Every Hour on the Hour
The Caesars Forum Shops have two animatronic fountain shows that involve talking statues. The larger of the shows is rather involved, with water, fire, video effects and more. They recently decided to update the installation with brand new, brighter fixtures, and I was brought in to handle the change over. The first phase was to change 10 of the original 26 fixtures to the current 2011 model of the fixture. Then, in a few months, I will go back as they replace the rest of the fixtures and purchase a new console. But for this adventure, the goal was to make the new fixtures look great and continue to use the existing console.
The Site Survey
About a month before LDI, I headed out to Las Vegas to check out the installation and determine the requirements. I also tried to scope out the control system and determine how everything was connected. A custom show control computer sends timecode to the automated console as well as the conventional console rack mount unit. The current console does not have fixture change capabilities, so I saved the show onto a floppy and took it home with me to work on later. Around January, I began working on the original show file, hand copying all the fixture data from the original fixture types to the new 2011 model fixture types (the DMX protocol had improved over the years).
14 Years of Updates
The original programmer on this show did a marvelous job of using palettes throughout and documenting cues, etc. I was able to determine mostly what everything was doing just by reading the data. However, I also noticed a disturbing trend in the cues. Often there were individual fixtures with positions, colors, and iris settings that were hard-coded values and not palettes. I realized that, over the course of the last 14 years, the operators had made updates to the cues as a result of fixture errors. Unfortunately some of these updates resulted in loss of palette information and inserted hard values instead. As I came across these values, I knew that there would be no way of knowing exactly what the original intent for them was. I could guess based on the other fixtures still in palettes, but this was not a full proof solution. I knew that when I arrived on site that I would have to determine exactly what these fixtures were meant to be doing.
Always Fear Cloning
I have hand-copied many shows in my time, and there are always errors that can occur. Some data just does not translate from one fixture type to another; particularly when using an older console. Most modern consoles have very sophisticated “change type” features that allow programmers to easily and instantly change from one fixture type to another while retaining all data. Since this console was from the mid-1990s, it did not have such a feature. After the data copying, I was left with spinning color wheels and invalid rotating gobo information throughout. When hand copying, I always leave the original fixtures in the show file so that I can refer back to the original data to see what they were doing compared to the newly cloned fixture. This proved invaluable, as I was able to easily look back and understand what color or gobo was originally selected.
This particular 9-minute show has about 200 cues, so I spent a good part of my first night on-site just cleaning up errors from cloning and restoring the palettes that had been removed. However, the further into the list I went, the more I understood the intent of the original cues. After about a third of the way into the list, I was moving along fairly well. I also started to determine that some palettes and additional cues were created at the beginning of programming, but were never used in the show. I plan to remove these during the second phase of the change over.
Yes, I Made a Mistake
At about 4 a.m. after a very long day, I was ready to move the show file from my programming station to the main console in the lighting booth. I took my floppy out and inserted into the console. Then I attempted to load the show file I just spent hours modifying. Whoops! It would not load into the desk, and the console reported that the show file was not compatible. During the site survey, I never checked the version of software that was running on the old console. I must have assumed that it was the final release version. Well it wasn’t. It was the version from 1997 when the show was installed!
I knew that my show file was compatible with the final version because that is what I was programming on. I also was very confident that I could upgrade the old console to the final version of software. However, I needed to have a method to get back to the 1997 version if something went wrong. I also need to come up with a plan for programming the new lights if I had to revert back to the 1997 version. Luckily the manufacturer of the console keeps an archive of all previous software versions on their website, so I downloaded the ancient version just in case. The console upgraded to the final version with no problems and we had the show running.
A New Phase for Our Industry
In the end, the updated show looked amazing. In a few months, we will move to phase two and it will be even more stunning. This gig had me thinking about all those other installs that others and myself have programmed through the years. With the current economic situation, many venues may decide to refresh existing shows without bringing in a full design team or changing control systems. This will result in programmers finding themselves working with older consoles and fixtures. As the current crop of programmers age, the newer generation will have to learn how to take over these installations. So it is increasingly important to not only to be proficient with current and new technology, but to also understand the basics of older systems. The next time you are in Vegas, stop by and watch the show; you might just learn something!
