Super Bowl Halftime Producer Ricky Kirshner on Assembling the Year’s Biggest Concert

One might think that after producing the Super Bowl halftime show for 12 years straight, Kirshner Events founder Ricky Kirshner and his team might be able to run the thing more or less on auto pilot. But, as he points out, with a different location each year come different challenges for country’s most-watched music event.

Case in point: With Super Bowl LII taking place in Minneapolis this Sunday (Feb. 4), Kirshner’s crew is dealing with snow and freezing weather conditions outside the U.S. Bank Stadium while putting together Justin Timberlake‘s performance indoors. That’s a stark contrast from the mid-70s they saw in Houston last year, creating new difficulties when you have just eight minutes to assemble the stage. Whereas in Houston they had a long train of carts that were lined up outside and brought inside for rehearsals and the actual show itself, that sort of staging area wasn’t possible this year.

“When designing the show you need to take into account the venue and we know even six months out that we could be on show day and have 12 inches of snow,” says Kirshner, who has also produced the last five Democratic National Conventions and the last 15 Tony Awards. “So this show’s designed more to try and get our stuff in the building prior.”

Read full interview here.