POITIERS, France – For Moonlight, the new pre-show for The Little Prince 4D attraction at the Futuroscope theme park, a luminous tube leads visitors through a snail shell-shaped area with visual and animatronic representations of sea creatures. Technology from Alcorn McBride — LightCue Pro, V4 Pro, Video Binloop and Alcorn’s Touch Interface software — play a key role in creating the experience for visitors to the attraction.
The attraction features animatronic representations of jellyfish, dolphins, an octopus and a ray suspended from the ceiling. Visitors can also see an underwater backdrop and watch as 5-meter high algae grows out of the floor.
When the music begins, the creatures start to move. The dolphins dive gracefully, the ray floats, the octopus stretches his legs. They are lit from within, changing colors and flashing lights to the music as bubbling lights glow around them and islands of light illuminate the floor.
Frank Ruisch, sound designer and programmer with AV Syncworks in Paris, who composed and mixed the soundtrack for Moonlight, also created the lighting triggers for all the DMX programming, assisted with DMX programming, and performed the show control programming and system design.
“This was my first experience with LightCue Pro, although I have used dozens, if not hundreds, of regular lighting controllers,” said Ruisch. “I worked on a daily basis with the system and couldn’t have done my job without it.”
Ruisch used the LightCue Pro DMX recorder to provide multiple sync AV channels and timecode support. Moonlight requires four DMX universes running in sync on SMPTE timecode. “There is simply no other embedded product out there that could handle this with the same reliability as LightCue Pro,” he said.
LightCue Pro controls the motion of the animatronics as well as their lighting effects. A large complement of RGB LED lighting fills the pre-show environment, including 480 RGB LED LagoDots to create the six swirling islands, 105 RGB LED balls of varying sizes for the bubbles, high-output RGB strips inside the sea creatures, four Martin MAC 250 moving heads and numerous LED PARs. Ten Martin Pro 400 spotlights illuminate the banner backdrop. Wireless DMX was required for the animatronic creatures.
A V4 Pro acts as the main show controller. A Video Binloop with six reproducer slots controls two Sabine Navigator 8802s plus 10 Crown XTI 1000 amps for the tunnel and animatronics and 20 JBL Control 25 amps for background music.
Netherlands-based Nightlife Productions was the installer of the pre-show with Boaz Borggreve serving as programmer. JoraVision, also in the Netherlands, provided the creative concept, did the build out and constructed the animatronics under the leadership of Alexander Goethals.
Ruisch credited the Alcorn McBride system as “indestructible,” and also commended Alcorn’s Joy Burke for customer support.
For more information, please visit www.alcorn.com.
