The Ballarat LYRIC company had rock Her Majesty's Ballarat in 2021 and February/March 2022 with a brand new production of the smash-hit musical, We Will Rock You.
Since 2002 over 16 million theatregoers in 19 countries have been thrilled by this awe-inspiring production which is based on the songs of Queen with a book by Ben Elton (a phenomenally successful writer : The Young Ones, Blackadder, Popcorn).
The Ballarat LYRIC company had rock Her Majesty's Ballarat in 2021 and February/March 2022 with a brand new production of the smash-hit musical, We Will Rock You.
Since 2002 over 16 million theatregoers in 19 countries have been thrilled by this awe-inspiring production which is based on the songs of Queen with a book by Ben Elton (a phenomenally successful writer : The Young Ones, Blackadder, Popcorn).
The show featured a full stage LED wall with a garage door style cut out in the middle and Matt Osborne ran the visuals for the production using SMODE Media Server.
“I needed a media playback solution and I wanted something I could set up and leave running without requiring me to be there to operate,” commented Matt. “I also wanted to be able to make changes as required remotely.”
The control of the system was primarily handled via Artnet from the lighting console as the show is called cue to cue so Timecode was only used to trigger the overture. SMODE doesn’t have a DMX personality like most other Media Servers, instead, any parameter can be exposed to DMX control, this means there is a lot less pressure on the lighting programmer.
Lighting had control of triggering scenes and then had specific elements within each scene to control, like virtual RGB fixtures, moving elements and changes.
“The show was shut down after opening night last year and had to be remounted again this year. The remounted show ended up with a different screen but SMODE made it very easy to remount. The whole show is contained in a project folder and because it’s all real-time it was very quick to adjust to the new screen (this would be a nightmare to re-render normally) and I was also able to log in remotely and make changes without having to upload massive video files.”
The way SMODE was integrated made it much smoother and because everything could be broken down to elements like simple RGB and Dims, and once they started playing, they were very excited every time I gave them a new element to control,” remarked Matt.
The show featured a full stage LED wall with a garage door style cut out in the middle and Matt Osborne ran the visuals for the production using SMODE Media Server.
“I needed a media playback solution and I wanted something I could set up and leave running without requiring me to be there to operate,” commented Matt. “I also wanted to be able to make changes as required remotely.”
The control of the system was primarily handled via Artnet from the lighting console as the show is called cue to cue so Timecode was only used to trigger the overture. SMODE doesn’t have a DMX personality like most other Media Servers, instead, any parameter can be exposed to DMX control, this means there is a lot less pressure on the lighting programmer.
Lighting had control of triggering scenes and then had specific elements within each scene to control, like virtual RGB fixtures, moving elements and changes.
“The show was shut down after opening night last year and had to be remounted again this year. The remounted show ended up with a different screen but SMODE made it very easy to remount. The whole show is contained in a project folder and because it’s all real-time it was very quick to adjust to the new screen (this would be a nightmare to re-render normally) and I was also able to log in remotely and make changes without having to upload massive video files.”
The way SMODE was integrated made it much smoother and because everything could be broken down to elements like simple RGB and Dims, and once they started playing, they were very excited every time I gave them a new element to control,” remarked Matt.
"SMODE runs in a layer-based workflow very similar to after effects, so has a familiar feel and was very quick to adapt to. Because everything can be changed and manipulated in real-time, it allowed for a lot of creative control and experimentation, tweaks could be made live on-screen in a run."
"SMODE runs in a layer-based workflow very similar to after effects, so has a familiar feel and was very quick to adapt to. Because everything can be changed and manipulated in real-time, it allowed for a lot of creative control and experimentation, tweaks could be made live on-screen in a run."
