CIRQUE DU SOLEIL`S EPIC TRIBUTE TO THE KING OF ROCK`N

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TOTAL PRODUCTION INTERNATIONAL
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FEBRUARY 2010
ISSUE 126
LIVE EVENT DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY • FEBRUARY 2010 • ISSUE 126
VIVA ELVIS!
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL’S
EPIC TRIBUTE TO THE
KING OF ROCK’N’ROLL
UH-HUH-HUH
ARCTIC MONKEYS • PLACEBO • SIMPLE MINDS • HOLIDAY ON ICE: TROPICANA
TAYLOR SWIFT • L-ACOUSTICS’ K1 • FLIGHT CASES FEATURE • CHRONICLE: LASERS
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
ALL SHOOK UP!
DIANA SCRIMGEOUR REPORTS FROM LAS VEGAS ON HER EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK BEHIND
THE SCENES OF CIRQUE DU SOLEIL’S EPIC TRIBUTE TO THE KING OF ROCK’N’ROLL...
Cirque du Soleil, the now globally famous
Montreal-based entertainment giant has,
over the past 25 years, reinvented the
definition of the circus. From founder
Guy LaLiberté’s original dream of street
performers bringing magic back to circus
tents with their touring big top in the
’80s, to the multiple travelling shows now
touring every continent except Africa and
Antartica, the company has become a
household name.
Cirque’s partnership with MGM in its Las
Vegas hotels has supported the creation of six
permanent shows in that city, each one unique
and allowing Cirque the luxury of creating
purpose built theatres to showcase ever more
22 • TPi FEBRUARY 2010
extravagant examples of its performance art.
Having built its brand on extraordinary
acrobatics acts supported by a unique blend
of sound and lighting, with its Las Vegas
shows Cirque has increasingly been exploring
other production styles — from the water
extravaganza O, through the technological
masterpiece of KÀ, and in 2006 its triumphant
celebration of The Beatles with Love, in
partnership with Apple Corps.
Now, on February 19 within Las Vegas’
spanking new ultra-modern City Centre
complex, Cirque du Soleil is premièring its
seventh residential show — a tribute to the life
and music of Elvis Aaron Presley, the King of
Rock’n’Roll: Viva Elvis.
THE BACKGROUND
In 2005, CKX approached Cirque about a
collaboration with Elvis Presley Enterprises and
devising a show about the legendary singer.
The City Centre complex ultimately provided
the ideal new location and plans went ahead to
create a custom-built theatre within one of the
new hotels, the 61-storey Aria Resort & Casino.
In the early days, before a design team was
selected, Stéphane Mongeau (later, in January
2009 to become the show’s executive producer)
was in charge of the design for the theatre.
He recalled: “After Love opened, we
immersed ourselves in the world of Elvis — we
went to Graceland, read all the books, listened
to all the music while Cirque’s resident architect
Johnny Bouvin [designer of the theatre from
proscenium out to lobby] did the same under
the direction of Gilles Ste-Croix.
“We started with the music, which is the
driver here, and we linked the music that
inspired our acrobatic people with what we
read about Elvis. We wanted the show to be
a really theatrical production unlike anything
Cirque has done before, and our vision was for
the stage to be like an opera house.
“Viva Elvis is about the man and his music,
and while we do take bits of his life we really
didn’t want to do any historical biographical
treatment so by coming up with the songs and
working from there it was better.
“The show is more about his influence on
music, so we go from gospel to country to
rock’n’roll, and we have rearranged the music in
such a way that I think we are introducing Elvis
to a new generation, demonstrating what a
wide influence he had and still has to this day.
“Elvis was a dangerous person, and for us
Cirque is also dangerous: people are amazed by
what we do acrobatically and how we defeat
gravity, so I think the joining of Elvis and Cirque
makes sense. The show is 90 minutes long and
it’s important for us to have points of historical
reference to things which influenced Elvis’s life,
and to be clear about what we are referencing.
“At the end of the day it’s all about the
emotion and being surprised and learning
something that you didn’t know about the man
and his music.”
“We are introducing Elvis to a
new generation, demonstrating
what a wide influence he had
and still has to this day...”
THEATRE DESIGN
While they had a vision for the concept, the
actual show design had to be done alongside
the theatre design and construction.
