(CNN) — Yes, the seven floating stages during Rihanna’s Apple Music Super Bowl LVII halftime show were theatrical and cool, but they also served a very practical purpose.
As explained by Bruce Rodgers, the show’s production designer for the show, who spoke to Wired ahead of the performance about how he helped create the show, everything had to do with the grass of the field.
Rodgers explained that the LED-lit stages jutting out of the field for Rihanna and her dancers was something that “has never been done before.”
“With Katy Perry, we put her in a flying machine, like a rocket,” he said. “But that’s a whole different animal.”
Rodgers said he developed the concept and worked with Rihanna’s team, which included designer Willo Perron, choreographer Parris Goebel and executive producer Joseph Lloyd, to bring it to life.
Rihanna performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show. Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
With the singer and the other performers on the air, tension was eased on the turf of the field, which consists of 9,290 square feet of Bermuda Tifway 419 hybrid turf at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Turf is very important to the National Football League as it can affect how players perform on the field.
And while it might seem risky for Rihanna, who revealed her recent pregnancy for the first time during her performance, to be suspended on a stage between 15 and 60 feet off the ground, the stages had “huge Brunel structures,” according to the report. that Rodgers claimed to Rihanna’s team that they were “strong enough to take a freight train”.
Rihanna incorporated seven scenarios into her performance. Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
“This is going to be, in my opinion, the most technically advanced Super Bowl halftime show ever done because of the amount of technology that’s being used to move the platforms,” Aaron Siebert, project manager for Tait Towers, told the publication the platforms, before the show.