latest news headlines

CyberHoist Raises the Curtain for Britney Spears

The audacious, ambitious in-the-round touring spectacle that is Britney Spears' Circus World Tour has been wowing fans in the UK before heading off on its latest international leg in Europe, North America, down under and beyond. Literally at the heart of the giant production is a mammoth circular Stealth LED video curtain, raised and lowered with millimetre precision several times every night by an XLNT Advanced Technologies CyberHoist motion control system.

The complex, three-ring, non-stop show is a cornucopia of aerial action, with acrobatics, nine automated lifts, and a central 5.18 metre (17ft) diameter rotating device, all contributing to the Circus theme, and with over 100 lift cues there's not a moment to draw breath.

The concept is the work of co-lighting designers Nick Whitehouse and Bryan Leitch, with tour director Steve Dixon and show director Jamie King. Whitehouse and Dixon, together with Bryan Leitch and William Baker, make up the recently formed Road Rage production company.

Literally topping the visuals is the giant carousel-style Stealth screen, four metres high and 18.9 metres in diameter and made up from 990 panels. It's suspended from 11 CyberHoist CH1000 1 ton intelligent variable speed motors and controlled at stage-side by programmer Arjen Hofma using XLNT's InMotion3D software running on a CyberHoist FPS Full Production System with dual Apple MacPro's.

The screen is, besides the multi-level stage itself, the show's key visual component, at times descending an exact 11.58 metres (38 feet) in 63 seconds to shroud the stage completely, with a dark red circular scrim above completing the masking-off of the central lighting rig. It was designed to fit around Madison Square Garden's centre-hung scoreboard, the largest encountered on the tour, explains Whitehouse, part of a modular, pre-rigged production that can go from load-in to show time in just 15 hours if necessary - and be out in four.

Flashing across the Stealth is a wealth of rich imagery, with the opening sequence bearing the logo of the Big Apple Circus whose performers work the routines with Britney herself; morphing into a tongue-in-cheek montage of lurid newspaper headlines about the star's career; and vivid, sassy graphics that pick up the theme of each song in sync with a large lighting rig from lighting, video and sound suppliers Solotech of Canada. PRG supplied the Virtuoso v676 lighting consoles, winches and Bad Boy luminaires.

Says Nick Whitehouse: "The complete screen weighs about four tons including the rigging, the custom frame that Tait Towers built for us, and the power supplies which we had integrated into the frame. That's picked up on the 11 CyberHoists and the shows starts with it dropped in over the main stage, followed by a big reveal. It's critical that it moves; if that ever broke it would be a showstopper. So CyberHoist was the obvious choice; I've used them a lot before. We had to have a really reliable product up there with a reliable control system that also gives the operator plenty of feedback, so if we know we've got a problem we can deal with it before it affects the show.

"It's vital to the show that the screen moves at the right speed at the right time and we're very happy to have CyberHoist doing that. And now that there's are CyberHoist systems based in America and Asia, as well as Europe, it's great because we can just pick up motors locally wherever we go and take the USB key and the show's there."

Steve Dixon adds: "We've got a reliable system that we don't need to spend a fortune on having back-ups of back-ups: a failsafe system, because stopping a show due to a motor failure would be a nightmare. Likewise, the software's tried and tested now, and it's the only moving motor software that gives you so much feedback." He adds: "As soon as we talked about the screen we knew it had to be on CyberHoist."

Flashlight Netherlands' Arjen Hofma explains the critical element is levelling the entire screen perfectly after load-in and assembly, before raising it into position under the mother grid. "Unlike regular systems the CyberHoist motors talk to each other," he says, "so once they're levelled at the start they stay that way." He adds: "It's a great tour to work on - video, sound and lighting guys, everyone is helping each other with their stuff; they're very good colleagues to work with. A few of the guys help me with the screen levelling, double checking physical height against the computer display, and it's done in a couple of minutes."

Tour production manager Jason Danter comments: "The CyberHoist system just seems to be a lot more exact than other chain systems; it's a lot smoother looking and when you're moving screens, certainly on this show where there's a lot of Broadway-style automation with winches, the slickness of the screen movement just adds to the whole production. It also kind of lent itself more to what we wanted to do during the show, including bringing it in quicker, taking it out quicker and being able to leave the screen down as long as possible before flying it out - there are various reasons why we used it.

"We also get great back-up from the company; they're good people to talk to, good people to work with. The people that they've sent out to run it have all been really good guys. It's reliable and with the back-up it's worth the money that you're paying for it. All good!"

News Type:

latest news headlines

CyberHoist Raises the Curtain for Britney Spears

2nd September 2009

HEADLINES

news archive

search stories