Chamaeleon technical director, Adam Knight, says: "Working on Daddy Cool has been exciting experience for Chamaeleon. It's our first musical, and great to be involved with. It's given us a real in-sight and appreciation for the thought and scale that goes into set design." Knight reserved special praise for Simon Needle and the Electrolite team for the installation of the Mirorr-ball, for Ian Moulds and his team of production electricians and for the theatre's lighting staff led by Pete Goodman saying: "The guys were technically brilliant, lighting the sets utilised the capabilities of our fixtures to the maximum and seeing everyone's work slot-together was an amazing experience for me. I've really learned a lot."
Chamaeleons' first introduction to the Daddy Cool project was as suppliers of their neon substitute Elektor-Flex which was to be used for the Ma Baker's Bar sign for the strip club set. The bar sign was designed to be red, with blue Elektor-Flex around the dancers podiums and bar front. "From those meetings came the idea for rope-light ball," says Knight. "I had demonstrated several of our linear LED products for Ma Baker's Bar, including Tantalus which we hadn't yet launched. It was Tantalus which captured imaginations, and led to the designing of the Mirror-Ball set."
Chamaeleon managing director Kevin Knight says: "The Mirror-ball is really half a ball, open at the back. It's made from sheets of perspex, horizontal and vertical lines of constantly colour-changing Tantalus give the ball its appearance and shape. The overall effect is absolutely fabulous!"
The programming and colour control for the Mirror-ball was completed by Rob Halliday. "Rob really had an issue to contend with", said Knight. "Controlling horizontal and vertical lines of constantly colour changing Tantalus was never going to be easy. Similar to a vid-screen, the lines really wanted to be one or the other. Rob determined his solution and overcamethe problem, changing the control pre-sets of Tantalus and controlling each of the lines in Hippotizer, giving precisely the effects he wanted."
Halfway through the planning stages, an idea for the Recording Studio Scene was introduced. The new idea envisaged a graphics equaliser. "We demonstrated several methods of achieving the effect," says Knight, "eventually settling on using two one metre lengths of our DMX controlled LED Elektor-Tube to decorate the DJ's turntable. Impressed with the power of the tubes and their effects, Rob Halliday also designed them into show finale. Lengths of colour-changing Elektor-Tube are arranged all around the stage and the light directed into theauditorium and onto the audience."
"Our wall washers light-up the opening scene too," says Chamaeleon operations director, Steve Whiteley: "Eight Astrum 1800 IND UBs are lined along the front of the stage washing the dancers. And, on both wings of the stage are the brick sets. The bricks, about four hundred in all, and in different sizes, represent the 'seedier' aspects of London andare lit by DMX controlled SpekTec mini tubes. The light on the bricks is individually controlled and is on all through the production, it's either fully lit or diffused and colour changes in theme with the scenes."
Summarising, Knight says: "All round, Daddy Cool has been a terrific project for Chamaeleon to work on. Seeing our lighting products for the first time on a London musical stage represented a fantastic debut for us,
