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Catalyst is the ‘One and Only’
Lighting designer Mark Kenyon is using three recently upgraded Catalyst digital media servers to create various scenic video and lighting effects for the BBC’s primetime Saturday night ‘One and Only’ show – which is searching for the ultimate tribute artist.
Kenyon worked closely with set designer Patrick Doherty to devise the visual look and feel of the show which is produced by Endemol, presented by Graham Norton and staged in the BBC TV Centre’s Studio 1, west London. “We wanted to make it big, bold, poppy, glamorous and exciting,” he explains. “Using Catalysts to drive various video surfaces gives us exactly the dynamics we need.” He adds that both set and lighting also have to be extremely versatile, to cater for the vastly different stylistic range of ‘artists’ appearing on the series, from Kylie Minogue to Frank Sinatra.
Adding several layers of video to his creative inventory has given Kenyon an abundance of additional depth and headroom for being imaginative, and also provides the director with a complete set of narrative tools at his fingertips. Camels, roads, mountains, cityscapes, water, rain and literally thousands of ambient and abstract effects – are all available at the touch of a button.
Using video surfaces as digital lighting sources also provides contrast to the conventional and moving lights, although the cues very much morph all types of lighting into a series of seamlessly integrated bigger pictures.
The Catalyst driven video and digital lighting effects are appearing on five main surfaces around the studio. At the rear of the set are two - left and right - curved sections made from the new Martin LC2140 panels – 28 2 x 1 metre panels in total with a 40 mm pitch.
The central screen – masked by the set to appear round – is made up of Barco 6 mm high res LED panels, and under the circular stage floor is a 25 mm video wall, both of which also receive Catalyst input.
The fourth Catalyst driven areas are six curved scenic fins strategically positioned around the stage perimeter, filled with semi-transparent Barco MiTrix modules.
Catalyst also drives a series of four ChromaQ ColorWeb borders rigged above the stage. The furthest downstage has a 2 metre drop, and the other three have a 1 metre drop. These neatly mask the studio roof from the audience seating positions, and work extremely effectively as sparkling, animated banners – for a nice touch of theatricality.
One Catalyst machine is dedicated to the ColorWeb and capitalises on the system’s PixelMAD pixel-mapping capabilities, outputting 14 streams of DMX sent via Artnet from the gallery back to the control position.
Catalysts 2 and 3, each capable of running on 12 layers and outputting 10 streams of DMX, are driving the LC, the MiTrix fins, the 6 mm central screen and the 25 mm video floor.
Pre-empting the trend for digital lighting and media server technology, Kenyon and lighting designer/director Will Charles were amongst the first TV lighting people to invest in Catalyst systems. They now have three machines that are constantly in use and being upgraded as new hardware and software becomes available. The latest has seen the installation of 500Gb hard drives and Mtron 64Gb Solid State drives, completed by Catalyst worldwide reseller Projected Image Digital, based just up the road in Chiswick. This additional capacity allows the loops to play out from the SSD drives with exceptional smoothness.
Operating the Catalysts for ‘One and Only’ is Roger Williams using a Compulite Vector lighting console. He and Kenyon are joined on the visual team by Mark Nicholson and Rob Bradley (vision control) and Julia Smith (Galaxy and conventional lighting operator).
The lighting (including over 150 moving lights and additional LED sources) and video LED is being supplied by a combination of two rental companies - RML and Finelight. The MiTrix, the Barco 6mm screen and the 25 mm LED ensconced in the floor is being supplied by Creative Technology (CT).
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