Sound and Light Magazine Article

Written by Andrew King

Each and every year since 1979, Halifax has played host to tens of thousands of visiting performers, military personnel, and members of the general public for the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo. Inspired by traditional military tattoos, the event, held at the Halifax Metro Centre, welcomes bands, choirs, drums corps, dancers, acrobats, stuntmen - every type of entertainer imaginable, really - from international militaries, police forces, fire departments, and the like to put on a spectacle that welcomes everyone from international royalty or military officers to local families for an evening of entertainment.

This year's edition featured over 2,000 individual performers in dozens of individual acts, some taking place in a corner of the arena floor, others filling up the stage with several hundred singers or orchestra members, some even whistling across the entire arena surface on motorcycles, and, in one case, an individual performer will actually fly, suspended in the air, across the arena. The awe-inducing visual factor of the show is so stunning that, at almost any given moment, blinking would rob you of a chunk of your admission price.

The sheer grandeur of the show's visuals makes for somewhat of an interesting paradigm from a lighting standpoint. The show is lit so effectively and tastefully that you could literally engulf yourself in the performance and not even realize how the huge system suspended above your head was enhancing it, but at the same time, you could just as easily focus all of your attention on the encapsulating vastness of the lighting rig and cues that you'd miss the performances altogether. Don't get me wrong; the two come together rather seamlessly throughout the performance, but when you dissect the two tiers of the production, the lighting enthusiast would almost do well to hit the show twice. That, or, you could just keep reading...

Reporting For Duty

David Hignell, currently residing in Lethbridge, AB, has been the Tattoo's LD since 1999, working as associate LD six years prior to that. Residing in what's essentially the opposite end of the country seems to have little effect on his ability to communicate with the rest of the technical crew throughout the year in planning the upcoming year's edition of the event. After the event's run has terminated for one year, it doesn't take long before Hignell's back to the drawing board for the following year's stint - not even a day, actually, "while everything's still fresh," he says. "Before I leave (for Lethbridge), we'll have discussed next year's show."

This year's show, though, was the first in which the Tattoo was able to employ a brand new army of Vari-Lite VL3500 fixtures, purchased by Tour Tech East earlier in the year to accommodate the Tattoo's lighting requirements that, in previous years, couldn't be accommodated by moving heads. "We used to light the show with 5K Fresnels, which were replaced by the VL3500s, just about one to one," explains Hignell. Prior to exploring this current model, there wasn't a moving fixture that was going to work from the required height (42.5 ft.) to replace the 5Ks. Essentially, it was a wait for technology to catch up with the needs of the show. The complete outfit of Vari-Lite fixtures was a $1 million investment by Tour Tech East, which in turn took a five-year contract as the event's lighting contractor.

As far as Hignell is concerned, enhanced colour and movement are the ultimate payoffs for the new squadron of suspended fixtures. "It's a similar look from year to year," he explains, "so the biggest thing, frankly, is the colour capability and the fact that we can concentrate the lighting more specifically." There's more movement with the profiles than the washes, with the washes usually only moving during blackout.

Despite its extensive impact on the show, the lighting set-up isn't overly complex, so when it came to programming the moving heads, nobody was overtaken with painstaking button-pushing. According to Hignell, "Some of it takes longer, but for the most part, it's the same amount of time (as previous years). We set up zones, and for a lot of the show, we're simply working with those zones," he says, with the show employing 16 in total. In a few cases, the fixtures are re-focused to swing out, independent of their zones, to follow the talent to different locations, but for the most part, the show is mapped out in easily-digestable chunks for simple operation.

Tour Tech's Shawn Organ has been working on this year's event through pre-production and is now manning the lighting board for each night's performance. He explains the control set-up, first noting that each 100 ft. truss flying above the arena floor is a DMX universe in itself. "That's how many fixtures are on each of the longer trusses," he says to emphasize. There are eight universes in total for the flown fixtures - six for each 100 ft. truss, and the smaller divisions share to make up the other pair.

