The show has just transferred to the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End after a popular opening run at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Visual designer Tim Bird's animated versions of (George) Suerat's pointilliste technique are a vital element of the show and bring a whole new 21st century dimension to the stage. They reflect the artist's ability to create huge compositions with tiny, detached brushstrokes of contrasting colours, too small to be distinguished when looking at the entire work, yet resulting in paintings pulsing with luminosity.
XL Video were initially recommended to Bird as a technical partner by a lighting designer. He and producer David Babani also saw their recent work on shows like Woman In White and Bat Boy The Musical, and Bird realised the potential and flexibility of combining Catalyst media servers and the DL1 moving heads. He approached XL's theatre and performing arts specialist Malcolm Mellows who co-ordinated the project.
Mellows says: "This production is possibly the cleverest and certainly most appropriate use of video in a theatre production and XL Video is proud to play it's part in such an important event. As Mr. Sondheim himself was heard to say: "If we had the technology when we first staged the show, this is the way we would have wanted to do it."
The show contains both front and rear projection onto a large rear back projection surface and two side walls. The Barco SLM R12+ fills the rear projection, and the Sanyos, rigged to the front of the second circle balcony - handle the two side walls as well as picking out elements of the Artistes work as these magically appear around the stage. All keystone corrections were manipulated via the Catalysts. The Catalysts store all the video content and were programmed by Sam Hopkins. They are controlled by a Hog iPC slaved to the house's Strand 520 lighting console.
Bird worked closely with scenic and costume designer David Farley and lighting designer Natasha Chivers to create the show's unique visuality, and to bring pointillism to a modern theatre-going audience. The design became more complex as the work developed he explains.
Apart from the back and side walls of the set, there are various other projection surfaces used during the show, inclosing some small centre stage canvasses centre stage, a cut-out tree and some shadow trickery running through the whole performance which utilises the DL1.
There's over 160 video cues, and the video content runs throughout the performance. It took Bird about three months to compile using a combination of graphic building and rendering techniques.
He shot special footage on a Sony ZX1 HDV camera, edited and treated, and produced animations and sequences using Hash Animation Master, Autodesk Maya and a number of other software programmes. Most of the digital compositing done in Adobe After Effects. When the show transferred to the Wyndhams, all the content had to be updated and re-touched as the surface sizes and proportions had changed, and they were also able to spend time streamlining some aspects of the show.
Bird says: "XL has been absolutely brilliant in every aspect. Malcolm bent over backwards to ensure we got the gear we needed, and the support has been second to none."
XL's installation crew were Duncan McLean, Paul Barry, Damian Ridge, whilst XL's Simon Pugsley and Warren Galt trained up the chief LX and two assistant LX crew to operate and maintain the Catalysts, Hog PC and projectors for the duration of the Wyndhams run.
(Chris Henry)
