Patrick Dierson
Part 1
Part 2
Principal Designer, The Activity
In Part 1 of a two-part LD Spotlight, Patrick Dierson shares his thoughts on the current crises (what you do today is important!) which he says is not unlike 9/11. Principal Designer at The Activity, this top tier LD says he still wonders what he wants to be when he grows up, a youthful outlook he has maintained across years of intriguing projects and to the top of his profession. For Patrick, there’s very little that’s impossible in the production world.
Meet Patrick
First of all, the elephant in the room, COVID-19. Do you think this will have long-term affects on our industry?
Way to bring it down right out of the gate! I have to say that if you asked me this question six weeks earlier, I would’ve had a slightly rosier outlook but watching this unfold the way it has has been very difficult. Every globally historic event is bound to change our lives to some degree and the COVID pandemic is inarguably the biggest global event that we have seen in our lifetimes. We discuss this event and immediately analogize it to negative similarities over the past 30 years; tech bubble crash, 9/11, the 2008 recession, Hurricane Katrina, etc. Out of events such as these, I liken our current crisis most to 9/11 in regards to how it will affect our lives and industry, particularly in being a New Yorker who felt the ground shake twice on that fateful day.
How do you feel 9/11 changed things?
The global populace was changed significantly in the wake of the towers falling. We changed how we fly, how we secure areas, how we look at personal safety, and how we treat those culturally different from ourselves; for the good and the bad of all of it. However, particularly as New Yorkers, we also had our industry ripped out from under us. All the work went away; albeit regionally. Subsequently, we watched how people within our industry reacted. Some fought hard to make it through and find their way. Others left the business entirely. What we witnessed was how resilient we were as individuals within the industry because nobody was really coming to save us. We had to figure it out. We had to perform the inevitable pivot.
What I state here is not to be taken as a negative but mores as a realization. Within a crisis that seems to fluctuate by the day, the ever present reality is that live entertainment gatherings will be one of if not THE last industry to return to whatever our new normal will become. What you do today determines whether or not you will be coming back. I know that that’s a cold statement but it’s the God’s honest truth. If you decide that you want to stick your head in a Fresnel and wait for this to blow over, you’re going to pull your head out in December and find yourself standing in a warehouse that’s been converted into a PPE factory. I’m begging individuals to light a fire in their belly and do everything possible to reinvent themselves temporarily. Unless, of course, you’re independently wealthy. In that case you can sit around eating bon bons and watch reruns of last year’s baseball season.
How has your work been affected and are you working on any projects at the moment?
Despite popular opinion derived from social media, I am in the unfortunate position of NOT being independently wealthy and still need to work for a living. All joking aside, we have managed the business interests of The Activity positively over the past few years and have been blessed with a wide breadth of projects that have kept us from being pigeon-holed into just one or two sectors of the live event industry. This enabled us to sustain a fairly steady stream of work several weeks into the pandemic, well after the majority of events had cancelled or pushed their dates. In turn, we were able to work a bit more closely with our clientele in helping them pitch more innovative ways of reinvention to THEIR clients. That part has worked out well despite the fact that, at this point in the pandemic, even those projects have finally pushed to dates later in the year. So now that we know that we have gone to the bitter end to attempt to help our clients as well as try to generate jobs for our loyal staff and freelancers, we are able to concentrate more on ourselves.
And what does that entail?
We’re now dividing our days into dealing with a lot of the projects that were previously on the back burner in getting ready to go back to work. This has included things such as the development of an online store, diving into some minor manufacturing of accessories, co-branding opportunities, updating our previz studios at Th3Farm, working with the Folding@Home initiative, etc. More importantly, we’re currently working on a major project outside of the industry that is specifically designed to do that big pivot that I mentioned earlier. We’re making extremely positive & rapid headway with the possibility of utilizing entertainment industry resources to help support various government agencies during the pandemic and what we predict will be coming in the near future. If we’re successful, we will have the ability to put hundreds if not thousands of entertainment industry staff back to work in different but extremely similar roles to what they are accustomed while also attempting to save lives in the process.
You’re keeping busy.
Now that I’ve said this, I’m realizing that we’ve been a little busier than I thought. Yeah, we’ve got some projects going on. They’re definitely more of an investment in the future but there’s stuff going on. I’ve never been one to back down from a fight so I’m feeling a little aggressive when it comes to what we’re facing right now. I guess I just want our industry to win in the end. Right now the world is counting on the medical community. Once that’s wrangled the world will definitely be counting on us to bring their spirits back up and we need to be ready for that.
Let’s turn to your past. What were your interests as a kid and what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a child, I had two fascinations; being underwater and science fiction. I presume that it was all the frogman and Star Wars movies that I grew up on. That being said, I’m still wondering what I want to be when I grow up. I’m not sure I’ve ever really felt like a grown up which is a wild thing to think about when you’re on the wrong side of 40 but that nagging uncertainty in the back of my mind has always been what’s pushed me within my careers.
