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Mika Reigns At Parc des Princes
Brit-Award winning Mika's larger than life personality was reflected on stage at his one-off appearance at the Parc des Princes in Paris in July, with the help of a set designed by multi award-winning set designer, Es Devlin (TMA Best Design 1998, Oliver Award for Best Costume Design 2005).
Production manager for the event, Chris Vaughan, once again approached Brilliant Stages to build and supply the 68m wide x 20m high solid fascia which was to provide the enormous backdrop for the show.
Devlin's design for the fascia was that of a clown's face, the mouth of which was to form the proscenium arch with the forehead, nose and eyes covering the main stage whilst the ears and hair extended off-stage and across into the wings.
Oli Metcalfe designed the lighting using 1500 Color Kinetics IColor Flex SLX units to outline the mouth, nose, eyes, ears and hair whilst James Thomas Pixel Par 90s delineated eyebrows and freckles. The entire fascia was then washed with colour using Vari*lite VL3500 Wash fixtures to meet the design brief that the whole should resemble an old-fashioned fairground attraction, complete with festoon-style lighting.
A semi-circular Barco Matrix back projection screen carrying video content was used as a backdrop behind the fascia with further screens mounted behind the panels of the eyes, nose and mouth, all of which were supplied by Creative Technology. The ears were each filled with 7m x 5m Lighthouse 10mm LED screens suspended from a roof manufactured by Stage Co which showed more video content, combined with live on-stage action and audience shots.
Brilliant Stages had to take all these elements into account when designing the physical construction of the fascia.
"Our initial meeting with Es and Chris took place at Es's studio at the end of May," says Brilliant Stages general manager, Tony Bowern. "The show was to take place on 4 July so we did not have much time to hang around!"
Devlin's studio built a 1:100 scale model of the set to act as Brilliant Stages' design brief and for client approval.
Taking Devlin's artwork and CAD sketches, Brilliant Stages proceeded to design the panels for the fascia, adapting the design so that each panel would be of the maximum size to fit into a box trailer. This varied slightly from the normal Brilliant Stages procedure where set is generally designed in smaller segments to fit into standard transport dollys for touring, instead of static, one-off shows.
To keep within the budget, Brilliant Stages constructed the panels using 9mm spruce plywood, clad onto lightweight steel frames and bolted together to form the Clown's face.
The assembly method from then on was to build the frames into rows, raising each row using chain hoists, until the next row could be bolted to the one above. When fully suspended, the panel assembly was then strapped securely to Stage Co's roof. The sequence and design of the installation was jointly conceived between Brilliant Stages' Warren Steadman and head rigger, Phil Broad.
After the panels were constructed they were assembled in Brilliant Stages' workshop and painted to suit Devlin's artwork. On intricate areas of design, Brilliant Stages applied a printed Scanachrome laminate made from a vinyl coated polyester sheet. Brilliant Stages liaised closely with Roger Southey from Scanachrome on the printing and application of these laminates.
Before shipping the set to Paris, Chris Vaughan arranged for a pre-assembly and rigging of all the panels in a test run which took place at Litestructures rehearsals studio in Wakefield. Here Set Carpenters, George Osborne and Rick Worsford, cruised through the assembly test before repeating the exercise successfully in the Park des Princes.
"When the news of the concert was announced, the tickets sold out within hours," says Vaughan, "so Mika was adamant that he wanted the show to make a real impact. He approached me on the basis of other shows I had done for the likes of Take That and News as he wanted to produce something on a similarly large scale. We then approached Brilliant Stages whose job it became to turn Es Devlin's ideas into reality. They had to decide if it was achievable on such a scale - which luckily it was - and in effect created a 68m wide version of Devlin's artistic presentation. In addition to the aesthetic achievement, the whole thing went together easily on the first try - it was all very matter of fact really. Everything just went to plan!"
www.brilliantstages.com
Photos courtesy Es Devlin
10th September 2008
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