VER Provides Global Lighting Services to Bruno Mars 24K Magic World TourProducer, singer-songwriter Bruno Mars is on a massive 24K Magic World Tour cross-continent tour which started in the Europe and is now entering North America. Dates for South America and Australia were just added with additional dates expected into late 2018. Bruno Mars' new tour reflects the funk and soul of the '70s, and the 24 Magic World Tour stage design is no different. Using a record setting 795 Robe Spikies, rigged on 20 moving over-stage pods, the design is a compliment of mashed together lighting rigs reflecting times from the past, while bringing a modern feel using motion-rigging pieces. "The hope was to design something that would return audiences to a previous era, combining uniformity with bold bright colors," commented Cory FitzGerald. "We reduced the amount of LED from previous designs, and used custom light boxes filled with Spikies to achieve a retro-meets-modern look. On top of that we incorporated Philips Vari-Lite VL4000 Beam wash and VL6000 lights to give us a second layer of visuals, as well as 200 plus of my go-to light -- the Solaris Flares." FitzGerald is the lead lighting designer for Bruno Mars 24k Magic World Tour, and long-time client of VER. This is FitzGerald's seventh consecutive year supporting Bruno's live shows. Production manager, Joel Foreman, production designer LeRoy Bennett, and FitzGerald decided to be ambitious with the new tour, adding several automated rigging pieces, transforming the stage during the highly dynamic set. "This year we included rigging automation on a scale we haven't done before. With all the Spikie light boxes surrounding the stage, it was a tight squeeze. Not only were we placing as many fixtures in each pod as possible, we were adding as many pods as possible on each motion rigging truss. We had several meetings about this with the VER team to maximize the rig while avoiding collisions or rigging complications." In advance of rehearsals, VER Lighting produced a digital replica of the entire rig using LightConverse and MA Lighting GrandMA3D; complete with more than 1,100 fixtures, 25 automated lighting pods, plus additional scenery movement. These simulations were run on VER's custom built pre-viz workstations to deliver maximum performance. By using these tools, FitzGerald and lighting director, Whitney Hoversten, were able to lay in a solid foundation of programming which was further polished once the physical rig was in place. When asked about VER, FitzGerald commented, "It's always a pleasure working with the VER team. They really tie everything together, creating system diagrams, answering all of our technical questions during design, delivering a quality prepped rig, and saving us whenever we're in a pinch." VER has a history with Mars and his team. Susan Tesh, executive director of VER Lighting and Bruno Mars account executive notes, "VER has been working with Joel and Cory on Bruno Mars since before 2012; we really enjoy working with his team, including stage manager Brian Bassham and production coordinator, Libby Dostart. There are good relationships on many fronts between the Bruno Mars' folks and the VER folks; it makes a huge difference when people enjoy working together to produce amazing shows. You really feel that on this tour; the best of the best enjoying what they do and delivering a great show every time. It's an honor to be involved." In addition to full service lighting, VER is providing a d3 Technologies media server system for screens control. VER provided lighting, control, truss automation, and media servers for the 2017 Bruno Mars 24 Magic World Tour. The 2017 Bruno Mars 24 Magic World Tour includes:
Production manager: Joel Forman
Lighting designer: Cory FitzGerald
Lighting director: Whitney Hoversten
VER Lighting project manager: Matt McCormick
VER media server tech: Drew Atienza
VER crew: Jorge "Soline" Velaquez, Ryan Lecomte, Chris Lanning, Tom "Poje" Poje, Angelo Viacava, Brian "Buba" Bukovinsky 
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