When the latest Elvis Presley show took to the road, PRG XL Video supplied Production Manager Peter Edmonds with lighting, video and rigging for the tour. 2015’s million selling album If I Can Dream further strengthened The King’s inimitable reputation by giving him a number one album in five different decades. The tour used archive footage of Elvis, musical accompaniment by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a personal appearance by Priscilla Presley.
Lighting Designer Steve Sinclair is a veteran of the industry and lit the intricate and technologically innovative production.
He explained: “The brief was straightforward, the main part of the show is the screen showing Elvis, and everything else has been designed with that in mind. We started off with the idea of having a cyclorama rear screen – a curved back wall with a projection screen and wash lighting. The lighting for this show has ended up being almost two separate rigs, one in the air and one on the floor lighting the orchestra. There are three trusses overhead – one curved one which follows the cyc screen and two standard, straight trusses further upstage. Lighting fixtures include the Claypaky A.leda K10 LED wash light and the A.leda B-eye K20 high performance LED wash and effects light. The key lighting product I used was the PRG Bad Boy, which is such a great fixture because it’s so bright. SGM P5’s were also used, as well as a host of Vari*Lite VL3000s and VL3500s.”
The video crew were led by Media Server Technician Clarke Anderson. Regarding this element of the production, Anderson explained: “The rear screen is ROE Visual Vanish 25 LED screen in full-width orientation, and we’re using a ROE MC-7 screen in portrait format that displays Elvis and drops in and out on Kinesys. There’s one Barco HDX14 each side projecting a simple IMAG image. We’ve got three mini-cams on stage, two robo-cams and two manned cameras. Playback is done through Grass Valley HD machines, and the video output is fed from a Barco e2 media server which composes and positions the content.”
Sinclair explained the concept for lighting the show was to keep it simple, but to have several big looks with subtle changes. He used a Hog4 console to operate the lights, taking a WYSIWYG system on the tour with him.