There's also one universe for the conventional dimmers, all on one chain. That's another key advantage for the show that came with the new moving heads. Without a slew of 5Ks loaded with colour scrollers, the colour changes are quick, and instant blackout is available, whereas a 5K would dim no matter what. The conventional dimmers are all on the top ring of the arena, running out to the fixtures via the catwalk.

This year, the lighting rig's commanding officer is a grandMA 2 console, which, at the time of the Tattoo's run, had only been out a few weeks. This is Organ's first experience with the boards, though the absence of the new software version kept the learning curve rather slim. "Right now, we're still running grandMA version one software, so we started programming on the original grandMA and then moved the show over."

Among the advantages afforded to Organ, and subsequently the show as a whole, is the board's solid-state hard drive, which makes the saving process a lot quicker. "Also," adds Organ, "going from screen-to-screen, there's really no delay. That may be the most noticeable difference."

The rig is mainly powered via one 200-amp and two 200-amp services fed from underneath the stage, running up to the catwalk to one flown distribution pod. The balance is powered from the south end off a 150 kva transformer supplying an additional 300 amps. "In past years," explains Organ, "there were three pods, so the amount of dimming has gone way down." So has the amount of cabling, as without the 5Ks, which require an individual joy cable per fixture, it's a few power and data cables running to the catwalk and that's about it.

Also worth a mention is the fact that there are 14 followspots working on the show - seven on each side of the arena. Each spot is given a side and number, and is then commanded, sometimes individually, and sometimes in groups (odd or even, for example) for coverage. In fact, it's Hignell himself on the Clear-Com system actively directing the spots for each act throughout the show.

"Even though there's an awful lot of automated light from above, you get face shadow from helmets or hats, so a lot of times, we're filling in where the overhead light is causing shadows," explains Jamie Dufton of Tour Tech, the company's Project Manager. Dufton has worked for the union on the Tattoo in many capacities over the years. Though there are way more performers and acts than a typical followspot gig would offer, the pace is slightly slower, and therefore more manageable than, say, trying to follow an overly-energized rock frontman. That said, coordinating the 14 followspots is still a big job and, considering the scope of the spectacle, an integral part of the lighting.

Moving Into Position

Lighting the 2,000-plus performers at different points in the arena is certainly no cakewalk, but perhaps more complex would be coordinating those performers themselves and the way they interact with the Tattoo's technical components. Colin Richardson has been working with the event since its inception in 1979, though he's been occupying his current role as Technical Director the last 15 years. He explains: "I'm basically coordinating all of the technical aspects of the show - sound, lighting, video, the set..."

He's also the safety officer for the show, a matching hat considering how a show's safety and technical considerations are correlated. "Because I've been doing the show so long, there's very little that will surprise me," he says. "I've seen it all." Even though this year, the show features a flying performer suspended from the catwalk and projected using a high-speed motor, Richardson is calm and comfortable making things happen with safety in mind.

Some of the risk is also eliminated by the experience that comes with so many members of the crew - and the performers themselves. "We have some returning cast each year, and some new cast that's never been here before, so we mix in people that know the show with those who've never been involved with a production of this size," says Richardson. Still, when you add components like moving vehicles (this year's show features an RCMP car, two jeeps, and a fleet of BMW motorcycles for the Hamburg Motorcycle Police's in-motion acrobatics) to a cast of over 2,000 performers, you really have to go the extra mile to make sure nobody's ever in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Richardson explains its not just the arena floor that plays hosts to mind-boggling choreography; working under the stands to get one act off and the next one on according to the set schedule is quite the dance in itself. "It's a real challenge," says Richardson, "and when you throw in the different languages, since we have performers from all over the world, that makes it even more challenging."

