GLP lights magicians’ showdown
- Details
In mid-July, the two brothers added further superlatives when they guested for three days in the Stuttgart Porsche Arena. First of all, there was the Showdown of the World's Best Magicians, with selected guests appearing on the first two evenings, presented by RTL. Finally, on the third evening, the Ehrlich Brothers presented their new show Magic Worlds.
Working alongside Ehrlich Entertainment GmbH, were the Production Resource Group (PRG), who provided rigging, lighting, video and media technology, Schiffer & Faber for decoration construction, TopVision for image technology, PMT for camera systems and mo2 design were also on board. Their team, led by lighting designer Manfred 'Ollie' Olma and project manager Matthias Allhoff, took care of the adaptation of the tour production for television, taking over all tenders and planning, as well as the creation of media content and media and lighting design.
The Ehrlich Brothers’ already gigantic tour set-up was increased again in Stuttgart.
On the lighting side, the mo2 team planned their design around 1,190 GLP fixtures, including 826 GLP impression X4 Bars, 108 GLP impression X4 wash lights and 66 GLP GT-1 hybrid moving lights alone, plus 32 more GLP X4 L’s at selected positions, and 30 GLP X4 atom and 57 GLP KNV.
"Many of these pieces of equipment were used to transfer the otherwise on-stage show to a separate centre stage, set in the middle of the audience," reports Ollie Olma, outlining the challenge faced by mo2. He made special mention of the GLP impression X4 Bars. “All 826 Bars were controlled in single-pixel mode and pixel-mapped, resulting in a huge number of over 110,000 control parameters.
“Together with the necessary control channels for the other lighting equipment, it was too much for the MA2 control desk to handle. But as we wanted to use the Bars both as a light source - in addition to the main stage - as well as a complex video space, we had no other choice than to allocate the Bars to the video element. In addition to the two grandMA2 full-size desks, additional six VPUs and 20 NPUs provided the necessary number of channels for this application. The VPUs were then controlled via the network from the light panels,” Olma explained.
A highlight was the presentation of the GLP KNV fixtures that were used for the TV recording (of Magical Worlds). These were on a side stage and used for backlighting the show band, as well as the form of the letters E and B.
The Zauberwelten production will provisionally be broadcast in November 2018 on RTL. The Showdown of the world's best magicians will be on air on 26 August on RTL.
(Jim Evans)
