| Gospel at
the Movies The Ennis
Gospel Choir has been a client of Ard Soilse Productions for the past 4
years, favouring our creative and boundary-less approach to production
design.
In November 2009 Fiona Walsh of
EGC approached Ard Soilse designer Joe Betts to design a set and rig
based around their theme "Gospel at the movies".
The project was a challenging one, integrating video and lighting
systems, with tight scene change times and complex choreography.
Joe Designed a set based on a series of concentric semi-circles
forming the tiers for the choir, with a central semi circle in the
opposite direction allowing the band to be situated in the centre of
the stage, without blocking view of the choir.
The lighting rig was designed to mirror the set, with concentric
curved trusses, that gave a clam shell effect.
The lighting rig was based around
16 Elation Design 300E spots and washes, which leant their versatile
features to the show.
The show moved into ASP Rehearsal
Studios in Shannon in December, and rehearsed on set for 4 weeks.
The next challenge to was to allow the video screen at the back of
the stage to be seen, when in use. The venue had limited height at
6M, and between the trusses and the set there was only 2.5M left for
the screen.
Joe Decided to implement a moving truss system which moved the
trusses up, and rotated them to curve up instead of down to the
centre, this allowed the truss to seem to disappear during video
scenes, and fly back in for stage scenes.
Joe commented "The show was
complicated and busy, as lighting director i was calling move cues,
video cues, spot cues and operating the board, so i didn't get a break
until the show was over!"
The show was controlled from a
Jands Vista i3, which allowed Joe to see the complicated plot as it
appeared on stage, making on the fly changes quick, easy and seamless. |
|
Rigging Training
NRC
Pushing Conventional boundaries