I understand that some members of your family were Broadway actors and that growing up you were often backstage.
My aunt and uncle are still active actors. In fact, my uncle, Tom Galantich, is currently slated to continue with The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway once the current coronavirus gathering bans have been lifted and Broadway reopens for business.
What opportunities did that backstage exposure provide? Did you know back then that this industry was for you?
The main thing that backstage exposure gave me when I was young was the understanding that there were other jobs outside of offices and that there were actually legitimate careers to be found in theater well past the acting part. Of course everyone dreams of being on a stage at some point in their lives but to be so young and exposed to the really fun and interesting people that made everything else happen was very impactful on my young mind and that notion never left me. In terms of it being for me? Well…that wouldn’t come for a long time after that initial exposure.
How did you get involved with lighting then?
The story of my becoming involved in the entertainment business is a lengthy and involved one but the CliffsNotes version of it lies in my getting a weekend job at a DJ company and ultimately being put in charge of their equipment. One thing led to another and I realized that the things that I most gravitated to were the lights. Eventually I went to work for a lighting installation company and ultimately, an automated lighting sales distributor where I became a technical support specialist being sent out to concert tours, corporate events, festivals, retail installations, etc. After being exposed to a wide breadth of sectors within the industry, I ultimately decided that programming automated lighting for concert tours was what I was going to concentrate on. That eventually led to becoming a Lighting Designer which, in turn, has ultimately led to my being a full-time Production Designer.
What’s your favorite type of project to work on?
I have to admit that my favorite projects are the secretive ones and not the “glamorous” big concert tours or TV shows. The big product launches and the special announcements are the most fun to me these days because the challenges that they present tend to be extremely different from the types that come along with touring or festival stages.
I imagine those types of projects require NDAs. Does that make a project more exciting?
Non-Disclosure Agreements have been a very standard thing in my life going all the way back to when I signed my first one on my 17th birthday in beginning the process of one of my first jobs in working for the US government. NDAs often tend to strike people oddly but for myself and everyone that works with The Activity, they are simply a mundane way of life and there’s always a fiendish pleasure in being privy to a project where you’re a part of a team who are the only ones in the world that are allowed to know about it for a brief period of time. Those projects always pose interesting challenges and, given that they are usually driven from the standpoint of being public entertainment to some degree, they often present the challenge of both having to hide in plain site as well as become a subject matter expert on something completely new within a very short amount of time.
Can you provide an example?
A perfect example of this, without getting into specifics, was some recent work that we have done that involved a combination of lunar landing equipment, actual jetpacks, firefighting drones, and robotic sharks. I love designing concert tours and festivals but, I’m sorry, that stuff just doesn’t stand up as being interesting when you’ve blurted out the words “robotic sharks” in a sentence.
What makes an artist good to work with?
Trust. Plain and simple. Trust between an artist and his/her/their designer is a most cherished commodity. To be fair to the question, trust is a two-way street and it’s really what makes a designer good to work with more so than the artist. The designer has the more difficult part of the job when it comes to gaining trust. It’s not an easy thing to achieve because it requires more facetime between the artist and designer than what is traditionally granted and thus it usually takes a long time to achieve via normal timelines. It’s also very tricky to shorten that timeline without becoming overburdening to the artist. They don’t want to be your friend and many young designers get too caught up in that notion.
I imagine that a young designer might try to befriend an artist.
The ones that make the attempt inevitably have one of two things happen. They either overstep their bounds or they end up with a micro-managing artist that now has their cell phone number. It’s a romantic notion to think that an international pop star is going to call YOU when they have a thought on their mind. However, the reality is usually that they end up not leaving you alone and then inevitably fire you because you’re not answering their calls at 3am to discuss their latest revolutionary idea. The reality is that gaining trust takes time to develop naturally.
I think that this is singlehandedly the reason why touring Lighting Directors often end up taking over the Lighting Designer’s “job” over time. They have the daily facetime with the artist and that’s whom the artist becomes most comfortable. They see that Director every day when they walk into sound check. They can have a meeting with that Director in the dressing room when they need it. The trust is built up over time and it becomes critical to performance on both sides. I’m happy to say that I have gained that trust with a handful of artists and people of note throughout the years and, in my opinion, it yielded the best performance results on both sides of the stage.
Have you ever had an artist request an idea that you thought was either impossible to achieve or simply ridiculous? (can you share?)
The Activity’s tag line is taken from a Jay-Z song and reads “Difficult Takes a Day. Impossible Takes a Week.” The concept of “impossible” is something that we try to take off the table as often as possible because it’s simply a combination of mindset and perspective. At its most base level, anti-gravity objects are impossible on earth…but we use wires so it’s the perspective that changes what is supposedly impossible. When you apply that mindset to every challenge, there’s very little that’s impossible in the production world. Ridiculous is another matter altogether and we’ve seen plenty of that, unfortunately.
