Robe Highlights Royalty posted: 16/11/2016
Albert 1 was a new and ambitious musical produced by Simon de Merode and staged around and on a series of pontoons floating on the moat of the magnificent (old) Westerlo Castle in Belgium, which has been the family seat of the House of Merode for over five centuries.
Lighting designer Michel Jacobs - who enjoys lighting off-beat and idiosyncratic shows and interesting site-specific works - was asked to light the production which played to 1850 people a night, sold out for over two weeks. He chose a completely Robe moving light rig to give the flexibility needed to deal with the challenges of the location and the complexity of the production.
The musical followed the story of Belgium's hugely popular King Soldier Albert 1 from his accession to the throne in 1909 to his untimely - and some claim mysterious - death in 1934 aged 58 in a mountaineering accident at Marche-les-Dames. Simon de Merode is also a prince in real life and a member of the Merode family, one of five dynasties that has dominated the Belgian high aristocracy from the 14th century onwards. Since 2006 he has assumed responsibility for the renovation and upkeep of the fantastic Westerlo Castle heritage site.
Michel has worked on the site before lighting a musical about Marie Antoinette, but not with the stage partially on dry land and water as was the case this time. He's also worked with director Luc Stevens on various projects over the last five years.
As soon as the site was decided, the large performance space was established covering around 150 metres in width and 100 metres in depth so Michel knew immediately he would need some very powerful lighting fixtures.
He chose 20 x Robe BMFL Blades as the main fixtures.
I approached lighting the work with a bit of a rock n' roll attitude he explained, I knew I needed lots of power and although it's essentially a theatrical show, I needed lightsources that could hold their own in a stadium concert!
He added that he's also seen rock shows with double the amount of fixtures on stages a tenth of the surface area of this one!
Dealing with the width of the stage and also encompassing a partial roof canopy that revealed parts of the building at the back was the big challenge because in addition to the brightness, he needed the precision and accuracy of the BMFL Blades, which were rigged on front lighting gantries at the back of the audience tribune.
The focusing had to be spot on, and he needed to shutter off any unwanted lighting or spillage - which could potentially be quite a lot over those distances.
The set included a large mountain, which fulfilled multiple different locational roles in the narrative as the action unfolded.
He's used Robe fixtures frequently in his work and earlier in the year, BMFL Blades and DL4Ss were spec'd for De Groote Rappel an outdoor musical drama located in an army barracks in Leopoldsburg.
Back at Westerlo, the BMFL Blades were used in just about every cue of the show, and their multi-functionality was very helpful at other times as well - including the intermission - where six Blades were able to light some of the immediately surrounding scenery of the castle and its gardens, rather than needing any separate wash fixtures to do the job.
Apart from the brightness, Michel likes the CMY colour mixing of the BMFL Blades and also the gobos.
Twelve ROBIN 300E Spots were used to add light, colour and texturing to the roof canopy, and some positioned around the floor arear at the front created the dramatic shadows that characterised the war scenes.
Ten LEDWash 600s added general stage lighting and atmosphere.
Four Pointes were used as FOH follow spots. With the frost filters inserted, Michel found they were a perfect solution to provide soft' highlighting. They were great - even from a long distance - for this task and picked out the principals and solo singers appropriately in the context of how the rest of the stage was lit .
Pointes also assisted in creating gunfire effects on the mountain for the war scenes.
Lighting the show was dynamic in that Michel had to amalgamate several styles from Hollywood to Broadway, encompass grim and dramatic war scenes and light anything from full stage big production numbers to intimate monologues.
All the lighting equipment was supplied by Meerhout based rental company Demon with which Michel works closely, and all the logistics and crew were co-ordinated by their project manager, Dominic Marien.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Robe Highlights Royalty posted: 16/11/2016 
