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Special Section: Renovations & InstallationsJacob CoakleyFor Criss Angel Believe, designers went back to theatre basics, with a twist.By Jacob CoakleyHarry Houdini was a great debunker of spiritualfrauds. Before he died he gave his wife a secretcode word, so that if anyone tried to convince herthat Houdini was speaking from beyond the grave shewould know they were a charlatan if they didn’t say thecode. The code word? “Believe.”Criss Angel and Cirque du Soleil have teamed up to communicatetheir vision of what awaits in the limbo betweenlife and death in their show Criss Angel Believe.The Original SparkTo create the look of the show, Cirque contacted RayWinkler at Mark Fisher Studios in London and tapped him tobe the production designer to meld the style of Criss Angeland the vision of Serge Denoncourt, director and co-writer.Winkler was happy to do it, but needed someone closer tothe action, as he was based in London. He spoke with hiscolleague Tamlyn Wright, a freelance designer based out ofL.A., and she agreed to be assistant production designer.“We needed somebody who would be able to nip over toLas Vegas in short notice,” Winkler says. “Keep tabs on whatthe scenery shop was doing, take some of the designs thatwe had in concept level and develop them up to the pointwhere they could be bid out and built.”This was important because the ideas flowed fast andfurious in the beginning.“Ideas come for free, implementing them doesn’t,”Winkler says. “It's better to start off with 100 ideas and settlewith 10 than only come up with 10 ideas when we need100. Serge would say something, I would sketch it, and,Ray WinklerTamlyn Wrightyou know, it would be the most horrific thing that he hadever seen and this is exactly not what he meant, or it wasthe most amazing thing that he had ever seen and this isexactly what he meant, or it was not what he meant, but it'sgreat anyway.”The process was fairly straightforward. During the first fewmonths of design work, Winkler and the creative team met inperson in Montreal to discuss ideas, generating hundreds ofsketches. In their time apart, sketches would flow betweenthe creative team as pictures or PDF files. When one wasdecided upon, Winkler would draw it in AutoCAD. His Londonteam would then import it into LightWave and work up textures,colors, lighting, ect. and animate it. If it looked good,the design made it to the next phase, a trial implementation.In-person meetings took place every few months, but most ofthe design communication took place virtually.28 December 2008 • www.stage-directions.com