TOP OF THE POPS IN REHEARSAL AT ELSTREE

• West End latest: The Hunting of the Snark• New Look Top of the Pops• Theatre Magic from Glasgow, Stockholm and Japan• Ultimate Movement: Talking Tracking• Disco Technology and a Dutch Palace

. • A new venue in Carshalton• Cloud Electronics Profiled NOVEMBER 1991

THE HUNTING OF THE SNARKJulian Williams at the West End's latest mega musical

I started at the technical 'heart' of the show andasked chief electrician Kevin Burgess what hethought about this massive new production atthe Prince Edward Theatre in London. "Brilliant",he said. And technically this show is.

'Hunting of the Snark' which opened on 24thOctober, has a precise mix of quality sound andcolourful lighting. It also uses what is claimed tobe - for the first time in a live theatrical situation- the biggest-ever installation of AV slideprojectors - a unique combination!

What is a Snark? Nobody seems to know, butthetale is based on Lewis CarroWsepic nonsensepoem of 'An Agony in Eight Fits'. They are: The~anding, The Bellman's Speech, The Baker'sTale, The Hunting, The Beaver's Lesson, TheBarrister's Dream, The Banker's Fate, and TheVanishing. The production has no less than 12scenes in the first act and 14 scenes in the secondact and to fulIyappreciate the racy presentationstyle of this work, it's best to be familiar with thepiece, and to have heard the music. Having thelibretto to hand would also be an advantage.

A true 'multi-media' musical, it commenceswith a clever introduction of the characters: theirnames are projected onto a front gauze with thecharacters themselves in various stage positionsin profile behind. The fast pace is set as theprojection media instantly changes the 'set', andthe character of Lewis Carroll narrates througheach scene. The characters are already on theboat at sea when we join them, and they arriveatan island, where they try to find the mysteriousSnark.

Mike Batt has designed, directed andconceived this unusual production, apparentlywishing to control all aspects himself. Hedemanded his team of technicians adapt at amoment's notice to keep up with his 'changes'as they built this highly technical production,right up to opening night.

The combination of different disciplinesdemands enormous attention to detail, in bothlight levels and illumination control, inconjunction with acutely angled visualprojection techniques. Coupled with that werethe logistical difficulties involved in the soundbalancing of a 52 piece orchestra on a stage andthe essential clarity of diction for numerousartistes.

Each department was pushing the limits toreach the requ ired effect.

One of the early sequences is one of the mostspectacular moments in the show when, byprojection on the front gauze, there areanimated images of waves, creating a sea scape,with birds fluttering by, fish jumping out of thewater and the crew lined up on the bridge withthe ship's wheel, while the bridge is 'yo-yo-ing'up and down.

A feature of the iron-clad structural set, whichwas built by Delstar Engineering Ltd, is thetracking Bridge. It can move vertically andhorizontally to any of the five entrances and exitson three levels on the stage.

The stage drive control for the bridge, byPinpoint Control Ltd, is from manual joy sticks,and is located in an onstage position where theoperator has graph ic status informationdisplayed on a monitor. The stairs and handrailsare pneumatically controlled from positions justupstage of the pros on either side of the stage.

For safety, there is a gate at every potentialbridge position. These gates are interlocked sothat they can only operate when the bridge is inthe correct position. All the interlocks areoperated via Pinpoint's Computer.

22 LIGHTING AND SOUND INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 1991

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The opening titles projected onto the lowered gauze.

The main characters are introduced by means of a very effective projection sequence.

Plan of theVeronica Hart as The Beaver performing 'As Long As The Moon Can Shine'.

The stage acting area is only 20ft deep as theremainder of the space is taken up by theorchestra. Because of the nature of the set it doesnot allow for a tallescope. Provision is made toaccessthe LX bars alongside the lighting bars.Production electrician Alistair Grant made thepoint: "This allows us particularly easy access forchecking focuses during rehearsal."