Production manager Mike Anderson
explained the process: “We started about three
years ago. The building of this amazing US$11
billion CityCentre complex was on a fast track of
which our theatre was just a tiny piece. In terms
of our infrastructure they had some pretty rigid
deadlines for us to give them the information so
they could get it built.
“Because we needed to get in early we
wanted Phase One to be complete, so the
timeline was: ‘This is it. Get it to us or you miss
the boat’. We had a bit of a concept for the
show initially and although we tried to do it
in tandem since the infrastructure had to be
designed so much earlier the reality was that
the show design had to follow.
“Guy LaLiberté’s initial idea was that he
wanted a theatrical dance/acrobatic show
celebrating the music of Elvis: that was the
parameter and anything within that was open
from there.”
The front of house theatre design was
inspired by the showrooms of the ’60s and
’70s, including the Hilton International where
Elvis performed his legendary Vegas shows
— modifying their U-shaped banquette and
table seating to incorporate a front stalls section
of extra wide seats accommodating two people
and in the lower half of the theatre the aisles
were also designed with extra width to allow
the audience to dance.
Anderson continued: “The stage from the
proscenium back was designed by a different
Cirque department who, having learnt from a
couple of other theatres, left us a gigantic 90’
wide by 100’ deep hole, which from stage level
has a 65’ drop down to the basement. Within
that void we could do anything we needed ,
stage-lift wise, which was great.
“The stage house is huge — almost 90’ wide
and 60’ high. The stage floor is 200’ deep from
downstage all the way to the upstage wall and
it’s 80’ wide and 50’ high from stage level to
proscenium.
“Designing the infrastructure was a very
collaborative affair. Jonathan Deans and Mark
TPi FEBRUARY 2010 • 23
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
Below: Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté; Elvis’s widow Priscilla Presley; write/director Vincent Paterson; Gilles Ste-Croix, Cirque du Soleil’s senior VP of creative content & new project development;
executive producer Stéphane Mongeau; set designer Mark Fisher and the full cast with VIPs. Bottom: Outside and inside views of the theatre within Las Vegas’ Aria Resort & Casino.
Fisher had already been brought on board as
consultants, and Mark played a very integral
part in all the stage lifts design. Guy St. Amour,
our acrobatic equipment designer, was very
involved from an overhead rigging standpoint.
“The writer/director, Vincent Paterson was
obviously trying to see how it was all going to
tie into show concept; additionally there were
our technical director Michel Tremblay, LD
Marc Brickman, and myself — so there were a
number of us in there making the decisions.”
DEPARTURE
Stylistically, Viva Elvis is a departure from
the world of fantasy which the Cirque has
traditionally inhabited into a much punchier
environment. Set designer Mark Fisher and
lighting designer Marc Brickman have both
brought their extensive rock’n’roll experiences
to the table here, and it shows.
Fisher described the approach: “Every other
residential show that Cirque has done except
this one is approached in what American
“Vincent wanted to have completely separate scenery for each scene.
It creates a particular style of show that is very staccato...”
Mike Anderson also tried to facilitate a
smooth technical transition by making sure that
some key crew members were on-site from the
very beginning. Dave Douvall was originally
brought in as the load-in technical director
to lead the installation process, then when
Anderson’s team arrived to finish the production
aspect he switched to his current role as
operations technical director.
As Douvall explained: “It has been very
helpful because very often there is no crossover
and Mike tried hard on this one to mix the two
— some of the crew have been around since
the first lift was installed which gives us a good
base of knowledge to maintain and run things.”
24 • TPi FEBRUARY 2010
theatre designers call a unitary style. They have
a single set and make transformations to it
during the show; they’ll bring something on, or
change something, but underneath it remains as
a single set throughout the show.
“The big thing here was that Vincent
Paterson saw the show as a collection of Elvis
songs (which are typically only two and a half
minutes long) and he wanted each song to look
different or at the very least be grouped into
sections.
“For example, there’s a romance section with
three songs, a military section (where Elvis joins
the U.S. Army) with two songs, a gospel section
with four songs, and a western section with a
six-song medley. They are all different places,
geographically, spatially and emotionally.
“Vincent wanted to have completely
separate scenery for each scene. It creates a
particular style of show that is very staccato,
and it’s been surprisingly difficult to get an
overall trajectory in which the whole show
builds to a climax.”
