CyberHoist Raises the Curtain for Britney Spears

02 september 2009

Britney Spears’ Circus World Tour, an audacious, ambitious in-the-round touring spectacle, has been wowing fans around the world. Literally at the heart of the giant production is a mammoth circular Stealth LED video curtain, raised and lowered with millimetre precision several times every night by an XLNT Advanced Technologies CyberHoist motion control system.
The complex, three-ring, non-stop show combines aerial action, acrobatics, nine automated lifts, and a central 5.18 metre (17ft) diameter rotating device, all contributing to the Circus theme, and with over 100 lift cues there’s not a moment to draw breath.
The concept is the work of co-lighting designers Nick Whitehouse and Bryan Leitch, with tour director Steve Dixon and show director Jamie King. Whitehouse and Dixon, together with Bryan Leitch and William Baker, make up the recently formed Road Rage production company.
Topping the visuals is a giant carousel-style Stealth screen, four metres high and 18.9 metres in diameter and made up from 990 panels. It’s suspended from 11 CyberHoist CH1000 1 ton intelligent variable speed motors and controlled at stage-side by programmer Arjen Hofma using XLNT’s InMotion3D software running on a CyberHoist FPS Full Production System with dual Apple MacPro’s.
Says Nick Whitehouse: “The complete screen weighs about four tons including the rigging, all picked up on the 11 CyberHoists and the shows starts with it dropped in over the main stage, followed by a big reveal. If it ever broke it would be a showstopper – so CyberHoist was the obvious choice. We had to have a really reliable product up there with a reliable control system that also gives the operator plenty of feedback.
“And now that there’s are CyberHoist systems based in America and Asia, as well as Europe, it’s great because we can just pick up motors locally wherever we go and take the USB key and the show’s there.”Steve Dixon adds: “We’ve got a reliable system that we don’t need to spend a fortune on having back-ups of back-ups: a failsafe system, because stopping a show due to a motor failure would be a nightmare. Likewise, the software’s tried and tested now, and it’s the only moving motor software that gives you so much feedback.” He adds: “As soon as we talked about the screen we knew it had to be on CyberHoist.”
Tour production manager Jason Danter comments: “The CyberHoist system just seems to be a lot more exact than other chain systems; it’s a lot smoother looking and when you’re moving screens, certainly on this show where there’s a lot of Broadway-style automation with winches, the slickness of the screen movement just adds to the whole production. It also kind of lent itself more to what we wanted to do during the show, including bringing it in quicker, taking it out quicker and being able to leave the screen down as long as possible before flying it out – there are various reasons why we used it.“We also get great back-up from the company; they’re good people to talk to, good people to work with. The people that they’ve sent out to run it have all been really good guys. It’s reliable and with the back-up it’s worth the money that you’re paying for it. All good!”