30th Apr 2008 - Debuts in West End with 'Make Me Song'

Recently playing in the New Players Theatre in London, Make Me A Song is a vehicle for the heart-felt lyrics of William Finn, creator of, amongst others, the Tony Award-winning 'Falsettos' and the Broadway smash hit 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee',

It is with this production that Zero 88’s Frog 2 console makes its debut in the West End, controlling both lighting and video in a compact but complex design created by designer Ben M. Rogers.

Directed by Andrew McBean, the work is a highly collaborative and continually evolving piece with a history of fourteen producers, the original conceiver and director Rob Ruggerio and the writer Willam Finn all involved during its evolution. Rogers was also responsible for the set and video design and covered the on site production management, so precision planning and time management was paramount.

“With all these other responsibilities, I needed technology I was familiar with to minimise the potential for headaches and the flexibility to quickly incorporate changes during the technical period,” explains Rogers, “especially since we were so heavily reliant on video within the design concept and had less than one week of production fit-up before the first preview.”

Rogers has used the Zero 88 Frog 2 extensively on international touring shows including Noise Ensemble, The OperaBabes and Nicky Slater’s ICE TIMES. Having owned a Frog 2 since 2005 and being very familiar with its operation, Rogers chose this as his control option, supported by Zero 88’s Peter Kirkup.

“To combine video with the lighting in such a short space of time it was important to have full and instant control of all attributes of the system in one easy to use package – hence the choice of the Frog 2. This takes the established technology of the Arkaos video software and supports it in a user friendly interface which made the production programming very straight forward,” states Rogers.

The set for Make Me A Song is a stylish, minimalist black box with black grand piano upstage overhung by a multi-globed glass chandelier. Five black and chrome stools line the front of the stage while, upstage left, is a raked section of roadway which ‘disappears’ into a vertical projection screen divided into three sections. It is upon this that most of the technical action takes place, with video clips of New York city skylines, subways and roadways taking the place of conventional set to establish location and set mood within a limited space and budget.

The video content is comprised of original photography by Rogers and his associate designer Claire Bilyard and some royalty free stock content, all of which was loaded onto the Arkaos system. This, in turn, was then linked to the Frog 2 via Ethernet using the Artnet protocol. The Frog 2 is then used to manipulate, colour, position, control and add effects to the clips using same attribute control interface as one would for intelligent lighting programming on the console.

Using a Matrox Triple Head to Go external video splitter, the single Arkaos widescreen output is split into three separate projector feeds, with layer control on Arkaos being used to define the output to each portion of the screen, and subsequently rear projected onto the three screens using Hitachi CPX1 projectors, to form a complete image of 1024 x2304 pixels. The media server system comprised of a quad core MacPro tower which provided ample processing power and system reliability for the design. This arrangement also offered considerable savings on such a small budget show, when compared to a networked system with one computer per output device. Rogers used the Arkaos in Maxi Mode which uses 51 channels per layer to give full control of the images employing a total of 6 layers - 2 per screen to allow for fading between layers – throughout.

“The speed at which I have been able to work using the Frog 2 has been invaluable,” states Rogers. “Much of the video content was only introduced at about 5pm on the day before the first preview but I was able to drop it directly from my laptop onto the server via ethernet and run it through the Arkaos system onto screen immediately.

“You are effectively programming the video as you would an automated lighting fixture. Each layer is selected as a different fixture so all can be programmed into one sequence on the desk and cued with one button press. The Move When Dark control in the console also applies to the video control with the system pre-loading clips on hidden or turned off layers prior to them being used.

“There is often a perception that video can be very complicated thing to work with, and historically it may have been. However with a powerful media server application like Arkaos and it’s integration with the Frog 2, I am able to access all the required level of control through a familiar interface and continue to work in the same way as I would plotting any other lighting show.”

Peter Kirkup, Zero 88’s Product Specialist, was on hand for the installation of the system, setting up the rig, aligning the projectors and programming the basic palettes for the video and lighting on the Frog 2. “We have worked together on a number of projects now and his backup is superb. I trust him to set-up the desk and build palettes in the way I am used to working and we have now honed it to a fine art. All I have to do is wave at him during a staging call and he will create a position palette for the blocking the cast are setting.” The video all referenced one main palette meaning that should there be a need to change an alignment of an image on a projector this can be done quickly in one palette reference which is then called up in each instance of the projection being used.

Make Me A Song has 250 lighting cues in addition to the video cues. The video content is held as a separate stack with macros in the lighting stack triggering the video changes. Consequently there is only one “go” button controlling both lighting and video content.
The lighting design includes a range of conventional fixtures including PAR cans and ETC Source 4’s plus Rainbow scrollers, VL1000s and ETC Source 4s in City Theatrical AutoYokes which, along with the Frog 2, were supplied by Stage Electrics.

The Vari*lites and ETC Source 4/AutoYokes are used in place of follow spots and specials throughout the show and take full advantage of the Frog 2’s Move On Dark feature – just one of many Frog 2 features which have been employed on the show.

“I like and use this feature a lot,” says Rogers. “I am a lighting designer who programmes and am not particularly interested in the technical complexity of how it is done. For me programming is just a by-product of achieving the design and this feature saves a great deal of unnecessary technical time – time which can be better used elsewhere on a busy show like this!”

On Make Me A Song, the User Defined Faders on the console were employed as standbys to inhibit the scrollers or video in the event of failure during the show. “A useful feature and a good failsafe option, but one that we fortunately didn’t need to put into practice “ remarks Rogers.

Finally, Frog 2’s link with WYSIWYG (which fully supports Art-Net in its recent releases) also meant that Rogers could start with the pre-programming before he actually got to the theatre.

“I remain impressed with the Frog 2. It has the functionality and capability of high end consoles and can compete with them across all forums from theatre and opera to rock and roll,” he says.



Photograph shows Louise Dearman performing 'I Have Found' (Photo courtesy of Ben M Rogers)