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The
opening of “Come Celebrate America” at the Governor’s
Palace Theater in Sevierville, Tennessee, must surely be
an exercise in superlatives. The three-hour show
features a cast of 45 singers and dancers, a 15’ by 50’
flying scenic projection screen, over 2000 video clips,
53 songs, and a 21’ by 55’ water pool tracked on at the
close of the first act. Medialon Manager driving Dataton
Watchout to time code underscores the visual
presentation.
“Come Celebrate America” rejoices in the scale and
diversity of our country’s history, from the 1800’s to
the events since late 2001. All genres are represented,
including a survey of the music unique to each state,
and a compelling tribute to our Armed Forces. The
1750-seat theatre is operated by the non-profit Primary
Focus organization as the pinnacle of their year-long
character program in schools throughout the nation.
Technical production took almost 90 days. “It was
exhausting” admits TD Chuck Bowers “but very much worth
it when you see the emotional reaction of the audience.
The media demands were enormous – for example, we have
over two hours of projection content alone that had to
aligned file by file. Medialon’s positracking feature to
Watchout has been tremendous. The fact that we could
bounce anywhere in the time code and know that the
Watchout will do what it needs to do at that point is
great. We can move ahead half hour in the audio, skip
segments, go back, and never have to worry that the
visual aspect won’t follow”.
“Another advantage of Medialon is being able to build a
custom interface” Bowers continues. “Rather than
showing a timeline view, which would be unnecessary in
this case, I have created a status screen that shows me
audio and Watchout time code as well as other Watchout
status indicators - is it online? what is it doing? -
and so on. It has been a great way to monitor the show.
We are now looking to have additional devices report
their status, in time for our Christmas special”. |
