The Guildhall offers musicians, actors, stage managers and theatre technicians an inspiring environment in which to develop as artists and professionals, giving them first hand opportunities to experience the real working environment.
One of the most recent productions held at the Guildhall was Lulu. The production involved the work of many of the students giving them all opportunities to hone their skill sets and shine and was used as part of the video design module assessment.
Below, Matthew Ferguson the Video Designer for Lulu tells us about the production and his experience using Hippotizer Media servers for the first time:
“The original concept for our design was relatively simple – 3 screens which would fly in and track onstage, with photographs of the cast which would slowly turn into drawings. The concept for the drawings were based on paintings and sketches by Egon Schiele, as the twisted sexual nature of his work suited Lulu and the theme the director was trying to portray.
These screens were initially chosen to be automated, and this is why we chose to work with Green Hippo on this production, having seen their work at PLASA this year. Green Hippo were extremely accommodating in this regard, working closely with our in-house automation wizard Simon Bond, to make sure the media servers could communicate well with our system. Unfortunately, this was cut for the actual show, however it was great to see this collaboration with Green Hippo in action.
We used 4 Panasonic EX16K projectors with 3 custom screens – two were made of gauze and front projected, and one was rear projected by 2 projectors. We paired this up with two Hippotizer V3 HD servers, which did a great job of running whatever we threw at them smoothly. The initial technical rehearsals went extremely well, with the Hippotizer media servers speeding up the process immensely. This was my first time using Hippotizer media servers and I found using the Hippotizers to be both reliable and fast.
Overall, I found working with Hippotizer media servers to be a smooth and easy process, and I would definitely choose to use them again on a production.
Lulu : written by Frank Wedekind, directed by Christian Burgess
Designer: Agnes Treplin
Lighting Designer: Johanna Town
Composer: Alex Hall
Video Designer: Matthew Ferguson
Sound Designer: Erin Witton
Student Video Programmer: Jess Bernberg
Supervising Programmer: Lanz Short