After getting back from Dubai I spent a couple of days at StageOne keeping on-top of drawings for HTTYD as well as managing and overseeing the start of the installation of around 500 Schnick Schnack panels in some scenic ground-row which is progressing nicely.
Now its the beginning of Bella Bartok’s opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Bluebeard’s Castle is a project I have been working on over the past few months with Nick Hilel (Yeast Culture) , Nick Corrigan (Nickin), Steve Holmes and Rite Digital allongside the Philharmonia Orchestra. To explain the opera better than I ever could, here is a brief excerpt from the Philharmonia’s website.
The extraordinary Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Bartók’s only opera, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. Its world is sinister, dark and deeply disturbing. There are just two voices throughout, Duke Bluebeard and his new wife, Judith, and the entire one-act opera takes place in the hall of his castle. Judith opens the hall’s seven doors, one by one; each door reveals its own horror. In one, a torture chamber; in another, an armoury filled with bloody weapons; and in another, a garden where bloody stains the plants’ leaves. The final door opens and reveals Bluebeard’s three former wives, who step forward and receive Judith into their eternally imprisoned group. This is chilling, psychological drama, one of the great achievements of 20th century music.
SOURCE
Throughout the Opera we are projecting visuals on a stage set which surrounds the orchestra representing Bluebeards Castle consisting of 6 turrets which are our some of our projection surfaces. All of the content was all filmed and created for the piece and edited specifically in time and size so we can map perfectly to the projection surfaces in each venue. Projecting on the 6 surfaces is a challenge in itself , but to add to this there is also a centrepiece to the stage consisting of 3 sails suspended above the orchestra which move and rotate during the pice to represent the opening of each room throughout the story. This was the second challenge, figuring out how to project onto this matching and masking the complex shape whist it was moving.
IPhone photo during testing at the Royal Festival Hall
From our side, the run up to Bluebeard consisted of developing a system using Catalyst (Media server) which allowed us to mask to the shape and move the masks in realtime to match the projection on the sails as well as being flexible enough to tour multiple venues with different projection angles. Much testing tweaking and head scratching resulted in a rather tidy video playback setup, here are the details if you want to geek out!
BASIC PLAYBACK RIG
2 x MacPro 8 Core runing CatalystPM4 (1 Main & 1 Backup)
1 x KVM for backup switching
1 x BARCO Matrix Pro (DVI-I)
2 x Matrox Triple Head DVI
3 x 1080p Monitors (Output Preview 1, Output Preview 2, Catalyst Preview)
1 x TouchscreenPC running Chamsys MagicQ
1 x Chamsys PCwing
4 x BARCO HD20 projectors
The beginning of the ‘Tour’ (mini tour, very mini tour) started with a get in at the RFH after mid-day wednesday the 19th October, we had a small window to get the projectors in and playback setup before we were kicked out of the control booth for another gig happening in the space that evening. I had travelled down from from Newcastle and met Steve at the hall where we proceeded to get the kit into the booth, Richard Bleasedale was popping in as we had some issues with playback in Catalyst and h said he would try and figure out what the problem was, we managed to get the projectors in thanks to the local crew in the hall, and all the playback setup.
With 4 x 20k projectors in the booth it got rather warm! Richard arrived around 16.00 and and a look at the setup and programming, if you don’t use catalyst the following paragraph will probably boring and nonsensical, you have been warned! After looking at things and replicating the problem, (we had random video clips freezing onscreen but displaying that they were playing) Richard suggested a few things about changing the play-mode and being more defensive with the programming of the lighting desk. Low and behold his suggestions worked and I now understand the issue, thanks Richard, to anyone who is interested heres an explanation:
Random Video Clips not playing in catalyst
During some instances of programming we are pre-loading up to 16 video clips prior to fading up the intensity to display them on the screen. This process involves sending a packet of data (Artnet) from the lighting desk to Catalyst which changes multiple parameters such as the location of the video clip (File & Library) and the playback mode. For everything to behave as it ought to that packet of data needs to be read in to the system in the correct order and if any of those bytes of data are missed then the end result is not as expected. In this case Richard concluded that because we were updating so may things at once, coupled with using the Chamsys (were unsure how it packages and orders its data) that in some cases when we were triggering a cue, Catalayst was receiving the packet to locate the video and set the play-mode in a different order. This resulted in the correct in-frame of the clip being displayed but the play-mode not acting as should (possibly referencing the previous loaded clips parameters) because it had been triggered before the clip was loaded. This is how i understand it and after going trough the show and tidying up the programming we were in business! No freezing!!!
Back to Bluebeard…….
We left the venue at around 18.00 feeling happier with the progress grabbed some tea/dinner (Nice chinese restaurant down the street form the Old Vic) and headed back to the Travelodge. We were due back in the venue at 02.00 so after finishing off some work in the hotel I attempted to sleep for a few hours. The alarm went off at 01.30 and steve and myself headed over to the RFH for a setup rehearsal, when we got there the set guys from deadline had begun to put up the set under the guidance of Richard Slaney from RiteDigital, we proceeded to setup the rest of the system and got as-much lineup as we could whilst we waited for the rest of the set & sails to get put up. Nick & Nickin had joined us at around 03.00 and we continued on updating programming and tweaking things. In what felt like no time it was close to the first rehearsal, time seemed to have vanished but Nickin and myself with Steve operating Automation managed to get all of the masks drawn up and in the system. The rest of the day involved 2 rehersals, a quick lunch, many tweaks to programming & labelling up the system until 14.00 where we had to strip down the system and get our minibus to Birmingham for a repeat of what we had just done, although this time we would have our first audience.
Right to left: Steve, Richard, Nickin, Marina & Davids hand
These are the happy faces of people who have worked silly hours under pressure to get things right at the mercy and time constraints of an orchestra, mental or happy, you decide :-).