Filming the Road for beabadoobee's The Powerlines Tour

Prologue

Everything you are about to read is compiled from voice notes kept as an audio journal of this show’s design process. By Video Designer, Finn Ross.

I'm about to set off on a 1,500 mile drive across what is sometimes called the empty middle of the United States. The route runs from Kansas City (which, interestingly, is in Missouri, not Kansas) to Denver, and almost all of it sits inside just two states, Kansas and Colorado. Kansas City is by far the largest city between here and Denver. In between, there is very little of any size at all.

The trip exists because of one idea. beabadoobee wanted The Powerlines Tour to feel like Bea and her band were playing on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. Not a nowhere you could point to on a map, but a non-specific one: that big feeling of giant, empty America, and you alone, small inside it. Her new album, Pylon, was written on the road. The show should feel like it still lives there.

The look of that nowhere came from Daniel Richardson, the show's production designer, who brought the photography of Todd Hido to the table: American roads at dusk, often shot through a car windscreen, quiet and a little ominous. That became our touchstone.

My own travels in the US have covered the coasts and the big cities, never this enormous empty space. So I'm curious to see what's out here.

This is an exercise in getting to the emptiest, most rural places I can find. I've identified a few locations from the images on our mood boards. The rest of the time, I'll drive and see what I find, and hope we make a show from it. I can't guarantee the outcome. I can't control the weather, I don't know this land intimately, and a location scout isn't in the budget. It is a great big experiment, albeit one built on a great deal of research.

The rough plan: Kansas City to Cottonwood Falls, on the edge of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas. From there to Dodge City, then west into Colorado and the high, empty plains around the Pawnee Buttes, and finally down the Front Range to Denver. I'll be chasing contrast in the landscape and in the time of day, aiming for every sunrise and sunset I can get. It's August, so the days are very long: up around 4am to be in position for sunrise, and keeping the camera rolling until 9.30pm for sunset.

Some accommodation is booked. Most of it isn't. My camera bag holds a Sony FX3, a GoPro, a tripod and a stack of hard drives. I have a sense of the road map. The only truly fixed point is my flight home from Denver.

So here we go. Through the empty middle of America, to find a place of atmosphere and a mood of nowhere for Bea and her band to play in.

Day One: Kansas City to Cottonwood Falls

I've never been into the middle of America before. Part of me worries everyone will have guns and it'll be wall to wall rednecks, but I know that's a cruel stereotype and far from the truth. What actually makes me nervous is how flat it will be. I'm a boy from the mountains. I'm used to hills and texture in a landscape, and the idea of there being none is nothing short of terrifying.

As I drive, the city gives way to the land, and any sense of people gradually falls away. Five fields and a barn. Five more fields and a farmhouse. Then no farmhouse for a very long time. Deeper in, I turn off into little towns that look like they've been the same since America was founded 250 years ago, which feels fitting, since this summer is the country's 250th. Then the roads turn to dirt, and I descend into nothing.

By evening I'm in prairie land, entering one of America's great protected landscapes, where the road and the land simply drop away into an infinite expanse. Terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. My stop for the night is Cottonwood Falls, in the heart of the Flint Hills, on the edge of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. This is unspoiled country where the prairie has been left to restore itself. It's Little House on the Prairie. There's even a one-room schoolhouse that looks like it came straight from the frontier, and in the evening light it's beautiful.

I've been travelling long enough. It's time to commit something to film. In the hour before sunset I hike half an hour into the preserve to find a spot to frame it. This is also me reminding myself how the FX3 works, since we're shooting the bulk of the show on it. I'm not sure how successful the first attempt was, but sometimes you just have to rip the training wheels off and get on with it.

It's done. Back to the car in the dark, filming the drive on the GoPro, home late and hungry, footage offloaded. End of day one.

Day Two: The Flint Hills

Up at 4am to catch sunrise over the prairie. I'd marked a few spots the night before, but I want to see where my nose leads. So I'm hiking in by torchlight with all the kit on my back, and at this hour it's already 28°C. In retrospect: an incredibly sweaty day.