The lighting rig is a simple one, controlledfroma Light Palette 2 with two advance bars andon-stage electrics bars. The luminaire contentconsistsof a combination of Strand Cantata andAltman Lekos, with some Silhouette 30s and Par64s,the lighting is predominantly from cross lightand is complemented with Vari*Lites, as well asa motorised light curtain in five sections. Thereare 'Howie' Mini-Strip battens in use forbacklighting the orchestra on two levels. Theprincipal luminaires are 14 Vari*Lites, fourfollow spots (2 x 2kW Strand Solo's on eithersideof the FOH, and two R&V 500W trackingbeamlamps along the sides of the stage at 'fly raillevel', and a Front-of-house followspottraditional front light. .

All the equipment was supplied bylondon-based Theatre Projects Services Ltd.

White Light's new optical effects were used,one of the most interesting being a smoke effectprojected on to the auditorium walls.

I talked with associate Vari*Lite programmer!RichardKnight who commented: "We've gotthesmallest rig I've ever worked with - 11 VL2 Bsandthree VL4s. The 4s are upstage and they tend todealwith the top platform and the stairs. We cangetthem down onto the orchestra so we can rollthe colours to do a few orchestra changes, andthe rest down-stage, mid-stage and up-stage.

''Their main function is to slide between thescreens. There's a lot of very accurate focusing

required where you're trying to miss the backprojection screen and the gauze, sneaking inbehind the screen to hit a particular target! It'squite refreshing to do something that is verydetailed and have quite a lot of time to play withit.

"Lighting designer Andrew Bridge decidedthat we'd do the fi rst half of the fi rst act withrealistic lighting - to show people the faces of thecharacters and so on, and to set the productionup. It was decided that 'Snarkland', would ineffect be 'Goboland'. So much of the work the2Bs do is gobo work, to make broken forest looksand a wavy sea for the travel bits. It's an attemptto create a kind of magical ever-changing forest."

Speaking with Andrew Bridge betweenrehearsals, he told me: "This production isunique in several areas in the sense that there isno scenery at all. There's a black box on stagewhich we affectionately call the 'Black Car Park',and there's a moving bridge - other than thatthere's no scenery at all!

"Having 52 musicians on the stage producesa potential light leak problem from their musicstands. Then there are numerous white screensfrom back projection screens, to front projectionscreens, and gauzes. These are used in manyconfigurations with the projectors; all thescenery is projected. The fact that it is a blackbox in a 'black carpet' (there is black wool sergeon all of the surfaces, other than the stage itselfl,with shrouded music stands, means we have tobe very careful.

"Then there are actors who get in the way ofall this - and I have to light them without hittingthe screens or creating any excessive spill, be itfrom bounce of a white T-shirt or from justphysically hitting the screens. The configurationchanges quite often and with some of them it's

very difficult."In this sense Mike Batt wanted to create a

particular style of production; he wanted a verytwo-dimensional, proscenium and projectionimage, and even though the images are two-dimensional, it's made up of three-dimensionalformations of screens.

"So you can have a cyclorama picture on theback BP screen; you can then have frontprojection - windows, and a pub sign - and thena gauze to bleed through which has a 'forest'round it. It appears that you're in a forest lookingat a pub with sky behind. It has been extremelydifficult. Both Vari*Lites and follow-spotting hasbeen extremely useful in achieving this.

"The other things we're using are the usual'toys' of colour scrollers. Its a small rig, but mostof the lamps have a scroller on them.

"The whole stage is sectioned off into bays.We've got five bays going up and down stage,and in any bay we can drop a screen and trapthe actors. Therefore we've got two sidefollowspots and the operator doesn't have toworry about changing the colour, as we can slidecolours within cues which works quite well. Asthe followspot is on a track, when the actor istrapped in, say, Bay 3 with a gauze up-stage anddown-stage of it, we can track the followspot upto that bay and cross-light it.

"It's been extremely difficult to get a brightlevel on the company without ruining the AV.The AV is actually quite bright and everybodyhas been helping to get it that bright. It worksvery well. We get quite a lot of light up therewithout realising we are 'blowing' the screensaway!"

Howard Eaton, whose company havesupplied production electrical, and lightingservices, explained some of the practical

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Planof the onstage projector layout (rear projection at top, pros. bar at bottom).

