Notre Dame de Paris

The spectacular new musical has toured across Europe selling more than 1 million tickets, including six straight months of sell-outs in Paris, before arriving in Canada in June. Rental house Eclairage Focus/Kloda Production of Montreal supplied 72 MAC 600s, 16 PAL 1200s, 18 MAC 500s for the Canadian leg of the tour.

Lighting Designer/Programmer for the show is Alain Lortie was has produced a beautiful and imaginative design. "We were privileged enough to have a 2 month rehearsal period," he stated. "This allowed for round-the-clock shifts in which an empty hall on late nights was a given in order to extend all necessary creativity to this project. I usually program my shows hands on, experimenting with the gear at will to extract all it can give me. Once I’m finished designing / programming, I leave the show which is then performed step by step by the tour operator who triggers each cue by hand."

That experimenting involved working with the Martin luminaires. Alain states, "Times have changed and products like Martin’s that keep working as well as they do after being used up to 20 hours every day for such a long period, can only be qualified as truly professional. We’ve downloaded new software from the Internet to the fixtures in a matter of minutes - a dream come "through" you could say."

"I prefer having the show run by a live operator even if we follow time code. It allows for some deviation on the part of the comedians who are therefore followed by lights instead of being ruled by a cue list."

"For some, fixtures must be trouble free. For me it must offer an extensive color spectrum, and for others it must pack efficiently in truckloads. As far as I can see, Martin fits the bill at all levels of this business, being granted a seal of approval by the service personnel, minimizing operation costs which keeps the accountants happy and satisfying my creative needs. When that’s all accomplished, there lies the irrefutable proof of success."