A year on from re-creating Billy Elliot in Japan remotely, five months on from programming Waitress in Japan remotely, Rob is remote-re-lighting and remote-programming again - this time for Billy Elliot in Korea.
Remote lighting plans were put in place for this production at a point when travel into Seoul from the UK was not allowed. Even as that became possible (with two week quarantining), Rob decided to continue to work remotely because of the uncertainty surrounding international travel. Lovely as Seoul is, it would be unfortunate to be there and have the rules change so you weren’t allowed home…
The remote working system Rob has designed is a refinement from that used for Waitress, with two video feeds offering the best balance between image quality and low latency, and then a working set-up that includes a large monitor for stage view, and an Eos Ti console connected to the Korean console via theBRIDGE networking system. Considerable care was taken with camera specification and, particularly, colour camera set-up to give the best possible representation of the stage to those working from afar. As before the only drawback is a crazy work schedule: a Korean working day maps to a 1am-2pm day in the UK.
The other different this time is that the lighting designer, Rick Fisher, will get to be in the theatre once he is allowed out of quarantine - so there will be ‘eyes in the room’ and so an ability to make real, useful comparisons between the on-stage image and the on-camera image.
Technical rehearsals for Billy Elliot in Korea begin today; the show previews from August 31st, and opens on September 5th.
Remote Lighting at Virtual Showlight 2021: [link]