MDG goes under the sea in Helsinki
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In this Disney adaptation of the original story, mermaid Ariel falls in love with human Prince Eric, and sells her beautiful voice to the sea witch Ursula in exchange for legs so she can join him in the surface world.
The ambitious production has been put together by director Samuel Harjanne, set designer Peter Ahlqvist and costume designer Pirjo Liiri-Majava and choreographer Gunilla Olsson-Karlsson from Sweden. Characters are also brought to life with liberal use of flying, and puppetry from UK-based Stitches and Glue. The puppetry and flying demands good haze coverage in all three dimensions, both to create atmosphere and also to mask and highlight the puppetry and set to its best effect.
Helsinki City Theatre’s resident lighting designer of nine years, William Iles, chose MDG generators to create the necessary haze for this magical production, using an ATMe haze generator and theONE dual-mode haze and fog generator for general ambience, and an Ice Fog Q with a Round Floor Pocket for low fog effects.
“The haze came in handy for creating the illusion of the underwater world with beams of sunlight filtering down to the bottom of the sea,” he says. “With the even distribution of the haze at all levels, we could create the illusion of a very three-dimensional world.
“We have owned theONE for two years and have used it on many shows and are very happy with it,” says Iles. “It really does the all the work in one unit and fills the stage quite happily by itself.”
The ICE FOG Q and its associated Round Floor Pocket (RFP) are both new to the Helsinki City Theatre and were supplied by MDG’s exclusive Finnish distributor, msonic oy. The ICE FOG Q generator is located under the stage revolve, where it rotates with it, and the low fog is ducted out through the RFP situated centre stage.
"Helsinki City Theatre's The Little Mermaid really is an amazing show,” says msonic's lighting sales manager, Janne Koivulahti. “We are really pleased to hear such testimonials from our important customer about MDG's products. We believe Helsinki City Theatre deserves the maximum praise for their visualization because of the sheer size of the production and the huge amount of work carried out by the talented artistic and technical team. msonic oy is proud to stand alongside world-class MDG in giving them full support."
(Jim Evans)