With 26 very high calibre dancers and 25
acrobats, Viva Elvis incorporates more dance
than any other Cirque show and displays a real
fusion of both disciplines.
The big Fisher-designed sets include a Juke
Box for the opening number, a multi-coloured
Gotta Lotta fairground set (referencing Elvis’s
love of both entertainment parks and Marvel
superheroes), a Jailhouse Rock set made by
StageLine in Montreal and a Las Vegas set, by
Show FX, which closes the show.
For the Western section, Fisher designed
an homage to Ant Farm’s Cadillac Ranch with
a series of leaning Elvis sculptures set in a
desert landscape and a very nice pimped-up
pink Cadillac, both of which were sculpted by
Jacqueline Pyle. She also sculpted Fisher’s 30’
long Blue Suede Shoe and the two flamebearing, Swarovski crystal-embellished Elvis
statues that feature in finale. F&D Scene
Changes of Calgary built the shoe, the Elvis
figures, the Cadillac and wedding cake.
Fisher was also responsible for the gold
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
Below: ‘Col. Parker’ during one of his monologes; the fairground Gotta Lotta set in with superheroes trampolining; the Blue Suede Shoe and Juke Box set.
Second row: The Western section desert landscape; the Jungle Gym featuring acrobatic performances of military precision; the giant wedding cake.
record theme that extends to the main curtain,
stage floor and hanging discs. “I made a whole
presentation with gold everything,” he said.
“The hard work of producing the artwork was
done by Tamlyn Wright.”
Other sets involve a Jungle Gym for the
military section with an American flag backdrop
made from genuine Fruit Of The Loom boxer
shorts and long johns, a huge wedding cake
(designed by Tamlyn Wright) and two aerial
acts, one featuring two engagement rings, the
other a guitar, both designed by Guy St. Amour.
A lot of material is juxtaposed into the show.
Mark Fisher elaborated on the design: “Most
of the sets are big because the stage is 80’
wide. About half of the set pieces are used by
the dancers but the technically interesting ones
are used by the acrobats. They are far more
demanding in what they require.
“The Juke Box, for example, is a very
straightforward piece. It’s big and it’s pretty,
but basically it’s just a bunch of decks. The really
technical pieces are the Gotta Lotta and the
Jailhouse Rock sets.
“Gotta Lotta is the full width of the stage,
nearly 35’ high, weighing 60 tons, has seven
Olympic size trampolines in it. When it’s done
it’s stuff, we lift it all up into the roof and store
it about 60’ in the air. The design [with Daniel
Cola] is very carefully worked out because
where people are trampolining and free-running
up walls and jumping off platforms, the heights,
the distances, the angles and everything
required a huge amount of research.
“Jailhouse Rock is also complicated. It has
three levels each about 15’ apart and supports
dancers who dance the right way up and
acrobats who dance the wrong way up. The
decks are carefully spaced to allow the different
levels of people to goof about without colliding.
The structure has to be solid enough not to
deflect even though everyone is dancing on the
beat, because the inverted walk rigging must
remain absolutely horizontal.”
A major piece of engineering, built by
StageLine in Montreal, it tracks downstage
almost 200’ during the performance.
The Jungle Gym in the military scene features
high bars and was designed by Guy St. Amour
and Daniel Cola, who directed some impressive
acrobatic performances on it.
Fisher continued: “The Gym is as big as it can
be to store in the downstage basement — it
literally scrapes the paint of everything near it
when it is moved around. Once it hits the stage
the performers unfold parts of it to make it even
larger. The Wedding Cake, also stored in the
basement, is almost the same size as the Gym.”
MULTI-LEVEL
Every inch of backstage space is crammed with
scenery. It tracks in from wings, rises from the
basement, flies in from the grid, and is laser
driven downstage. Currently there are 30 songs
in the show and 16 different scene set-ups
stored backstage. On the stage level alone
there’s almost 20,000ft2 of space and every
square foot of it chock full of stuff — likewise in
the basement — so it’s easy to understand the
issues in the early stages of how to deal with
moving it all around.
Said Mike Anderson: “Probably the biggest
challenge we faced early on was the stage
lifts. We knew they needed to be able to move
between one and two feet a second, be up to
Above: The basement lifts; the stage lift door open; top grid; stage floor; winches and motors in the top grid; Elvis immortalised in statue form.
