Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 - PLSN.com

FEATURE
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
lighting the action for video games live
The orchestra plays video game themes ranging from Tetris to Halo 3.
By DanDaley
When you watch a performance of
Video Games Live, the touring orchestral
show of music from video
games, now in its third season, you get a bit
of a history lesson. “They start out with the real
classics, like Donkey Kong and Tetris, some of
which had only two or three colors in the entire
game,” says Heath Marrinan, LD for Video
Games Live. “As it goes through the night, the
lighting begins to blend more with the video.
We choose color schemes that reflect those
of the games themselves, and the cues follow
the dynamics of the music and the action on
the screen. It can be sweepy and soft as you
watch a guy cruising in an airplane on screen;
then he jumps out and starts shooting a machine
gun. I’ve never lit a symphony orchestra
shredding on Halo 3 before.”
But there is structure, says Marrinan. In
laying out the show’s lighting design he had
to keep the hardware compact and adhere to
show co-developer Tommy Tallarico’s dictum
that no one element overshadow another in
the program. “Tommy’s very into production
and he wants the show to be an overall experience,
not a music experience with lights and
video or a video experience with music and
lights. Just like a video game, he wants it to be
a total experience.”
The hardware is indeed compact. Marrinan
laid out four 15-foot lighting towers, each with a
Vari*Lite 3000 Spot, a PixelRange PixelPar 90 fixture,
an ACL bar and a PixelLine 1044 LED ministrip.
A pair of 40-foot trusses complements
the towers. The upstage truss has six VL3000s,
split three on the far ends of the truss to allow
a 20-foot gap for the video screen and a set of
PixelPar 90s to tone the truss. The downstage
truss holds six more Vari*Lite 3000 Spots and
two PixelPar 90 fixtures, seven Lekos (four to
light the choir, two to illuminate conductor and
Video Games Live co-founder Jack Wall’s podium,
and one for a featured vocalist) and two
9-lamp omni-directional Mole Fays to light up
the audience. There are four more ACL bars on
the stage floor, and an MDG Atmosphere APS
High-Output dual-output fogger adds haze.
The lighting design, worked out on ESP
Vision software at Video Games Live’s lighting
vendor Theatrical Media Services (TMS)
in Omaha, hews closely to the music, though
for the first two seasons the cues for each song
were manually triggered using the video start
as the signal. Within each song, Marrinan programmed
an average of two dozen individual
cues that he says were flawlessly synched with
the music thanks to the click track fed to the
orchestra through small earphones from a
hard drive at the FOH position. The cues were
programmed using the Learn Time feature on
the Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 3 console
that travels with the show. However, this year’s
The firing button is in the shape of an explosives
plunger. “Just try getting it through airport
security,” says Tommy Tallarico.
production will use SMPTE timecode generated
by a Doremi media server newly added
to the show’s technical complement.
“We get a ton of looks out of a relatively
little amount of gear,” says Marrinan. “We’re
playing mostly small and mid-sized, kind of
cozy venues, and we’re able to use what we
have to really shape the stage.”
Tracking “Reality”
PLSN
Tracking Synchronizing “Reality” via eyeball isn’t the only plsn trick
Video Games Live has used to stay on budget.
When audience members are brought up on
stage to play a round of Space Invaders on the
projection screen — with the orchestra following
Wall’s lead based on where the play is taking
them — Tallarico hands them a remote-control
firing button and a T-shirt with a luminescent
green Space Invaders logo
on the back and tells the
contestant that he’ll be
“tracking the game” as he
moves about on stage. In
reality, Tallarico has rigged
a Sony PlayStation2 game
console that video designer
Mike Runice is operating;
Runice follows the bright
logo on the player’s back
to keep the screen properly
positioned. “I’ve had
some very good players
up there who can wipe out
the entire first screen and
get to the second level,”
says Runice. “But in general
it’s a lot more challenging
to play a video game on a
screen that’s 19 feet wide.”
But the firing button — in
the shape of a cartoonish
explosives plunger (“Try
getting that through airport
security!” quips Tallarico)
— is definitely under
the player’s control, hardwired
with 100 feet of cable
running to the master
PS2 console.
Projection
PLSN
Projection
plsn
Video Games Live’s video is front-projected,
in pursuit of the brightest possible image to
maintain the vid-game effect, says Runice, who
has done video for Jack Johnson and is also
the LD for Mannheim Steamroller. “We want
to get it as bright as possible to make it work
with the light rig,” he explains. “Rear projection
wouldn’t have as good an off-axis brightness
response and we don’t have to throw as many
lumens at it to get a good image.”
Video Games Live uses a pair of Sanyo XF
46 12K LCD projectors showing on to Screen
Works screens that range from 12 by 16 feet
to 15 by 20 feet, depending upon the size and
configuration of the venue’s stage area. A DVD
Tommy Tallarico, Video Games Live co-developer.
This year’s production will use SMPTE timecode to trigger lighting cues.
Link from the Zelda series is one of the many recognizable characters appearing during the
production.
player originally fed them, but the widely varying
nature of the venues led Tallarico and Wall
to burn new DVD content for each show to allow
for changes in songs and sequences. The
move to the Doremi hard drive system now
lets them select from any song on the drive
and sequence it internally. “It’s become our
overall central engine for the show,” he says.
What’s less predictable is where the projectors
will be rigged at each show. “That literally
changes at every venue,” says Runice, who
will sometimes fly them from a central truss or
on the main floor. At times he has to co-opt
space adjacent to the FOH position. “But I have
to make sure the fan noise doesn’t interfere
with the [FOH mixer] Matt Yelton’s ability to
mix the show,” he says.
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PLSN MARCH 2008
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