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EX1 Media Server on Bill Bailey
Lighting designer Arturo Ollandini has just completed comedian Bill Bailey’s 11-week ‘Part Troll’ national tour, which put the new EX1 digital media server to the test, using it extensively and highly effectively throughout the show.
The tour’s been so successful that Bailey has just confirmed a West End run starting in October.
Ollandini and VLPS’s (PRG’s) EX1 product manager Neville Bull worked closely with Bill Bailey himself to produce EX1 content for integration into the show as the tour progressed.
The tour demonstrated the massive flexibility of the EX1 and its great value as a live performance tool, especially in the context of Bailey’s highly interactive comedy. By the end of the run, they had a completely new show from what they’d started with, which will be the essence of the performance that opens in the West End.
The EX1 was not originally specified for the tour. However, during production rehearsals at VLPS (now PRG) in Greenford, Bill Bailey and tour manager Bobby Trowman saw a demo of the machine and were suitably impressed. They realised it was exactly the right creative medium for what they wanted to achieve, immediately seeing its potential for incorporating specific video content into certain jokes and sequences.
A projection surface on stage was always in the master visual plan – initially for a play-out film at the end of the set. The first half featured three original 8ft wide x 18ft tall backdrops supplied by Hangman, featuring the ‘phrenological’ artwork of Bailey’s head taken from his website. These were also designed to work as the projection surface for the end
sequence, and to be lit conventionally through the first half.
Downstage of the painted drapes, Ollandini added some motorised white gauze roll drops to retaining the three separate drapes concept, but incorporating a more projection friendly surface. These lowered in at the end of the interval, ready to take the EX1 projections. The painted drapes were Velcroed to the weighted bar of the roll drops, so when the latter lowered, the painted cloths folded neatly onto themselves on the floor.
As the second half kicked off, the audience could have thought that they were looking at the same backdrop images, but this time the three Bailey heads were projections. Then Bailey’s eyes would start rolling around, and his mouth or chin would drop Terry Gilliam-style. So the backdrop images gradually became more animated and ‘alive’; this had enormous impact as everyone sussed what was happening.
During the first two weeks of the tour – as the EX1 content evolved apace with the show, with Ollandini, Bailey and Bull all working furiously to make up hundreds of video clips and store them on the EX1 computer. Bailey hired an archivist who trawled the BBC’s extensive library for suitable material for integration into the show, and they also made use of the EX1’s onboard library images. By the end of the tour, the second half of the show featured EX1 footage throughout.
Control needed to be fast and highly interactive, so they linked a MIDI keyboard, played onstage by Bailey, to Ollandini’s Vari*Lite Virtuoso lighting console, which triggered macros in the desk that in turn fired the EX1 computer.
This gave Bailey complete timing control over firing certain clips that had to be spot on with his repartee, crucial in sequences like the ‘Scale of Evil’. Here Bailey brings up images of various dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, interspersed with Chris de Burgh and others as he plays the ‘Scale of Evil’. The ongoing “Where’s Osama Bin Laden” gags were also triggered via the MIDI keyboard.
The rest of the video content – some of which is more abstract and traditional texturing effects – was controlled by Ollandini at the desk, along with regular lighting cues. This includes the now-famous Drum ‘n’ Bush sequence, where Bailey, never one to shy to exploit the laughability of the contemporary political agenda, sets the words of George W to a gangsta-style backing track. This comes complete with patriotic, moving videoscape backdrops, shot through with the surreal theme of Bin Laden popping in and out of some unlikely world landmarks – from the Taj Mahal to the Eiffel Tower.
The EX1 was instrumental to the development of the show in the direction it went. “A versatile fast, hands-on video and control system with instant access control was the only way of keeping pace with the show’s improvisational wit and intelligence. It also helped explain and give specific oral references a visuality”, states Ollandini. The EX1 effectively became a completely integral live element of the show and set.
The video files and images are all stored as JPGs and Quicktime files on the EX1. The projector was a 6500 Lumen Christie Roadrunner, rigged on the front truss.
In addition to the EX1, VLPS (now PRG) also supplied the tour’s lighting production equipment, which included two 36ft mini-beam trusses, four Manfrotto stands, 11 VL6 spot luminaires and 14 VL5 wash luminaires. Ollandini worked alongside lighting technician and tour rigger Jim Allison.
26th July 2004
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