26 • TPi FEBRUARY 20101
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
Below: Production director Mike Anderson, stage manager Carolyn ‘Nog’ Wyld, technical director (on-going operations) David Dovell, (front row) operations production manager John Barnett & technical
director (production) Michel Tremblay; the automation dept — Simon Parsons, Steve Carl, Matt Cadenhead, James Bryant, Ron Travato, Chris Cameron, Andrew Swanson, Chuck McCafferty, Chris Hodsden,
Duane Turner & Galen Price; James Bryant in the automation control booth.
Below: The carps — John Gallagher, Brian Petre, Alex Malinov, Chris Ziemann, Tim Merziotis, Trevor Workhoven, Steve Pelletier, Sammy Waltens, Craig Breternitz, Matt Ayers, Antonio Olmeda,
Kelly Dornfeld, Cayman Medina, James Hutcherson, Marshall Spratt, Carley Buchanan, Christine Chabira, Gavin Thomson, Omar Sealey & Mike Bowen; the riggers — Jamie Rivas, Denis Komarov,
Steve Scott, Chris Cadlett, Eric Eoelu, Nick Cavazos, Clay Kauffman, Derek Hoskins, Edward Ransom, Vitaliy Frolove, Abdiel Garcia & Curtis LeGacie.
80’ wide and 20’ deep, to have the capacity of
lifting over 70,000lbs and a sustained capacity
of around 200,000lbs. That’s a really BIG piece
of machinery moving, and there’s not a lot of
people that can make it.
“Our sub-basement is 60’ and our basement
is 30’ below stage level so we knew that when
our stage lifts were up there was the 30’ hole
from basement to sub-basement. It was one of
my major concerns coming into here because
we faced this with Love, so we came up with
a really ingenious non-negotiable plan to put
a 30’ facing on all the stage lifts creating a lift
shaft so there is no potential for anyone to fall
into any hole.
“The weight of the steel for the lifts is three
quarters of the amount of steel used in the
entire building and they take up so much square
footage that the fire department required us to
do fire suppression underneath them, so not
only do you have all the electrical stuff travelling
with the lifts you actually have a sprinkler pipe
travelling with them as well in case all this
concrete and metal down here catches on fire!”
A total of 17 stage lifts were constructed
by Show Canada in Montreal. They can travel
anywhere in the 30’ between the basement
and stage level and, in the case of the small Pod
Lifts, can rise up to 10’ above the stage and be
popped up in different configurations to add
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ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
“Stage Technologies have been absolutely incredible as always...”
another dimension and allow the creation of
smaller scenes without using the larger sets.
This ability to do multiple configurations
played a large part in the development of the
show. The furthest upstage lift is C5, the 80’ x
20’ workhorse of the show, used the most to
bring up all the largest pieces of scenery.
Downstage of C1 are two 8’ x 8’ star
traps that travel between stage level and the
basement. The C1 lift and the star trap holes are
covered by SLOATS (Sliding Lifting Automated
Traps) when the lifts are down. The lifts are all
powered by rack and pinion motors (mounted
on the lifts themselves). The three largest lifts
are all counterweighted.
WINCH FARM
There are 66 Stage Technologies winches used
in the show, 54 of which are housed in the
‘winch farm’ on the grid which, because of
the length of the cable drops (the grid is 104’
above the stage and 200’ above the basement),
provided a cable management challenge
regarding guiding them and keeping them
straight — the stage configuarion meant they
could only have guide columns on the four
corners.
Mike Anderson pointed out that their
tolerances are down to 0.1875”, so all the
winches had to be lined up because there
is a zero fleet angle and the drum travels
instead of the cable which always stays exactly
perpendicular.
The maximum load capacity on an average
winch is 2,000lbs on a normal scenic unit
though the massive Gotta Lotta set is on a triple
purchase system lifted off of nine separate
dedicated winches, none of which can go
out of sync by more than 5mm or it shuts the
system down. The LED truss uses four winches,
travels up to 52” below the grid and drops
down up to 60”.
