The design team for the five Broadway-style shows staged aboard Holland America's New York-themed cruise ship, the 86,000-ton Ms Nieuw Amsterdam, relied upon CAST Software's wysiwyg for previsualization. To prepare for the shows – Avalon, Cantare, It Takes Two, NYC and Garage Band – all of which are expected to be performed over the course of five years, David Horner, lighting and media programmer, collaborated with show director John Charron and LD Brian Monahan of BPM Designs.
The design team first met with Holland America in early 2009, but the work on the five shows – four of which are new productions – began in earnest in May 2010, only two months before the ship's July 4 launch date.
The drawing and wysiwyg setup took around two weeks, and the pre-programming happened for 10 days at the end of May. Onsite work started on June 1, and the first public shows launched on July 2 for the shipyard workers and their families.
"If all the shows were played one after another, it would last over five hours, so clearly a lot of lighting cues had to get programmed," noted Horner. "I do not think we would have been able to complete this project on time without the aid of wysiwyg."
The wysiwyg drawing, wysiwyg equipment and part of the media content were carried out by U.K.-based Visual Connection Ltd., under the direction of Horner.
The gear list for the shows included 43 Vari*Lite VL2500 Spots, 38 VL2500 Wash fixtures, two Barco/High End Systems DL.3s, 1 Axon server, a 32-foot-by-12.5-foot Barco LED MiTrix wall, close to 50 ETC S4s (spots and PARs) with Wybron Coloram scrollers, six Martin Atomic Strobes, two Look Solutions hazers, six UV units with DMX dowsers, a low fog system, three fiber-optic curtains and two sets of fiber-optic legs.
Control gear included a full size grandMA console (plus replay for backup), a Pathport system with approximately 50 nodes, three 48-way sensor racks and wysiwyg Perform.
Horner ran wysiwyg Perform 5000 on a custom-built PC with the new i7 Intel chip. "It worked so great," he said, "I was able to connect the grandMA desk into the software, and even with over 80 moving lights, all the conventionals and three separate live video feeds inputting into wysiwyg, the software still performed great, even when using complex scenarios such as all the lights doing movement while having a detailed gobo and rotating prism in them."
Of R25, Horner said, "It was great to be able to look at the stage and scenery in such a detailed virtual world that with the ability to create motion Axis allowed us move around scenery in the same way it was going to be done in the real shows. The live view looks in these latest versions of software are so good and incredibly realistic. I especially like the new feature of being able to put live video on an LED wall."
Horner selected a photo from each of the new shows and images which illustrate each aspect of what they used in wysiwyg such as an LED wall, the DL.3s, live video input, Axis, large amount of lighting fixtures, multiple sets and more. "We definitely used it to its fullest," he said.
Ms Nieuw Amsterdam, which launched from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri's Marghera shipyard in Venice, is the fourth Nieuw Amsterdam from Holland America, with a legacy that dates back to 1906.
With a capacity of 1,380 passengers at a length of 780 feet (238 meters), the ship's name reflects its New York City theme (which was formerly called New Amsterdam). Along with its Broadway-style shows, Ms. Nieuw Amsterdam features an art collection valued at over $3 million that includes works from some of the Dutch Masters and modern creations by Andy Warhol, Richard Estes and Roy Lichtenstein.
Other attractions include a panoramic restaurant, a wine-tasting lounge, a jewelry boutique and atrium bar area.