After the best part of an hour I arrive, well before the sun comes up at 6.30. I use a brilliant app called PhotoPills, which shows you exactly where in the sky the sun will rise and set. (It rises in the east and sets in the west. I always remember that thanks to the opening of The Lion King, which tells you how much of a theatre person I am at my core.) I find a lovely position, set up and start recording.

At some point I turn around and there's an enormous buffalo standing behind me. Not a buffalo, sorry: a bison. How was I to know? We only have cows in the UK. It's breathtaking. A huge, wild creature, apparently very calm. Imagine the biggest cow you've ever seen, then make it half as big again. The funny thing is, I'm on the phone to Adam Young (the AY of FRAY) at the time. Without a hand free to google what to do, Adam very kindly does it for me.

These are wild animals, and very dangerous to people if you end up on the wrong side of one. My first instinct is to stand very still. (That works with bears. It does not work with bison, Adam tells me.) So I back away slowly and quietly, keeping my eyes on the animal. It has absolutely no interest in me. It does, however, walk straight through my shot and ruin at least five minutes of footage. That's nature. What can you do?

The signs tell you not to approach the bison, and I did not approach the bison. The bison approached me. It invaded my space, not the other way round. Eventually it has enough of me and wanders off, and I keep shooting.

I frame a few more things while the light holds, then move to another part of the preserve and meet more bison. This time I end up boxed in, bison on both sides, with no phone signal to call a ranger. The sensible part of me reasons that they didn't seem interested before, so if I stay put, they'll move. Eventually one side opens up. Of course it's the side that makes the walk out longest, as the heat builds and the pack gets heavier. But it gets me clear, and I pick up several more shots on the way.

Another hour of hiking and I'm back at the truck. It's 10am, 32°C, and I am ready for air conditioning. (For the record: two litres of water, all of it drunk, and plenty of sunscreen. All the sensible precautions for working in an extreme climate.) A really good start.

I rest, still jetlagged, then go scouting for the next evening and morning. I find a place where the sun will set exactly into a copse of trees, which feels special, and another where it will rise over a small group of trees. Later I come back and shoot the sunset. A few solitary hours, standing beside a camera at the end of a dirt track with nobody to bother me. I hesitate to use the word profound, but it felt like a rare thing to be so far from other people. I hope that feeling carries into the footage, and into the show.

Late to bed. Early to rise. Tomorrow is a transition day.

Day Three: Cottonwood Falls to Dodge City

Up at 4am again, cameras set for sunrise, rolling by 6:30. It goes well and looks very good. To a European mind, it's almost impossible to imagine standing by a roadside for hours without a single person passing. Out here, on a dirt road, it's entirely possible. That isolation feels like exactly the idea for the show: Bea and her band at the roadside in the middle of nowhere, an abstract everyplace made of emptiness and sky. 

By 7am the sunrise drama is over, and I set off looking for shots while the light is still good. If you want a dramatic landscape, you have early morning and the run into sunset. In the middle of the day the light is overhead and flat. No shadow, no contrast, no drama. Unless you want that baking heat, and there is plenty of it. Today's high where I'm heading is 40°C.

The three hours to Dodge City aren't particularly memorable. I'm out of the protected prairie and into something much more commercial: vast crops, cattle, corn, grain. And here's today's disappointment. I'd hoped for wheat fields shimmering in the wind and sun, but the wheat harvest has already happened. The corn harvest hasn't, but the corn hasn't turned golden yet either. Neither is quite right at this time of year. You can't win them all. We try, we fail, we keep driving.

In Dodge City I've gone from the homely charm of a local stay in Cottonwood Falls to a Holiday Inn Express. Standard. Boring. I rest, then drive north of the city into a network of dirt roads to see what I can find. Some nice cornfield shots, a few other interesting bits. And then a place where the sun is going to set between two pylons. Bea's album is called Pylon, so that shot has to be captured.

That was my sunset, and I think it was pretty good. There might even be some poetry in it. I'd hoped to find tall radio masts around Dodge too, but they never materialised.

Back late. The only dinner on offer is a microwaved beef chow mein from the hotel shop. We all know how that went.

Day Four: Dodge City to Pawnee Buttes

This day stands out as the most extraordinary so far, for all sorts of reasons.