Stage Technologies has been working with
Cirque for the past 10 years and Anderson was
full of praise for the company’s work: “Stage
Technologies have been absolutely incredible
with us as always. They are absolutely at the
top of the list of main suppliers for the show
— from theatrical infrastructure on the tracks
and trolleys, to the automated control system
that we’re running at FOH, to all the laserguided elements.
“They’re also busy on the production side
and were very involved in a lot of the scenic
elements that we built. Had they not been with
us 100% on this one we would have been in
a world of trouble! We’ve had half of their UK
shop and almost all of their Vegas shop working
with us for the past year.”
AUTOMATION
Head of automation, Galen Price gave an
overview of his department’s work: “I have
a wide range of electrical/electronic and
mechanical skill sets with my crew, so where
rigging is specialised, they just do one bit of it
but we can actually take a lot more.
“We maintain everything on the grid and
make sure that everything before it leaves
the drum is perfectly safe — the motor, the
gearbox, the encoder — so that all its limits are
set.
“Stage Technologies have a product
development partnership with Siemens who
supplied all components for the motor control
cabinets which have a main brain and two
sub data boards that control all the inputs and
outputs of the four computers plus a bunch of
relays. It’s got a touch screen so I can tell what
weight is on each one of these hoists, and gives
us feedback from the winches and checks all
kinds of errors before a winch is allowed to
move.
“If I lose this cabinet and the Gotta Lotta set
TPi FEBRUARY 2010 • 29
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
Below: Image content designer, Ivan Dudnysky and the projection team — Tom Juliano, Monte Davis, Selina Davenport & Dallas Nichols
is down we can’t do the Jailhouse Set because
we can’t lift the GL set out.
“Each winch is programmed specifically
for a particular scene, unlike at the consoles
where they can interact at times, the individual
cabinets are specific to the act. There are just
over 225 axes of motion in the show. Fifty on
the grid, another 12 in the LED panels, 18 axes
in the tracks and trolleys, plus all of the rotates
and traverse axes.
“On stage level, the MI and the GL set are
automation motor-driven; it has a laser guided
tracking system so it knows when it’s off by
5mm which is pretty handy when you’re trying
to move a 90,000lb piece of scenery and you
only have a crew of 20...!”
The lifts have four automation control
operators — two in the control booth (one
doing all of the stage lifts and the other doing
all of the drops and moves on the tracks and
trolleys) and two backstage operating consoles,
one left and one right, primarily loading artists
and scenery on the tracks and trolleys and
the automated platforms that roam around
backstage.
In addition to the lift systems there is also a
versatile track and trolley system: three tracks
carry a total of five trolleys which are used
primarily used for transporting artists in and
out on their scenery. The trolleys have lifting
winches integrated into them and can traverse
at 12’ per second.
Four of the trolleys have two winches inside
with two pick-points on each one and the fifth
one has four lifting points and it can rotate.
Assistant head of automation Chuck
McCafferty described the control system: “In
Stage Technologies’ eChameleon console
software, there is what they call a sculptor
path, so I can hit record and then with a single
joystick we can go up/down, right/left and
rotate so whatever I do by hand and it just
records live.
“It is very new technology which they are
writing just for this show. It’s great because with
the joystick we can do pretty much anything.
“We can use it on any of the trolleys
individually, or we can take the four trolleys
which have two lift points and tell the system
that they’re in a bridle so I can lift one point,
traverse left/right or move upstage/downstage
and lift as well all with the same joystick. Each
point can lift 600lbs, or I can put it in double
purchase mode and lift 1,200lbs per point.
“All five trolleys can work independently of
each other without the others knowing, but
they have interlocks between them so they
don’t crash. So it’s always looking forward to
see where the other piece is and it will come
all the way up to it and depending on speed
(traversing or lifting: max 12’ per second) it
knows it can come very close to it.
“They have a belt encoder across the track
so they keep their position and know where the
other one is via wireless communication. Trolley
5 interlocks as well with the vertical lighting
ladders (TORMS), the gold discs, the Delano
drops (white fabric) and LX2 (lighting truss
2) comes through into its path and there’s a
collision hazard, so we also have interlocks.
“We only have 10 guys on the crew which is
very difficult, because we have more automation
than most shows — KÀ has 23 guys!”
VIDEO & PROJECTION
Image content designer, Ivan Dudnysky had the
lucky task of sourcing and selecting all the Elvis
screen imagery as well as making new graphic
material, and he describes his role in this project
“as kind of the key to Elvis, visually-speaking”.
