Gary Gillies and John Gorman created Alien Wars in 1992, after watching a double-bill of Alien and Aliens at a local cinema, and wanting to experience the movie rather than just watch it.
Creating the right ambiance and effects for the Alien Wars/i> experience has been key to its success. Having been asked to supply and install the lighting, Phil Haldane of Blacklight needed equipment that could stand the rigours of daily use and handle the variety of lighting fixtures and effects used throughout the experience. He chose Zero 88.
The whole experience is run on Betapack dimmers and a Leap Frog 48 lighting control console. The show is controlled from 10 cue stacks. Effects are programmed onto the Leap Frog's submasters, which are all independently fired throughout the experience by push switches. The Leap Frog 48 controls everything from fuzz lights, 120m of festoon, Atomic strobes, SGM flasher strobes, birdies, SL3 LED moving lights, and some fans for added chill factor.
Haldane explains: "Due to multiple number of rooms within the experience, programming was quite a challenge. We had to ensure that one section didn't interrupt another as different groups travel through the set in up to 100 shows per day. And all the bespoke push-switch mechanisms had to fire off both lighting cues and audio samples at the same time. The Leap Frog 48 gave us a stable quick programming surface that allowed us to keep every area independent. All intelligent lighting was easily programmed utilising the Leap Frog's powerful effects engine giving us the exact results we wanted.
"The desk also allows us to update cues quickly with ease. So far the Leap Frog 48 has been running all day, every day for 129 days without any failures and continually delivering. The offline editor has also come in extremely handy when small cue updates are required to match small changes in the show."
(Jim Evans)