No disrespect to the people of Dodge City, but I don't think it's a place for me, and I'm happy to set off early. Today is six hours and about 350 miles of driving, out of western Kansas and into eastern Colorado, climbing all the way into a very different landscape.

Until now we've lacked any drama in the skies. It's been so hot and windy that there's been nothing up there at all. Today does not disappoint. Sometime after lunch the clouds start to build, and there are lots of nice pickups along the way.

About an hour from my accommodation I stop for groceries. I'm staying in a remote cabin out on the grassland, so I don't waste time driving and can simply be in the emptiness. Behind me, the sky starts to turn black. For the entire drive up into the hills, a tremendous thunderstorm erupts left, right and centre. I get so much footage: from inside the car with rain streaming down the window, from the car with the window cracked open, all sorts. A completely different kind of weather, and a different kind of sky drama.

I arrive at the cabins to find absolutely no one. No guests, no staff. On tiptoe, I find one spot with a single bar of signal and call the owner. The website never told him about my booking, he says. He's 40 minutes away. Take the cabin at the far end, and he'll come and sort me out.

While I wait, a huge truck loaded with hay bales comes down the hill. I assume it's delivering hay for the horses. It gets close, doesn't pass, and then the driver walks over and asks if I live here. No, I tell him, I'm British. Definitely not from round here. He'd taken a wrong turn, and while reversing, some bales have come loose and rolled onto the cab. He asks if there's a tractor about. I have no idea. I'm a video designer.

But we end up having a lovely chat about the beauty of driving across America. And, weirdly, his hay came from the Flint Hills. He's driven more or less exactly the route I have.

As I write this, the storm is still going on one side of the cabin and a terrific sunset is happening on the other. The FX3 is shooting one, the GoPro the other. So much coverage.

Day Five: Pawnee Buttes

One of the stranger days, and one of the most dramatic. A reasonable sunrise, then by 8am everything descends into a gloomy funk. Flat light gives the land an empty, lonely, unforgiving quality.

Slowly the cloud lifts, and the drama in the land reveals itself. Side note: the natural world is slow. I'm used to making things happen in a controlled amount of time, for an audience with a fixed point of view. Trying to create that drama out of nature is a very different challenge. Nature works to its own rhythm, directed by no one, totally unpredictable. Never work with children or animals, they say. I'd add landscape to the list.

As the land opens up, I'm mildly terrified. Up here you stand on a high escarpment looking down onto the plains. I've probably never had such a vantage point over a landscape with so little evidence of people. Everything drops away into a flat, open nothing. To someone from the mountains, it's hard to process. How can there be so much space? It breaks the European mind.

The first thought is: how could anyone live here? Then I think about it more, and realise I'd actually quite like to. As the week has gone on, my desire to be away from people has only deepened. I'm not sure if that's the pressure, noise and relentlessness of making shows, or a return to the wilderness where I started my life. Maybe everything comes full circle. Maybe I am too.

Having spoken to almost no one all week, my inner monologue has grown louder, because there's so little else to listen to. Making this journey alone has been quite exposing. It wasn't the intention of the project, but it's an interesting side effect. Bea wants her show to feel exactly like this, so why not immerse myself in it?

Is that what songwriting is? Listening to your inner monologue and giving it a poetic voice? I don't know. I'd love to know. I spend my life giving music a visual identity, so it's something I want to better understand. Maybe that's why I'm so drawn to artists who tell stories with their words. My life in theatre is storytelling, and bringing that instinct into music is rewarding.

But in music, the story is different. For me, a good show has a present narrative, but it can also give way to sensation and pure experience in a way theatre rarely can, except in the hands of a select few.

Music moves through an abstract space rather than a literal one. But for a show to hold together, the abstraction still needs structure. Less a linear narrative, more a few rules that define the world the show lives in, so it can move through that world with meaning. Building that system adds a layer of meaning for the audience. It can be simple and experiential, but it has to exist.

An audience comes in search of the unknown: surprise, excitement, a step out of their everyday into somewhere else. The world they find there is for the artist, and for us, their team, to sculpt and define. A good show sets its own rules, so the audience can stop asking where they are and simply be there. And here I am, in a way, inside the show while making it.

