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XL Video on Ha’Penny Bridge
The Irish/English love story by Alastair McGukian, set in Dublin during the bitter Civil War of 1922-23, was originally produced by Kassan Productions in 2000 at Cork. Five years on, it again returned to Cork Opera House for a technical preview period before moving to the larger venue in Dublin in this revived, revamped and technically upgraded version.
With a miniscule amount of rear projection depth, the original production made inventive use of projection for the main scenic and locational elements, dispensing with the need for excessive amounts of backcloths and scenery. Back then Driscoll used Pani large format projectors and slide changers to produce these effects, combined with an arsenal of traditional VSFX projectors and luminaires with animation effects.
With video projection technology having advanced dramatically in the last five years, this time he decided on a combination of high powered video and PIGI large format projection. For the specialist video requirements, Driscoll once again turned to XL Video – with whom he’s collaborated on many high profile projects including, ‘Our House’, ‘Billy Elliot’ and ‘Rebecca’.
The PIGI equipment and the digital output of the imagery onto large format, high definition scroll film was supplied by E\T\C UK.
Driscoll is also the 2005 production’s lighting designer – in keeping with the current trend of visual ‘convergence’. The show’s lighting was originally designed by Mark Jonathan. Due to Jonathan’s lighting commitments abroad he was unable to re-design the new version for 2005, entrusting it to Driscoll.
Driscoll asked Jonathan’s 2000 associate Jason Larcombe onboard to work alongside him to develop the lighting design, keeping faithful to much of the original work. Scenic designer Patrick Murray significantly redesigned the set, this time including several large flown and automated structural pieces, but retaining the simple large blank canvas format of the initial show, leaving space for the projection to fill in the details.
The project was managed for XL by Paul Wood, who comments: “Once again it is a pleasure to work with Jon, particularly on this project as we have been discussing the possibility of this happening again for the past four years.”
Out front, two doubled Barco R18 projectors beamed across the whole stage, at times including the pros arch, and at other times masked, confining the image to the 11 metre wide stage portal opening. Two sets of grey slatted blinds came across the stage to form another projection surface, the bottom set tracked in from the sides and attached to the underside of a flown bridge, while the top set flew in from above.
Onstage XL supplied two Catalyst DL1 moving head projectors, rigged either side of stage behind a special Gerriets BP (back projection) screen, and in front of that, a black sharks tooth gauze. The DL1s were used for smaller picture-in-picture details like shop windows and more abstract images like fire. They also created the moon in the show’s signature Ha’penny bridge scene. Some of the DL1 images were carefully masked and ‘mapped’ into gaps left in the PIGI artwork.
The PIGI S 500s were also rigged upstage of the BP screen on a custom designed cantilevered shelf structure, situated between the show’s tracking replica of the Ha’penny Bridge. The pair of PIGIs were fitted with double scrollers and Barco wide angle 0.9 lenses to cover the full 12 metre screen width. PIGI control was by DMX 512.
The 2005 show’s film footage and artwork was created from scratch. Driscoll re-used some of his original 2000 show artwork, cloudscapes and textural stills photography from his own archive, plus some newly shot special effects film sequences. The historical images were sourced from the National Library of Ireland. They were restored digitally, treated in a variety of other programmes and perspective corrected by E\T\C before printing onto large format film or being stored on the media servers.
All video sources were stored on two Catalyst media servers, one located with the R18s at front of house, and the other onstage, feeding the DL1s. XL Video and production chief projectionist Clarke Anderson worked intensively with Driscoll in preparing and loading the Catalysts, operated during the show via the WholeHog II lighting desk. The console was programmed from the outset to control both moving and generic lighting, Catalyst digital projection and PIGI projection by Steve Parkinson, a veteran of the 2000 production.
Said Driscoll: “I find that the combining of lighting and projection design for a production works well if you’re surrounded by a great support team. As a designer you are in an extremely exposed position during the production period of a new musical, and fortunately on Ha’penny Bridge I had a great technical team and first class equipment suppliers. The projection elements took a great deal of pre-production and problem solving. Paul Wood of XL Video was involved from the very outset and contributed huge amounts of technical expertise, support and onsite consultation.”
20th July 2005
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