The Lord of the Rings finally reaches stage

One of the most popular adventure fantasy books of all time, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, has finally made it to the stage in Fantasy Musical Production Company’s rendition of this classic tale. The production takes place under a circus style tent in central Berlin.

Chris Laska has been designing lighting for 27 years and jumped at the opportunity to design lighting for a story which he adores and has read seven times. He has been working on the production for 2 years. The show will play in Berlin through 1999 and then travel to other major European cities beginning in 2000

Chris’ motivation to design lighting in a tent comes from his very first experience with lighting as a young man right out of school. "When I was done with school I went straight into the arms of Andre Kellor and my first job was in a tent, not as a lighting director but in sound. But this is where I got interested in doing lights and I’ve done it ever since. I have used moving lights since 1984 when Vari-Lite came out with one of the early scanners, and now on this production we have 12 tons of truss and lighting," he states. "The idea for the lighting design was to try to design a lighting scheme with very little conventional lighting, just moving lights - MACs and PALS" he explains.

"The difficulty I had with this set-up with the tent and playing basically in the round is that it eliminates you from using any front light, otherwise you will get light on the audience. So I had to design the lighting using mostly top light and that is hard because of the shadows you get, especially on the faces."

"With a production such as Lord of the Rings though, it was possible to incorporate a lot of color, so that’s what I have done. In order to reduce this shadow problem a bit, I use lots of color from above. I realized that in order to do this I would have to use dichroic colors with a very strong lamp, therefore I knew I had to work with moving lights."

"For me the most important elements for the lighting equipment were dichroic colors, a moving head, gobos, CMY color mixing and a good dimmer but I knew right away that dichroic colors were going to be key."

Some 320 special litho gobos were created for The Lord of the Rings to create special moods. It was decided to use Martin PALs with special gobos to create the patterns and images needed. Fourteen PALs are built into the stage for projection onto the tent walls surrounding the stage.

"Gobo projection is such an integral part of the lighting that a special gobo wheel was made for the MAC 500. "I use the MAC 500 for break-ups on the stage floor. It took me a while to get into the MAC 500 because I like color mixing, "he states, "but it has worked out well. The gobo wheel really works perfect for this production."

"I believe you have to pick a product and grow up with it. That’s really the only way to learn the ins and outs of a product. On this production for example we use the followspot system, the MLD. We have 4 trackers controlling 16 PALs. It’s been a bit of a chore at times to teach the actors not to hit eachother on the tracker microphone in the fight scenes, otherwise the signal gets disrupted. They really have to think about where they are hitting. I like the new technology though. It is really good for me that there is someone on the continent that is taking care of these things, producing cutting edge products."

 

"We chose Martin because they are European-based and have a lot of experience with moving lights. I had the opportunity to use the MAC 600 and liked the color mixing very much so I decided, lets see what they can do. Then I used the PAL with the framing device – I use it as some of the only front light to frame sceneny, etc. I can cut the shape with no backlight so it works perfect for me."

The tent is also illuminated with 14 Martin Exterior 600s.