LIGHTING AND SOUND INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 1991 23

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ChrisSlingsby, Imagination's creative director ofvisualcommunications at work on the projectionplan.

problems he has had to deal with. "The problemwith the atmospherics was that Andrew Bridgedidn't want a cracked oil because you can't getrid of it - he didn't want just smoke. He finallyselected fan assisted Skywalker fog generatorsfrom German company The Smoke Factory. Themain advantage of the Skywalker is its variability.They are 0-10 volt which means they can beoperated from sub-masters on the board. A bigadvantage is that they are able to trickle and notclog-up and overheat.

"We are using one of our Bytecraft Sageprotocol convertor units to take the AMX 192multiplex signal from the Light Palette, andproduce DMX 512 directly to drive the 60scrollers and other such toys. Other similarinstallations such as in 'Five Guys Names Mo'and 'Joseph' are using this now to convert theD54 signal from the Galaxy board. It actuallyproduces two parallel DMX outputs.

"We also have our standard motorised lightcurtain which is used in five sections with theRainbow scroller's at mid-stage LX Bar 5position. It flys to various positions during theshow.

"We supply the team of productiontechnicians, for continuity, and to get the samegroup of people who are all used to working inthe same way together; hopefully to a highstandard. This takes the problem away frommanagement who don't have to hire individuals.

"Aremote page button and colour monitor forthe Light Palette 2, which Andrew Bridge hasalways wanted, is not normally available. Weprovided this and it allows the lighting designerto select his own pages on the monitor at theproduction desk without having to have anexpensive full designer's remote system. It is asimple thing that's essential for this type ofproduction.

"Our tracking followspot consists of a R&VSOOWBeamlight with a scroller on the front andit'smodified to move into any of the five baypositionsat both sides of the stage."

Ithen talked to Imagination's creative directorofvisual communications Chris Slingsby.

"One of the particularly nice things about thisproduction was that many of the peopleinvolved had our company's background andhadcome together on our show rather than acommercial show," he said.

London's Imagination, a team who consist ofleadingpractitioners in the art of presentation,covertrade shows, product launches, businesstelevision,and privatisation road shows among•

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Theatre section showing tightness of projection beams to the theatre structure from both stalls anddress circle.other things.

"We are first and foremost designers of all this,and secondly we are the technical producters ofit," continued Slingsby. "On 'The Hunting of theSnark', our responsibility is the technicalproduction - on most of our projects we are thedesigners as well; we do a lot of commercialaudio visual production and also have areputation for doing unusual audio visualprojection, commercial and entertainmentshows. This was a logical extension of that, butmore complicated technically than the jobs weare normally likely to do on an everyday basis.It's so large and complex.

J,::-:)-'--::/"Stalls projection room: part of the line-up of 96Kodak 2060 Carousels.

Viewfrom the stage to the projection rooms with thebanks of projectors. To the left is the room housingthe Genesis computers.

Richard Knightat the Vari*lite desk.

LIGHTING AND SOUND INfERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 1991

"Mike Batt and Imagination's chairman GaryWithers spent a lot of time developing how thescreens should be and in what shape, how manythere would be, and what they would do, andso on. Mike Batt wanted to create the whole ofthe scenic elements with projection and there isobviously much scope for depth on a stage. Withthe orchestra on the stage, he wanted to havethe images in amongst the set with the artistes,as a total visual piece.

"He actually does the drawings himself. Thevisuals are based on his outline drawings whichour studio people then take over and turn theminto slides. We already knew how he wanted the

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Howard Eaton (right) discusses his tracking follow-spots with production electrician Alistair Grant.

Sound designer John Del'Nero (right) with assistantMike Furness at the Cadac consore.

~~Control is provided by six Genesis computers withthe operator's 'go' button just visible centre .

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AlthodemaByprojection on the front gauze, animated images of waves, birds, fish combine to create a real'yo-yo-ing' sea scape.

techniques of creating the images, and thisrequired the use of many lith slides with colourgels, instead of colour film and colour stock, andthe use of many projectors.

"Using gels, you can maintain a brightness ofimage more effectively than you can usingcolour film. He builds up complete scenes usingmany small elements, with soft edge grads andso on inserted into each slide individually. Manyof the slides are hand-made and built up to makeenormous images using many projectors toachieve the result and this is why there are somany projectors involved.

"One image might use between 50 and 60projectors to create it. This style is a unique wayof working on such a large scale. However, itdoes maintain purity of colour and brightnesswhich is critical in this situation.