What would you define as ridiculous?
I gave up making artistic judgements about what I felt was “ridiculous” a long time ago. There’s simply no accounting for taste. I’ve stood in arenas demo’ing inflatable vaginas for an international pop star. I’ve lit a comedian who insisted on having a four meter inflatable penis on stage. Fascinations with inflatable genitalia aside, these were definitely instances in which I personally thought something was ridiculous but, given the present company, I found myself in the minority. Once again, you can say the words “robotic sharks” all you want but when you’re standing on stage trying to get the key light just perfect for dancers emerging from a giant inflatable vagina while a creative team applauds how great it looks, you’re probably not necessarily thinking that it’s your career high so judgements on what is beautifully artistic go out the window. The ridiculous parts have usually come in the form of things that are not financially viable for all parties involved and that’s one of our main focus points at The Activity.
How do you know when a seemingly creative idea crosses the line into financially impractical?
A perfect example of this was in working on a co-headlining tour many years ago. We had two artists that were about to go on the road together and one of them had very high expectations of what he wanted the tour to be from design standpoint. I was just one of the team of designers in the mix at that point in the process. The creative that this particular artist had chosen to represent him touted herself quite heavily as a Production Designer. The one thing that I will freely admit is that she had, and continues to have, some phenomenally creative ideas. Most people do. However, after weeks of conceptual design and just a few weeks away from opening night, there was nothing that she had proposed that was going to be physically achievable in regards to both fitting her ideas into trucks for shipping OR actually having a stage crew be able to setup on time each day given the tour’s routing schedule. These are two absolutely critical issues when designing a concert touring production and she blatantly did not care to entertain the issues at hand. This all came to a head on a conference call where the latest addition to these great ideas was to install a giant hydraulic hand of God in the back of the arena that would lift the artists up in the air and present them to the audience for the three-minute intro of the show, never to be utilized again throughout the performance. There were representatives from Live Nation on the call and you could just sense the tension about this idea but nobody was willing to speak up about it. There was a looming financial responsibility that had to be spoken to so I finally did a quick calculation and posed the question that nobody else would. “Given the size of this scenic element, the number of seat kills that it requires each night, coupled with the estimated $300,000 build cost of this piece, are the artists willing to absorb an estimated $2.3 million loss over the course of the currently scheduled 28 tour dates?” There was a long moment of silence when the artist himself finally chimed in and admitted that this idea perhaps needed to be tabled a bit for further review.
It’s a horrible position to be in but, at the end of the day, we have responsibilities to the producers and artists who hire us in regards to what is left behind when the design teams and creatives walk away from opening night congratulating themselves about what a great job they’ve done and a Production Manager is left holding the bag of keeping the whole thing going in an effort to maintain profitability for the producers.
I saw a picture of you diving in a tank to do a safety check for a David Blaine show. I thought that was a good example of doing what it takes to support an artist and get the job done. Was that an “if I get this wrong someone might die” moment?
When it comes to doing what it takes to support an artist, I’ve run the gamut of being shot at all the way to cleaning dressing room toilets, which actually happened quite recently. I say that for the young designers out there lest you think that you hit a point in your career where you can be above everything. Sometimes what it really takes to make a show happen is that you need to put on a pair of rubber gloves and scrub some toilets because there is literally nobody else that can do it.
That picture of me diving in a tank is actually a giant “snow globe” on stage at the MGM Arena in Las Vegas. David Blaine was doing some pretty intense performance art as part of a larger show and it definitely required some attention that’s not a part of a normal day at work. In that instance I was in the tank handling several duties, primarily that of tying knots to some special line weights for David’s inverted descent from the high steel into the snow globe where he would ultimately stay submerged for 15-20 minutes on a single breath hold. We were putting together two performances for him on that show but the snow globe wasn’t necessarily the one where I was concerned about someone dying. That concern was focused more on the gag where we were helping David to willingly shoot himself in the face with a rifle. It sounds crazy mainly because it absolutely was! He was hell bent on completing the stunt and he had practiced it with success several times. The general concept was that he would catch a real bullet with a steel cup in his mouth. It was originally requested that I take him and his competition shooting partner out to a desert shooting area to help him work on the final stages of development and practice for the stunt. I vehemently disagreed to take part in that portion of it mainly because I did not want to be standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert with a dead celebrity at my feet after having helped him shoot himself in the face. I thought that my standpoint was relatively sound and, thankfully, the rest of the team ultimately understood and respected my concern. For some reason I was seemingly fine with being a part of this ridiculous stunt in front of 15,000 people in an arena on the Las Vegas Strip so, once again, there’s no accounting for taste.
