Elvis: A Musical Revolution is the story of a man who gave the world a musical revolution. Featuring over 40 hit songs, this worldwide premiere opened last week at Sydney’s State Theatre with an all-Australian cast.
In production design meetings, lighting designer Declan O’Neill says that they discussed the types of light used in the multiple periods, how the lighting was used in performances when Elvis performed, and how it evolved over the years.
“You will notice as the show progresses through the forward timeline, the lighting becomes more involved in the performances,” he said. “The show is set in a memory state of Elvis reflecting, so we play with the brightness and types of colour. There are moments in the show that is very dimly lit, and it can make the “memory space” feel enormous. We have matched a lot of colours to themes throughout the show. This show is non-linear and keeps jumping through periods of his life, so this helps navigate the story. There were also moments where we had to make it feel like light was beaming out of Elvis on stage.”
Declan challenged himself to light the show as true to the periods as possible. From the time where Elvis started performing to the ending, lighting evolved rapidly. As above, as the show progresses, the lighting becomes more involved.
“I love a moving light as much as the next person, however, I kept restraint and have only one live move in the show allowing for a clean-looking show,” he added. “I have never used pixel mapping before, so I tried that for the first time with the set electrics, which helped speed up the programming process.”
Back when Elvis started performing, most concerts were only ever a stage wash and maybe a followspot, if they had one, so trying to stay true to the time period whilst also adding a sense of theatricality to it, proved challenging in some scenes. The other challenge for Declan was gear availability.
“The industry is racing at a million miles an hour now, so trying to find the right product can also be tricky,” he remarked. “I try to find the lights that will do the job to get the right look on stage, not just because of all their features. My entire rig is LED, which can seem a bit off for an Elvis musical, however with technology evolving, there are moments when I can’t tell the difference between an LED and a conventional lighting fixture.”
The set consists of about 150m of LED strip and nearly 1000 individually controlled LED globes incorporated into many set items, being the proscenium, static set, automated set and wirelessly on smaller set items handled by cast. There is also a giant flown Elvis sign that is 6m high by 7m wide. It runs five universes of individually controlled RGB LEDs.
Declan says that he was fortunate to be one of the first few musicals in Australia to have an ETC APEX on the show permanently. He says that it helped the workflow of programming, being able to see everything all at once and having dedicated encoders for parameters. It also helped unlock the nearly 10,000 parameter count and Declan adds that the assignable user target keys are a game changer in the programming world.
The lighting rig is supplied by Resolution X and the LED products are by Opto Projects. ResX also provided a lot of trussing and networking.
The lighting rig consists of 25 x Martin MAC Encore Performance CLD, 18 x Ayrton Diablos, 26 x Martin MAC Aura XIP (brand new), 3 x GLP X4 Bar 20s, 19 x Elation Six bars, 16 x Prolights ECLProfiles, ShowPRO Dreamfest and Chauvet Festoon for days.
“We also run an MDG for haze and a Glaciator for low fog,” continued Declan. “We also had some wireless technology on this show, using the new Pixel Dot range from ENTTEC and Astera AX3s.”
The show is operated on the ETC Apex with a Gio as a backup through a lighting network with Midi and SMPTE timecodes to help maintain a tight show.
“Programming was on the ETC Apex with Capture as Previsualisation,” commented Declan. “The nature of a brand-new, never before seen show is that there are always going to be changes to the story or structure, so you need to stay on top of what is happening. This show is my first time using ETC’s Augment 3d, to help assist with updating the show. Because my lighting rig is fully hidden behind the set, sometimes it is hard to pinpoint which light you want to change, so I could refer to the Augment 3d tab to help navigate. There were times when the stage was unavailable to program on, so we could reconnect Capture into our network and continue programming. There are about 700 lighting cues in this show, some timecoded and the rest called by Stage Management.”
As to his favourite lighting moment of the production, Declan says he has quite a few adding that the show is quite stripped back compared to previous designs he has done due to the period of the show, however, the opening of the show builds hype through lighting, sound and vision.
“With a versatile lighting rig, I can light an entire Vegas-style performance and then be able to strip back to lighting a living room in the 1930s,” he said. “My favourite part of the show would have to be the 1968 comeback special, followed by JailhouseRrock. Blue Suede Shoes opens the top of Act 2, with an average of 1 cue per second. I quite enjoyed being able to help match the energy on stage for big production numbers and also be able to drive the mood and setting in smaller scenes/songs.
“All in all, I think my favourite part was being part of a brand-new commercial musical, never seen before. We get the opportunity to create something new and nothing was off-limits.”
Video content was designed and composed by CVP. They used three Panasonic laser projectors and a 7m x 7m LED screen run-through disguise D3. There are also live camera feeds from the stage.
Photos: Daniel Boud, Ken Leanfore & Lara Jane
