Lighting Magic for Hans Klok
The world's fastest illusionist enters the House of Horror
CATEGORIES Entertainment
Lighting and video content for Hans Klok
Assignment
Painting with Light has created innovative and highly effective lighting and video content for the current tour by Hans Klok, the world’s Fastest Illusionist, who is presenting his grisly ‘House of Horror’ show!
The action includes mind-boggling special effects that help transport audiences into a strange world where nothing is as it seems, as Hans Klok’s House of Horror tests and exceeds the limits of the genre of ‘illusion.’ To become the greatest illusionist of all time Hans has to survive his visit to the house and combat Cordoni by executing 15 illusions in three minutes, a world record and the reason he’s known as ‘the world’s fastest Illusionist’!
Solution
The Painting with Light team utilized a newly purchased d3 Technologies 4x2pro media server, supplied via Benelux distributor FACE, to great effect to help produce some gripping video special effects. They evoke the mystical world with many gruesome tricks and twists.
For this show, Luc Peumans, Sina Sohn and video artist Jos Claesen developed a graphic style inspired by the work of 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, renowned for his grimly fascinating fictitious ‘prisons’ with their impressive detail, intimidating walkways and staircases and foreboding darkness.
The d3 was programmed by Painting with Light’s Katleen Selleslagh. The whole process started at Painting with Light’s studio facilities in Genk, Belgium. Then it moved to the production rehearsal facility, a former factory space in Klok’s home town of Ijmuiden.
Finally, they moved the d3 and full video visualisation package plus WYSIWYG, for a final week of intense programming and editing on site at the Royal Theatre Carré before the premiere.
“Using the visualisation, we could look at all the footage and see exactly how it would appear onstage, onscreen from multiple angles and positions,” Luc explains.
Lighting was designed with the demands of touring in mind: It needs to be practical and manageable to rig on the morning of the first show in the case of multiple dates and able to deal with the odd back-to-back booking on the itinerary.
