Eos brings the Moulin Rouge to Broadway
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“ETC’s products are why we can make this show happen,” says lighting designer Justin Townsend. “There is just so much data - nothing else could have driven the show.”
Most people are familiar with the 2001 motion picture, a stylistic spectacle from the mind of Baz Luhrmann, so it was important to the musical’s creative team to make something that both honoured the film and stood out for itself.
“We didn’t want to just recreate the movie,” Townsend says, “but try to create a live Moulin Rouge experience.” The over-the-top scenery by set designer Derek McLane was matched by Townsend’s lighting design. “It needed to be bold, nimble, striking, rococo,” he explained, “And I’m tickled we were able to have such huge resources put into set electrics to make it happen.
“All around - we put the pedal down on all fronts in order to create something that could really sparkle and be different.” With nearly 200 moving lights in the rig, LEDs, LED neon, actual neon, thousands of lightbulbs, and a huge amount of power in the footlights, the show required a control system that was up to the task.
“Any given show might have one really tricky element,” says lighting programmer Brad Gray. “Whether it’s pixel mapping, heavy on effects, or lots of discrete timing, this show was a combination of all the hard parts of every show I’ve done before.”
As the flagship Eos family console from ETC, the Eos Ti provided enough versatility to program the complicated effects as well as the capacity to reliably control thousands and thousands of parameters in the rig.
One of the major advantages of the Eos software for Townsend and Gray was the ability to create a variety of Magic Sheets. Gray created 10 magic sheets that all interacted with each other.
Gray adds, “One of the best parts about the Eos platform is that it’s so, so designer friendly. They can give direction and not worry about commands - it’s very conducive to how most designers work.”
(Jim Evans)
