Producing a live performance, the Johnny’s way - Nikkei Entertainment Jul 2012 [2/2]

[barbosa2007.livejournal.com]

Here's part 2 of the article from Nikkei Entertainment! You can read part 1 over HERE. 

Matsumoto Jun (Arashi)

His thoughts on how to create a “period of joy” with 70,000 people

Producing a live performance, the Johnny’s way

While it’s a fascinating experience, an outdoor venue is easily susceptible to changes in the weather. Last year, due to the direct assault of a typhoon, they had no choice but to postpone the concert by one day.

When the rain gets heavier, it becomes physically impossible to use the gunpowder, the flying system is also out of the question, while the hanging LED monitors can’t be switched on. Problems like that pop up here and there. In the event that a band is brought in for a live performance, there’s also the risk of them getting electrocuted by the instruments that run on electricity. Therefore, we had to make a screen which prevented them from getting wet, and there were many occasions where we had to deal with a problem on the spot. 

And when the weather is bad, we bear in mind to shorten the MC segment. It’s better when a song is playing and everybody’s moving along to it, when the audience calms down [during the MC] their bodies might catch a chill. 

The extraordinary number of staff who support the concert from behind the scenes amount to around 300 people. More than half of the massive mechanisms are operated by hand. The staff who handle the complex operation routes and various types of machinery, what kind of people are they?

The movement of our concerts can be considered somewhat special, so since some time ago, they’ve been handled by quite a number of people who have done Johnny’s concerts. In particular, the sectional heads who are close to us were always the same staff members, so even for a single special effect, when we say, “We’d like to do it like this,” we’re quick to come to a common awareness. Of course, there are benefits to using machinery. However, in the case of using automation, unless you get things down to a T using rehearsals, it’s actually quite frightening. Sometimes we do something impromptu, or the concert gets affected by the weather because it’s outdoors; as a result, there tends to be less mistakes when the machinery is operated by hand. 

Incidentally, due to reasons such as noise, the main speakers are fixed in place and the main stage is located opposite the Olympic flame platform. Therefore, we can change the shape of the stage in the Dome performances. 

The ability to adapt to instantaneous changes without so much as batting an eye was a gift of our days as Juniors.

Thanks to everyone, amidst our busy schedules, I often feel that our training in the past really helped us a lot. (laughs) When we were kids, we often used to be backup dancers for TOKIO, Kinki Kids and V6. Within a single day, we danced for two Kinki performances, then we would also have two V6 performances on the same day; we needed to memorize many different things within a short span of time. Furthermore, when Johnny-san was personally involved in the production, there would be many last minute changes; we’d memorize those changes on the spot, with the actual performance coming up 10 to 15 minutes later… Our ability to cope with last minute changes now stemmed from our experience from those days.

On the other hand, there’s also fun in spontaneity. While we’re thinking of linking the images on the screen to the performers on stage, there’s also the risk that the link might break. It’s something which I always worry about.

Matsumoto, who regularly enjoys watching the concerts of various types of artistes. How does he view the much talked about foreign artistes?

The thing which strikes me whenever I see a foreign artiste is, they don’t move around as much as we do. Perhaps the difference stems from the Johnny’s way of thought. Be it one person or two people, we want to entertain the audience, we think of ways so that they wouldn’t get bored. That’s something significant which I have seen, ever since I was a child. 

Besides, people really came from all over [Japan and Asia] to come see our concerts, so we simply wish to create a concert where these people can have a blast. That’s the thing which we bear in mind as we’re creating our concerts.

scans: littlewinds