A Technological Conglomeration Takes Europe By Storm
A new arena spectacular is in production across Europe right now based on the very popular Fast and Furious franchise — a movie brand that has been more popular among one of the largest cross-sections of the population to date than many to come before it. Just based on the sheer volume of ticket sales that the movie franchise has grossed over the course of eight movies is spectacular in itself: the profit in the Fast and Furious movie franchise has exceeded approximately $5.13 billion worldwide (more than $1.5 billion in the U.S. alone) across the eight movies that have been released. Two more franchise movies are in the works, Fast and Furious 9 and Fast and Furious 10, planned for 2019 and 2020 respectively. That’s not even touching what the merchandising alone must bring in, but that’s for another article.
An Adrenaline-Fueled Spectacle
Fast and Furious Live is an amalgam of seemingly all of the technologies that we use in our industry, including high-power projections, video mapping on a scale that rivals most currently running productions, live tracking with feedback-based execution of cueing, massive rigging and precision machinery and truckloads of lighting of multiple sources. This is a very large, highly precise, audience-pleasing conglomeration of performance, production and spectacle that has had Europe providing constant streams of positive feedback across social media channels and industry publications worldwide.
Rowland French, the show’s creative director and writer, reached out to Kate Dawson of Kate Dawson Studios and longtime partners dandelion + burdock (Dickon Knowles, Nils Porrmann and Niall Thompson) to produce the content and 3D projection mapping for Fast and Furious Live.
After an initial meeting and subsequent team meetings where the enormity of the project became clear, the Fast and Furious Live project was given the green light. In 2016, Kate Dawkins Studio and dandelion + burdock joined forces to realize the full creative production of the show’s projection content. The two companies have collaborated on a number of projects, although they admit this was probably their most ambitious joint undertaking to date.
The production specs are intimidating and give a solid perspective into just how massive a production Fast and Furious Live really is for the entertainment tech trying to imagine this show. Keep in mind that every one of these things takes place inside an arena space of 25 meters wide by 55 meters long (82 feet by 180.5 feet), all tracked, and except for the flying missile fired from a submarine that drives around the arena floor, all of this is human controlled. The show features 43 vehicles of different specs, weights and horsepower, including a tank and a submarine — some of them fly, some of them have power ratios in excess of 900 horsepower (the Dodge Charger that appears in the franchise). At least one of them is the famous W-Motors Lykan Hypersport that’s known for exceeding 0-62 m.p.h. in a cool 2.8 seconds, with a retail value of about $3.4 million USD. Only seven were built. Again, all of which takes place inside the arena space designed for the production.
A Live and Virtual Show
Fast and Furious Live has 102 rigging points that contain a total static weight of 37 metric tonnes (that’s 40.78 US tons or 81,571 pounds of load), which starts loading in on a Thursday at 6 a.m. and is ready for doors just over 24 hours later — tested, rehearsed and tech’d — by Friday for doors at 6:30 p.m. The 83-member touring staff traveling with the 40 trucks of production make this monster ready for the audience in time. Logistics company GAC handles the trucking around the world for the production. The video and lighting needs were handled by PRG.
Even the tires on the vehicles in the production, specially formulated and produced by Nankang Tires, are high technology: the floor surface is gray to maximize projections, and the team needed specifically formulated gray tires that made no marks on the projection floor. Nankang delivered a special gray no-mark tire for the team
The production has a wide mix of video and media technology, with two disguise 4×4 media servers with 24 outputs working across 48 Panasonic Z21 projectors to output 3D mapping content onto the floor and wall. In addition to this, four of the cars used in the production are covered with a total of 250,000 LEDs for custom mapping content that follows the range of locales and scenery being projected onto the floor, 13 worldwide locations in total that range from a Tokyo car park to Russian frozen tundra. Cast BlackTrax real-time tracking system plays a large part in the production, with each vehicle having two BlackTrax tracking beacons that allow each car to be “immune” to the projection being provided from above and allows lighting to track them in real time and follow each car around as they drive through the arena space. The BlackTrax system provides a virtual boundary around each car, giving the cars the ability to have no projection appear on them as they drive through the projection field.
Collaborative Magic
Kate Dawkins Studio and dandelion + burdock used a web-based virtual studio of screens and content called Previz, created by Niall Thompson (previz.co), which lets production partners collaborate on visuals while deciding what the client sees, and when. “We used Previz on an almost daily basis throughout the production period,” says Dickon Knowles of dandelion + burdock. “It allowed us to virtually preview our content in a 3D representation of the stage. This provided us an extremely quick and effective way to test our work on the go and make sure that perspectives worked correctly and that the different projection surfaces were always in sync. It also gave us a highly streamlined method of sharing work-in-progress between studios and with the end client.”