The process for selecting the screen content
was based around two main groups of material:
live concerts and the feature film archival
footage and stills from the Graceland archives.
Viva Elvis writer/director Vincent Paterson
gave them a rundown of how he saw the
show playing out and the story he wanted to
tell, including the different elements he was
proposing for each song. Based on that story,
they pulled in everything and made selections.
Dudnysky recalled: “The video/film selection
has been a very time-consuming process —
more than a year and a half. We’ve been cutting
on an Avid editing system and it took six months
to load all the material into it, six months to get
a first cut and six months of refining to create
our own highlight reel of Elvis elements.
“The toughest part was finding great quality
footage and shots. The best footage was up to
1972, so we have a lot of monochrome imagery
on the screen though we did treat some of it to
give it colour. There are only two movies that
have been converted to HD, so the footage
looks really old. It is what it is, so the real
challenge for me was to try to make the stuff
look good.”
The stills involved another whole process.
There are 60,000 photos in the Graceland
archives where Dudnysky spent three days
whittling his selection down to 3,000. “I was
looking for candid material because we’ve seen
enough Elvis poses. I tried to pull anything
labelled ‘Restricted’ because those were the
ones that hadn’t been seen before.”
They’ve also created graphic designed
original elements including HD shoots with the
dancers and musicians. They worked with Mark
Fisher on a few of the numbers, notably the
opening Juke Box set where Fisher designed the
bottom half, while for the top half Dudnysky
and his team created motion graphics and an
animation of a giant Juke Box on the LED wall.
For ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, which references
Elvis’s induction into the Army, Dudnysky
made a selection of newspaper clippings,
scanned from Col. Parker’s comprehensive press
scrapbook collection, which Fisher and his team
blew up and made into a giant backdrop.
They are using a 40’ wide, 30’ tall, 12mm
deep LED wall from Daktronics — allegedly
costing US$1.5 million — which is broken into
eight 5’ wide vertical columns of PST-12i panels.
“The video/film selection has been a very time-consuming process — more than a year and a half...”
30 • TPi FEBRUARY 2010
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
Flown on a dedicated truss from the grid which
raises and lowers the screen by automation,
it can also track on and off, side to side, or do
both at the same time and is used in different
configurations on almost on every song in the
show.
It is extremely bright and as Dudnyski
pointed out: “It was a fine line for me trying
to elevate what’s happening on stage without
taking focus away from the performances.
We could light the whole theatre with the
screens so we have to pull the intensity back
the whole time, sometimes to 15% so we’re not
overpowering.”
Tom Juliano, head of projection, explained
his choices: “I personally recommended
Daktronics for this project because I felt strongly
about their custom fabrication, specifically for
the system that they were designing for us.
“We had two main conditions for the screen
design. The weight limitation couldn’t exceed
1,300lbs per column and their concept was to
build it without fans of which we had over 64
for each 4’ x 5’ panel.
“Without the fans it became lighter. It’s a
huge power saver for us and it helped audio
because they don’t hear the fan noise, and we
have never reached above 85°F of operating
temperature. We now have a total weight,
including all the cables, of approximately
9,800lbs. So that was a huge weight off
people’s shoulders!
“The second condition was that we had to
make it fit a very tight space — no deeper than
6” — as we were concerned about other set
elements around it, and had to devise a way
to make it as thin as possible without anything
sticking out of the back.
“Daktronics’ solution was to build a custom
box frame of solid steel into which the 7” x 7”
LED tiles are built, so if necessary I can go up
and actually remove it live during the show, hotswap it and pop a new one in while the frame
remains untouched.
“The frame is hung with a custom centre
spine that keeps the entire unit rigid and allows
us to keep it from flexing — it weighs about
1,200lbs and over a distance it tends to want
to ‘banana shape’ so you have to try and
compensate for that deflection.
“Usually for the quick one-off shows in
rock’n’roll or theatre touring they have giant
locks and a coffin key to hold it in place, but
for us we needed to reduce the weight and we
needed the ability to adjust it dynamically based
on our conditions here in the theatre.
“Our particular application — this size screen
in a permanent installation on a flying line-set
where not only does the LED wall traverse but it
also goes up and down — is quite unique and I
understand this was a first for Daktronics.”