Day Six: The Front Range, Denver and Home

Hard to believe it's nearly over. I'm exhausted from driving, from being up for every sunrise and out for every sunset, then everything that comes after. August days are long. And yet, if time and budget allowed, I could keep going until I hit the Pacific. Sadly, it's time to bring this to a close.

One of the biggest things I've taken away is what it means to travel without a fixed destination. Usually you get in a car, type where you're going into Google Maps, and robotically follow the route the computer lays out. This was different. Start at A, aim to reach B by nightfall, and let curiosity and instinct guide everything in between. Passing a road that leads somewhere you can't quite see, turning down it, and being open to whatever is there.

We so rarely actually explore the open world in front of us. Everything now is so guided, so scheduled. Having nothing more than a sunrise, a sunset and whatever lies between them to define a day has been liberating.

There's a reflection of that in the music we're making images for. Bea wrote much of this album on a tour bus, crossing territory like this. If you've ever done a long tour bus drive, you'll know the day is endless and unfocused. That boredom lets the mind open up and wander. Out here, mine certainly has. I'm left with a sense of wonder at the sheer scale of America: the flatness, the vastness, the bigness of everything. It's mind-boggling, and it's been lovely to have my mind so thoroughly boggled.

Driving down the Front Range today, from dirt roads to single lanes to dual carriageways to giant American highways, has felt like returning to a reality I'd very pleasantly forgotten for the best part of a week.

Instead of method acting, this has been method design. It's the first time I've ever approached video design this way.

Now I'm curious to see where this week's footage lands. What happens when something that has only existed in my hands goes to the animators, when other people see it, and what it becomes. The journey shifts from a physical one to a creative one next, and like this drive, creative journeys are rich and unpredictable. They need openness and freedom to navigate honestly.

Let's see what happens.

Postscript

I'm writing this after we've made the show in the studio, delivered it for real, and had a few weeks at home to think. I wanted to square where I thought I'd be at the end of the road with where we actually landed.

First: it has been an enormously enjoyable process, and I'm grateful to every collaborator involved.

Second: I'm incredibly proud of how ‘method’ we stayed. I'd wondered whether we'd end up using half of what I shot and half stock, or maybe three quarters mine. In reality, around 95% of the concert visuals are footage I shot on the road, and 5% or less is stock. The main substitution was a pylon. The pylons in the part of America I drove through are a very different shape to the one we have on stage, so we found stock to match.

It has been fascinating to hand over the raw material and see what our animators, Letty, Laura and Grace, have done with it: where it goes, the energy it gains and the atmosphere it builds. Night turned into day, and day into night. A sunrise smashed into something harsh, contrasted and frightening. A field of colour laid over a dawn scene, and suddenly something mysterious and otherworldly appears. It's rare for me to be this hands-on with the source material and then hand it to others to deliver. My schedule didn't allow me much of the studio work, but I very much wanted to be there for delivery.

That said, there were two songs where the footage wasn't right. They needed something far more urban, and I'd been so remote I simply hadn't been near a city. The stock we tried felt false, and it was never long enough. Stock tends to stop at 20 or 30 seconds, when what you want is a great, open, rolling shot that goes on forever.

So one night in Philadelphia, while the set was still being built for production, I rented a car and drove from sunset into night to shoot content for both songs. One picks up where the other leaves off. At the end of "Talk", the journey comes to a stop, then starts again and becomes something entirely different through "Switchblade". That night was a real test of the process we'd built and the visual language we'd developed together. It was flexible enough to move from one space, one song, even one idea to another, very quickly.

Because the source footage was captured consistently, it could be graded and treated consistently too, into a mysterious, Todd Hido-esque world. The result is a show that holds together but carries many moods: bright and soft, grungy and dark, rocky and aggressive, misty and moody, glowing and optimistic. All of it drawn from the palette of the landscape, and the idea of Bea and her band playing at the edge of the road in the middle of nowhere.

I hope that's the feeling the audience take home. The expanse of the world, and the expanse of the artist's music.

And I'd still like to pick up where I left off, and keep driving until I hit the Pacific. Just to see what I find.