The technology helped the design team meld the live action components and projection mapping components. “Our primary task was to create animated 3D environments which would surround the action onstage and at times interact with the performances,” says Kate Dawkins of Kate Dawkins Studio. “The content was often used to introduce the arrival of certain vehicles before they entered the arena. An example of this would be a sequence recreated from The Fate of the Furious, where we featured a virtual submarine in our content as it smashed through the ice before charging towards the screen and then emerging physically on the stage. It is a magical blend of the cinematic moment that suddenly becomes real and has an incredibly impressive impact.”
Synchronized Precision
The challenge of having to create motion with video and actual vehicles matching the implied speeds of the video was a skill that the two studios have mastered with incredible results for the Fast and Furious Live production. “A good example would be moments where we create the illusion that the cars are driving much faster than they really are,” Dawkins says. “By having the two projection surfaces [a back wall and floor] running in sync, a city street or desert highway would continue into the distance and be moving at high speeds under the drivers as they cruised around the arena.”
“The show features some extremely complex choreography that the drivers perform in various vehicles,” Knowles added. “The content we created needed to be flexible enough to either take center stage to deliver a cinematic action sequence, or to drop back into a supportive and complementary role to let the live action shine.” “For anything that had to interact with the drivers there was no one possible solution, Dawkins shared. “The drivers are amazing and extremely accurate, but every slight change in their movement or timing would have big impact on our animations. Where possible, we would build our sequences in a modular way, allowing for slight variations in the action. Finally, extensive testing and experimentation during pre-production and throughout the rehearsal period was needed make sure our work could support the action to maximum effect.”
The breakdown of the two companies’ responsibilities, Kate Dawkins Studio and dandelion + burdock, worked well due to their long-time collaborative relationship. Kate Dawkins Studio, already with a great pedigree for creating content for spectacular live shows, was responsible for the creative and art direction. She laid out the vision for the shows projection content which heavily referenced the films, but took on a more stylized, graphical, game aesthetic for this show environment. dandelion + burdock, mapping specialists and long-time collaborators with Kate Dawkins Studio, managed the complex and creative challenge of designing and creating the projection content and 3D animation.
Fast & Furious Live: Production Credits
Tour Production:
Chris Vaughan, tour production director; Phil Broad , touring production manager; Paul English, stage manager rehearsals; Mark Berryman, stage manager; Gemma Thomas, show caller; Lizzie Graham, tour production coordinator; Laura Shotton, production assistant rehearsals; Cally Harris, wardrobe/ASM
Tour Lighting (PRG):
Iestyn Thomas, lighting crew chief; Tim Probert, assistant crew chief; Simon Port, lighting operator; Jonathan Rivers, power / dimmers; Marcus Illsley, systems tech; Az Khalid, lighting tech
Lighting Design & Programming:
Bruno Poet, LD; Matt Daw, Associate Lighting Designer & Programmer; Max Narula, Lighting Programmer
Tour Video (PRG):
Andy Joyes, crew chief; Luke Williams, Blacktrax; Avid Butler, disguise media server operator; Ed Moore, Steve Highgate, Luke Butler, projection
LED Design and Creation (Feeding The Fish Ltd):
Alix Wilding, artistic director; Simon Mylius, technical director; Christopher Sly, head of technical delivery.
3D Projection Mapping (Kate Dawkins Studio, Dandelion + Burdock):
Kate Dawkins, creative director; Dickon Knowles, motion director; Nils Porrmann, technical director; Niall Thompson, managing director; Michelle Stanhope, senior producer
CG, 3D Animation and Post-Production Team:
Oliver Soto, James Pykett, Alec Strang, Enric Rodriguez, Will Jarman, Will Davys, Martin Stacey
Video Department:
Lizzie Pocock, content producer, Marcus Scudamore, graphic design; Dan Sollis, motion graphics.
Set Production:
Brilliant Stages Ltd, Stage One Creative Services Ltd
Set Carpenters:
Jason Slaney Welch, Head Set Carpenter; Stefan Schumacker, Jack Redman, Karl Cavenagh, Stuart Simms, Angelika Griebl, Tony Ravenhill, Alessandro “Gondola” Soccoli, Peter Ridley, Jesse Silcock
Special FX (Quantum Fx):
James Whitwell, Crew Chief; James Barwick, Kemal Canalp, Craig Steward, John Wonnacott
Radio-Controlled Vehicles:
Pablo Lopez Gunn, Alex Hawtin
Engineering Team:
Andy Jackson, Lee Usher, Matt Bennett, Brandon Diagostin, Harry Broomhall, Elliot Coffin
Costumes:
Kitty Hawkins, costumer designer; Flora Moyes, wardrobe assistant
Audio:
Fergus Mount, FOH; Cezar Lopez, Josh Thomas, Zoltan Pauli, Antione Bataillard
