Livin’ On A Prayer - in a Croatian tunnel
Croatia - Since its release in February 1987, Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer has been embedded in our collective musical psyche. It seems that everyone, from the Royal Philharmonic to Alvin and the Chipmunks has recorded cover versions of this ‘80s anthem. 2Cellos are the latest.
In their latest video, Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser, the Croatian cellists who make up the group push the oft-played rock classic to new levels. Reflecting the driving force of their performance visually throughout the video is a dynamic and intricately layered light show by Crt Birsa of Slovenia-based Blackout Lighting Design.
Running the 6-universe, 126 fixture, time-coded show on his ChamSys Magic! MQ80 console, Birsa created myriad patterns of light to play off the music video’s unusual venue: a 33mlong tunnel in a former military warehouse. To focus the viewer’s attention firmly on the geometry of the setting, he kept his colour palettes simple.
“I didn’t want to go multicolour,” he said. “Basic palettes were the most well-suited for this venue. Patterns and movement were what I relied on to visualise the music in a way that stood out.
“The venue is different from others I’ve worked at,” continues Birsa. “My goal was to enhance the geometry of the structure itself. The great length and circular shape of the site guided my ideas on where to put the lights and what to show at different times.”
To accent the architecture of the venue, Birsa minimised the visibility of the fixtures themselves, positioning most of them on the sides of the cylindrical structure, hanging a few overhead (there were limited hang points) and using the remainder to create a blinding wall of light at the end of the tunnel.
Birsa notes that the Time Code and Cue Editing features his ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 were critically important to the success of his show, which was programmed with WYSIWIG R45.
“The Time Code feature is very supple and exact,” he says. “We had precisely timed cues to accent key moments throughout the video. As we did the video, it was also sometimes essential to make changes to cues quickly. This is very easy to do with ChamSys.”

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