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The amazing combination of Cirque du Soleil and The Beatles and how they came together for a permanent installation at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas is something of a magical mystery tour. As the Beatles are notoriously protective of their music, it took a personal friendship between the late George Harrison and Cirque founder Guy Laliberté to make it possible. Sir George Martin and his son Giles Martin got involved, and the two, working from Abbey Road’s master tapes, created unique collages and arrangements that have never before been heard. Add Celine Dion’s long-time lighting designer, Yves Aucoin, and more video than has ever been used in a Cirque show, and you’ve got one of Las Vegas’s most anticipated and talked about entertainment events.
The show, which previewed last month, started rehearsals in September of 2005 in Montreal. The 60 cast members are now performing the extravaganza in a custom-built theatre in the round with panoramic video projection. That, of course, brings with it all kinds of technical challenges, including the lack of a backstage, no wings, and a stage roughly the size of a tennis court with performers entering from below and above not that any of that scared Aucoin.
“They called me and they said we have this project with the Beatles and I was, ‘Ah!’ ” laughs Aucoin. “ ‘That is the one I want!’ ”
An Intimate Show
Typical of the untypical take that the Cirque creative team takes on projects, the show is a dazzling combination of music and theatre. In just one special moment, an arrangement of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is performed with “stars” in the sky. This effect was created using Color Kinetics iColor Flex LED strings adapted for this production.
“We always try to have the audience be part of the show,” Aucoin says. “So we always try to have some tricks with the video and the LED strings.” Adding to the effect are “bed sheets” cloth that stretches the height of the theatre that has images projected on it and also moves out into the audience. He adds that working with the old school projection screens (no LED screens were used) was challenging because he had to keep the light off of the projection surfaces. Working closely with video director Frances LaPorte, they were able to work around technical challenges and create the intimacy the creative team was aiming for.
We have spent many nights together to accomplish this, to have it work and hit with the music,” Aucoin says. The sheer familiarity of this music was another challenge, as the audience certainly has ideas of their own of how these songs “look.” So the creative team had to come up with unique approaches to presenting a particularly number. The show utilizes music from 1962 to 1969, but isn’t a “g r e a t e s t hits” approach, and artistically there is a mostly psychedelic approach to the show. Not that it’s a retro feel technically.
“I’m the type of guy who works a lot with moving lights rather than conventional lights, and for this show, it turns out to be all moving lights,” Aucoin says. “When I put my list together, I went around and it turned out that Vari-Lite had everything I needed for this show. As of today, Vari-Lite is still the sexiest moving light.” (The theatre, built from the ground up in the old Siegfried and Roy spot, had some conventional lights that were refurbished for this show.)
“I have ADC dimmers, a (MA Lighting) GrandMA 2, a GrandMA main desk, and another little MA light,” he says. “We have 28 DMX universes on this rig—it’s huge.” Aucoin says that assistant and project manager Cal Goad did a fantastic job working it all out. “I like to be sitting behind the desk programming, but I need someone to make sure that it is working properly.”
Eight Robert Juliat followspots are used, as are several low fog machines. “Even though on this show I have a bigger budget, you need to work with tools you feel good about, with people you feel good about. Like Vari-Lite— I’ve been doing business with them for a long, long time. It’s the first time that I’ve rigged with just one moving light company and for now they don’t let me down. So it’s good.”
Being a 360 degree show it’s tough to find spots for the cameras, and with 28 video projectors it’s complicated on all levels. But new technology is helping overcome the complications. Demark-based Brother, Brother & Sons, for example, supplied four V-Base automated projector yokes for the four runaway screens.
“I’ve done Celine in 360 before, and I consulted for Wynn Hotel the La Rêve show next door—but man, this show is it tough! Suddenly you have 60 artists and you want to see them and you want to see their costumes and you don’t want to seem flat. And you always have to repeat the same effect three or four ways. Plus you’d like to have gobos, but not in the audience’s face… and if it’s not in their face you go to the other end and it is flat. But we are so pleased that we struck a balance.” Keeping the washes on the inner truss and the spots on the outer truss helped to keep the balance.
“Now it is fun, but I have spent four months sitting in this theatre almost 18 hours a day….”
Video Immersion
Putting in as many hours was video director LaPorte. While this is his third Cirque show, he says that it is the first one that involved so much projection.
“It is a very immersive experience,” LaPorte says. “We tried to involve the images as much as possible, giving the idea that the audience is inside the experience. So for the first time I’m doing images from beginning to end.”
He admits that going with traditional projection might seem like an unusual choice, but he didn’t want a standard video format, or even a theatre or cinema format. “I wanted something more graphic, a more panoramic view. So its basically five Digital Projection projectors blended and double-stacked shooting on a curved screen. We wanted to make it one big seamless screen.”
It was complicated because even in HD format it was not big enough to fill the screen, so they “tricked” the video processing by using unusual image sizes, high definition pictures and high-speed cameras. The screens were translucent, enabling the audience to see both sides and through it. “So you have an image and the action in the same frame. And those are 16,000 lumens.” And he also used the four projectors on the moving yokes to project everywhere on the stage, the set, the artist, etc.
There are 28 Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers all synched together. It borrows technology from video gaming and allows LaPorte to use eight different layers of high-definition images. “I’m able to tweak the color, the contrast, put in some effects—all in real time,” he says. “So where as before I was always going back to the editing room to make changes, now I can follow the rhythm of a creation. If I decide to change the color completely, go to a dual-tone effect or reduce the speed, I can do it all in real-time. For me, it is a big, big step for the creation of a live show.”
The source material was shot with high-definition cameras and was directed by LaPorte. The 1960s style was a challenge, he says, because he wanted it to have that feel without being dated. “This show will remain for at least a few years, and I wanted it to be as timeless as possible.”
