Green Hippo on Lady Antebellum spectacular
- Details
Matt Geasy of Clear All Visuals specified two separate setups, each with a pair of Hippotizer Boreal Media Servers. Both setups were used to feed the LED screens and each one was triggered depending on the performer, switching between two or three outputs.
During the global event, the SRae team ran Hippotizer in conjunction with an automation system. The Kinesys motor control system fed PSN data to the servers, so that they could live-track the screen positions in real-time. The end-result was the content tracking of the screens as they moved throughout the show.
For Lady Antebellum’s automated screens, the system provided information regarding the vertical position of the two motors for each truss. This was a challenge, but using MacroManager, they were able to interject formulas between the automation data and SHAPE. This allowed them to take the vertical position of each motor and the horizontal distance between them to calculate the vertical position and rotation of each truss at over 60 times per second. This was vital as the team needed to know the resultant height and rotation of each truss in order to get the content to track across the screens as they moved through the ‘virtual canvas’.
This also allowed them to build in variables for the touring crew to adapt to changes in rigging setups for different venues - meaning that no matter the rigging limitations in a venue, they didn’t have to sacrifice any part of the show. Even in venues where they were unable to fully utilize the automation system and had to rely on static truss positions, the content was able to track across the screens perfectly without and reprogramming of the servers.
(Jim Evans)
