Lighting manager Philippe Catalano collaborated on the festival's technical direction with Philippe Roy as second desk operator and network manager for Romeo Castelluci's Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy. Philippe Roy was in charge of the dramatic fireball scene, a very special effect on the upstage wall of the famous court of honour.
The idea is to give the impression of a free-moving ball of fire behind all the windows, so that spectators believe there is nothing but void behind the wall. This fireball effect requires the projection of a light beam from the inside of the wall to 26 windows, with the beams being able to move very quickly to give the impression of a free-moving ball behind the wall. The solution was an ETC Source Four profile with 25° field angle combined with a motorized moving mirror.
A very small diffuser was used on the fixture and the stained glass windows gave a convincing Gothic frost. W-DMX from Wireless Solution was used. Philippe Catalano uses one transmitter and two receivers for the general scenic system and Roy uses one transmitter and 11 receivers for fireball effect. Those 11 receivers deliver DMX to the 26 dimmers, to the moving mirrors and to the only Revolution moving head spread across the palace.
Philippe Roy comments: "W-DMX answers to the wholeness of the network. The transmitter is plugged directly into the Congo Junior and all of my fixtures are driven by the receivers. The system worked perfectly. I just plugged in the receiver at the end of the wire, without begging myself questions and everything was immediately OK. The LED bargraph gives an instant visualization of the reception and every time it was green [full strength]. We only needed the 3db standard antenna. The networks were fully independent."
For more on the Festival d'Avignon, see the September issue of Lighting&Sound magazine.
(Jim Evans)