Juliano worked with Galen Price on the
installation. He continued: “We have a custom
truss that flies out to the grid so we can hide
the screen. As the truss flies in, not only can
we separate it into eight different columns at
different spacings between them, but it allows
us to change the speed and/or bring them all
together to make one solid 30’ x 40’ wall. It’s
on eight individual trolleys that are individually
controlled via the front-end automation system.
“In the cueing of the show we are actually
able to make it look as though the walls are
individually run and they can travel out left
and right diagonally, or that they can come in
together as one solid wall. We have what we
call ‘anti-swipe’ in our software to prevent the
walls smacking into each other or into anything
else, so the system can run at full speed
and then when they come to a certain predetermined spot, it just slows down at about 6”
apart until they slowly ‘kiss’ each other.
“From the trolleys down to the LED columns
we have 14’ stingers or steel cables, and then
from the bottom trim of the wall is about 40’ in
total and the truss can fly all the way up to the
grid where it collapses on a scissor.”
The tiles are surface mounted with the
individual LEDs inside the surface mount,
typically called ‘three-in-one’. There are 48 7”
x 7” tiles per panel and eight panels in each of
the eight columns, making 384 tiles per column
or a total of 3,072 tiles... and 786,432 individual
LEDs!
The final resolution of the screen is 1024 x
768 and the aspect ratio is 4:3 — the projection
in general remains square.
TPi FEBRUARY 2010 • 31
ON THE ROAD: Viva Elvis
“I recommended Daktronics because I felt strongly about their custom fabrication...”
SYSTEM DESIGN
Juliano described his system design: “I could take a live
feed in several different formats, like SDI or HD-SDI, or even
take video over the web and ingest it into my system and
play it live on my screen, which we did for Guy LaLiberté’s
poetic mission where he did a live broadcast from space.
We put in on the LED wall here and had a cool two-hour
event in the theatre.
“We have six Coolux Pandoras Box servers (two
configured with an SDI live input) which I specifically chose
because of their flexibility and their unique interface which
is very user-friendly. It’s a media server application which
allows us to play all of our video on the LED wall or through
our projectors with dual DVI output on each server.
“I’ve got two Pro servers on which I can do up to 16
layers of video and 32 of graphics, plus four standard
servers. Basically I have a plethora of room depending
on the size of the content, and our Media Manager Pro
(timeline-based playback control), makes it very easy to
implement new content from our designer and his team.
Our timeline resembles many media editing applications on
the market today such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro.
“We have multiple layers to which we can add many
different clips of video and it allows us to intermix those
videos together and be more creative. If Ivan gives us a
video and doesn’t want to re-render it but just add some
colour or trim it, we also have the capability to do that live
and pretty fast.
“On the Coolux system I have preview function for
playback which is supported by an Avitech Multi-Viewer
installation. This allows us to monitor all outputs without
ever having to turn on a projector. We also have a
Widget Designer Pro — a Coolux remote device control
and program interface application installed with a 7”
touchscreen monitor which is used to trigger cues and or
take control of our projectors remotely.
“Our building has been designed for scalability
and almost our entire network, signal transport and
communication is transmitted over miles and miles of
50µm fibre, made by Corning. We have fibre connections
pretty much everywhere throughout the entire building
which allows us to be very smart and creative because
although our theatre is huge, our personal space is quite
tight.”
At previews they used projection in three songs,
although they were looking for more opportunities to
do so. There are six Christie DS+10K-M projectors at FOH
with two mercury lamps on each used during ‘Love Me
Tender’ (with Army footage on a downstage scrim) and
on ‘Burning Love’ (for two and a half minutes on to a
downstage film screen).
Additionally there are two overhead High End DL3
projectors hung at the edge of the proscenium which,
in ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, project footage of Elvis’s
wedding to Priscilla Presley down on to the giant 60’ wide
wedding veil as it comes out on stage.
TPi
Photography by Diana Scrimgeour
NEXT MONTH, WE
CONCLUDE OUR VIVA
ELVIS REPORT AS WE
FOCUS ON THE AUDIO
& LIGHTING DESIGNS,
AND EXPLORE THE
REACTIONS TO
THE SHOW’S
GRAND OPENING
TPi FEBRUARY 2010 • 33