“Stars on Ice: Double Exposure” is the new professional ice skating tour from champion Scott Hamilton featuring top skaters who get to let their hair down and show the audience many sides of their lives beyond the skating rink. Lighting the many talented performers is a simple but effective lighting rig that allows the ice to be completely covered by patterns and colors throughout the show, and with the versatility of Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots, each production number and solo performance looks entirely unique. All visual aspects of the show are intricately timed to each musical number using SMPTE timecode, and this enables the show to be heavily cued and polished for playback during the tour.
The title of the show also applies to the integration of video into the show. A Doremi V1m video server is being triggered via a custom DMX switch between the lighting console and the video server, a switch that Phil Cane from MVI Display created himself for this purpose (“Stars On Ice” Production Manager Scott Harvey affectionately refers to this box as “Phil’s Magic Box.”) By having this box in the loop, the Hog iPC can then send out a binary preset number directly to the Doremi and in turn, a specific video that is needed for a particular skater or production number is triggered accordingly. A special function of the “magic” DMX box is that each video is assigned a binary preset number that is then converted to the RS-422 protocol required by the V1m. When a new video clip is added to the Doremi, a new binary preset can be easily created in the DMX switch with scalability of up to 256 possible unique recalls. (Those of you who once programmed Intellabeams on LCD controllers will be familiar with this type of binary preset recall…Okay, I may be showing my age somewhat here…)
Configuring Video Control
In order to trigger video presets in the Doremi, we began by patching eight single (desk) channels into our show on the Hog iPC. (We were running the console in the Hog2 OS). Once those channels were patched, we assigned the DMX box a corresponding DMX starting address. We made it easy and used “1.” Then, in order to playback a video clip, Scott would give me the binary preset number of the clip he wanted to recall for a particular cue in the show, and I would bring up a simple combination of the eight channels on the console and program them into a cue. I then played back the lighting cue on the console and let the DMX switch do its “magic” (i.e. convert that binary number to a preset number corresponding to a video clip on the hard drive of the Doremi).
Having this level of control over the video images used in the show is highly efficient and attractive for many reasons. First of all, the execution of the video cues used to transition between each number, as well as the video clips used as backgrounds during the performances, are executed virtually the same night after night since the lighting cues are being triggered by SMPTE (barring any unforeseen issues with timecode, the console, the DMX switch or the Doremi drive). Also, during pre-production, the flexibility in the implementation allowed director Jef Billings the freedom to make changes to the video clips being used in the show without affecting the playback performance and without the need to rehearse a new cue. This was also a benefit to lighting designer Errol Reinart and production manager Scott Harvey. They had complete control over the implementation of the video clip being used during a number as well, and they often made color and background choices that balanced well with the lighting cues, costumes and music on the spot.
Certainly there are many options for implementing DMX-controlled media servers into a show today, but this particular system provides an easy, cost effective and straight-forward way of playing back pre-rendered content for this show. Although the Doremi V1m doesn’t allow the programmer any options for real-time content manipulation like a “DMX media server” such as Catalyst or Maxxedia, there is no need for that in this production. This is what makes the V1m a great match for this show. Its new double exposure keeps the audience seeing one great performance.
Vickie Claiborne is a freelance lighting director, programmer and trainer. She can be reached at Vickie@vickieclaiborne.com.