Sure there's a lot to it, but at the very base of the process is the fact that the performers are all concerned with their own safety and that of everyone else involved in the production, so it's never a struggle getting everyone on the same page. Richardson sees his hard work in action each and every night, spending most of his time (aside from his trip to the catwalk to fly the performer) during the performance behind the stage, taking care of traffic control and commanding the troops - literally. "We run very much like a military behind the stage," he says. "I have a stopwatch, and we run every act to the clock."

Seeing Action

"We have a pretty fundamental system," states Director of Visuals Ron Doucette about his set-up. The production features two 10,000 ANSI lumen Panasonic DLP projectors, set-up behind the stage for rear projection. The pair of projectors is new to the Tattoo, and the addition, along with that the lighting rig, was approximately five years in the making before finally being implemented. The projectors are fed via fibre optics, with the source being a Mac Pro Quad-4 8 GB computer. "Pretty basic," according to Doucette.

The large amount of space backstage, designed to accommodate the many performers flowing on and off the stage, also allows for a rear-projection set-up, ideal for any production in terms of brightness, quality, and clarity, not to mention its immunity to ambient light from the main rig. "Light that happens to land upon the screen can fall through the screen from the front, so it doesn't get reflected back to the audience like it would with a front-projection set-up," explains Doucette.

Of course, avoiding these kinds of clashes with the lights requires a good deal of communication with the lighting department. As Doucette explains, lighting and visuals need to work together very closely, as one can overpower the other very easily, "so we have to work closely to keep darkness and complement each others efforts." Not only is there little visible interference between the two departments, but the two work quite well together at many points throughout the show to complement each others' looks. "You'll see a lot of connection between screen colour and floor colour," shares Doucette prior to the show. "You'll see some elements of our programming that are streamlined right through from the floor to our screen."

The visuals for the show are compiled and created right onsite a few days prior to the show's run, when content starts coming in from the soon-to-be-visiting acts. "We've created most of what you see on-the-fly," says Doucette. "Now, our ‘fly' started about two weeks ago when content started arriving," at which point the videos are edited in Final Cut Pro, and some graphics are created in Photoshop. "It's all put together and delivered on Mac's Keynote. It's very basic, very easy to use, and works for us in the stage we're at right now."

The visuals are simple and subtle, only commanding attention when short video clips are being run. In most cases, the screen will sit in the background with the name and logo of the featured act at that time, clear, sharp, but not overwhelming - there are already enough eye-drawing aspects to the performance; the visuals add to them without creating others.

"Every act is different, and every act can potentially throw us a curve ball," says Doucette. The safety factors are built-in beforehand, ready to go in the case of an emergency. "All of our graphics are stored here," he explains, "so if we need to pull something out and work with it before the show, we can facilitate those last-minute requests pretty quickly."

>At Ease

If all went according to plan after the Tattoo's eight-night run in Halifax, Hignell and the members of the technical crew have already started planning next year's event. While they may be unsure of which acts will be incorporated - the Paris Police Force's acrobats, the Hamburg Police Force's motorcycle stunt-people, gorgeous dancers and baton twirlers from Estonia, or some of many Canadian bands, choirs, or drum corps we saw this year, for example - the spirit of the event and its recurring "Bond Of Friendship" theme will certainly be back and at the heart of the performance.

The new technology recently incorporated into the show will certainly offer exponentially greater potential for future shows, though Richardson wisely points out that: "You can have all of the best toys, but if you don't have the personnel, it's not going to work." Fortunately, the returning cast of technical characters seem competent and comfortable with each other, making for good communication and a well-run spectacle for the Tattoo's annual audiences.

"For me, it's a labour of love," says Richardson passionately. "It's very important for us to celebrate the military and acknowledge their contributions and sacrifices for Canada and the world." Indeed it is, and it's all the more special when you can invite around 100,000 others each year to join in, all with smiles on their faces and eyes dancing across the arena, wondering what's going to happen next.

As appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Professional Lighting & Production (www.professional-lighting.com) by Editor, Andrew King.