"Also, this quantity of projectors gives theopportunity for animation. We have a full timestudio of artwork people and our own in-houserostrum camera. Apart from processing thecolour film we do everything in-house.

''This is a real development story based onmulti-vision techniques that we have developedover the years for the conference industry andwhich has now been taken a stage further.

''The fundamental problem was in making allthe projection work in a theatre that wasn'tdesigned to ever take it in that form. So justarriving at the right number of projectors and tohit the screens in the right places without theprojector beams catching the ceiling of the dresscircle above the stalls, or getting on top ofpeople's heads when they walk through theauditorium, and so on, was a very tight technicaljob! A lot of careful work went into making surethat it would all just about fit into the adaptedprojection rooms at the back of the stalls and thecircle, to enable engineers to line up andmaintain the equipment.

"The reason the projection rooms are ondifferent levels is because they need to reach thedifferent parts of the screens with the beams.There is no way you can project from anyoneof those places and get the beams to all of therequired places. You can break the projectiondown into two halves; the first half of the show

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is all front projection which comes from thestalls and dress circle and that basically uses thesame sort of projectors and projections.

"There are many screen overlaps and we havepushed the limits of soft-edging slides together.The bigger the image the dimmer it gets, - thesmaller you can keep the image the better. It'sa case of how wide you're spreading the lightwhich is a fundamental problem with AV. Wegot over this problem by taking the image andsplitting it on the rostrum camera in perfectregistration. Without these fundamental thingsthis job would not have been possible.

"These images and projectors are then linedup using special line-up slides which, when youput all the slides back with the right relationshipto each other, you can blend them together tomake a perfectly seamless picture. We usespecial soft graded pieces of film that aresandwiched in with them all. It's a veryspecialised business. Mike Batt insisted on a 12ftx 8ft picture (from the front projection) forconsistancy of brightness. These images are thenbuilt with soft edging both horizontally andvertically, into images that are nearly 40ft wideby 30ft high.

"We've had to programme the whole of whatyou see in the theatre, in one-third scale. It wascompletely created and set up at Imagination'spurpose-made studio, with all the projectors,and all the screens and took six weeks. We hadsixweeks pre-production before that, to preparethe slides.

"The job started for my team in May this yearand the first month was spent working out thetechnical details for the projection. We startedthe artwork in July which went on untilSeptember. Itwas then an on-going process rightup to opening night.

"It was an on-going situation because of theway Mike works, as he creates everything withthe pressure of time. As he was also doing otherthings, you were creating along the way. Hewould do the drawings and we would turn thoseinto slides while we were still programming thelast scene. We had a production team of sevenpeople and a rostrum camera operator. Twopeople did all the slide mounting, specialising

LIGHTING AND SOUND INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 1991

with the collation of the slides, and three peopleworked in the studio full time, together with astudio manager.

"On the stage itself there is some quite trickyprojection coupled with back projection.Installed in the back wall are 26 projectors forthe back projection; all boosted 2055 400WKodak Carousel projectors. From the LXbar 2position, 18 carousels were used. The projectionthrow is so short that we had to develop amethod of shooting those images to keep theprojectors running parallel to each other, ratherthan keystoning in together, which, because ofthe distortions involved, would have been totallyunacceptable.

"The other thing on that screen is that thereis a bottom strip which is projected from abovethe other projectors down at an angle of 30degrees. The keystoning on that was severe, andlike everything else they would soft edgetogether. The slides all had to be created, andtechniques had to be developed, tokeystone-compensate all those slides so theywould be a perfect match, which is much moredifficult than it sounds.

"Inaddition there isthe Horizon screen, whichis right at the very back, and which comes downin front of the back projectors, behind theorchestra, and above the rhythm section. Thereare also some blinds in front of the section andwe project on all of these screen areas as well.Both screens also had to be keystone-corrected.

"From the dress circle projection room, wehave two Pani 4kW BP4 HMI projectors to coverthe whole of the front pros gauze with one slideimage or through combinations to createmulti-layered imagery.

"On the Horizon screen we only had a pair ofprojectors on each screen area. The basictechnique was to shoot those images from ascreen and then by using a number of stages ofre-copying them, to end up with them distortedto exactly the right degree. So again when theyare projected back together you will get aseamless picture. In factthe whole picture attheback of the set is actually five separate slidesevery time blended together, and I must say thatIam pleased with it, because I know what we've

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beenthrough to achieve that. You don't realisethat it's not just straight on front projection.

