Interview mit Florian Wieder - Stage- und Production-Design von Rammstein

As far as I know, you usually design stages for television shows – now the stage for the stadium tour of RAMMSTEIN …
This is only partly true, as a large part of our projects are music and tour productions. Of course we also do TV productions like the Eurovision Song Contest, the MTV Awards or the Country Music Awards. Most of these productions are in the USA, where my design company is based. In the field of music we have worked a lot with artists like Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez or U2 in the past. In Germany, the tour business is less interesting for us because the budgets usually only allow standard stages – that’s not very attractive for me as a designer. With RAMMSTEIN it’s completely different. Their stadium tour is currently one of the largest tour productions worldwide and everything has been individually designed for it.

What are the main differences between a TV and a stadium concert production?
The main difference is that a tour production is custom-made exclusively for a certain artist or band. In TV music productions, different artists usually perform on one stage and it has to work for everyone somehow. This leaves less room for individuality. Also the creative exchange with the band or the artist is much more intensive for a tour. After all, they have to be able to identify with it and see themselves in it.

Are you a RAMMSTEIN fan yourself, or aren’t you really interested in the band privately?
Of course I’ve knwon the band and their music, and had them as guests at several other shows. But until then I haven’t dealt intensively with RAMMSTEIN, because that’s not relevant without a concrete request. I’ve liked the band, their music and shows before and always found them great. Of course there is nothing better than working for a band that you like. This is inevitably not always the case. Here it was like an ideal constellation.

How do you proceed with stage design, what are the work processes like?
There is no clear rule regarding the creative approach, because every artist is different in the collaboration. Some have clear ideas, others less. When RAMMSTEIN asked us, there was no creative briefing by the band, except the info that it should be a stadium tour and that they don’t want a standard open air stage. Although the band has a very clear idea of how they present themselves, in this case they didn’t want to give me any creative restrictions.

Then how did you start in the concrete case?
For weeks I absorbed everything I could find about RAMMSTEIN. From interviews, how they see themselves, to their shows so far. I wanted to create a huge architectural statement that would be impressive even before the concert started, when the audience entered the stadium. That’s how the idea of building a tower in height was born. All in the typical RAMMSTEIN look. A mixture of „Blade Runner“, steampunk, „Tron“ and „Metropolis“ inspired by Art Deco from the 1920s – the entire thing then transferred to 2019.

What inspired you?
The inspiration in the first step was the film „Metropolis“ from the 1920s. This was then consistently developed further in a direction that is unique for RAMMSTEIN. I also deliberately integrated elements that you already knew from past concerts in a slightly different form, such as the oversized surgical lights – albeit with new features and adapted in size to a stadium tour. I also wanted to add more creative components to the typical massive lightbeam looks.

Were parts of earlier stage constructions integrated into the stage?
No, old parts were not used.

Is such a stage design created on paper, via construction software or even with models?
At first, there were only sketches, then I looked for references that reflected my idea best. In the second step, we built and rendered the whole thing in the computer as a 3D model. Our computer visuals are almost photo-realistic, so you get a very concrete idea of what the whole thing looks like. At this point I presented the idea to the band for the first time. A model was built later, in which everything was built down to the last detail in a smaller scale.

Did the band get involved creatively as well?
The decisive thing was that the band really liked the design idea. It was more about details like how many LED screens to integrate and how to create the actual performance areas. Just as you can best integrate the infrastructure of each individual musician into the concept. The design was hardly changed at all.

What was the biggest challenge of this project compared to a television production?
The stage should represent RAMMSTEIN in the best possible way, not just any broadcasting concept. The complicated thing about an individual tour design that is not based on existing stage elements is the technical logistics: it has to be set up and dismantled in the shortest time possible. Every little thing has to be thought through and planned as efficiently as possible so that the costs won’t explode later. In our case, it’s more than 120 semi-trailers that transport the stage from A to B. For this there are specialists like Jeremy Lloyd from the London company Wonder Works, who did the technical planning. Apart from that, it is mainly the size and the proportions, which have to be suitable for a stadium. We have exhausted almost every conceivable size to the maximum. This applies both to the statically feasible height of the tower and to the total volume of the tour.

