After five years, over 700 performances and 3 million spectators packing the 4,000-seat Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Celine Dion triumphantly closed her show, A New Day, on December 15, 2007. Three years later — after a year and a half on tour, and giving birth to twins, Celine returned.
The new show, simply called Celine, was designed from the ground up. The focus remains on Celine and the voice that has drawn audiences for the past 25 years. Celine was designed to be a very intimate show reminiscent of past Vegas musical acts, but with a 21st century flavor. The show is all about Celine, her voice and what matters most to her, her family.
The trick with a venue such as the Colosseum, with a stage that is 125 feet wide, is to keep the audience focused on one person performing in such a vast space. Although the focal point is always on Celine, the show isn’t entirely a solo performance. The dancers and other Cirque-like performers from the original show aren’t there anymore, but the vocalist is accompanied by a 31-piece orchestra.
A Long History
Lighting designer Yves Aucoin has been Celine’s lighting designer for the past 22 years. In addition to designing, programming and running the show, Aucoin is also the production designer for Celine. He worked closely with Celine; René Angélil, Celine’s husband and manager; director Ken Ehrlich; costume designer Annie Horth; and Celine’s longtime bandleader, Claude Lemay to bring everyone’s vision to life.
Aucoin incorporated the original video wall that was used in A New Day and the permanent lighting rig of the Colosseum to his visual design, supplementing them with additional video walls, projection surfaces and moving set pieces to fulfill the small and close-knit production team came up with. “Being the set and lighting designer, I got into fights with myself battling out which element worked better for a particular moment. In the end, I won,” Aucoin says, smiling.
As for lighting and video, “I find there is no difference, there is no line drawn between the two,” Aucoin adds. The main video wall upstage measures in at 106 feet wide by 33 feet high. “With a screen like that,” he adds, pointing upstage, “it’s hard to say that it is not a lighting source.”
A Delicate Balance
“The real challenge came when blending the video content and surfaces with lighting,” Aucoin continues. “With over 400 moving lights and 24 projectors, it can be tough not to overpower one or the other and lose one due to brightness.”
Supplementing the already-large video wall, which sits six feet off the deck, Aucoin added LEDigami 10mm video walls to help close the gap and add element of time and place to each musical piece.
Video imagery is central to Celine’s narrative flow. Throughout the show, moments from Celine’s past are projected around the stage, including imagery from her last performance of A New Day, moments with her family, and other performances during her 20-plus-year career.
Projection screens on both sides of the video wall extend the imagery, immersing audiences with almost 180 degrees and 225 feet of video content. You might think a projection surface like that seems at odds with the overall goal of keeping the show intimate and centered on Celine, but Aucoin suggests the exact opposite is true, with background content and scenic elements adding to, rather than detracting from, the Celine experience.
“Every seat in the house deserves to see and have the same experience,” says Aucoin, adding that “Celine feels the same way.” The video wall and projection screens wrapping the stage, he notes, helps ensure that goal is fulfilled, also bringing larger-than-life I-Mag of Celine’s performance closer to the farthest seats in the balconies.
Aucoin worked closely with Montreal video content company Moment Factory to produced and create custom video content that would complement the set and put the final touch of emotion in a scene, while keeping the focus on Celine’s performance.
The rig incorporates a wide variety of fixtures including Vari*Lite VL3500s, VL3000 Spot fixtures, Coemar Infinity Washes and Clay Paky Profile Plus SVs. “I don’t believe there is any one perfect light,” says Aucoin. “Each light has a unique feature that can’t be found in another fixture, from color palettes, effects engines to optics. I use a particular fixture because that is the best I have found for what I am trying to do.”
Driving the rig are two grandMA full size consoles running Series 2 software, one as the server and one as a real-time back up. “I found that running the show off both of the desks gives me more flexibility, more touch screens, faders and executors,” Aucoin says. Along with the consoles, there are multiple grandMA Network Processing Units spread throughout the venue, providing 54 universes of DMX to control the lighting and special effects.
Although the consoles could have also been used to control the video content, these visuals are controlled by a separate system incorporating Coolux’s Pandoras Box.
An LD’s Work is Never Done
When PLSN visited, Celine had been open for a few weeks, and close to 20 shows had been staged. But Aucoin wasn’t really finished. “Designing and tweaking a show is never done with the first show,” he notes. “I am always playing, adjusting and perfecting my design. While the overall show is the same night to night through the next three years, I can always find a better way of lighting something a different way or subtly changing a color.”
The tinkering also helps Aucoin adhere to his own insights on how to maintain creativity in lighting designs — and might explain why Celine and A New Day are, visually, very different shows, despite the same screen and star: “Have an open mind, don’t be stuck on a particular design,” Aucoin says. “Getting stuck can stifle your creativity and lead to poor choices.”
Early Vegas, Updated
Although it has the intimate feel of old-style Vegas shows, Celine continues to push forward with new visual technologies. If many in the audience would be content simply to listen as Celine performs, lit with a single light, the new production uses modern technology, stunning aerials, lasers, haze, a water effect and even a holographic effect to dazzle spectators. It is not that often that a singer gets to do a duet with themselves live on stage, but with an ace up his sleeve — a large holographic screen — Aucoin makes it happen.
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Gear (Partial List)
2 grandMA Series 2 full size consoles
89 Coemar Infinity Wash fixtures
48 Clay Paky 1500 HPEs
36 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures
19 Vari*Lite VL3500 Spots
47 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots
26 Vari*Lite VL2416 fixtures
18 Vari*Lite VL2202 fixtures
12 Martin Atomic strobes
12 Pandoras Box
15 18K HD digital projectors
4 35K HD digital projectors
4 MDG Foggers
4 Robert Juliat followspots
