, you know, they all wear inner ear monitors and how do you distribute those and all that stuff, and just figuring out the big numbers of people in the same place. And we don't have a lot of big numbers of people in the same place right now. And so that's what I'm what I'm really missing. I think we're going to soon be moving to the hybrid show, where we're going to do something with limited number of people in the room, but then we'll have that extension of so many other people watching remotely. That's kind of what we're doing right now, is getting ready for the hybrid. Right now, it's all remote and I'm over it. I need the people. I want to be in the room. I want the energy, I want the hugs. I want the high fives. You know what you just said was, when you get people together and I don't care if it's a small group, a large group, a stadium, there's a certain energy that's been created and it's almost like you're in a stadium and you and they do the wave and and you feel this energy and that, and it doesn't exist right now. And when people are trying to do productions, they're trying to figure out a way to transmit that energy, whether it's within the audience or with the people of the viewers. And so I share your feelings, and I can't wait to be back. And that's this is my final question. This is to Tom. And then I'm going to ask Dave. You can bring us to close Tom. When do you think events will return in any meaningful way? And I'd like a month and a year. So you have to give me a month in a year. And I'm not talking about, you know, stadium the size. I'm just saying in general events as as all of us want to go back to concerts and Broadway shows and, and all of those experiences. So, Tom, and because this is recorded, we can reflect like 2 or 3 months or three years, whether or not you were on target, you were off target. So you will be measured on at some future date on your accuracy. But what is your prediction every day? As you know this, like the bear coming out of hibernation, it's like, say, when's that bear going to wake up and come out of hibernation? You know, I start in every day. There's a little bit of good news, just a little bit. This morning I heard the NBA All-Star Weekend is on. So in March in Atlanta, the NBA is going to hold their All-Star Weekend right. This weekend we've got Super Bowl weekend. You know this summer there's some outdoor festivals that are actually going to take place. Actually the Olympics right. As as we've heard, the Olympics will probably most likely take place this summer expo. Right. Expo and Dubai this, you know, October. These are massive events that people are putting a stake in the ground. So yeah, we're going to do the expo. Yeah, we're going to do the Olympics. Yeah, we're going to do the All-Star game. That gives me hope. So I think our business of spectacles and bringing people together and building communities and doing all of that stuff, not going to happen this month, next month, but maybe in the fall, maybe we'll all get to go to Amway in a limited fashion and see and Justin Timberlake in concert, maybe. So are you going with October, September, November? And you're saying 20th November? November 2021. Okay. Mr.. Same question. When are we going back to to a room with people in it? I'm going to be slightly more optimistic in my date, and maybe it's just wishful thinking, and I'm just trying to will it to the universe. I'm going to say June 1st. I'm going to say June 1st. We are back out and we're almost going to be normal. I think, you know, there's going to be some changes. So I think when we go to concerts, we may be getting our temperatures checked and, you know, we may have to wear masks for a little while and that sort of thing. But I think the way, as Tom said, the good news comes out every day that more vaccinations are are getting out there. And I think we're going to get a little bit more comfortable with where we are in the numbers and that sort of thing. So I think June 1st, we're going to start seeing a lot of in-person meetings and people are going to see that it's okay, and we're going to be back to normal pretty soon after that, or whatever the the new norm, whatever that is. Yeah. Guys, I must tell you that no matter what you thought before you heard this podcast, the the sheer joy and energy, and you can tell that Tom and Dave love doing what they do because it comes out and everything they say and talk about. And I appreciate both of you joining us. I think we will reflect back on your dates in some future, so I can call you and tell you how smart you are. Or maybe not so smart, but I'm hoping, Dave, I'm hoping Dave's a little closer to the target because of my own personal interest in getting back to to to doing live events. And anyway. But guys, thank you for your insight into spectacle and what it takes to deliver that kind of show and scale. And I look forward to seeing you in person and not on a Zoom call or a Teams call, but in a ballroom or in a production environment. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead, guys. Thanks again. Good job. Thanks so much. Thanks, Les.