What difference does it make that it’s not an indoor show tour but rather a stadium tour?
A stadium tour is completely different from an arena tour with a roof over it: You can’t let anything hang from the ceiling. Everything is ground supported. The show also starts almost in daylight. It only gets darker from the middle, so that various lighting effects can only develop their full impact later in the show.
That’s why together with the band we divided the concert into three acts: For the bright moments at the beginning, we use more architectural looks based on physical elements, such as the flags. Then we add very bright, linear looks that trace the architecture – a bit like in the film „Tron“. Towards the end, the monumental beam looks typical of RAMMSTEIN are used, whose power can hardly be surpassed in the dark.

The decisive requirement for the stage itself must have been: Everything must be fireproof. Right?
That is indeed the case. Nicolai Sabottka, who with his company FFP has been providing the band with unique pyro effects for many, many years, has created the concept and the implementation. We had many conversations about how and where to best integrate the effects planned by him and the band. That sounds simple, but it is enormously complex: A large part of the pyro effects and the necessary technology was developed especially for this tour. I think the dimension of the pyro effects is unique and surpasses anything that has ever been seen before.

Do you have some facts and figures for us – what are the dimensions of the stage?
The tower is about 50 meters high … higher was technically not possible. The width is about 60 meters. The weight is difficult to specify because there are simply too many components.

Does the technical implementation of the stage also fall within your scope, or is your job fulfilled with the finished design?
The technical planning was done by Wonder Works, the implementation by many different companies, each specialized in a specific area. We take care of the whole process until the end to make sure it looks the way it was designed. Along the way, there are countless meetings in which thousands of details are coordinated.

What is the time frame of such a project – how long did it take from design to finished stage?
The development process takes about three to four weeks. It takes about a year to complete such a tour from start to finish. In this case, we had about nine months.

And to put it roughly: How much money is in the stage alone, from design to construction?
Unfortunately, I can’t say anything about that …

To what extent are you responsible for production design in addition to stage design, and what exactly can a layman imagine?
Besides the band itself, we are a pool of creative people. Light, pyro, stage design and so on. The band is very involved in the staging process. They have a very clear idea of what they like and don’t like. The exciting thing is that there is no hierarchy within the creative team. This allows for a certain dynamic and is the most efficient: In the end, it doesn’t matter who had an idea – if everyone thinks it’s good, it’s done. But of course the final decision is always made by the band, in the case of RAMMSTEIN as a collective.

Is there a detail on stage or in your production design that you are particularly proud of?
I am basically very proud to do this for RAMMSTEIN. I can say without restriction that it is certainly the most beautiful project of my career to date. This is partly due to the friendly cooperation with the band that took us into their family. On the other hand, it’s also due to the fact that I can identify 100 percent with the band and the jointly worked-out result. I find the mobile screen and balcony particularly cool. When I had the idea, everyone thought it was great. But at that time it wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether it would really be feasible and affordable.

After the shows, fans complained that they couldn’t see enough of the show from the seats because of the central screen. In fact, this one screen fits perfectly into the stage set, but is relatively small for a stadium stage. Is that something where the design might have taken precedence over functionality, and would you do that again?
It was decided not to use big screens because the concert should be seen as a spectacle in its entirety. RAMMSTEIN sees itself as a total work of art. In other words, your music and visual productions are inseparable from each other. The focus of the audience should be on the stage, not on video screens, on which a concert takes place like a film. You can buy it on DVD and watch it at home. I can only recommend everyone to watch the show twice from different positions: Once close to the stage and once from far away. They are two completely different experiences. I quote Paul who said: „Caesar didn’t have screens in the Colosseum either and the shows worked great“.

Are you going to accompany the project, supervise the production and the test runs?
Absolutely! This is a very important part of my work. Only when everything is up and running does one get a real feeling for the whole thing. The same applies to technical problems that can arise during rehearsals and have to be solved. Before that, the whole thing is a piece of stage design that perhaps looks quite good. But it is really brought to life by the band and their music! The stage design is to be understood as a support – the most important thing is the band! They are always in the foreground, because that’s what the stage was made for in the first place.

Were you at one of the shows to see your stage in action?
So far I have been to Gelsenkirchen, Munich and Berlin. I love the music of RAMMSTEIN and think that you should have seen this spectacle – no matter if you are a fan or not. Even after all the rehearsals and the four shows I’m still not tired of seeing the band live. It’s just an unbelievable experience again and again!

Finally a question about your vita – how did you become a stage designer?
In my work it helps me a lot to be a musician myself. I studied guitar in the USA and know the needs from the artists‘ point of view. But my career as a musician was much less successful than my career as a designer. My two passions and talents are design and music. I managed to combine them for myself.

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Publiziert am 10. Juli 2019 von Moritz Grütz