'We were working right to the limit of therecommended safe angles with the beams justmissinghandrails, and the way all those beamswork is really tight in every direction, we just missthe borders."

The control for all this work is by theAmerican AVL company Genesis whomanufactured the purpose built Genesiscomputers. The operator has one 'go' control,calledwith the corner cues. He has to keep hiseyeon each of the monitor screens displayingthe 142 projector's data. Any running problemscanbe relayed to a resident engineer in each ofthe projection rooms.

There are 98 projectors from the stalls anddresscircle; all standard 2060 Kodak Carouselprojectors with auto-change lamp facility and a250W Halogen lamp. It takes three full-timeengineers from production company MartynHayesAssociates to look after the maintenanceof the system.

I asked Chris Slingsby where this is likely totake Imagination, having gained some newexpertise and experience. Will other producersthink of this as a wonderful new concept for thesetting of a show?

'We have already had some enquiries frompeople who have seen the show, and personallyI would like to do some more theatre work.Although it's been a long job and technicallydemanding. I've enjoyed it very much."

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SoundContradicting various recommendations in theprofession that the actors should use handheldor boom microphones, both of which wereunacceptable, Imagination's sound designerJohn Del'Nero broke the barriers of soundtechnology in a theatre environment to achieve

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the quality of sound that Mike Batt required. Hehad to ensure that the actors could be heardabove the sound produced by the 50 pieceorchestra in its predominant position on thestage.

John Del'Nero said: "We've spenta lotoftimein Imagination's studio with the artistes workingout proper mic positions on their heads. Thebiggest problem is that the artistes are notnecessarily aware of the importance of theplacement of microphones. So we took them tothe studios and placed a mic at various placesover their head, and made recordings to playback to them, so that they could hear thedifference, thus they realised why we neededthe mic in a particular place. We thenphotographed that particular position forreference. In that way every artiste has theoptimum mic position on their face. Aseverybody has different shaped heads thepositioning of the microphones had to beanalysed individually. A difference of just 1/2cmwas so important."

Possibly the biggest sound desk installed fortheatre production a Cadac 80 channel 'E' typemixer console, with a computer programmewritten by Mat McKenzie of Autograph, alongwith a Cadac 22 channel 'B' type 3, are used tomix the show. The Cadac automation systemallows the Sony RS DAT machines, along withchanges of fader ganging, and processing,including delay units, to be stored and operatedduring the show cue sequence.

Sound Equipment List

Microphones

20 x Sennheiser MKE2 diversity radio mics6 x Neumann U87 mics with boom stands1 x AKG C535 mic with boom stand20 x Sennhesier MKE2 in-line mics

1 x AKG C414 mic with boom stand9 x BSSDI boxes1 x Shure SM57 mic with boom stand1 x AKG C451 +CK1 mic with boom stand3 x AKG C414 mic with boom stand2 x Shure SM57 mics4 x Neumann KM84 mics9 x Sennheiser MKH40 mics1 x Ambience stereo mic2 x RSDat machines

Mixing and processing1 x 80 channel E-type Cadac with computer3 x Brooke Siren delay units10 x Meyer parametric equalisers2 x Klark Teknik DN360 graphic equalisers1 x Klark Teknik DN 780 reverb unit1 x PCM70 digital reverb units1 x SPX1000 digital reverb units7 x Formula Q4 mini mixers4 x Formula Q8 mini mixers

Loudspeakers and amplifiers18 x Meyer UM1 ultra monitors12 x M 1 controllers12 x amplifiers6 x Meyer UPA1a loudspeakers6 x M 1 controllers6 x amplifiers2 x Meyer USW subwoofers1 x B2 controller2 x amplifiers10 x Meyer UPM1/Apogee SM1 loudspeakers3 x controllers3 x amplifiers18 x Bose 101 loudspeakers5 x Macrotech 600 amplifiers21 x Galaxy hot spots11 x amplifiers

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John Del'Nero's sound design schematic.

LIGHTINGAND SOUND INTERNATIONALNOVEMBER1991 27