BlackTrax preserves Chocolate Factory magic
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Last year, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. It featured one of the movie’s most memorable tunes, with the evocative line: “Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination”.
Creating such a world on the stage is notoriously more difficult to do than in a movie – which is why the musical relies heavily on staging company WorldStage and its well-established mastery of the technologies that can help turn a designer’s vision into a theatrical reality.
As well as providing an ambitious, custom-made Unilumin LED wall to tell the story of how the Golden Tickets were won, WorldStage also deployed a range of Panasonic projectors, media servers from disguise (formerly d3 Technologies), and a BlackTrax real-time tracking system.
BlackTrax technology has long been favoured by WorldStage’s Lars Pedersen, VP of innovation and technical solutions, being quick to see its potential and becoming an early adopter. Lars continues to provide invaluable feedback to the BlackTrax development team.
Ask anyone who has seen either of the movies what they remember most vividly, and the response will invariably be “the Oompa-Loompas”. The BlackTrax motion tracking system is instrumental in making their appearances no less memorable in the Broadway musical
“We put together a fully-staged and choreographed number for the director, writer, and composer to get their approval,” said Jeff Sugg, whose history with WorldStage goes back 20 years. “This was a great example of technology serving the art and not vice versa. Once I knew we were going to use BlackTrax then using d3, with its tight integration of BlackTrax, was a foregone conclusion.”
(Jim Evans)
