stanwax
Classical Spectacular
Kevski and I had a pre Roger Waters preview of the Echo Arena in Liverpool last night when we went to see the Raymond Gubbay Classical spectacular.
The Music and show were very good - Liverpool Phil. Orchestra and Choir - Marvellous! The lights fireworks and guns were great too.
And the Lasers....? Effective but limmited.
They had a pair of identical lasers either side of the stage which had beam tables firing to a number of difraction effects and also to bounce mirrors, small mirror balls and more rotating diffractions out in the audience area. The lasers were Argons that clearly had AOM control as they were faded in and out nicely. These were used for all the scanned FX but with no colour (line) selection in the output they were just single colour scans. Bright strong but lacking the impact of even just argon colour selection - Some blue beams and green beams would have been nice. When fired at the diffractions and mirror balls the lasers had a red (Im guessing a diode combo of sorts) which was weak compared to the blue and green but added to the starburst effects nicely. There was lots of beams into the audience - which some people didnt seem overly happy about, but Im sure the calculations had been done for safety. The beams on the back wall opposite the stage looked to be about 8 inches in diameter - nice round gaussian blobs from them old gassers. The lasers were used alot - but not too much which was good but the variety of effects was limmited to about 8 or so different things so it just looked too repeated. If there had been some colour in there they would have got away with it more. There was a couple of occasions where they used lights to project union jack gobos onto the wall - Pomp & Circumstance + Rule Brittania - and they swept these round the audience. This was effective but had it been nice fat Red white blue laser beams or scans I would have had much more impact.
Upon arrival I quickly identified the laser operator - sitting centrally behind the light & sound booth - he wanst tough to spot - the Pangolin Lasershow Performer console gave the game away along with the TFT displaying the Live! window. Kev & I nipped down for a peek at the interval but he buggered off as soon as the lights went up so we didnt get to speak to him - obviously wanted to get to the front of the bar queue!
The Echo Arena is a nice venue - it should be being brand new - They should however have tested the fire alarms - which were set off by the smoke at the rousing climax of the show when the guns and fireworks were firing! But worst of all was the parking - the person who signed off the carpark planning needs his nuts kicking. One route in from the main road - 2 lanes to a roundabout into one lane - to the barriers in three lanes - into the carpark in one lane -Traffic Jam city! Then when you come out of the venue there is but one door into the car park - yes one 3 foot wide door! & god knows how many soles shuffling towards it. We went for a drink and an hour later the cars were still queuing to leave.
I will not be parking there when we go to see RW!
Great show well worth a watch, lasers good but could be better
Rob
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Originally Posted by stanwax
